Aaah! KING-fm has started up their Christmas channel online again.

I admit it: in many ways, I am an unabashed Christmas freak. I love the music. I love the decorations. I love going out at night and seeing all the lights people have put up. (I even love the "Griswold Houses"). I love the chill in the air. I love the Advent wreath at church. I love the specials on tv, even the silly sappy movies that they run on Hallmark channel. I love going out and buying a toy I would have enjoyed as a child and giving it to Toys for Tots, and hoping that it is what some little kid somewhere wanted for Christmas. I love figuring out the "best" presents for the people I love, obtaining them, and hiding them away. I even love the rather silly Christmas sweaters and sweatshirts that some people wear.

I know a lot of people complain about the commercialization of the holiday, and yes, I could do without the "buy your spouse a NEW CAR for Christmas!" commercials and such. But most of what I really truly love about our celebration of Christmas (quite aside from the reason we celebrate) are things that really are not that commercialized. It's the things people do that are not "ordinary" - putting up lights and wreaths, wearing brighter clothes than they otherwise might, making foods they normally otherwise never make.

I guess, for me, all of those "non-ordinary" things, all of those instances of (what I perceive as) adults taking a more childlike joy in life, for me, point to the reason we celebrate - that even if our society sometimes kind of forgets - there's still that underlying joy, and I think, almost, an underlying relief. From what I've read of "older" celebrations, particularly when times were harder, there was a real sense of "relief" that Christ was in the world - that for believers, this hard life was not all that there was, and that for once in the year, they would take joy in that...and have foods they would normally not have, and dance and sing and generally act in a way more like carefree children than burdened adults. And I think that still remains, perhaps just as a ghost of its original self, today.

And the fact that, despite some isolated incidents, I do believe people are generally nicer during this season. More generous. Perhaps more tolerant of others' foibles.

Even though there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world, at this time of the year, I find it generally easier to focus on the good stuff than I do at other times. Christmas magic, I suppose.

One other good thing about traveling for Thanksgiving?

You can leave all the leftovers behind! (My parents got a 14 pound turkey, counting on more at dinner. Even with us, plus a re-heated lunch with a family friend the next day, there was a lot of turkey left over).

I'm back.

As always, Thanksgiving break is just a bit too short. Just as I've relaxed, it's time to come back home. (And I guess this was a pretty hard semester after all; seeing a friend of the family, she commented that I looked "pale" and asked if I was tired. I don't know - I'm always very fair-skinned, even mid-summer, and I think sometimes what people interpret as "pale" is just my natural complexion but I do think I was kind of tired.)

(Though I will admit to surreptitiously pinching my cheeks to try to raise a little pinkness - I didn't have quick access to my makeup bag to put on more blush - after that comment was made)

I didn't get to see my brother and sister-in-law after all. A couple weeks ago, my brother had what was most likely H1N1. He was just barely getting over it when my sister-in-law got sick this week, and our general consensus was (a) she should not travel as she did not feel well and also might be contagious and (b) my brother needed to stay with her to look after her, get her tea, make sure she had food, etc.

But that's OK. I will see them at Christmas.

But it was good anyway. (And probably good I made the effort to travel to be with my parents, since my brother and sister in law couldn't be there). I didn't do a whole lot - helped some with the cooking, hung around and knitted, Saturday helped put up the outdoor Christmas lights.

Pretty much all my Christmas shopping is done - I do need to make a small gift (I'm going to do a couple of dishcloths) for a family friend, and I do need to figure something else out for another family friend, but other than that, I'm done, and did it entirely through mail order and the small shops in my downtown.

And I'm glad. I did the "Black Friday" thing once, many years ago, and that was enough to tell me that, despite whatever "deals" may be on offer, it is not worth the cost of my good will and Christmas spirit to cram into a store with dozens to hundreds of other people, some of whom will resort to underhanded techniques to get what they want. (And generally, the "big popular" gifts are not the sort of things the people in my life like or want). I'm sure some people enjoy that type of shopping - the thrill of the chase - but it's not for me, as crowd-averse as I am.

I did enjoy, while coming back, looking at all the Christmas lights that were already out. I particularly like it when small towns put up the bells or wreaths or other shapes outlined in lights on their lampposts.

I also read "Mauve" (the story of William Perkin's discovery of the first true artificial dye). I had started it a couple years ago and not got very far, but I read it through this time. It's interesting to think how much something that seems comparatively small - a different sort of dye - led to all manner of changes (stains for tissues, some medical applications in chemotherapy, other colors, the changes in the fashion industry...)

I'm also plowing my way through "The Whiskey Rebels" and really enjoying it - it's very suspenseful (it's told in an alternating-narrator format - there are two separate stories that have some figures in common, and so the chapters alternate between being narrated from the POV of Ethan Saunders, a former (now discredited) Continental Army spy, and Joan Maycott, a young woman and would-be author who has moved into the unsettled "west" (Pennsylvania west of Pittsburg) with her husband. It is leading up to the Whiskey Rebellion, a period of American history that I could tell you the date of, and perhaps the main idea (tax revolt against taxes on fermented product), but very little else - but I am learning. (I think the author, David Liss, was pretty diligent at trying to get the history right).

And so far, it passes three of my "tests" for historical novels:

a. No explicit sex scenes, please. (Oh, it's alluded to. Apparently Saunders made a bit of his living by being, if not exactly a gigolo, a sad-case that women would take pity on...and he would, ahem, perform certain services for them. And of course Joan and Andrew are married. And there is even a male couple (and yes, it is made clear that they are a couple, not just two guys "batching it" until/unless one of them finds a wife) in the frontier group that help them after they've been defrauded...but no heaving bosoms or throbbing organs, much to my relief)

b. Nothing that seems glaringly anachronistic or a badly-done way of setting the time period. (I remember years ago, putting down a novel after one of the female characters declared near the beginning, "It IS 1888, after all!" in a rather non-sequitur sort of situation)

c. (This is probably the hardest to explain or put one's finger on why it works) it transports the reader to another place, it furnishes a sort of escape from the here and now.

I'm about 1/3 through but the rest promises to be good. (And I also have Liss' earlier novel, A Conspiracy of Paper, which I bought not too long after it came out in paperback, having read a favorable review, but never got around to reading. I think I will do that, now, after finishing this book)

I also did do some knitting (pictures to come later). The Neverending Scarf of Neverendingness got finished (and blocked!) and I finished the Angee socks - both projects I had had going for months. And I started a pair of fingerless mitts and the "traffic stoppin' boot socks" - though I think for me to actually stop traffic in them, I'd probably have to build a time machine, go back to 1905 or so, and wear a skirt sufficiently short to show off my ankles.





