The birthday swag.

(Thank you, Angie! It was a nice surprise. I think it came as two packages because one was shipped from another shop).



As you can see there, because a CERTAIN relative of mine doesn't check the Amazon wishlist to see what others may have ordered, I wound up with two copies of "Socks from Handpainted Yarn." Oops.

So what I am going to do - and I will probably note this again on Monday, to catch anyone who might miss it - I am going to give my second copy away. So if you don't have this book yet, and would like a chance at getting a copy, drop me a comment or send me an e-mail before (let's say) Thursday next (heh. I always wanted to say that).

So - comment or e-mail before the 5th, and I'll put you in the drawing.

It's a really lovely book and there are quite a few patterns in it I want to make. (I just don't need two copies).

(I never know what to do with duplicate gifts. It happens, and I always feel impolite "regifting" one, but what can you do?)

So - the other gifts - a big Sasha Kagan book on crochet that I've not spent a lot of time looking at yet, but which has some neat projects (a filet crochet doily with Scottie dogs - almost an Art Deco doily). And the swirly thing is a "jelly roll" - for those who are not quilters (or are not familiar with the latest fads in quilting), this is a bundle of 2 1/2" strips - usually 40 - of the fabrics from a designer's line. The idea is, with these and a couple yards of sashing or background fabric, you can make a quilt.

I had bought a book of Jelly Roll Quilt patterns - thinking, of course, that I could use some of my existing fabrics (by cutting them to size). But when my mom asked what I might want for my birthday, it occurred to me that it would be fun to make one of the quilts using the directed fabric. (And less cutting).

There's also some yarn there - that's from the swap box. A couple skeins of Lorna's Laces in the color called "camouflage," which will probably be used in one of the patterns in the sock book.

And there are four skeins of "vintage" moss-green mohair. I think that will become a scarf, perhaps in the Razor Shell pattern. (Even though I have a plethora of scarves already). I never seem to run across vintage yarn, so it's cool to get it. (I suppose you have to spend a lot of time going to estate sales and such, which I don't do.)

There are also two spoons there - the Moomin spoons that were on my wishlist. Angie ordered them for me.

Wait, here's a better view:



The fillyjonk and the hemulen! I don't know if it's the botanizing hemulen from Finn Family Moomintroll or one of the others (apparently there are many of them, rather like Rabbit's "friends and relations" in the Pooh books).

The fillyjonk looks more like her incarnation in the Moomin comic strips - less skinny and angular and more "hippy."

I think I shall use these for eating my morning cereal. And handwash them, though they are said to be dishwasher safe - I don't want to wear the designs off of them.

I also went to McKinney today. It was a good day out. I did get some quilt fabric (including 2 yards of plain white to use as sashing with the jelly roll fabric - I think I'm going to do a pattern from my book that is a modification of the four patch).

I also got one really big thing.



A new (well new-old) bookshelf. This was at Morningstar Treasures, one of my favorite antique shops. I don't think it's terribly old, but it wasn't very expensive. (it's sort of that mock Early American style, so it could be, I think, as old as the 1940s or as recent as the 1970s. It is "real" wood - maple - so I don't think it would be much younger than the 1970s; it seems most inexpensive bookcases now are that pressboard stuff)

I bought it because, as you can see, it fits right in the space between the doorway to my bedroom and my bed. So all the books that were stacked up on the floor (or shoved under the bed) now have a home. You can't read spines but there's a real mix in there - and it makes me happy, because it is indicative of my reading tastes - a lot of mysteries, some "serious" literature (Pickwick is there - actually, on the very top of the shelf as one of the "most actively" read books at the moment, as is Bleak House, which I want to re-start next). And there's some "popular science" (like "The Elegant Universe") and a bunch of history and a few books on religion and some lighter novels like the Jasper Fforde stuff.

Seeing books on a bookcase makes me so happy. And it inspires me to get reading. My plan with this is to only store yet-unread books on here, and as I read a book, to move it somewhere else and replace it with one I want to read soon.

I like that I can just reach over from bed and grab something to read, and also that I can put the book I'm reading up on top of the shelf when I'm done reading for the night, rather than dropping it on the floor as I formerly did.

(Oh, and on top of the shelf - that's Domo-kun dressed as a pumpkin. I had it out as a Hallowe'en decoration and it never got put away. And I guess you can see that I have the crocheted Doubtful Guest sitting on my bed right now.)

I also bought this:



Yes, it's totally nonsensical. But I love that silly Japanese-cute stuff. I'm not sure what "Tenshi" means but "Neko" is "cat."

It was a total impulse purchase but things like that just make me happy. I'm probably not brave enough to use it to carry books over to work (though I just might, especially if I can't find another, more sedate, book bag some morning). But I plan to use it as my new "traveling purse" for when I take long trips. Because (a) it is large enough for my wallet and cell phone and tissues and bottle of Excedrin Migraine and all that, plus a paperback and a small knitting project and (b) it has a zip in the top so I can secure it and (c) it is so bright and obnoxious (in a good way) that I am unlikely to leave it anywhere by mistake (not that that's ever HAPPENED to me, but I know people who have left purses on trains or in shopping carts or such.)

Good all around:

NO horrible embarrassing signs. (Especially none with my baby pictures on them. Not that I looked so horrible as a baby, but it's just still kind of embarrassing. Actually, I was kind of a cute little kid, but it's still embarrassing.)

But: YES cake. My secretary bakes a birthday cake for anyone who is unattached but has a birthday during the school year. (People who are coupled, presumably, their significant other has to provide them with cake.) So I have a piece of cake to eat after I finish my yogurt and orange.

Thanks for the well wishes (and Charlotte and Karin, thanks for the e-cards).

I do think my being-a-little-weirded-out over 40 is explainable by what I said yesterday: I'm surprised that I've been here this long. It does not seem that long.

It's not "Oh noes I'm OLD!" or anything like that - more of a "Huh? How did that happen?"

(So far no one at work has done anything. One person - who I think turned 40 last year - got his baby pictures plastered all over the department for the day. Then again, he had a wife who colluded with one of the people in my department to do it. I doubt my parents would surrender copies of my baby pictures, knowing as they do that I hate that kind of thing.)

I've decided to shorten my research work a bit for the day, go home early (well, I have to bake cookies for a reception Sunday and as they are a dough that needs to be shaped and frozen first, I want to do that). I feel like an afternoon off (and a day off tomorrow) are due.

Well, tomorrow morning at 5:05 am my time (6:05 am EST is the official time-of-birth, according to the certificate), my odometer rolls over to "40."

It's kind of too bad (but kind of not) that we don't have visible odometers like cars or else it would be tempting to take a picture.

But at any rate (looks out at world in general and department in specific with the stink-eye) everyone BETTER be nice to me tomorrow. (I've already had a few not-so-nice dealings today. It always happens on the days I give a non-majors exam).

I'm not exactly freaked out by the number but it still kind of surprises me, in an "I've been here this long already?" sense.

The McKinney trip is still on for Saturday, as is Friday evening's package-opening. (At last count, there were SIX things. I feel a bit like El Guapo in "Three Amigos":

Jefe: I have put many beautiful pinatas in the storeroom, each of them filled with little suprises.
El Guapo: Many pinatas?
Jefe: Oh yes, many!
El Guapo: Would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?
Jefe: A what?
El Guapo: A *plethora*.
Jefe: Oh yes, you have a plethora.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a plethora?
Jefe: Why, El Guapo?
El Guapo: Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has *no idea* what it means to have a plethora.*

Except, I DO know what a "plethora" is.)


(*Heh. I had forgotten how funny that movie is, in the dumb-funny sort of way that I like movies to be.)

Police Blotter follies.

I should really save these up and do a post once in a while, but I'm not that organized.

This was one from yesterday:

"Deer head seen in ditch. Caller was not sure whether head had antlers or not."

Apparently it's round-the-world week in my piano book. I have "Gallop on the Moor" (which has some minor shades of Leroy Anderson to it; there is literally what sounds like galloping - or really, more trotting - in it). And then there's "Mysterious Casbah" (which is more fun than it sounds).

The book - which of course is aimed at the under-15 set - very helpfully tells us that a casbah is "A North African palace."

Which raises the question for me - when did a "casbah" become the sort of thing that Pepe Le Pew* (or other various ham-handed would-be romantics) offered to invite the lady of the hour to? Is it some left-over Valentino thing?

I always think it's funny how there's stuff I know, that's from perhaps 2 generations before me, because of Warner Brothers cartoons. (Seriously - what is the last time someone invited a person to come to their "casbah" unironically?)

Another odd little love-making** tidbit from Warner Brothers - the concept of "come up so I can show you my etchings." Even as a child, I presumed they were "naughty" (though as a child, the only "naughtiness" I could imagine being involved would be ladies with no clothes on). But where did THAT line come from?

It's funny how many things are out there floating around in the collective consciousness that most of us have no idea of the origins of

(*I always felt kind of sorry for poor old Pepe. So enthusiastic but so misguided. One would hope he'd have found a nice French lady-skunk and, if not been happy, at least worked out his inter-species confusion. Also, nowadays, I'm sure there's a cosmetic surgery that would take care of his "problem.")

(**In the perhaps-Victorian sense. Not in the later sense. Still, Warner Brothers cartoons were light years beyond most stuff on tv in suggestiveness, having been originally aimed at adults. It's just that so much of that stuff was so subtle it zoomed over the kids' heads.)

****

And a "Thursday Th'Heck?"

