Monday!

I found FOUND found the Pixela (image software that came with my camera) disk in my office and installed it on my new office computer. Whoo hoo! I thought this thing had got lost or crunched or irretrievably scratched. (I'm good at taking care of music cds but for some reason not so good at taking care of program cds. Probably because they usually come in little paper envelopes instead of nice jewel cases with artwork and an "about the composer" booklet enclosed.) But this one is now going in the little "holster" I got free one summer for reviewing a textbook. Interesting - how they've changed the payscale for that. That year I only made $150 for reviewing a WHOLE textbook, plus got a free lunch and a few bits of publisher-swag.

So now I'll be even more picture-enabled, because my connection at work is lots faster.

And I knit a hat for the eventual-box-to-be-sent-somewhere-probably-to-Dulaan-2007. A whole hat - out of bulky yarn on size 11s. That made me feel a little better about the world. It's basically the same as the "algae hat" but knit slightly smaller and to a tighter gauge - it will fit a small adult or a teenager and should be pretty warm.

and I like the idea that I have one like it too: that maybe someday in Mongolia there will be a young man going to school wearing the brother of the hat I wear to school in Oklahoma. Or a young mother wearing it to go out and milk the yaks, or whatever animal they get yaks from, while I wear mine out to my field site. (The blessings of a good imagination.)

I realize that a hat (or a scarf, or some mittens) really doesn't solve the problems of the world or alleviate all of human misery. But it's something I can do to fix one little tiny bit of it. And it does make me feel better, like I'm part of the solution.

I also watched most of an episode of "Little Bear" yesterday afternoon while I knit. Perhaps it's profoundly regressive behavior on my part, but that show always makes me feel better: the animals are all so polite to each other (and to Emily and to her grandmother). And there's a high coziness quotient. And there's good food. And it's low-tech. It's actually kind of reminiscent of the Hobbit-scenes of the Tolkien books, or Mr. Tumnus' cave in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."