Oh, and one last thing: NO advertising your blog on my blog if it has NOTHING to do with what I am writing about! (I had to track a spam comment down on a 2+ year old post. What benefit that brings the spammer, to post on an old archived post no one reads, I don't know, but that irritates me) I've had to delete three spam comments (I realize that's very few by everyone's standards) but it annoys me - I never get any "bennies" from anyone for the blog - I don't run ads, I don't accept free products - so why should someone be able to shill their site on mine?

If it continues I shall have to go to comment moderation, as much as I hate that. And I have a new little warning that should be there right above the comment form. If you happen to go to comment.

I managed to get packed. And most of the papers I needed to grade tonight are done.

So, to my American friends, a blessed Thanksgiving to you and yours.



(Claude the elephant, Wilbur, Thalia, and Gloria, around a table loaded with Re-Ment food. Alas, I don't have a little turkey, but I suppose Claude enjoys the soybeans and corn more, and I think escargot may be more to Wilbur's taste.)

this day was just about the death of me

graded two classes' worth of exams, each for classes of 20-24 people
graded 24 lab reports
graded a couple "hangover" tests and positional papers from people who were sick
updated and printed off take home exams for one class (needed Monday the 30th)
taught two classes
went through a delivered-at-the-last-possible-minute administrative task. I split the job with colleagues who had to do it too, and I probably did a crappy job on it, but they seemed satisfied. I wish I felt less guilty about not taking it home tonight, reading the whole thing, and doing it all myself instead of splitting it up.

what remains:
grade 20 student article critiques
pack
wash my hair
maybe eat dinner if I can find time.

Urgh. I spoke too soon about not having nausea from the shot.

Well, on the bright side, all of this immune response means I should have really super good immunity to H1N1, no?

Reaching in to a washer full of HOT agitating water to try to find your little zipper-bag of purses you are trying to felt is not fun.

Pictures to come, hopefully in a few minutes.

Yes, here they are. I had waited to felt until I finished the second bag, the one for my sister-in-law. The darker one is the AAUW present; the lighter one is for her.

Before felting:



After felting, with the flaps closed. (They look darker here because they're still wet):



They warned not to "over felt" - I suppose it gets too small that way. But you need to felt them enough that stuff won't fall out between the stitches. (I have them bouncing around in a warm dryer right now to see what that does)

Here's a close up. The stitches tightened up but you can still see them.



I think she'll like it but I still think for me it would have been cuter in a medium to dark brown with either a red or cream colored stripe.

****

I got the H1N1 vaccine Friday. (It's very funny, very spotty how the distribution of this was. This was the injectable form - which is what I was supposed to have - and the campus nurse assured me that the really sensitive populations had already been given their shots, so I didn't feel like I was taking it from someone more in need of it than I).

I will say if you decide to get this vaccine? Try to do it on a day when the next couple of days aren't unusually challenging. They do warn you there are a few minor side effects: sore arm, possibly nausea (I didn't get that), muscle aches and headache (yes), slight fever (yes), and fainting (in adolescents, and I don't think they meant as an emo response to the shot).

I had a sore arm Friday evening (it was better after taking tylenol and putting ice on it) and I had muscle aches yesterday and today, and a headache today, though I don't know that that can necessarily be blamed on the shot; I get headaches a lot from pollen or mold or whatever. And I had a fever of 99.1 this afternoon.

And I felt kind of "meh," like you do when you're fighting off some low-level bug. I know you can't actually GET the flu from this shot (it's "killed" virus, which is not literally what it is - I think it's actually just proteins from the viral coat, which is what your immune system would recognize anyway - you can't really "kill" a virus, most biologists believe viruses are not technically "alive." The virus is just deactivated in some way that it can't invade your cells and use them. (The spray mist IS "live" but weakened virus - which is why people with asthma and other respiratory stuff aren't supposed to get the spray kind)

Hopefully I will feel better tomorrow but I think as a precaution I'm not going to try to get up early to work out, unless I happen to bounce out of bed at 5 am feeling good.

Another thought on music:

Growing up, I listed to WCLV (the well-known Cleveland classical station) and (I can't remember the call letters now) an "oldies" rock station.* So I knew more about rock from before 1965 or so than I did about what was currently popular. (I tried listening to Top 40. Oh, how I tried. It was part of my "normalization" program, to try to make myself more like the other kids, in a brief attempt to see if that would make me more popular. I finally said forget it, realizing that being untrue to myself and my tastes to bring popularity would be a pretty hollow victory. And it would require a level of maintenance I was unwilling to do. So I just accepted that I was a "weird kid" in a very conformist era (or at least it was in my junior high). I was a lot happier in high school; I went to a private school and I think a lot of the other "weird kids" in the region had parents with similar ideas to mine ("I'll send my kid to WRA; they'll have a chance to shine academically and they may be less likely to be tormented for caring about grades"))

(*It's a bit disconcerting to me that they have changed "classic rock" so now it means mostly 70s and some 80s stuff, as for me, growing up, "classic rock" was like Bill Haley and the Comets and the various 50s and early 60s vocal groups. (I wonder, are they now considered Baroque Rock? or maybe Renaissance Rock? if what came after them is now "Classic" period rock?). And it was really disconcerting a couple weeks ago, when I went to give blood, and they had a "classic rock" program blaring, and "Angel in the Centerfold" came on. You know you're starting to get old when a song you hated on its first go-round is now called "classic rock." (And nothing against fans of the J. Geils Band, it was just that when that song was popular - fall 1981 into spring 1982, maybe? - in the town where I lived, you Could. Not. Get. Away. From. It. It was as if it was being played every 15 minutes. Which, as I remember, was the standard joke about Top 40: that there was a tiny subset of songs played again and again and again, and yet, all the 'cool kids' seemed to love it.)

Anyway. I know a surprising amount about doo-wop and girl groups and bubblegum pop for someone born during the Psychedelic Rock era and matured during the disco/New Wave era.

(And I am unapologetic in my love of bubblegum pop. Even if it is a "manufactured" band. I enjoyed the Monkees whenever VH-1 or someone would re-run the show.*
And of the J-pop I've heard, I like that too.)

I guess I also know a surprising amount about classical music, based on my piano teacher's reactions to my recognition of certain terms or composers and my knowledge of odd random facts like that Beethoven never married but was apparently in love with a countess (allegedly for whom he wrote what was later entitled "Moonlight Sonata")

(*And as I said on a Ravelry board this week, I'd LOVE to have a recording of Davy Jones' tagline, "you MUST be joking!" to use when ever someone requested something unreasonable of me).

***

I did finish one thing today - not knitting though.

I did my Christmas decorating today, put up the tree and the mantel-stuff. And then I pulled out something I had bought back in the summer and never got 'round to before.

I had never owned a proper nativity set. I have a small one, in tree-ornament form, but I never had an actual one with figures that you could set up. And I felt like that was a bit of a lack, you know, not having something representing the actual reason why I am celebrating Christmas.