I came home yesterday afternoon and found a small package from Powell's in my mailbox. I had ordered from Powell's a couple weeks back; one of the items was a Margery Allingham mystery, and I ordered the UK edition because it was the only one available. Well, my book came. And I couldn't remember anything that I had ordered that had been on back-order.

So I kind of shrugged and decided to open it (thinking, who knows, maybe my brother got his schedule together for once and sent a birthday gift on time). The exterior of the envelope had my name and address, plus Powell's return address

In it was a copy of the Rough Guide to Madeira and Porto Santo.

Which I most definitely did not order. While I don't really have a negative opinion on those two places (and in fact had to look at a map to remind myself of precisely where they were), I have no interest in going to either.

There was also an invoice in there. Addressed to a Mr Andrew Williams (no period after the Mr because he's in the British Isles). Of Dublin, Ireland.

Honestly, what is it with me and unexpected books I did not order. It's like my mailbox is on the other end of a wormhole that misdirected books fall into. I suppose that's a bit more appealing than being the other end of the Dryer Sock Wormhole, but still.

I've e-mailed the UK Penguin Group (helpfully, there was a customer service e-mail address on the invoice) letting them know. I hope they don't want me to send the book back to the UK on my own dime - because frankly, that might cost more than the book's worth (it's marked 6 pounds 99). I've not heard back yet.

My assumption is that Penguin and Vintage (the company that produced my book) use the same UK distribution/mailing center (centre?) and the address machine hiccuped (hiccoughed?) and printed a second mailing label for me which then went on Mr Williams' book. (I do hope that that wasn't an error perpetrated down the line, where Mr Williams got the book that was to go to the person who ordered after him, and on down the line.)

Do not tempt me, library!

I am my department's Library Liaison. What that means, practically speaking, is I ask my colleagues for titles of books the library needs to order (we get about $500-$600 a year to spend). The library sends us these little cards (those who are librarians may be familiar - the ALA does them, they are called "CHOICE"). Or maybe they don't any more; I haven't received any recently.

I'm bad about distributing the cards; the person who used to do it (who is no longer here) would sort them by discipline and put the appropriate ones in each person's mailbox. (I'm more prone to stick the stack in the office and say "have at it").

Going through an old batch (we have some money left over and I am without inspiration as to what the library needs, but the money must be encumbered by Friday and giving back university budget money is never a good idea). The first card? "Textile Preparation and Dyeing."

I totally cannot justify ordering it. But it made me laugh when it tumbled out of the stack. (I think I'm going to have them order a couple of "policy" books - we are weak on that section.)

(courtesy of Craftzine): It's like the Snuggie, only gone very wrong.

(And here is a question for those who are happily coupled: are "smittens"* and the like - the "smitten" being apparently the most viable of these things - actually appealing, or do they seem a bit like the proverbial ball and chain? I know they would to me. And it seems entirely possible to me to hold hands while wearing gloves or mittens - true, there is not the skin-to-skin contact, but it's also practical in the sense that if you come up to a lightpost- or wind up in a crowd - you can break contact without fumbling. (Though I have ALSO had the experience of seeing couples walking hand in hand and expecting crowds to flow around them. Because, apparently, they are people around whom the universe revolves)

(*Those are those double-sized mittens so two people can hold hands inside of it. Yes, it's called a "smitten." Tonstant Weader fwowed up.)

***
No, I really didn't get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

***
I have come to the conclusion that the crazy dreams I have are NOT the result of stress on the job, but pollen. Fracking pollen. Because I've been having them this week, and the only unusual factor is that the trees are all doing what trees do in the spring.

I will say that whatever part of my reasonable mind that stays alert during these things, it does a decent job. It seems that when a dream gets too oppressive or uncomfortable, that part of my brain goes, "OK, gotta put a stop to this now" and it throws in some bizarre random thing that doesn't fit and it makes the dreaming part of my mind go, "Wait....WHAT?" and then I wake up shortly after.

Last night it was a box of Lucky Charms. In the middle of a dystopian-future dream. Magically delicious, indeed.

***

I'm still thinking about "next projects" as I continue to knit the sleeves. Here's a totally-out-of-left-field one - I have about 12 ounces of handspun (not by me; I bought it from Yarn Again a couple years ago) in Monet colors in my stash. Because I do not think well in "ounces" (being used to calculating sweater needs in yardage), I had been afraid of using it. But when looking through my Green Mountain Yarns pattern book, there is a pattern for something called the Artisan Vest (a very simple ribbed vest with moss stitch between the ribs) that seems to require 10 ounces of wool in my size.

(And yes, that it's wool is important; different fibers have different weights-to-yardage. That's why 200 grams of Sirdar Snuggly would have been enough to make 3 unicorns when the pattern claimed that 200 grams of a wool-cashmere blend would make one. And that's also why I'm not so much in love with the idea of specifying weights required rather than yardages.)

So I might wind that yarn off and do that vest next - it would be nice to use something that's been "hibernating" for a long time.

I'm also thinking about the VIP Cardigan from the Best of Interweave Knits book. I have yarn in-stash for it. (Seriously, I need to do a yarn-buying moratorium so I can use up some of the wonderful stuff I've bought first). It's a lovely honey color, purchased because I bought a set of really darling sweet buttons in the shape of little bees - they are sort of a bronzed-looking metal (they are not "cartoony" bees; they are more Napoleonic bees).

Then again, reading the instructions for the sweater make me twitch a little: "Because of differences in the row gauge, work a short row every 20 rows of the smocking pattern." Oh, I know what that means, and I can see what I'd have to do, but the level of concentration required that that implies makes me very worried for my ability to complete the sweater.

It's.....



Sleevie Wonder!

(Get it?)

(There's really not that much of an exciting way to say you are working on a sweater's sleeves. I'm probably not quite midway on the first sleeve of the sweater but it's going faster than sleeves often do. I'm once again doing the switch-every-row trick, which does a good job of mixing the "no dye lot" not-quite-matching colors of the yarn.)

I've been devoting most of my knitting time right now to this. I have also been picking away at the various socks - including a "simple" 7 by 1 ribbed sock made out of one of the newer Opal colorways - from the most recent Rainforest line.

It's an extremely bright (yellow with pink and orange) colorway, patterned after some tropical bird. The "name" of the yarn is die Stolze Harald, which I think means "Harald the Proud" or "Proud Harald." I'm up to the heel flap on the first sock of these. It's kind of nice to have a simple thing on the needles for when you're just tired and want to knit, but without following a pattern or keeping track.

I was also pleased to find out this afternoon in my piano lesson that my teacher is going to be offering lessons over the summer (at first I thought she might not, what with school being out). I've asked her to tentatively reserve a slot for me on Fridays (remember that summer classes do not meet Fridays for me). She seemed pleased I wanted to do it; she also made a comment to the effect that having students like me is 'rewarding.' I assume that's because I practice and I have a desire to learn and to get good beyond what some people have (I am sure some juvenile piano students' motivation is mostly the pushing/cajoling/bribery/threatening of their parents).

I remain surprised at how much fun practicing is, compared to what I remember it being like as a young teenager. I think it's because it's an attainable challenge - the stuff she assigns me is just challenging enough that I have to work at it, but not so hard I can't master most of it in one week - and for me, seeing myself progress on something, seeing myself get better and learn and develop skill is a powerful motivator.

Two out of three isn't bad, though on an exam it would be 67%, which actually IS kind of bad....

Your result for The Presidential Capacity Test...

Chief Justice

89% Values, 58% Charisma and 88% Judgment!

“Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.” - Richard M. Nixon

Not this time. Let's face it. You're little too stuffy to make it to the top. Maybe you stutter, or maybe you're just not pretty enough - either way, the American public's not ready to have you stammering and muttering your way through press releases in front of the entire world.

You've got the credentials and you've got strong values, but your face is probably better suited in the Supreme Court. Hell, Chief Justice is one of the most prestigious positions there is. Your integrity and strong judgement makes you perfect for the role. We'll leave you to deal with all the legal mumbo jumbo and paperwork.

Other possibilities:

Take The Presidential Capacity Test at HelloQuizzy

You know, of those three things, I would rather lack charisma than either of the other two (honesty and leadership skills). (And I can never objectively judge my looks. I put "below average" because the other choices were something like "Smokin hot!" and "Above average." And frankly, in this society, if you look "normal" for a woman, you're already "below average" by the way standards are.

And when I get nervous or talking too fast, I can stutter a bit. Or rather, stammer. I work hard to control it but if I'm tired, it does tend to come out.)

Besides, I'd RATHER be Chief Justice than President. Not as many people wanting you dead.

Dallas teen will lead the Young Performer's Orchestra playing her great-grandfather's 220 year old violin. ('ware the pop-up ads).

It's stories like this that give me hope that beauty and goodness still exist among the ugliness that we see every day in the world. There are so many wonderful things here - she will be the first Steiner to be a concert-master in 70 years. Her great-grandfather's violin has been passed on to her for the honor - so in a way, it gets to "live" again. And this quotation from Rachel:

"When I play, I do kind of feel him ... just watching me or helping me get something in tune. I guess he kind of helps me."

Yes. Amen.

So.

I turn 40 on Friday.

As I said a couple months back, I've been saying it over and over in my head (and referring to myself occasionally as "fortyish" publicly). Didn't have the freakout over it that I said I was reserving the right to, though.

Part of me - the part that is still 11 or 16 or whatever - the part that still laughs at words like "sackbut" and "coxsackievirus" is kind of going "40? How the (bleep) did that happen?" but the rest of me is pretty OK with it. (Again, as much as I hate that phrase: what choice does one have but to be OK with it?)

