Thanks for the support re: the reader-in-class thing. I honestly don't know what to do in those instances. I wish I could be like one of the profs I worked for, who imperiously threw people out of class for opening up a newspaper (yah, I saw it happen - it was in a ~150 person GenBio lecture for which I was TA and "lecture note person" [there was a student with a chronic illness who had days when he couldn't be there, so part of my job was to sit in and take notes in case he was ill].). But, I'm one of the most non-confrontational people out there, and I guess I tend to take the attitude that even though it offends me, it's ultimately their own lives they're screwing up.

this is not a person who has good attendance or a good record of handing in homework.
this is not someone who has the "interested attitude" where they ask/answer questions in class.
this is someone who's rolled their eyes over the goofy little class demonstrations and activities that some of the others get into.

so yeah, maybe she'll be working to clean the Squishy machines in a few years. (Or, heck, maybe she's got a rich relative on the verge of dying...and I really don't envy her if she's someone who has enough money that she can afford to blow off school. Because in my experience, people with more money than interests in life...well, they generally don't have happy lives. I'll take my $40K-before-taxes and my passionate interests over $150K-after-taxes and boredom any day.)

Anyway. As I often say, on to happier things.

First of all: my mother knows me too well.



That's a note that came attached to a packet of "short communications" from the journal "Science." (Either she or my father - I forget which - bought a "lifetime membership" back when they were fairly inexpensive. So they get the journal every single week, and have, for as long as I can remember. Because she knows I'm too cheap to subscribe to [and too busy to look at in the library] an expensive journal that has maybe one article that is useful to me per month, she's taken to tearing articles of interest out and mailing them to me.)

the really funny thing? Can you guess what I was doing when the mail came bearing that packet?

At any rate. I'm almost done with the gusset decreases on the second Dublin Bay sock.

I also picked Hiawatha up again last night (after I finished my hour's reading) and worked some more. I'm getting to the point where I will be glad to be done with it. I've just started the sixth (of ten) repeats of the "second side section." Then it's doing an edging allllllll the way around the thing. I've decided my goal is to have this done by the end of the summer.

I'm also toying with the idea of joining (a bit belatedly) in on use what you have month. (However, I reserve the right to give the money to Mercy Corps, which is my personal favorite charity, instead).

Why? Well, for one reason, my stash IS really huge. Both yarn and fabric. I need to start working down on it. (Part of the problem? A lot of the yarn was bought "opportunistically" - I see a mailer from Elann or somewhere that they have a yarn I'd really like to try on closeout prices. And somewhere in my youth or childhood, there must have been one or more instances of my saving up money for something, just to find, as soon as I have the money accumulated, that it was sold out FOREVER. Because I have bad issues about immediacy and about seeing something on "sale" or "closeout" prices.) And another reason is that the cost of gas has again hit the discomfort mark for me - so I'm going to do much less running around this spring, I think, and much more staying close to home. (I realize that doesn't prevent me from shopping online, but I find when I'm out, I figure "well, if I sort of want this, I might as well get it now, and save myself making a second trip if I decide I really want it"). The last reason is, April is literally the cruelest month for college professors - everything comes due in all our classes, it's time to start thinking about exams, all the committees have their meetings, and there's also a lot of volunteer-oriented stuff this month. (My weekend this weekend will not be a weekend).

I also have a bad habit of being over-optimistic about what I can do with my time. (This may be a genetically-based trait; my father has it too. And my mother tells me my father's father exhibited it as well. [also the tendency to change the oil in his Lincoln while wearing a white dress shirt and tie. Which I don't show, probably because I don't wear white dress shirts and ties, nor do I change my own oil. But I have weeded in a skirt and hose.].) Anyway. I'll see a yarn on sale, and think, hey, I'm almost done with my current project! I should buy that and start a new project! And then the yarn comes, and I'm really busy, and I get distracted by something out of the stash...and into the stash the new yarn goes.

I also have to say I'm hanging my head in shame over the smallness of TChem's stash compared to mine. Why can't I be like that? Why can't I travel light through life? Is it that I have some deep down irrational fear, that I don't even articulate to myself, that Kang and Kodos are going to come and beam up all the sheep and all the cotton plants and those without huge stashes will have to sit around and twiddle their thumbs, or worse, read "People" magazine in their spare time? What? So anyway, it's probably a good exercise to constrain myself to using what I already have for at least a month.

So as you see, I have a lot of reasons to, instead of buying stuff, try to rely on using stuff at home. Already if I finish the Amy Butler quilt, I've used $2.25x12 = $27 worth of fat quarters, plus a yard of fabric at $8 and then the 2 1/2 yard piece at $8. So that's what? $55? And if I knit a couple pairs of socks out of stash, that's like $14 a pair or so, if it's a pricey yarn.