I kept looking for one. Either they were horrendously expensive or were frankly not a style I liked. But then I finally found one of those printed-panel things that you cut out and sew and stuff. I liked it for several reasons:

1. I liked the aesthetics of it; it wasn't too formal and wasn't too kitschy. (Though I will observe that the Holy Family is depicted as Northern European, rather than Semitic, looking - a common "mistake" in nativity sets. Though then again - having been in Black churches where paintings of Christ had African features - maybe we all see God through the lens of our own background, so maybe it's OK for me to have a blond, fair-skinned Baby Jesus in my set).

2. It's not breakable. Because of where I have to store my Christmas stuff this is actually kind of an issue.

3. I have a nostalgic fondness for those cut-and-sew panel items. I said before I had several toys (including a greatly beloved toy giraffe named George) that came as flat panels my mom cut out and sewed up for me when I was a child. So the set makes me happy in a childlike sort of way. (And again: aren't we called to be a bit childlike in our faith?)

Another nice thing: I can set them up on my piano (which is a good display place; it is easily visible and not eclipsed by other things) without worrying about scratching it.



Putting it together was fairly involved. The figures themselves weren't hard - two pieces plus a base, but then when you stuffed them you were supposed to cut a cardboard to go inside the base to keep them upright. (I opted for plastic needlepoint canvas instead; it won't get folds in it and if I ever had to wash the set it wouldn't fall apart) and it was kind of an effort to stuff them without dislodging the piece of plastic canvas.

There is Joseph and Mary, a pair of shepherds, the three Kings, a camel, a pair of sheep, and baby Jesus. And there's a separate tiny manger (which had side seams to make it box-shaped). The trickiest part was the stable; you have to back each side (front and back) with "fleece" (I used very thin quilt batting as it was what I had on hand) and then make "channels" into which you slipped pieces of plastic canvas (I had to buy a six-pack of plastic canvas; that was all wal-mart had, and I don't ordinarily use it, so that's why I used it in the bases as well).

But I think it looks pretty good. It took me about 3 hours all told. (I rarely have time to sit down and do a project start to finish like that). And I think the piano is a good place for it. (I am going to put the lid back up after Christmas; I kept it propped in the half-open position to keep myself from being tempted to use it as a mail catch-all spot or a place to set things.)

I'll post other Christmas photos after Thanksgiving, I think. I did have to set the tree up in a different place this year because of the location of the piano, but I think it's a good new place.

You know the new iPod Nano commercial? The one for the one with video and a really catchy song? (At first I thought it was one of the female singers from Squirrel Nut Zippers singing backup - it sounds a bit like her - but no, it's a couple of Swedish indie rockers). (The song is called "Bourgeois Shangri-la")

Anyway, the tune kept bugging me - the tinkly intro, and all that. I had heard something like that before.

Yup:



I wouldn't call it a "rip off" but it's certainly an "inspired by" I think.

(And you know? Gary Lewis does look like his dad. I guess I never really saw video of him before.)

I have a very good "auditory memory" - to the point where sometimes tunes used in commercials strike me funny because they are so out of context. Three I remember:

"House of the Rising Sun" used for some sports drink (IIRC), showing runners "burning out" on the road. (The song is itself about a guy in a New Orleans brothel, or at least the version I know is)

"La Goulante du Pauvre Jean" used for Dove shampoo (It's a French song, essentially about a guy who turns to crime because girls won't fall in love with him. And he winds up being hanged in the end.)

and, most ridiculously, "Little Bitty Pretty One" turned into a sort of Zen chant for a green tea beverage.

I could probably serve as a detective or expert witness in cases where one artist is accused of plagiarizing another artist's song. If I've heard it more than once, I remember it.

(Sadly, that memory does not seem to be able to extend - at least yet - to playing piano "by ear.")

Some perspective. (The Universe has a way of whacking a person upside the head now and again):

I got an e-mail concerning a person I know. He is one of the "driving forces" behind the local soup kitchen (Families Feeding Families) that provides a hot meal, five days a week, to anyone in need. They also do things like collect winter coats to distribute to kids who might not otherwise have one. And they do other good stuff.

He has been diagnosed with throat cancer and is going to be starting chemo. He and his family don't have insurance. (I anticipate that if they hold a benefit, or ask for donations to help with the cost, they will find their cups running over...that is how people in this community feel about them). But the time and the strain and all the risk...that is worrying. I hope his family will be able to continue their service, or find people able to take it over - it is incredibly important and valuable in what it does (I've helped out on a few - sadly, only a few, because of my schedule - occasions and it really does fill a big need in my town).

He has a wife and children, too. Cancer is always horrible, but for someone fairly young like him and who is so vital and busy, it's an extra bad blow.

If you're a praying sort, would you mind saying one for him? (Brian Burkhalter is his name). And for his family.

My problems this week are nothing in comparison to what he is facing.

This is for Lynn, in regards to her last comment:


see more Epic Fails

Yes, you are probably right. And sadly, it seems to me that the "it's all about me" people are taking over. And you know, I WANT to see some of them FAIL. I want to see some of them face consequences for their self-entitledness. I'm tired of being responsible and doing what I'm supposed to and still having people come whining to me that, because I didn't bring the paperwork they missed getting to THE DOOR OF THEIR HOUSE that I am somehow a bad and wrong person.

I think we've already established that I watched far, far too many hours of Looney Tunes cartoons in my youth.

(But I maintain that they were FAR more educational - at least in terms of mid-century American culture - than many of today's cartoons are. I learned what a War Bond was, for example, from Bugs Bunny.)

Today in stats we did correlation coefficients. And I was mightily, mightily tempted to walk in there and exclaim in my best Daffy-Duck-impersonating-Jerry-Colonna impression, "Greetings, gates! Let's correlate!" (the best reference that I can find to the original)

But sadly, I knew that (a) not a one of them would get it and (b) as I was being evaluated today, anything that made me look like a nut (well, more of one than I usually do) would be inadvisable.

The day ended better than it began.

I finally broke free, got out to Lowe's, and ordered my new windows. I had been worrying about "When will I get out there?" and worrying about making a Big Expensive Decision and I think that partly preyed on my mind. (I am much happier AFTER making decisions - when it's done, and I can't mentally debate it any more, and I tell myself I will be happy with the result - than I am in the PROCESS of making decisions)

I did find out - when I called - that the Millwork guy is there from something like 2 pm until after the store closes at 10. (OK, so other jobs have things that stink worse than some of the stuff I put up with in academia...). I was afraid he'd have short hours, like 10 to 2 or some lunacy and I'd never get out there when he was on duty.

But I did, and got the windows picked out.

