Continuing with my regular "I'm a big geek" theme:

Geeky Knitting from Everybody wants a Rock (A geologist knitter!)

I'm sitting here, calling the people that made the map that I used originally. I'm trying to get a fix for the centroids problem. (Someone at the place suggested something yesterday but it didn't work). No one's in. It's a state agency, so I'm guessing they're either out in the field or in a meeting.

Sigh.

I started entering the climate data in the hopes of someday having county centroids to tie them to, but I tend to bug out fast when it comes to transcribing lines of tiny type into Excel. And several counties have more than one weather station, I'm not sure whether to just use the first one I come to on the list (as "representative" of that county, or whether to average the data (and I've lost my hand calculator YET AGAIN - I think it's buried somewhere in my office from my last cleaning bout, but I've still not run across it so it's possible I took it to class with me one day, left it there, and there's someone walking around who got a free calculator. Pity, it was one of the TI statistical models).

On the knitting front, I'm really torn between wanting to start something new - I was contemplating winding off the yarn for my second Bookworm Vest last night - and completing some of the stuff I've got on the needles. I hauled out the long stalled Canal du Midi socks (going on their second year of non-completion now) and added a few rows to the second sock. One of the problems is I took insufficient notes on the changes I made (or rather, the mistakes and misreadings of the pattern I did that I decided weren't worth ripping out and redoing) on the first sock, so I have to knit for a bit, then peer hard at the first sock and try to see/remember if I'm doing it matchy.

I thought perhaps working on a project that had been in perma-stall would be as good as starting something new, but it isn't.

I'm also fighting the temptation to make a Tar-zhey run tonight; book club is tomorrow night and I really don't have any really swanky snacks to share. I have some cheese straws and I will make iced tea. And I'm thinking of making Ambrosia (the book we're reading for this month is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil so I wanted to go with a Deep South theme but really didn't want to mess with Smithfield ham biscuits) but I don't know if I've got all the ingredients on the shelf. And I'd really love to have some of those little Key Lime cookies. I thought of doing Pecan Tassies, but, meh. I don't feel like baking right now. It's too hot and my kitchen is newly cleaned, and the last thing I need is to drop an egg in the middle of the floor late tonight. And Wal-mart just doesn't have the right mojo to it.

I do have a container of pimiento cheese that I could make little sandwiches with but I don't know if that's Elegant Southern or just 'cracker.'

I suppose I could go to Wal-mart and see if they have red pepper jelly and do that thing with the cream cheese and pepper jelly. I have some crackers at home.

I probably shouldn't do the Tar-zhey thing; partly the hour round trip there gets me down, and partly the fact that if I'm there, I might as well "batch" the trip and go to Hobby Lobby and the bookstore and a couple other places - and that could get pricey, and I really don't want to be spending more money right now.

So I guess Walmart and pepper jelly it is.

I don't know why I feel the urge to go all Martha and do the themey thing when I have the book club over to my house. The other folks, when they host, put out a can of Planters' nuts and some cookies and they serve margaritas and call it good. (I did warn them that if they wanted alkeyhol, they'd have to bring their own. Not that I'm so opposed to it or anything, but I don't normally drink so I don't know what people like, and what is good or bad. I'd probably wind up buying a cream sherry or some damn sweet dessert wine that makes everyone retch.)


(Actually, that's another way I was a Big Unfashionable Geek growing up and in college - it was the era of the Preppie Handbook, and it was regarded as borderline fashionable - or at least, permissible in sort of a louche way - to go around half-sloshed all the time. And although my parents occasionally drank beer or wine, they never overindulged. They even allowed me to taste it as a teenager, but I really didn't like the stuff and I was uncomfortable - yes, uncomfortable - with the thought of being tipsy and a little out-of-control, especially in a public place. So I never drank, and still really don't - usually the excuse I use, at least in the summer is 'I'm on allergy meds' which usually works.)