A big part of it is, I think, I like myself better, as a person, now, than I did when I was in my 20s and such. I was awfully insecure in my 20s. I would obsess over stupid things, and not the fun kind of obsessing where you learn stuff - the kind of obsessing where you wind up staring at your eyebrows in the mirror every day and hating them or something like that.

I do think the aging process, if you're lucky, sort of burns away the more stupid parts of your personality and leaves the better parts behind. I'm still the same loyal person I was at 22. I still have the same quick wit and ability to make people laugh. I still have the same compassion (if anything, I am more compassionate now, because I am less self-absorbed). I think I'm more responsible than I was, but then again, I was never particularly a slouch in that area. But I'm less likely to give into fits of sobbing when things don't go my way (not that I ever did that, you know, publicly - I'd go home and weep and pound the kitchen table and wail about how it was Not Fair and how I Never Got What I Wanted or Deserved.) I'm more likely now, in the face of some disappointment, to shrug, go "Well, that stinks" and figure out what I need to do to fix it.

I suppose it's the self-absorption thing again - at 22, I did feel there were certain things I Deserved. Now, I don't feel that so much - oh, I understand injustice and would be angry (and would try to find some reasonable recourse) were a true injustice done to me (like, I don't know, my research lab being taken away and given to someone else, just because they're a shiny new prof who claims to have a bigger research program. But I don't see that happening, ever.) But there is also stuff that happens that's disappointing and feels wrong - but it's just kind of how the world works and you can go around being ANGRY about it all the time and feeling wronged, or you can look at it and shrug and figure everyone has to put up with this kind of junk sometime and it's not directed at you, personally.

And also to recognize that you have an awful lot of good stuff in your life that other people don't have, so on balance, you are still happier than you could be.

And on balance, there's a lot more good stuff than bad. I enjoy surprisingly good health; I suffer from two minor "chronic" sorts of problems (allergies are one) that are treatable with medication and will not shorten my lifespan any. Allergies are more an annoyance than a true health problem in my mind.

Though I tend not to talk much about it (because it's private to me), I do have a fairly deep faith that provides a sense of meaning and sustenance during life's darker times, and that serves as, if not exactly a goad, an encouragement to try to be a better person than I might otherwise be. And I think that faith has grown deeper over time. And it provides a sort of connectedness - I can't really explain it, but it's a feeling of being connected to something larger, and that's comforting, that no matter how much I may think I've screwed stuff up, there's something out there that's Larger than me and Better than me and my screw-ups don't matter as much.

I have a roof over my head; moreover, a roof I own outright, which is an unusual thing in this day and age.

I have enough money put aside that if that roof starts to leak - or my stove decides to shut down - or a faucet breaks - I can get it taken care of.

I have a job that is interesting and feels worthwhile and where I don't really daydream about doing something else. It has its frustrations like all jobs, but I suspect it has fewer than most.

Most people seem to like me. I'm not one of those sorts to have a whole bunch of super-close friends; I do tend to keep people at arm's length a bit. But I suspect that if I had some kind of life-emergency, I'd have people coming to my assistance. Perhaps even some people I'd never expect to.

I am not afraid of being alone. I think a lot of people wind up in unfortunate circumstances because they either can't stand to be alone, or they become convinced that being alone is the loser's way of living. And it really, truly, isn't.

I have hobbies that keep me occupied in my spare time, that are, in fact, so absorbing that my one wish, if I could have one, would be to have more spare time (on top of the time I spend at work and doing volunteer stuff) to devote to them.

I have a variety of skills, that, I suppose, if worse came to worse, I might be able to parlay into sustained survival if an asteroid hit the earth and we wound up in some kind of medieval barter economy. Knowing how to knit warm socks has its virtues.

I still laugh fairly easily at things (and yes, even words like "sackbut" can bring a giggle when I'm in the right mood). I do think being able to laugh - to, as Bugs Bunny said, "Don't take life so serious. You're not getting out of it alive anyway" is important. I think over-seriousness is one of the great banes of our times. Or rather, perhaps, seriousness about the wrong things. We seem, as a culture, all too good at brushing off the Important things, and giving the Not-Important things far more weight than they deserve.

So anyway. On balance I'm happy with where I am. I suppose turning 40 would occupy a bigger chunk of my mental real estate if I were the sort of person who based their value mainly on their youthful appearance, or on their "reproductive value," or their ability to attract a wealthy mate. Or if I bought into the idea (from some segments of society) that once a woman hits 25, she is no longer of interest.

Or if I were unhappy in my work, if I felt I was wasting my life (I still fall prey to that sometimes. I think the cure is starting a new research project because I find myself noticeably happier with the soil-critter search to look forward to), maybe 40 would be a bugbear.

But, by and large, I am more where I want to be than not.

And it looks like it should be a fun birthday. So far, no rumbles of Bad Meetings on the horizon (five years ago my birthday was co-opted by "you sit in a room, and we'll lecture at you for two hours about why you shouldn't teach by lecturing" academic "efficiencies" meetings (And may I say: thank God nothing ever really came of that whole process? Ideas were being floated right and left about things like having a "common" textbook for all ecology classes in the state, or requiring those of us at the meetings to write a lab manual which then other people would be able to use for free, no credit to us - the word "slipstreaming" was used, but it sounded more like "freeloading" to me).

I've already decided to take a Fun Day at McKinney. Even if all I do is buy fabric for a planned Mixtape Quilt* (I'm thinking either purples with golden yellow sashing, or pink with pale green, or maybe bright bright Moda prints with white) and get lunch somewhere, it will be a fun and worthwhile day.

And I have gifts to open! (some years, as an adult, I did not). I have the wrapped book from my aunt and uncle, and something from Amazon from my folks, and there is another package from them on the way. AND I have the swap-box from a swap I participated in in CPAaG, which I'm saving for the day. AND Friday afternoon, something arrived for me from Amazon, so I know not what that is. (And if you sent it, don't spoil the surprise).

So I'm thinking: Friday evening I will get something 'special' for dinner (either I'll do carry out from the good tex-mex place here in town, or I might go to the meat market and buy a really good steak and cook it up), and I'll open my presents, and then Saturday have a fun day in McKinney. And it should be good.

(*The Mixtape Quilt pattern is for sale in that blogger's Etsy shop. And I will tell you - yes, it costs $10. But it is not merely a "pattern" - it is a 33 page booklet with instructions for three different varieties of the quilt in multiple sizes (crib, lap, twin, queen....) It looks like a tremendously fun pattern to do so I'm looking forward to it.)

I finished the Sea Glass (well, that's what I'm calling it) quilt this weekend:



(Not the best depiction of the colors; it seems my camera does not like the out-of-doors any more).

Here's a close up:



That swirly print with the orange, yellow, and green "clouds" is going to be the backing. (Yeah, I broke down and ordered enough yardage of it from eQuilter. I really love the fabric and thought it would make a nice backing for the quilt).



It's just the good old Yellow Brick Road pattern, done with (mostly) Kaffe Fassett prints.

I think I know at least one person who will find this as amusing as I do:


more animals

I don't CARE if people say these things have "jumped the shark," they still make me laugh and I check that site almost daily.

Just on the off chance that the "Christine" who sent me the "mystery cupcake" from the bakery in Palatine is a blog-reader rather than someone on CPAaG, I'm going to post a "thank you" here as well. (Though it does seem a rather Pointless and Arbitrary thing, to send someone you don't know a bakery cupcake.)

(Though I'd be a bit puzzled to think of how a blog-reader might find my address. Oh, I'm sure it's possible, it's just there's more than one person out in the world with my name, so googling me might turn up someone else. (Though I suppose using Sherlock Holmes style deduction, you could. And I think I'm the only person by my name who lives in Oklahoma.) And also, I think I removed my address from some of those "online phone book" things).

But at any rate, thanks! It's sitting in the fridge right now and I'm going to eat it tonight after dinner.

Well, late in the day yesterday I did a sample that had almost a dozen things in it (a couple small beetles, a tiny worm, a weevil, and a number of what I think must be diplurans), so I concluded I NEED to go through all the samples, seeing as "a dozen things" might be the sum total that came through the funnel for some samples.

It's still hard on my eyes but I think if I limit myself to one or two samples I day I won't actually do any damage. (My father had a similar experience years back...in a class where they worked with thin sections of geologic samples (Crystallography, maybe? There are so many different classes out there). That's when he discovered he was prone to migraines.)

So this will be my theme song for a while:



Heh. Thomas Dolby. It had probably been ten years since I thought about him. He was steampunk before any of us really knew what that was.

(Edited to add: watching that video the whole way through for the first time in 20-some years - wow, the 80s were even weirder than I remembered. I remember thinking that was a cool, "deep" video as a high school student. I think this quotation from Calvin and Hobbes applies here:

Hobbes: "Maybe I'm just New Wave."
Calvin: "Maybe you're just stupid."

The line between "art" and "stupid random crap" was incredibly thin during that era.)

I really don't mind doing all the samples; I'm getting faster at it as I realize I don't have to be quite so painstakingly precise - if I put enough water on there, everything floats up and I can grab it without having to do too much scraping and digging.

Oh, and I keep getting spam telling me I'm "RECOMMENDED FOR A Ph.D!" or advertising "BUY a degree!" If I had five bucks for every one of those I got, I'd be able to go back to college and take classes in all the stuff that I never had time to the first go-round. (And every day, it seems I find some topic that I'd really like to learn more about. It's really not fair.)