They are not the very top of the line, but close to it, and by Pella. I tend to think a company that's been around for umpteen years, at the very least, will be willing to make stuff right if it isn't. They're double-glazed (I suspect all windows are now), and have the tilt-in frames to make them easy to clean (I don't have to crawl behind the holly bush to clean the outside of the dining room windows any more; I can tilt them in and clean them from inside the house). And they have low-e glass, which I'm hoping will keep it cooler in the summer without running heck out of my air conditioner.

And they are vinyl. Yes, I know. Heresy, in a 60-odd year old house. I probably "should" have gone with wood. But I don't have time to paint wood and worry about its upkeep and if it's warping and all that mess. Luckily, I don't live in anything designated as an "historic district" so the Aesthetics Police won't come after me. I did select ones as close in style as possible to what I have now.

And if whoever winds up with the house after I'm done with it - if there still is a world and still is a house in the future - if they don't like it, they can put in whatever the heck they want.

I will say I was pleasantly surprised on the cost. I had money saved up for this, I was anticipating something like $12K, as a friend had window replacements priced out a couple years ago and claimed, "It will cost more than my place is WORTH" - he was saying it ran like $22K, and his house is no bigger than mine, so I was prepared to boggle at the cost. (I have no idea why his were so expensive. Maybe he was looking at custom jobs. Or maybe he wanted wood, and wood is a lot more expensive...)

Turns out, my replacement (barring anything unforseen like dry rot in the sills - which I may actually foresee, I spotted a bit and pointed it out to the installer and he said, "yeah, we can replace that for a bit extra") was only about half of the anticipated $12K. So instead of mostly-depleting my savings, it's only partly-depleted them, which relieves me - I like having a cushion of money in case something really goes bad and needs to be dealt with right away. And with a year or so's frugal living, I can build the savings back up to where they were before.

And yeah, yeah, they made the offer of financing and all (even with 0% interest) but my philosophy is, if you have the money NOW, pay for it all NOW. Then you don't have it hanging over your head.

Other good news: if the special-order comes when it's supposed to, it will be in the correct time frame for the installers to put them in in my little break between exam week and my departure for Christmas break. (Extra good: if the vinyl "outgasses" at all, I will be gone for much of it and won't have to smell it)

***

Knitted more on the never ending scarf of neverendingness. It's getting close to done, actually. And I know there are a few places with errors in it - mainly row 11s where I forgot a yarn over, and just said "bag it" and fudged in the next eyelet row (the following row 5). I don't know. Intellectually I know the errors won't show, but I admit that emotionally they bug me. Not quite enough to rip literally months of work out and start over (swearing not to make a mistake - because that never works anyway), but it still bugs me.

I keep telling myself that it's like the Amish quilts or the Persian rugs where the maker left an intentional flaw because supposedly to make something too perfect offends God. (Sigh. I never have to make sure to leave an "intentional" flaw in things).

I'll probably feel better about it when (a) I am less tired, and less tired of it, (b) it has blocked and I can realize that the mistakes don't really show, and (c) if I wear it and someone comments that it's nice or pretty or something.

But making mistakes does bug me. And it's more than on an "oh, I screwed up" level, it's almost like "The earth has now tilted a couple extra degrees on its axis because you did this thing WRONG and gravity is all out of whack and things aren't RIGHT." It takes me a while of living with a mistake to learn to tolerate it.

From a friend:

"Some days are just a waste of make-up."

That kind of sums it up. I'm going to bed.

Okay, maybe not. Maybe I won't leave this gig after all. Maybe I just have to channel that part of me that is "quietly and politely evil sometimes" (as my friend Doug says about me).

Student comes by wanting to know "are we doing anything tomorrow?" (urge to kill, rising, rising...seriously, if they KNEW how many times I have heard that question and resent it).

But this time, I had a response prepared - this is the stats class, the one that is driving me batguano crazy because so many people have missed and then don't know how to do the tests and then earn 20%s on their homeworks and are all sad and angry over it.

I said: "In fact, we are. We are doing correlation coefficients. They will be on the final, you will need to know how to calculate one. And the way it's written up in the book is not at all clear; you need to see someone work an example to understand it. You will be sorry if you skip class."

And he kind of hemmed and hawed - it was a social thing he was going to that might lead to miss class - but then he assured me he'd be there. So I need to stop any desire I have to be liked or even respected, I just need to be the tough old witch who tells it like it is.

I'm putting an attendance policy in my classes - all of 'em - next semester. Now, I hate attendance policies, first, because this is NOT fifth grade, they are adults and should know that they need to be in class, and second, because all of the logistics and the dealing with doctor's notes and obituaries and sad faced people demanding excused absences drives me wild. But I am so tired of people skipping for two solid weeks and then coming back and being SURPRISED there are consequences to it.

I hate to say this, but I'm beginning to wonder if it's time to leave academia. The combination of the rising Millennial generation and their sense of entitlement is the main reason, but there is other stuff.

I'm just utterly tapped out right now. I have no more sympathy. I have no more patience. I nearly cried twice today, and nearly snapped at a student.

The sad thing is, I have absolutely no idea what I could do if I left this gig. I have completely the wrong personality for sales and retail, I don't have any wonderful skills like being able to do electrical work, as much as I like knitting and quilting and stuff I hold no illusions about my work being good enough to earn me a living...

I need to find a rich older man and entice him into marrying me. That's all there is to it. He doesn't even have to be THAT rich. Or I have to go back in time and get born into a family with a rich grandparent that dotes on me.

You know what?

Even though I said I "had" to finish at least one project before starting something new, I am so totally casting on a new project tonight to reward myself for making it through this day.

I wound off some yarn last night...the Northern Lights yarn for the Lepidoptera mitts (and it looks even better wound up - I do not think it's going to pool in an ugly way, but rather maybe "sparkle" a bit - dark background with brighter flecks rather than brighter blobs).

And I kept thinking about the Cauchy socks (yes, named [indirectly] after that Cauchy) and how I wanted to make them but didn't have yarn in mind. So a hunt in the stash boxes turned up a skein of Dream in Color in a medium blue ("Deep Seaflower") that I think would be very nice for them. (Also, I just LIKE the Dream in Color sockyarn; it's pretty and it knits up well). So I wound that off.

I'm getting closer-to-done with the Angee socks (from the same book as the Cauchy pattern, which is why I was thinking about it). Maybe not before break, but they will be done soon.

I also wound off a couple of skeins of Happy Feet in a greenish-brown colorway. No pattern in mind of yet, but when I was getting the Dream in Color out of the box, I wound up disturbing them and made the skein "separate" (come out of the twist that it was wrapped up in) and from past experience, I know that leaving a skein in that state can mean that it's very messy to wind up later on.

I also dug out some screaming pink yarn and the Traffic-Stoppin' Boot Sock pattern. I've been wanting to do this one for a while but never quite decided on a yarn, but I think the brilliant pink (and it really is, it's almost Hello Kitty pink) will be "right" for it.

If anyone needs me today, I am going to be under my desk. Possibly sucking my thumb, something I haven't done since I was 2 or so.

This morning alone, I have had:

three weepy e-mails from students about why they canNOT take the exam today and how I "need to" give them a make up

an e-mail from a student who missed the exam I gave Monday because he was out of the country (I am SO asking for documentation on that one) and he "needs" to take it now. This is an exam that includes a take-home exam component. Which is due Monday. His, even though he doesn't have it yet, will still be due Monday.

A phone message from someone else who missed class yesterday and will likely miss class tomorrow.

an e-mail from someone On High...uh, telling me I have to do something that turns out it's supposed to be confidential and Kept From The Students (which we weren't told right off). And I don't know for 100% sure no one reads, so....you may have seen something different here earlier...

Oh, and we are also mid-Program-Review, which is like a collective departmental panic attack.

So it has not been a stellar morning. And I have only been here about an hour.

It turns out that this week (Monday, actually) could be considered a potential birthday for the American Teddy Bear. (I say "American" because the Germans - through Marguerite Steiff - also have a claim on the invention).

In 1902, then-president Roosevelt was in Mississippi. He was there to settle a border dispute with Louisiana, but he was also hunting at the same time. He had wanted to shoot a bear, but no bears crossed his path.

So one of his "handlers" went out and FOUND a bear. By some reports, it was an elderly bear that was weak, in others, it was a cub. The bear was (allegedly) tethered so it couldn't get away. But Roosevelt (allegedly, again*) would not take such an unsporting shot. So the cartoonist Clifford Berryman drew up "Drawing the Line in Mississippi," showing Roosevelt refusing to shoot what was depicted in the cartoon as a scared bear cub.

(*I say "allegedly" because another record of the trip notes that Roosevelt returned to Washington after shooting a bear. Hopefully not the one that was tethered.)

A toy maker in New York (Morris Michtom) thought he could capitalize on the popularity of the president - he sewed up a toy bear and (allegedly, again) wrote to Roosevelt asking permission to call it "Teddy's Bear." (If such correspondence existed, it's been lost, I think).

The Teddy Bear became quite a fad in its early days. It was even fashionable for flappers to carry them at one time. (The fact that some bears were made with flasks concealed in their bodies probably had something to do with that).

The bear's popularity seemed to wane after the 50s (this site refers to the 50s-70s as "the lean years," which I think was actually true for a LOT of toys...there were a lot of good toys that came out after I was too old to really enjoy them, and there were a lot of crummy toys in the 70s). It became repopularized in the 1980s, after collectors discovered the antique bears.

I've made quite a few bears over the years - I got interested in them when they became popular again and ALWAYS wanted an antique one, but could never afford it. (And actually, now, after getting a couple of modern Steiffs as gifts, I'm not sure I still want one - the "traditional" bear is very stiff and unyielding, and of course, the antique ones would have to be displayed very carefully, kept out of the light and all that). I think I prefer the more cuddly modern versions.

Like Bertie:



I have a lot of bears I've sewn from patterns (either from books, or ones I made up myself) over the years but have few photos of them. This one (I call him Algonquin) was made to look a bit like the original Berryman cub. He wears a small sized cat's collar. (The photo was really taken using the bear just as a model for the hat, but I remembered I had it in my photostream):



I also have quite a collection of "purchased" bears - I put several of them out at Christmastime (which I will be decorating for this weekend).

I've read a lot of different supposed reasons for why people respond to teddy bears - one being that they are vaguely human in form (bears, when they walk upright, walk "plantigrade" - on the soles of their feet - like humans; many other animals walk "digigrade," on their toes). But they are NOT human, and if you're someone who has temporary or permanent difficulties relating to other humans, that can mean something. And traditional bears have a rather "neutral" expression, so you can kind of project your own emotions on to them. And they were proposed as a sort of cuddly, lovable thing that it was at least marginally OK for a boy to play with.

I think perhaps the "nonthreateningness" of the bears is something people respond to as well. (Funny, because real bears can be quite dangerous, at least mothers with cubs can). I think also there is a tactile quality to them - at least to the furry bears - and I think some people are perhaps a bit deprived of the tactile in life.

I'm not sure any of those explanations work - or maybe, a bit of all of them do. At any rate, I'm glad teddy bears exist. I suppose some day I should chronicle the other ones I've made, most of which came into being before I had a camera.

Apparently, 'Unfriend' is the New It Word for 2009.

Is it wrong of me to say that that makes me a little sad? The whole concept of "unfriending" (and yes, I understand that there are valid uses of it, like if someone turns out to be stalkery and weird) makes me sad. It reminds me too much of grade school days, where the girls I knew would "friend" and "unfriend" people with, it seemed to me, no good reason at all*. The whole concept of "unfriending" pushes the button corresponding to one of my deepest "issues" - I think because I DID have "friends" in my past who either pulled the "If you don't give me your new Barbie, I won't be your friend any more" scam**, or who just decided that I was a drag on their newfound popularity. So they unfriended me. And 25 to 30 years later, it STILL hurts to contemplate it.

So I don't like "unfriend," and I don't like the thought of it being used lightly. Or maybe I just need to get used to this brave new world, where relationships mean little - where "hook up" has replaced "courtship" and where BFFs are really only BFFs until the following months.

I've said before I don't have a lot of friends, but the ones I do have, I am pretty fiercely loyal to. They have to do A LOT - I mean A LOT - to make me angry enough to consider dropping them. (I am actually probably too forgiving sometimes for my own good). So I find the whole idea of making and then dropping friends (I mean intentionally, not the sort of "we live on opposite coasts and never see each other and are at different points in our life's journey so we don't have so much in common any more" type of growing-apart) sort of appalling. And it makes me feel insecure: how can I trust this person if they might decide to stop being my friend next week for some capricious reason?

So, though "unfriending" may be the wave of the future, and I realize it's what I interpret as a serious word being used for a casual situation, it still bugs me.

(*I really, seriously wonder some days if, as a child, I might have been a bit farther towards the Asperger's end of the neurological spectrum, remembering how baffling and opaque so much of socialization and the "rules" (particularly those levied by other girls) seemed to me. It just seemed so much of what they did and how they chose friends seemed very capricious and illogical.)

(**How I got through high school without some guy pulling the bad old, "If you really loved me, you would..." scam on me makes me wonder now. Perhaps there were a few things I was capable of holding the line on.)

The contractors just got done (when they said they'd be out...I said they were good and I particularly asked for these folks).

The funny thing? After checking to see if "inside" and "outside" dimensions were the same using one of the dining room windows, they DID NOT HAVE TO GO IN THE HOUSE AT ALL. Instead, they went around outside and measured.