Well, this week ended a lot better than it started. So no curling up in the corner eating my hair:

1. I e-mailed the student whose paper I lost. She is cool about it; she is going to bring me a new copy today which I will then grade IMMEDIATELY.

(And what do you bet I find the original lost paper some time next week?)

2. I was discussing the pick-through method to try to find soil arthropods with a colleague who has done similar research involving benthic organisms. He asked how many additional ones I was finding. When I told him, he said, "Great googly moogly*! Why are you bothering? I would do 1/4 of the total samples, and then, if you're only finding those few, conclude that additional sampling does NOT contribute significantly to diversity or abundance metrics."

Which means if I examine two more samples and don't find tons of stuff (I do not expect to), I'm done with that part.

(*OK, he didn't say "Great googly moogly" but I am euphemizing for the blog)

So I get some 20+ hours of my life back that I had already imagined would be spent staring at mud through a microscope.

3. The furnace seems to be fine now. (Charles, I've had that issue before - I had oxide buildup cleaned off last year. So I am somewhat familiar with the stuff that can go wrong. And I smelled very carefully for a gas leak before doing anything, and all I could detect was the usual dust/old books smell that my house has anyway. If it happens again I'll get the guys out, but I've also had times when I panicked, spent an afternoon waiting on them, just to be told, "Ma'am, all we had to do was reset it." But seeing as I had the furnace inspected and pronounced perfectly healthy less than a month ago, I figured it probably wasn't any of those problems).

4. Several people about whom I care who have had health problems recently are doing better, including someone who had their gall bladder out (successfully) yesterday.

5. When I got home yesterday afternoon, there was a big box from Amazon on my doorstep. That surprised me, as I hadn't ordered anything from them, and the package my mother told me to be expecting (for my birthday next week) had apparently already come (I haven't opened it yet; I've decided to "save" what birthday gifts come for me and open them on the actual day). So I decided to open it, on the off chance something was sent to me by mistake.

It was, in fact, a big wrapped hardcover book. (I do not know what book; I didn't open it). I didn't even know Amazon did gift wrapping (My family and I are cheap that way - when we mail order stuff as gifts, we never pay the $5 additional or whatever to have it wrapped). It was from one of my aunt and uncles.

Which surprises me a lot - my understanding was that the rule in the family was, after you hit 18, no more extended-family birthday gifts. So I guess they either decided that since this was a "landmark" birthday they'd send me something, or else they found something they decided was just so perfect they would have to send it to me.

Either way it's a nice surprise. (And yes, I will send them a thank-you card after I have opened it).

6. Progress on the sleeve continues (slowly). I'm already contemplating next-project status. (Lord knows I have enough wool packed away). Right now, I'm torn between the Burma Rings pullover (you will have to scroll down)and Rosedale. I bought the yarn for Burma Rings from Yarn Forward last year as my birthday present to myself (also Yarn Forward was having a good sale at the time). The benefits of this project are it's all knit round, so the vast majority of the sweater will be a simple, knit-while-you-read type of thing. But Rosedale is pretty! And it's Kureyon! And I think I've had that in stash longer than the Burma Rings yarn.

Of course, I also have the Airy Cardigan packed away. I have a tiny bit left to do on the body but I kind of stalled because I need to alter the pattern to lengthen the sleeves (I do not like 3/4 sleeves on myself - for one thing, it makes me look like I'm wearing my little sister's sweater (and I don't have a little sister) and for another, you can't wear a 3/4 sleeve sweater over something long sleeved without looking like a sk8r girl wannabee, and it's more practical for me to have a sweater that looks good with both short and long sleeved tops.

And it's not even that HARD, I think, to figure out the alterations, but it will require sitting down with a pencil and paper and some gauge calculations and figure the thing out, and I've just not had the energy to do that.

Though maybe I should re-start the Airy Cardigan; we are coming into the time of year when it would be ideal.

Late in the day yesterday, I found a technique that works for getting the remaining "critters" out of the soil. The bad thing is that it is enormously tedious - it takes 2+ hours to go through a sample.

But, I can deal with "enormously tedious" if I am confident it works. What I can't deal with is "slightly less tedious and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing and I feel like I may be missing stuff."

The other potentially good thing about the technique is that because of its nature, I am limited in how many samples I can do a day - because I am staring down a dissecting scope at soil which I have to illuminate rather brightly, I cannot do more than 2 samples in a day without destroying my eyes. So when I complete my 2 samples, I can be done, and not feel guilty about it - even if it is "only" noon on a Saturday.

(And at any rate - it will be just over a week and a half to finish these IF I can get 2 in a day, Sundays excepted).

****

I decided yesterday evening that I needed some time to relax. So I wound up watching (most of) a movie about Emile Zola on TCM (It's their "Oscar Month," which means they show all kinds of wonderful obscure old movies that won Oscars back in their day, but which are rarely seen now). The movie concerned the events of what I learned in French class as L'affaire Dreyfus - an innocent man was sent to Devil's Island for allegedly having been a spy, when a minor nobleman was the actual guilty party. (It was not mentioned in the movie - I suppose it would have been anachronistic to - but a point my French teacher brought up was that Dreyfus was a convenient scapegoat because Dreyfus was Jewish, and there was a tremendous amount of anti-Semitic sentiment in late 19th century France).

I mainly knew the outline of the case, plus the idea of "J'accuse" - Zola's impassioned argument that Dreyfus was innocent and he had been railroaded.

I was not aware of how the people of Paris turned against Zola for that, for the violence and nastiness of the response. That was brought out in the movie.

And also, the sad fact that Zola died shortly after Dreyfus' pardon, and (according to the movie) did not even get to shake the man's hand after he returned to French soil. (And Zola died of CO poisoning - or at least, again, according to the movie).

I have to say Paul Muni (the main actor) made an excellent Zola, in my estimation.

(Seeing the movie kind of makes me want to read something by Zola. I think I've read a few of his short stories - en Français, even, but never one of the novels).

I also worked some more on the (seemingly forever) Cobblestone Pullover. Finally, a milestone: I got up to where you put stitches on holders for the area under the arms, and started the very first sleeve.

***

And then, this morning.

I woke up a bit before the alarm (that is typical of me). Got up, thought, "Gee, it feels cold in here." On my way to the bathroom to dress for my workout, I turned up the thermostat.

Nothing.

So I went to the furnace and peered through the little window. It was flashing the "lockout 14" code, which means that at some point in the night, the furnace tried to ignite and failed. (I do not know why; sometimes I think an odd gust of wind down the flue will mess things up). So, I sighed, and went to pull the front panel off, so I could try hitting the reset switch.

I pulled on it.

It would not come off.

I looked, and saw that the last time I had the furnace checked, the guys found one lone metal screw and screwed the panel down. And the screw was one of those hex-head ones, where few homeowners (or at least few female homeowners who don't do a lot of home repair) have the right tool to remove.

The emotion I felt at that moment was perhaps best summed up by the old Schiller quotation: "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

I went to my tool drawer, hunted around (remember: this is all happening about 4:45 this morning). Found a locking pliers, which I used to remove the offending screw. Hit the reset switch, the fan turned on (which is just what it's supposed to do in this situation), and when I released the switch, the furnace came on, just as it was supposed to.

For the rest of the time I was home (until about 7:10 when I left the house) the furnace was doing what it was supposed to do.

I changed the filter just in case, though the filter that was in had only been in for a few days past a month, and these are supposedly three-month filters (because that is the ONLY KIND I can find in the odd size my furnace requires. And yes, they are more expensive.)

I'm going to try not to worry about it today. If the furnace messes up again tonight, I'll call the furnace people first thing tomorrow and (sigh) give up the time I WAS going to spend on research tomorrow afternoon waiting on furnace guys. (I COULD go back and do the research afterwards, though the thought of being in a lab doing research at 5 pm on a Friday galls me).

I'm hoping it was some kind of odd glitch like happens once in a while - a gust of wind blowing just wrong down the flue; a bobble in the power supply right at the moment when the furnace is supposed to ignite.

I suppose the guys bolted the cover on as a safety precaution, but I tend to feel that if a furnace has an accessible-to-the-homeowner reset switch, it should continue to be accessible. Because I don't want to pay $50 for some furnace guy to come out and punch a button that I could punch myself for free. I suppose some people are JUST stupid enough to do things like test to see if the electrical contacts are "live" by licking them or something. But seriously, I am NOT that stupid; I should be able to open up my furnace and punch a silly reset switch when the furnace is being an idiot.

***

So, to sum up:

Fixed the furnace at 4:45 am
Did my hour's workout
Did a half-hour's piano practice.

I used to boast that I accomplished more before 8 am than many people did all day. I suspect that today that is true.

If I make it to Friday evening without winding up curled up in a corner in the fetal position eating my hair, I will count this week a success.

Lowered expectations. Lowered expectations.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

I lost a student's paper this morning. One I had not yet graded. I KNOW she handed it in; I had seen it on my desk and said, "I must grade that soon" (it was a paper she had gotten an extension for.

Now it is gone.

I hate this. I almost never lose things (which is especially amazing given the state of my office; but I maintain that the messy stacks of things are actually easier to remember where things are for me; I have a very good spatial memory but if I move things around too much, it's too much information to process and I can't find anything).

I feel like such a failure when this happens. (or when I miss a bad typo on an exam.) I feel like if I were a "real" grownup, rather than someone who is pretending to be such, it wouldn't happen.

I know, everyone makes mistakes. But those of us who aren't really-real grownups have to toe the line even more, lest we tumble back into being seven years old.