So, yeah. My rushing to clean up this weekend was actually not necessary. But now I need to keep stuff cleaned up until they can complete the work. (Hopefully that will be in about a month, unless the windows have to be special-ordered and specially constructed for my house).

The guy explained all that would need to be done; he seems very knowledgeable and also didn't act like I was the "little lady" who wouldn't know what he was talking about. Which is another reason why I like hiring these folks. (They asked if I had requested them and thanked me when I said yes.)

WANT..

500 colored pencils. With color-names like "Meryl" and "Garden Club" and "Orange Glaze."

It takes 20 months to collect the entire set - they do it by "subscription" (Yes, I checked.) It's also apparently $33 a month. As much as I'd love to have them, I balk at that kind of a cost.

It's a good thing I did push to get the entire house cleaned this weekend. Yesterday, the contractors called - they are going to be in town today and could come out and measure for windows. So after I get out of class, I am going to go home and wait for them; they ought to be able to get out before my 1:30 meeting this afternoon.

****

I worked a bit more on the Clapotis last night. Did one more drop row. And I'm now beginning to worry if I will have enough yarn to make it as wide as I want it. I was able to complete just over four repeats on one ball, I have

I think my next project needs to be a pair of fingerless mitts made of fingering weight. It's cold in my office but the worsted-weight ones I had on make it too hard to type.

I've decided on a different pattern for the "Northern Lights" sock yarn (this is the one I had a photo of earlier - black with light greens). I'm going to use the Lepidoptera pattern, which is a freebee on the Simply Sock Yarns website. I like it better for this yarn, and I think the pattern will be faster to do than my original plan.

****

Two spoilers (though I'm not sure how spoily they are; I've not seen the show for the past 2 weeks or so) from last night's House, MD:





I have to admit I'm tiring of the soap-opera-ness of the subplots. I enjoy the "medical mystery" angle, and trying to figure out what the patient has, and I enjoy House's interactions with the "team," but, seriously: NO ONE, no one, of the eight or so "major" characters, has a happy marriage/relationship? Or seems to have the potential for one?

"Fore-teen" (gag) has broken up. Wilson has had several marriages and several relationships. Taub apparently cheated on his wife. House was married but got divorced (well, I'd probably divorce someone with that kind of an attitude too), Cuddy is chasing after some guy who, I'm sure he's over 30 seeing as he's a doctor, seems too young for her (And almost looks a bit like "House, Jr." Interesting, that.). And now Chase and Cameron have broken up and Cameron is leaving.

I know an awful lot of doctors who are happily coupled. Granted, it may not be the same kind of pressure cooker atmosphere as "Diagnostics" seems to generate, but I know a surgeon who's happily married (and married for a long time), so it doesn't seem impossible. And I know two doctors who are married and who work in the same practice together and are still married.

It's like, can we have one token "old married couple" for a little balance? I once said that the reason I never watched soap operas was that the people around me in real life lived sufficient frustrating drama for me. I'm beginning to feel the same way about House, MD - kind of "meh," like I'm tired of all the excessive drama re: interpersonal relationships. I mean, in some ways I'm a screwed-up hermit but (a) I recognize that not everyone has to be that way and (b) I'm not even THAT screwed-up. In House universe, I'd be the person House was accusing of having brain damage because I am generally happy and more-than-generally nice to other people.

I don't know. Sometimes I think if I were an alien from another planet, and all I learned of Earth came from its current television shows, I'd never come here, for fear of being set upon by people who are alternately needy, whiny, backstabby, or rude.

It's funny, some people excoriate television for showing people's lives as being more glamorous than reality - that they are thinner and prettier and they dress better and have nicer apartments - and yet, at the same time, it seems to me a lot of characters on television shows have greatly impoverished emotional lives relative to those of the real people - the less-pretty, less-wealthy, don't-drive-a-new-car sort of people - that I know.

I'd rather have the rich emotional life than the perfect cheekbones. Even if they offered to throw in a new car.

This FAIL contains an R-rated word, so I'm linking rather than posting it, but I admit that:

1. It made me laugh.

2. It is a good reminder to be careful how you write exam questions, lest you get responses like that. (You still might, I guess).

I don't get a whole lot of "Hail Mary Pass" test answers, where the person puts something totally crazy and inappropriate in the hopes of getting sympathy points; usually they just leave the question blank. Which actually makes grading a lot easier but it still frustrates me: I will give partial credit even if they get just ONE of the necessary terms in there.

I have decided that this week is the beginning of Holiday Brain for me. Because I worked so hard last week, I find myself with fewer duties than expected. I have nothing (save grade some 50-point tests) to do after my 11 o'clock class this morning. So I am going to go home (I have no office hours this afternoon), have a nice lunch with a nice cup of tea, sit in my nice clean house and grade my tests, and then after that, put on some music and knit. And maybe think a bit about decorating.

Holiday Brain = that time of year when you think about all the good things related to Thanksgiving and Christmas, and do some of the fun things you like to do. (Ooh, I really need to order my Christmas cards.)

As it turned out, there was no Youth Group for my age group tonight - the older ones (18, 19 year olds) were at a friend's wedding out of town and got delayed coming back, and the two younger ones (brothers) both had migraines (they are 15 and 17, I think - which is about the age where my brother and I started having migraines, so I think that's not an uncommon age for them. I'm actually surprised I didn't get one as the weather here is supposed to undergo a large change overnight).

So anyway, I took advantage of the extra hour or so after dinner and the praise band played I went home and finished cleaning house. I scrubbed the bathroom and also the kitchen floor and vacuumed/swept floors. (Really, cleaning-cleaning goes a LOT faster - and is a lot easier, because you can go on autopilot - than decluttering-cleaning). I hope I didn't "rev" myself up to the point where it's hard to sleep (it's happened in the past), but I think taking a shower with lavender soap and playing the piano for a while before bed should help.

Even though this weekend was mostly devoted to life-maintenance tasks of the sort I normally gripe about, I actually feel pretty happy. It's a load off my mind to have the window-replacement process beginning, and also a huge relief to have the place cleaned up - I think my bleating about the house looking like a pigsty is partly mainly my own perfectionism; I would like my house to look like the ones in magazines, though of course I know the magazine sets involve the family that lives there moving out for a week while the "stagers" come in and remove everything that doesn't fit their "vision." And you can't actually live in a house like that.

(I also wonder if there's a difference in attitude between different people - the idea of "house as showplace" vs. "house as cave" - as in, the showplace is there largely to bring other people in, maybe to impress them, whereas the "cave" - which is what I lean to - is the place you go to escape the outside world. The place where you have your books and stuff and you can close the door on everything else "out there." And that you only rarely invite other people in to your cave, because a cave is a very private and personal thing...)

I still would like a self-cleaning kitchen though. Or at least one with a sealed floor that slopes to a drain, and a spigot close to floor level, so I could just close off the drain, turn the water on, add some soap, let it soak, open the drain, and then run fresh water through, instead of the laborious scrubbing. (And yes, despite all the Swiffer "Wet Jet" commercials, I think you DO have to really scrub at least once in a while to get the floor clean).

Despite doing all the life-maintenance stuff this weekend, I did finish the current "simple socks":

Well, it looks like Flickr needs a "massage." Darn it. No photo tonight, will see if I can upload one tomorrow.

Oh, wait, I still can, via Blogger:



I really like them. I'm always glad when I make the effort to make socks "match" - this involves starting at a recognizable place and then, if necessary, winding off yarn before starting the second sock so you get to that same "place."

As I said, they make me think a bit of roller derby - both the broad stripes and the acid green/grey color combination. (As I also said: Maybe I will feel tougher on the days when I wear them).

I like the "just simple" socks; there is something satisfying about them and they are easy to wear. I still like making the more complex lace or cabled socks, but there's also pleasure in just making something simple.

I spent about 40 minutes before church, and then three hours this afternoon cleaning and decluttering my bedroom and the guest room.

I am almost at the point of saying "Forget it, I don't care whether the contractors think I'm an OCD hoarder who can't ever pitch a magazine." (And some of them, I really can't. The old Interweave Knits - they have so many patterns I still want to knit! The old "Groups" still have useful ideas (and wow, do I need useful ideas right now) for things to do with Youth Group)

However, I could probably eat off my bedroom floor right now. And not get sick, I mean.

The worst part of cleaning, I find, is putting everything back in its place. Or finding a place for the stuff that never had a place in the first place. The sweeping and dusting and scrubbing are easy by comparison.

I have decided to switch out the quilt on my bed for the Paddington Bear Christmas quilt (yes, it is still technically too early. No, I do not care).

And moving stash around - I had to move a couple of the clear boxes of it I had been keeping in my bedroom - always makes me long to start new projects. All the nice yarn I have! When will I have time to knit it all up?

I got a few things done today.

First, I finished sorting through the last soil samples. What this means is, I still have to count and score the "critters," but at least they are all preserved and if necessary, the preserved samples can wait a couple weeks. Which is good; I think I'm going to wait until after Thanksgiving to even think about these.

The second thing I did was went out to Lowe's and set the process in motion for getting new windows. The installers (the people I've worked with before on other things, so I know/trust them) are going to call some time next week. Which means I need to get the terrible clutter in my bedroom and the guest room out of the way, and at a minimum sweep again and scrub the kitchen floor. (I have this horrible vision of someone coming into my house and reacting like it's one of those houses on "Hoarders" - and, mind, my house is no where that bad, but I find that people who live in the bare/spare houses, who don't do crafts, who read one book at a time and that is checked out from the local library...well, they don't always understand. So I have issues about how people see my house. Having a small house with not much storage space does not help).

It may be too late to get them installed in the few "flex days" I left between exam week and going home for Christmas break, if they have to be special-ordered (or especially if they are not a standard size). But I also have a few days when I get back in January before classes start, so that would work too.

(Really, my bedroom is the only room where the windows are not readily accessible - I have low bookcases right in front of one set and also have a couple of stash-boxes stacked in front of those. If I just move the stash-boxes to my big closet it should be OK.)

I also bought a big tarp. Because they are saying on the weather that today is supposed to be the last warm dry day for a while, and I wanted to get the leaves out of my front yard.

In the past, I raked them all into piles, and then spent what felt like hours of punishing work trying to pick the leaves up (salad-tongs style, using a second rake) and dump them into the wheelbarrow, and then take them out back and dump them on the leaf pile (over the course of the year, they rot down to soil, so it seems really wasteful to me to send them to a landfill).

This year, I was smart - the tarp made things SO much easier. What I did was rake the leaves onto the tarp, and then when there were a bunch on there, I rolled it up into sort of a leaf-burrito and just carried the rolled up tarp to the leaf pile and dumped the leaves. The other nice thing about this was that when I raked the last pile of leaves and dumped them, I was DONE - no raking and raking and then realizing I had what seemed like endless piles of leaves to try to pick up. So I'm definitely using the tarp method in the future. (It also seemed to get done faster. I never timed things in the past so it's possible it wasn't faster, but it just seemed so because it was easier).

If anyone wants to replicate it, I used a 6' by 8' tarp, 5 mil thickness. Thicker than a painter's dropcloth but about the thinnest tarp that Lowe's sells, and it held up fine. It might have been a bit easier with another person or two to hold down the edge of the tarp while the leaves were being raked on to it (and to keep it from wanting to fly away on the breeze when it was empty), but even doing the job alone, it was not too bad.

I've also decided on the house cleaning that I am not going to kill myself by trying to do it all this afternoon or tomorrow; I have an easier schedule next week so I'm going to try to do a half-hour or an hour every afternoon until it gets done. Which should happen about the same time as the contractors call me to come out and measure for windows, if things work like I hope they will. And then, next weekend, I am decorating for Christmas. Yes, it is still early, but I will be gone over Thanksgiving.

So maybe this was a bad week.

It could have been a lot worse.

Some random stuff for today.

First of all, I'm kind of surprised. I had ordered an item from an online purveyor (I commented about this on Twitter last night). I ordered on Sept. 15. I knew the order would take a LITTLE while (like, a week after I ordered it) because one item was still being printed and signed.

So I waited. The time frame came and went. I e-mailed early in October: hey, where's my stuff. Got back a "sorry, artist is still working on it, it's taking him longer than anticipated."

So I waited more. E-mailed for a status update (when the artist claimed on his website "all my orders are done and shipped now!"). Got some kind of vague "It's in the warehouse" comment.

Finally, yesterday, after another difficult day, I was fed up. I had waited nearly 2 months, the only contact I had with the company was at my own initiation (I thought there was a law that said if a mail-order purchase was to be delayed more than 30 days, the company had to contact the customer). I told them: either let me know when my stuff is coming, or please refund my money. I also may have used the word "unprofessional" but I was fed up after a day of "Do we get extra credit for being here (because a lot of the students skipped)" or "Waaah! I did my graph wrong and YOU ARE OUT OF GRAPH PAPER" and similar things.

This morning, I have a message: they are refunding my money (shucks, I thought, no t-shirt and book) BUT....they are also sending the items (and I admit: I'll believe it 100% when they are in my hands). I really didn't expect that - I just wanted one or the other and frankly what I really wanted were my items. But I'm glad they decided to refund because I really did feel like I was being jerked around in the earlier e-mails.