(Though then again, it would be nice to have someone come into my room in the morning and say softly, "It's time to wake up, dear," instead of having to have an alarm clock, and it would be nice to have someone to pack a lunch for me).

I am really trying to do too much.

I've looked for it and will keep looking as time permits, but I doubt I will find it at this point. (I even tried the old "St. Anthony prayer." No, I am not Catholic, but I know other non-Catholics who do it. And on a couple occasions, it's actually worked. Of course, I have to mutter it under my breath here at work instead of saying it out loud as I do at home).

There's also, I suppose, a very remote chance that it got stapled onto the back of a student paper for my OTHER class (none of them seem capable of stapling and I know I was grading in a wild hurry Saturday morning) and it's now long gone.

This frustrates me. I don't need this kind of frustration right now.

Mike Rowe quotation that is oddly connected to what I did this afternoon:

"It's like panning for gold. Without the, you know, GOLD."

Yeah, I'm panning for soil critters. After doing the extraction you're supposed to look over the remaining soil to capture anything that was missed.

First I tried crumbling the soil in a tray and visually inspecting it - didn't find anything.

I tried using a dissecting scope, though it was hard to get the tray under there - nothing

Then I tried soaking the soil to see what would float to the surface - nothing

Then I tried looking at the floaty stuff under the scope - nothing (other than root-bits, seed coats, and chaff)

Then I ran it through a couple of soil sieves (which look sort of like the old-time panning-for-gold pans) and picked through it - nothing.

The distressing thing is that I don't know if there's nothing to find (which is a possibility though a slim one, I'd think) or if my technique is such that I'm not finding what there is to find. (But I'd think if there WERE, I'd at least be spotting worms or beetles or something.)

And I am once again wondering if my ancestors were wiser than I. I used to talk about, back when I was studying mycorrhizae in grad school, how I'd grow corn for 20 days, harvest it, and then inspect the roots for the fungi. And how if my ancestors' ghosts met up with me and asked me what I was doing, the conversation would go like this:

Me: "I'm growing corn so I can research the tiny fungi that live in its roots."

Shade of my Ancestor: "Forsooth, why art thou doing that?"

Me: "So I can eventually get a degree, get a job, and earn money so I can buy food and not starve"

Shade of my Ancestor: "Why dost thou not grow the corn to maturity, harvest the ears, and eat that, so thou dost not starve?"

And you know, I'd have a hard time answering that question.

(And no, my ancestors - as far as I know - were not Quaker. I'm just trying to make it sound archaic)

One of the things I learned from my uncle who is into genealogy is that one of the great-great grandfathers (? or maybe it was a great-uncle) abandoned his family so he could run off to California for the Gold Rush and pan for gold.

And some 160 years later, his descendant (well, maybe not DIRECT descendant if it was a great-uncle) sits in a windowless lab and "prospects" for nematodes. Which will never make her rich.

I think part of the reason I need to do things like knit and quilt is that the sheer abstractness of my career - the fact that it really isn't tied directly to anything involved with actual, you know, survival, would drive me crazy after a time.

Surely there cannot be more than 10% to 15% of the population who are total incompetent boobs who MOREOVER do not care that their incompetence negatively affects others.

If that is true, then why do I keep encountering them?

(Bad, bad incident this morning surrounding trying to get needed lab supplies from a local store.)

This month - with the possible exception of my Berlese Funnel Succeed yesterday - is really getting me down. And that's sad, because it's my 40th birthday this month and one should not be sad during the month of one's 40th.

Barking loons. Sometimes I feel like every time I go off campus I'm surrounded by barking loons.

A couple tidbits from that medical-history book I'm reading:

In ancient Egypt, apparently there was a royal cabinet position known as Keeper of the Royal Rectum.

Yes, I am eleven years old: that made me laugh. And yeah, I realize, cultural differences are a big thing, there are probably things we are obsessed by in this culture that would horrify other cultures. But I also laughed - and in fact, was much closer to being actually 11 years old in reality - when some medical treatment Reagan had was performed by a "rear admiral"*

(*OK, maybe that was just in MAD Magazine. I can't find any evidence of it on the Internet, though I was pretty sure previously that either the attempted-assassination bullet was removed, or one of his colonoscopies was performed by, someone who had been a Navy man and had served in that position. Or someone from the Public Health Service Corps; apparently Rear Admiral is a rank there as well).

Apparently Egyptians were rather obsessed by that part of bodily workings; it also said that three days a month were set aside for people to treat themselves with laxatives (and apparently deal with the aftermath of such).

Somehow, that makes modern Americans' obsession with exercise and looking "youthful" seem a bit tame in comparison.

Mai Berlese funnels: let me show U them:



That's what I spent my morning (well, before class, between classes, and after class) doing - making a home-brew set of Berlese funnel like objects for my soil invertebrate study. (There is another set on the bench opposite these).

They're pretty simple, but they fill the needed role.



They are those heavy foil casserole pans (something like a buck for 2), plus "liners" (you can just barely see it in the above photo) cut from plastic needlepoint canvas. (Craft supplies to the rescue again).

The idea on these is that the lamps (which we had already; they are used for photosynthesis-of-elodea experiments in GenBio) heat and light the soil. Soil "critters," having a natural dislike of heat and dryness, burrow down, fall through the grid (on a typical Berlese funnel it is a little wire grid, like window screen) and wind up in the preservative (actually ethanol in this case; most preservatives give me bad reactions but ethanol fumes don't bother me too much) that's in the beaker (which we also had on hand).

Total cost (not including the stuff already on hand): about $10.

On the one hand, this makes me really happy; I feel a bit like the spiritual descendant of both Angus MacGuyver and of those early-times scientist folk who "bash up" what they need for the lab (I remember in a book I read about the early development of penicillin, Dr. Heatley, one of the researchers, talked about how he "bashed up" some equipment they needed using wood from bookcases discarded from the Bodleian Library).

And it's also kind of nice to be able to do the research I want to to and that I care about - I could probably get thousands of dollars in funding to look at some weird soil fungus that might have antibiotic properties, but I'm really more interested in the little "critters" in the soil. But because they don't cure disease, can't be a new source of energy, or (presumably) are not greatly affected by rising CO2 levels, funding for them is harder to come by.

I've been involved with writing a couple grants for NSF. Never been on one that actually got awarded. That's because the overall success rate is something like 14% - and that includes the big Research I schools with lots of research equipment already. I've tried talking to folks about getting funding for, say, a growth chamber, and the response is kind of, "Wait? You don't have one yet?" and the light kind of goes out of their eyes and sometimes you feel like the response is "Why are you even bothering to try to do research, if you don't have such basic things?"

And the other thing with grantwriting at small schools - if you get one, YOU are the grants administrator. YOU get to do all the paper work. And it is (frankly) not worth it to me. Not even with the fact that I'd be able to hire a student, give them that extra experience, and get some of my work done for me. I'd rather spend umpteen hours between classes or after class sorting my own critters rather than spend that time filling out the equivalent of tax forms so I can hire a student to do it.

So I don't know. Again, I've gotten the response of some at bigger schools with more money that "If you can't get funding for it, it's probably not worth doing" and that kind of angers me.

I like being able to build my own stuff. It made me happy when, upon not finding funnels of the right size (or ENOUGH - that's my biggest gripe with having to get stuff from local stores; they may have two or three of something in stock when you need eight), I found the metal pans. And then thought of the plastic canvas (because I didn't want to work with cutting hardware cloth; that's too hard on the hands and too easily bent). And in a way I feel a bit like I'm in the same lineage as Darwin & company; they built most of their own stuff, because there were no governmental agencies to fund them, and moreover, there were few scientific-equipment houses to sell them a glorified funnel for $30 a pop.

On the other hand, I fear that when this eventually goes to press, some reviewer will gripe about "nonstandard methodology" or "substandard equipment" and try to sink my paper because of that. (There's a lot of undiscussed snobbery in science; some people believe if you're not at a Research I school you should not be permitted to do research; others believe that if you don't write for the "big" journals you're just a hack and should give it up, and on, and on. It irritates me because from my readings about earlier days, especially in ecology, none of that was there. And it seems to have come in - in ecology at least - because of what I call "physics envy" - the need to have the fancy flashy beepy tools that generate perfect numbers every time. The idea that the messiness and unpredictability of fieldwork makes it somehow less desirable to lab simulations or numbers crunched on a mainframe. And I LIKE the messy part of things. I LIKE the chance that I will find something sort of unexpected. I prefer being sort of a Jamie Hyneman of ecology, where I can go to my cabinets of stuff I've saved up and use my ingenuity to build what I need.)

I got up to do my usual workout and was wheezing after 20 minutes, so I decided to bail. I'm not sure whether it's the elm pollen or the fact that although it was ostensibly the youth group kids painting the new Youth room last night, it was actually my co-leader and I who did most of the work.

I had tried to find a respirator but the guy at Lowe's that I asked waved me towards a shelf that had only those little paper masks on it, and claimed no knowledge of them selling anything else. And I was irritated enough at that point (had been roaming the store for about 15 minutes and could not find the other thing I had gone for) that I just left, empty-handed.

So it's entirely possible that paint fumes - although I had the windows and the door of the room wide open - have temporarily destroyed my wind.

(I'm trying hard not to be irritated with the kids but this seems to be the general pattern of ANY volunteer work I do - I'm buckling down and going "I will get this done if it kills me" and most of the other people are standing around and talking.

It bugs me though that I feel like I cannot take a deep enough breath. And if I try, I start coughing.

I did finish the blocks for the sea glass quilt but did not have the energy to think about laying them out or starting to set them together.

I also started cutting the pieces for the County Lines quilt using that Ooh-la-la fabric. As I have half-yard pieces of some of these, I feel a little less nervous about cutting. One of the challenges with fat quarter quilts is that sometimes the fat quarters are a bit smaller than what the pattern writer expects (or the fabric company uses GREAT HONKING LARGE white spaces on the selvedge to print information on and reduces the usable amount of fabric). More than once I've had to add an extra fat quarter or two to a quilt, or use scraps I had on hand, because although I cut perfectly, the fat quarter was just not quite big enough.

Lately, I've taken to vetting patterns carefully to be sure they aren't ones that assume a fat quarter is precisely 18 by 22 inches (oh, dream on, pattern writers) and that they can call for every bit of that 22 inches.

I'm doing a bunch of reading.

Part of this is that I'm in my typical mid-February allergy season - the elms are flowering and I feel kind of cruddy and un-energetic. But reading is one thing that I can handle.

Three of the books I'm reading have an odd, tangentially-coincidental relationship. First, I am still working (but nearly am done) with The Pickwick Papers. I'm still enjoying it; it's a very entertaining novel.

Then, I am re-reading the first Thursday Next novel (The Eyre Affair). I read this a long time ago for the book club and decided recently I wanted to re-read it, so I could then read the sequels. And I find that there's a lot of the in-jokes I missed, even some fairly obvious ones (like Paige Turner) on the first read. The link to Pickwick Papers is that Thursday Next has a genetically-engineered pet, a reconstruction of a dodo, which is named Pickwick.

And then finally, after hearing David Quammen speak on Tuesday night, and having him autograph my copy of "The Song of the Dodo" ("Ecology for an ecologist" he wrote in it, which I think was nice) I realized I had enjoyed it so much the first time, I wanted to re-read it. So I'm reading a book that (at least briefly) mentions dodos.

(Which I think, could any recently-extinct species be brought back from the dead, they would be one of my picks. Along with the mammoth. And maybe the thylacine. Oh, and whatever the creature that Nessie was purported to be - the big aquatic dinosaur thing)

Those are my "bedtime" reading. My "work" reading (the stuff I read in the evenings/afternoons when I'm done with my other work and there's nothing good on tv, which is most of the time these days) are the directed-readings books my students chose. Luckily most of them (I have a lot this semester) picked books I am familiar with already. But I did finish "An Urchin in the Storm" by Stephen Jay Gould last night.

Gould. Not to sure what to say about him. He was a brilliant mind but he could be as cranky as all get-out, and since this book is a series of essays inspired by books he reviewed for various magazines, he's at his crankiest here.

I don't always find "cranky" that fun to read. It's funny, I read lots of Gould as a student and I never realized what an opinionated coot he was.

I also just began another book - Roy Porter's "The Greatest Benefit to Mankind." This is presented as a history of medicine and I probably would never have chosen to read it if a student hadn't picked it because (a) it's just over 700 pages long and (b) I figured "history of medicine" would mean long articles about Koch and Lister and Jenner and that lot, and I have to admit that biography leaves me a little bit cold. But actually the book - at least as far as I'm into it - is really a history of humankind, with an emphasis on how disease and early medicine affected cultures. Already I've learned several things about malaria I did not know already (I was vaguely aware there were different forms - tertian and quotidian fevers, and there are different strains of the protozoan that cause it, some worse than others), but I wasn't aware it had been present (well, the weaker terian form) in the British fenlands, and that it was apparently brought to Mesoamerica by the conquistadores.

(There are also chapters yet to come on medicine in India, China...other cultures with different attitudes from our own).

And despite the fact that it's a huge, brick like book, it's written in a way that makes it very readable, that makes you want to keep reading on it. And I feel like there's stuff in here I will be able to incorporate into my teaching. So though it's going to require extended attention and work to get through the thing in time for the student's coming in to discuss it, it seems to be an interesting book.

Sometimes, you see a craft that makes you sad.

This one makes me sad.

Poor kitty. He reminds me a bit of myself when I was younger, more foolish, and less cynical: "Here! Look! I ripped my own heart out of my chest for you! And you still won't love me?"

Otherwise known as: why I have a hard time being "vulnerable."

It's interesting how many people describe it as "cute," it only makes me cringe a little. Poor kitty. Put your heart back in your chest and take off that funnel collar.

Grading the paper of someone who has told you "Writing is kind of, you know, my THING" and finding that that paper is not what you had hoped it would be (based on the above statement) is not a happy way to begin one's Saturday.

Somewhere I read a faculty member quoted as saying: "I teach for free. They pay me to grade."

I think that's the truth.

I think this afternoon I will have to drown my sorrows in knitting and House, MD re-runs.

Self-frosting Nutella cupcakes:

Self. Frosting. Nutella. Cupcakes.

squee. I think I have all those ingredients (oh, nope, wait, out of eggs) at home.

XKCD less-than-3's you

Hooray for easily-memorized fancy stitch patterns:



This is the beginning of the Caledonian Mist pattern (which you can buy here, which also comes with another, twisted-stitch pattern sock pattern.

It's a nice pattern. Fun to knit, not boring but not painfully complicated. It's entirely possible to do them without a row counter.

I'm using Damselfly Yarns' "Sturdy Sheep" sockyarn in a special dyed colorway called "Shadowed Snows" (shop here, blog here)

It's fun using yarn from someone you kind-of, sort-of "know" (well, through the Internet, at least).

Yesterday evening was the first time this week I was actually HOME in the evening. It does make a difference. I was never one of those "gotta go out" people, even when I was of the age supposedly to do that. I was a lot happier at home, reading - even in my tiny sad "efficiency" apartment in Ann Arbor, I was more content to stay home than to go "clubbing."

I am the classic introvert. While I can't really say I dislike people, being around them too long drains me. Being able to be home and not have to talk to someone for a few hours and being able to do what I choose to do for a few hours is much more refreshing.

I also worked a bit more on the Sea Glass Quilt. The last cutting step was to cut the remaining wide strips into 5" chunks.

So I started happily cutting. And then realized that the strips weren't going to be long enough. Then I realized I had cut 6" chunks instead, and I would, as a result, be short of fabric (most of the pieces were fat quarters and were all used up).

I said a few very unladylike words, and then went and dug in my fabric stash. I found a couple of bits that work - I'm not terribly happy with them, but they match in terms of color and general theme so I guess they will go. But I hate it when I do that - when I don't pay perfect attention and cut the tiny bit of precious fabric I have left in such a way that I won't have enough of it. (And this is also partly WHY you have a stash - otherwise, I'd have had to wait until I had time to go to a quilt shop (perhaps more than one) or order online a couple pieces to make up for what I was missing).

Hunting around on the Powell's website, in the Mystery category, I see there is a sub-genre (or maybe it's just a single series) called Southern Vampire Mysteries.

Wow, that's...specific.

I'm sure they're different than I'm imagining them but somehow the idea of a Southern Vampire Mystery stretches even my ability to suspend disbelief.

FINALLY my home computer is fixed (they called today). I think part of the delay was that I said I wanted to buy some new virus-protection software and have them install it - and they were all out.

So now I go to pick it up. I also have the (woo) Departmental Credit Card, and permission to buy the gear I need for extracting soil inverts. It feels good to be starting some research again. I get twitchy and sad when I am not-researching, mainly because I feel I am Failing To Fulfill My Purpose on this Earth.

And things are further looking up: I got a "will you be my Valentine?" message. OK, so it was from Powell's Books. But it does carry a $5 off offer with it, so that's something. (And really, if I had a real actual Valentine, and he really understood me, he would know that a book would be a more-favorably-looked-upon gift than pretty much any of the "typical" Valentine's gifts).

So, I'm trying to read through some journal articles that talk about different modes of sampling. And it occurs to me: I wonder if someone has written up a standard protocol for sampling soil inverts?

by golly, they have!.

While I don't have the nifty fancy Hydropneumatic Elutriator (what a great name!), I CAN use Berliese funnels to get what I can, and will "float" the rest out in water.

So I'm all set for tomorrow afternoon's collecting. I'm always relieved to find that the basic idea I had of how to do something (at least getting the soil samples) was pretty much what an "expert" had in mind. I am not so convinced that my extraction method will work as well but you do what you can, in the absence of a Hydropneumatic Elutriator. (It's not a good time to write grants, even if I had a prayer of getting the NSF to look favorably on my little tiny research program)

One of the interesting things about learning to play the piano is that, for me as an educator, the learning process becomes more "transparent."

I suppose I don't notice "how I learn" with a lot of the other things I do (like reading journal articles about a topic I don't know as much about - right now I'm planning a side-project on surveying the soil invertebrate population on the prairie restoration site - because it's a mode of learning I've used so long and so much that it's second nature).

One thing I notice is the wisdom of the "work on it some each day." I had this pretty well drilled into me from high school on - if you are taking a difficult class, don't wait until right before the exam to study, do a LITTLE studying each day.

That is also true with practicing. My teacher told me: even if ALL you can practice in one day is 15 minutes, do that. Don't not-practice and then try to make it up on the weekend.

And I see that. Because I see how I progressively get better with each day's practicing. Some days it may be a miniscule, almost-undetectable amount; others, it will be a considerable gain. But the only way to get that is through the reinforcement of working daily.

The other thing I notice is the truth of something I read somewhere, figured made sense, and always tell students about: you learn things best if you have the chance to sleep between sessions of learning. It is as if the pathways solidify during sleep, or something. (Or maybe not solidify, that's probably not the right word. Maybe "strengthen" is better). I can go from barely being able to play a piece one day to being able to play it mostly successfully the next - and that without any practice time or even really THINKING about the piece. It's as if my brain works on it without my paying attention to it.

I assume that is the same way for studying anything.

It is interesting to pay attention to the "meta" of learning something like this. (Or maybe it's just interesting to ME, since I work as a sort of an educator). But I like that a couple of things that I believed to be true about learning seem to be borne out by my experience. (And yes, I know: "anecdote" is not the singular of "data.")

Another thing I notice about practicing, and I think this is why it puts me in a better mood to be able to do it, is that it is one time out of my day when I HAVE to "uni-task."

I know, it's long been said the wave of the future - nay, the only way for us to "adapt" - is to multi-task. To do five things at once. And in my experience, that means doing five things, each more slowly and more poorly than they would be done if I could just stop and devote my full attention to each thing in its rightful order.

I am a poor multi-tasker.

And I know, being able to multi-task is supposedly the hallmark of being female. It is supposedly our genetic legacy from our cavewoman ancestors who had to make sure their babies weren't crawling off a cliff, while simultaneously scanning the horizon for predators, looking for edible leaves and berries, weaving together a new mat of grass for the cave floor, and wondering just WHERE Og was with that giant sloth steak he promised to get?

But I just don't multi-task well. I notice several things when I multi-task:

1. I make more mistakes. I have had to have more assignments and exams re-copied than I care to admit because I was trying to talk to someone on the phone while writing them - or I was toggling back and forth between that and entering grades.

2. I don't work as fast. It seems like the "toggling back and forth" eats up time.

3. It distresses me. I find I am far more stressed out at the end of a time period where I've had to juggle five different things than I am at the end of a time period (even if it takes more time) where I could do each thing, as I said, in its proper order. I think it's because multi-tasking creates a false sense of urgency.

I think a sense of urgency - especially false urgency - is one of the great malaises of our time. The idea that we have to DO something, NOW - that we cannot take time to contemplate and plan - that we have to be busy or at least LOOK busy - that time is money (no, it isn't. Time is more than money. Time is the only thing that the richest man on earth and the lowliest beggar in Mumbai get the exact same amount of each day. Time is the only thing you can't get BACK, even if you spent all the money in the world).

I think it is one of those things - like the drumbeat of bad news stories, that the economy is failing, that we will all be out of work soon, that everything in the air water and food will kill us AFTER giving us some kind of hideous cancer, that we have probably irreversibly poisoned our world and just haven't seen the canary in the mineshaft keel over yet - that if you pay attention to it, it can kill you. Oh yes, I think it can. I think a person who is too driven to be busy - too driven to achieve - can make themselves very sick. I know I've made myself minorly sick by pushing myself to the degree that I ever do.

And so I think we need to be able to do things where we can take a breath and say, "This is the ONLY thing I am going to pay attention to for the next 40 minutes."

In its own way, it is like prayer or meditation. You cannot pray effectively if your mind keeps pinging off on other things. (Though maybe the "you can't multitask" isn't all that true; I've actually prayed while knitting or weeding or doing some other simple repetitive task and found I actually stayed on my thoughts better, and derived a greater sense of peace, than if I was just trying to sit still. And there is also "walking meditation" where you walk a labyrinthine path of inlaid tiles). But at any rate - you have to give your full concentration to it to be effective.

And I think that's the insidiousness of multi-tasking - it fragments our concentration. It, in effect, gives us a sort of ADD. (I wonder how many people who were diagnosed with ADD as adults may have come by it through years of multitasking. I know, it's a neurotransmitter thing, but I can't help but wonder if sometimes behaviors and thought-patterns affect the production and uptake of neurotransmitters).

So it's a relief to be able to sit down and do one thing - and one thing only. And not to have to fear interruption. (I don't work as well in my office as I do at home, because of the constant stream of phone calls, people knocking on my door, noise in the hall...)

I think this is also why I like piecing quilt tops - while I can listen to music while doing it, I really can't do anything else - I can't multitask.

I guess in a couple of ways I tend to run counter to trends. I've said to people that I think in the future the ultimate luxury will NOT being "reachable at all times" (when cell phones were first available and were still a status symbol, being reachable at all times was a mark of an Important Person) but to be able to go somewhere WITHOUT being able to be reached.

And likewise, I think perhaps the hallmark of good time management and someone who does their job well may be someone who doesn't HAVE to multitask; who can plan and do one thing at once without feeling torn in fifteen different directions.

I do think we will have to, at some point, come to a saner pace of life: I don't doubt that the being pushed to be available 24/7 and to extend the workday more and more hours. Oh, I know, in this economic climate people will tell people to do just that - to make themselves "indispensable" by turning themselves into a version of those robots that work on the car assembly lines. But I look at where we're going - a utilitarian world where things are valued based on how they can advance us or how much money they will make us - and it makes me kind of sad.

And not just because two magazines I used to subscribe to have closed down. And a tea room I used to love. And an antiques shop that was one of my favorites in the world.

I just fear a grey uniform future - where everyone is a cog in a machine, and where the concept of doing something for your own amusement or your own edification is seen as perhaps a dangerous aberration.

And while I hate the whole activist-we-are-saving-the-world-through-craft attitude that some people take, I do like to think of my setting aside an hour a day (if I can at all manage that much time) to work on learning to play the piano as my own little quixotic protest against a culture that tells me that the only things worth doing are things that put more money in my pocket or more accolades after my name.

(One of the things I hate about myself: I get the feeling of "You're wasting your life!" on a more or less regular basis. Because I haven't done anything BIG. I think it's almost as damaging to a child to raise them with the expectation that they will do Great Things as it is to tell them they Will Never Amount To Anything, because then that child grows up, and if they don't want to go in for the near-monomania that it takes to do truly Great Things (spending 20 hours a day working on research, for example), then they feel like a failure - and like they are wasting their life. I kind of had to stuff that emotion down a little at the Quammen talk the other night, when, in the introduction the person talked about all the stuff he'd done. And he's not that much older than I am (I think). So I don't know. Part of it is that so much of what I do is intangible - it's not like a book you can point to on a shelf. But sometimes I do wish I had someone to remind me that I'm NOT wasting my life when I get to feeling like I am...)

Argh.

I wonder how many magazines folded as a result of the Great Depression. I wonder how many folded in past recessions? I wonder how much more magazine-attrition we are going to see.

Already two of the magazines I subscribe to have died - first, Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion (and I JUST RESUBSCRIBED. And my subscription is being filled out by the less-satisfactory Martha Stewart Living (a/k/a Martha Stewart STILL Wants to Take Over the World).

And now it's CRAFT. And while I always had mixed emotions about CRAFT - I could have done with less of the in-your-face activism, and I could have done with less of the "We're going to throw tradition out the window, whee! Because ugly is the new pretty!" there still were some good articles and ideas in there. (Supposedly we will get e-mails telling us how to reclaim the money we had left in our subscriptions. I have not received one yet).

This is a bit upsetting. Magazines are one of my joys and one of my escapes and now I'm worrying - I haven't had a "Victoria" in a while...could Better Homes and Gardens be going down a bad path? Will the knitmags survive?

And online is NOT the same. Not at all. I cannot comfortably curl up in bed with an online version. I cannot fold it open next to me while I eat. I can't half-look at it, half-knit while I sit on the couch. (And NO, I am not lusting after one of the new Kindles; they leave me cold).

This just stinks.

(Bad path of BH and G: I praised them a month or so ago for not taking the route of far too many women's magazines, where 1/3 of the magazine is devoted to delicious looking recipes, and another 1/3 to scary medical stories and nannying diet articles that basically tell you that as an adult woman, you should NEVER enjoy any of the delicious food featured in the magazine. Make it four your husband, for your children (there's that assumption again!) but don't eat it yourself.

Then last month they trumpet that they're starting a new "Health" feature. The focus? Mediterranean diet. But the subtext? We're all too fat.

They actually said - and this very nearly made me throw the issue across the room in disgust - in one of those little "text boxes" - that "eating alone could be as dangerous to your health as drinking alone."

I'm sorry, but: the Hell? I LIVE ALONE. What am I supposed to do? Never eat? Go knocking on neighbor's doors looking for someone with whom to sup (hi Lynn!)? Line up at the Government Feeding Centers that surely will open soon so that I can have rationed out to me the amount and type of food some faceless bureaucrat has deemed is "best" for me?

Oh, I understand the whole disordered-eating thing. But telling people not to eat alone because perhaps 4% of the entire populace can't handle it - it's ridiculous! It's untenable! It fails to understand on a very basic level how some of us live, and some of the problems we face. And it makes me alternately sad and angry. I'm d-----d, as they say in the Victorian novels, if I will be dragging my sorry backside around town to find someone to share my meal with just because an idiot writing in a magazine says it's "unhealthy" for some people to eat alone.)

But anyway. Bad news in an already not fun week.

One of my students lives in Lone Grove. He is OK; the tornado missed his house. (I don't know about friends and family). He can't get out of town - he called one of his buddies to go spread the word.

I will not be at all surprised if a student of mine, or someone I know from church, lost someone in the tornado.

****

It's funny how things make you think of other things. My comment about trying the Bailey's and not liking it one bit reminds me of an old, old joke, but it's one I still find funny:

Two upper-class British men met at a club. After being introduced and shaking hands and all that, William said to Trevor:

"Say, would you care to smoke a cigar with me?"

Trevor responded: "Oh, no thank you. I tried smoking once and did not like it."

Undeterred, William responded: "Well, then, may I buy you a drink?"

Trevor: "Oh, no thank you. I tried drinking once and did not like it."

William: "Well, then, I would like to play billiards. Would you care to join me in a game?"

Trevor: "Oh, no. I tried billiards once and did not like it. But my grown son should be along in about fifteen minutes; he might play."

And William remarked: "Ah. An only child, I presume?"

Hahahaha.

I know this is looking ahead to yet another holiday, but apparently there is a drink out there called an Irish Car Bomb. (And yes, I will refrain from commenting on the tastelessness of the name.)

It is compounded of a shot of Jamison's Irish Whiskey, Bailey's Irish Cream, all dumped into 3/4 pint of Guinness.

It gives me a migraine just contemplating it.

I've tasted Irish Cream (did not like it at all), smelled Guinness (and decided discretion being the better part of valor, did not drink it), and have avoided whiskey. But some of you might like such a thing.

(I know, lots of people love Guinness. But I can't get past the smell of any beer. Besides, having learned that wine gives me migraines gives me a reasonable excuse to avoid something I really don't like that much anyway.)

There are also cupcakes on the same theme. MOST of the alcohol will be cooked out of these, but still, I'm not sure it's a combination I'd fancy.

Once again, my community dodged a bullet.

I got home from the Quammen talk (more on that later), flipped on one of the local channels, and found they were running a weather-radar picture and talking in The Tone.

You know, The Tone. The one news/weathercasters use when something really big and really bad has happened.

Eventually it became clear there had been a tornado somewhere. I didn't realize how bad it was until this morning - Lone Grove, which is not far from Ardmore (about 50 miles west of me) was hit.

The tornado was apparently a half-mile wide. Brrrr.

One news station this morning is saying 15 dead; another one, less given to hyperbole, is saying 8 confirmed deaths, so hopefully those other 7 are "unaccounted for" and will turn out to be safe.

We had some pretty huge thunderstorms (and at one point I thought I heard a tree limb come down but could see no evidence of it this morning), but nothing on that order.

They had to suspend the search for people last night because debris and downed power lines made searching unsafe. (I guess the answer in a case like that is, if you're somewhere even marginally safe, you stay put until the searchers come to find you). I assume they're back at it now as the sun has just come up.

The weather today reminds me of why I like winter, and hate humidity so much.

The fact that it is about 80* in my office right now is not helping my mood any. Maybe President Obama and I should switch offices; he seems to like warm temperatures and high humidity.
****

I'm also struck by the funny behaviors we inherit (though I doubt this one has a genetic basis). I was sieving some soil in preparation for doing a lab tomorrow, and I realized that (a) I had not bothered to change out of the dress I wore to teach today, (b) I hadn't even bothered to grab my lab coat and (c) I had soil all down my front.

And you know, my mother has commented many times on how my dad did similar things - mowing the lawn in his dress shirt, doing minor household repairs with his tie (from teaching) still on. And how his dad did the very thing (but my granddad* was even worse - he would change the oil in his Mercury (he always drove Mercuries) in a white dress shirt and dress slacks).

And now I do it too. As I said, I don't THINK it's a genetically based behavior, how could it be, but it just seems odd that it got passed down to me.

(When I am visiting them, and I happen to be cooking, my mother is always after me to put on an apron, something I usually forget to do at home).

(*This is the same granddad who was the source of the piano. And the one about whom it was said, "Cy will wear the same ratty old fedora year in and year out and spend all his spare money on books." And again, I doubt one could attribute any genetic basis to that behavior, but it seems to be one I've inherited. [the book-buying, not the fedora-wearing]).

Odd little observation, courtesy of GenBio:

how would history be different if Henry VIII had known it was HIS contribution that was "failing" to produce sons?

I suppose that's not an interesting enough topic for the sort of speculative, alternate-universes historical fiction set, though. (They seem to require something involving Hitler).

I suppose at a minimum, we'd think of Luther as Protestant Reformation 1.0, rather than 2.0.

This is not going to be the usual kind of shiny happy post. Be forewarned.

One thing that gets to me from time to time is the fact that the way I live my life - that I never married and had children - is not the "typical" path women (or at least, women in my community) seem to take. And while the vast majority of the time I'm "OK with that*" and in fact realize that a lot of the things I do, I could NOT do if I had a husband and children to concern myself with, still, sometimes there's this feeling that people don't understand me on a very fundamental level because of it.

Last night, I made some comment at the meeting I was at - I think I quoted the old Judge Judy dictum about someone else's failure to plan not making a crisis for me - and one of the women looked at me, laughed, and said, "I can't wait for you to have kids" (Presumably because I'd change my opinion then).

And I suppose I should take it as a compliment that I must really not look nearly-40, because I think otherwise people would assume (as I have) that that ship has sailed.

But the thing is: I AM nearly 40. Even if I were to fall in love next week, get married the week after, and immediately "start trying," it is highly unlikely (and not just for reasons of age) that I'd have a kid. (Not that I even WANT one. I'd be copacetic with the falling-in-love and the getting-married-at-some-point if the right fella came along, but kids - just not something I think I could raise.)

And I was struck the moment she said it: do I immediately disabuse her of the notion, laugh and go "I turn forty in just over 2 weeks; I guess I'd better hurry"? or do I just smile weakly and laugh.

(Probably you all know me well enough to know which one I actually did).

But I have to admit, I get tired of that. Most of the time, as I said, I have no problem with the "following an atypical path" way that my life turned out. But you know, sometimes I just get tired. Tired of explaining to people WHY I never married and had kids (and yeah, I know, it's all kinds of rude for someone to even ask. But that kind of thing is sort of my reality). I just kind of shrug and laugh and deliver the truth as I see it: one part never-met-the-right guy, two parts was-probably-too-busy-with-career.

But yeah, I get really tired of explaining.

Especially this week, when I'm already tired. (I am OH SO TEMPTED to bail on the Quammen talk tonight and go home and read instead). And when other stuff is going on that's low-level upsetting to me (among other things: I have to hand back a test in my non-majors class that most of the students failed). And then there's the Tide of Pink and Flowery.

Which is another whole assumption thing that bugs me. Most of the "typical" valentine's day gifts are not things that would particularly charm me. Cut flowers - they die, and also with my allergies many of them are not enjoyable to me.

Candy is OK, though most of the "heart box" candy is frankly kind of cheaply made and is not that good. And there's SO MUCH of it. I'd rather have a couple of nice truffles from a gourmet counter, or maybe a really good chocolate bar, instead of one of the big plushy hearts full of over-sweet creams and caramels. (And some caramels, I can't eat any more: dental work.) Or for that matter - I really don't NEED to be eating candy; I'd probably be more thrilled to have someone call me up and say, "I'm going to make some hot soup that you like and bring it over to your office so you can have a nice hot lunch."

As for jewelry - the ads show all kinds of fancy diamond jewelry. Beyond the concerns I have about the treatment of the people who mine the diamonds (at least in some parts of the world), I have absolutely nowhere I would wear a fancy pendant or ring. I have two very nice pieces of jewelry - both gifts from family - that I almost never wear because they are too fancy for my everyday life. I'd be much more likely to wear - and in fact, to be charmed by - something a bit idiosyncratic and incorporating my interests - jewelry made out of old typewriter keys, for example, or something out of turquoise made by a Native American artist that was actually purchased FROM the artist at an art gallery.

I suppose what frustrates me about the ads is that their assumption is that "more" (in the sense of "more money spent") automatically equals "better." And that there's a one-size-fits-all gift out there. And just the whole idea that valentine's day is pretty much solely dedicated to romantic love, which, looking at it mostly from the outside, seems to be a giant minefield a lot of the time.

Anyway. I think I once said that I liked in better in grade school - where you took an afternoon off, and exchanged those silly pun-ny little valentines with your friends (and mmmmmmaaaayyyyybbbbbe saved the nicest one for the boy you had a little bit of a crush on) and you drank red Hi-C and ate a cupcake. (But maybe those days are gone, too - maybe parties have been banned as part of the Zero Tolerance for Fat Children move that seems to be crossing the nation. And I have to say I think that's misguided - a child is not going to become fat because they get a cupcake and a cup of sugary punch maybe three times a year; but we as a society seem very good at throwing simple draconian solutions at complex problems).

I don't know. I think of all the holidays the advertisers have done the best job of mucking this one up. At least with Christmas and Easter you can still go to church and be reminded of the actual reason you celebrate; with valentine's day there's really not much underneath it all. (Yeah, I know: St. Valentine. Is he still even part of the canon? And supposedly this was the day birds start pairing up for the spring - well, if, like me, you've read much about songbird mating behavior (or have a friend who is an ornithologist), songbirds are not exactly the greatest examples of marital fidelity either. (Honestly, seriously, true: it is like Peyton Place in a nest box). So that doesn't leave us with much.)

At any rate - everything including the tiredness I feel (I was out of the house until 9 last evening) are just coalescing into a pool of Blah.

(*the phrase, "Are you OK with that," while I know it is well-meant, is one of the phrases I have a pretty great dislike for. I had a friend who used to use it all the time. It bugs me, because in my worldview, if something happens that you do not like, there are two options: first, it is something you can change. So then you change it. Second, it is something you cannot change. So then, you have to accept it. There's no question of "being OK" with it or not - it has happened and you'd BEST figure out a way to "be OK" with it or else you're going to be miserable every time you think of it.)

Yeah, sorry, ranty. I get this way when I'm staring down several long days in a single week, including meetings where my getting home to actually relax is dependent upon the whims of someone who has a freer schedule than I do.