I'll supply name of the company privately, if anyone is really dying to know. It's not any company I link to here.

****

Speaking of places I link to - and I have to make it very clear right here, that KimonoKitsy Studios, the home of Nemu-Nemu, has ALWAYS had TOP NOTCH customer service when I've ordered from them. I've ordered all the books (on separate occasions), some pins, and two t-shirts. And they are good at communicating information. And they ship FAST, especially considering that they are in Hawaii.

So: the Nemu-Nemu people: good model of customer service.

The newest shirt from them came yesterday. I decided to wear it today (I washed it last night in my usual Laundry Night) to, as we say on CPAaG, desuckify the week.

I almost didn't wear it; when I tried it on when it first came I was afraid the size was wrong for me - I bought the "girl cut" t-shirt this time (rather than the unisex, which is what I usually buy) and I was afraid at first that it was too much OH HAI BUSTLINE but I don't think so now. (And I do think I've maybe lost a bit of flab off my "upper waist," or the cut of the shirt makes it look so).

(I think it's true that the camera adds a pound or two. To my eyes, in the mirror, this looks a bit less lumpy on. But whatever).



It's the BFF t-shirt! Anpan and Nemu, plus a parade of foods (coffee and donut, peanut butter and jelly) that go well with each other. (On the back left shoulder, there is a little pepper and salt, the "tail" of the parade)

I will have to wear a cardigan over it as it's not QUITE warm enough for just a t-shirt in most of the classrooms. But it makes me feel happier wearing it. "Ish good."

***

I also mentioned a while back that I had a gingerroot sprout, and so I tried planting it? It's growing:



Not a great picture, and it only has one mature leaf at this point, but I'm tickled that it even grew. I think I'm going to see if I can entice my secretary to "babysit" it for me while I'm gone over Christmas - I would hate to see this plant go belly up, and it seems to require more frequent watering than some of my other houseplants.

***

And finally, some knitting. Just a progress shot, but whatever.



This is one of the two scarves I'm working on. (The other one - being knit in Crest of the Wave out of Dream in Color Starry - has earned the nickname of "The Unending Scarf of Unendingness.") This one is pink and fluffy and is being knit of an opal-colored yarn that Diann sent me a long time ago.

It's nice to have something like a scarf to work on, where you don't have to really measure as you go, or worry about shaping or, (in this case at least) do cable crossings or anything complicated. But scarves are LONG to knit (which is why I don't think they're really the ideal "learn to knit" project). This one is about half of what I would consider the "minimum workable length" for a scarf. But I have lots of the yarn so I'll probably keep motoring away until either I get sick of it or it's "long enough."

Really, this is not the reason why Carl Larsson is one of my favorite painters:


see more Celeb Look-A-Likes

I expect that Harold Ross and I would, somewhat, be kindred spirits.

The semicolon is my favorite punctuation mark; the comma is a close second.

Working on a stats exam, I was reminded of yet another bizarre dream episode.

I was a designer. I was producing a line of tracksuits called "Pi Couture." Featuring, as you might guess, the digits of pi printed on the backside. The number of digits varied with the size of the tracksuit bottoms...so the tiny little ones would be "3.14" and the ones for someone like me would be "3.141592" and then there would be some sizes that said "3.141592653589793"

And of course, that's a real design FAIL right there (at least in the real world) because (a) very few women are going to want to walk around with an irrational number on their bums and (b) no woman larger than a "3.14" is going to want to advertise that fact. (And, the world of vanity sizing being what it is, there's probably have to be a "3" for the women who are really really super tiny.*)

(*there's an old April Fool's Day hoax (Snopes site: 'ware the pop-ups) about some southern state "redefining" pi as 3 because supposedly "that was good enough for the writers of the Bible.")

Computers are odd. Or maybe just the programs are.

Yesterday, my home computer downloaded one of those "update packs" that Microsoft pushes at us periodically. And then, when I got home in the evening and turned it back on, it had totally reconfigured itself - my wallpaper was gone, most of the programs I have on the desktop had been moved. And worst of all, Firefox was totally changed - the "skin" I use was gone, all of my bookmarks were gone, and worst, all of the auto-remember passwords (like for Flickr) were gone.

I actually went through the (extra-laborious, because my spam-catcher caught the @yahoo.com e-mails at first) process of resetting my password (And realized that my "favorite restaurant" - which was the trigger question - is no longer in business and I have to think of another).

And now this morning, everything is back the way it was before the "update pack." I'm not looking a gift horse too much in the mouth, but if I had known the stuff was going to come BACK, I wouldn't have worried or mess with the password reset. And redoing the skin. And redoing WOT and the other add-ons I have.

****

I'm closing in on the toe of the "simple socks" I'm knitting.

I haven't been home much this week and that is sad. Part of it is that at work, it's full-tilt boogie time, and that, combined with the fact that I have more than a few students who need almost more cheerleading or hand-holding than I'm capable of giving, means that I take more work home with me these days, and I'm more exhausted when I GET home.

I feel like I've probably lost my knitting readership anyway, because of lack of pretty pictures of finished objects. (I'm trying to stave off one of my periodic spells of "I suck at everything"/"I'm trying to do too many different things and I don't do any of them 'well enough' to attract the sort of attention I want")

(Part of my frustration with the "cheerleading" or "hand-holding"? When I am in a position where I need it, I don't feel like I really have anyone I can turn to for it. Part of that not-wanting-to-look-needy thing, but also part of the that-sort-of-thing-just-isn't-done-in-my-profession thing.)

Maybe I'll have a new pair of socks by the end of the weekend. I don't know. I do also need to clean the house up, and contemplate if and when I'm going to decorate for Christmas. And see about the windows. I still want to do that. But I also have another exam to write, and five more soil samples to sort through.

And, I have to admit, finding an hour a day or so to practice piano does cut into my knitting time. But it's important to me, so I don't want to reduce the amount of practice.

I think some of the "issues" I have about "I'm probably losing my entire readership because I'm being boring or not providing the content they want" are just another manifestation of my people-pleasing issues; that I need to be able to say to myself, "I want people to read my blog because they like how I write, not because I give them knitted eye candy or I provide free patterns or I have exciting contests or whatever. And if they don't read, that's fine, then this is just my personal diary."

I think of the old fairy tales where the prince or princess disguises themselves so that they will find someone who likes/loves them for who they are and not for their position in the world. But - and I realize this is perhaps not the nicest part of my personality - but if I were a princess and there were people who liked me (or at least treated me well) because I was a princess, I wouldn't sneeze at that. If people liked me because I was otherwise "popular," I think I'd be OK with that. (Like the old t-shirt: "God, let me prove to you that winning the lottery won't change me.")

All a legacy, I think, of having defined myself as an unpopular child. (Whether popularity in school actually exists or not is a question for debate; most everyone I've ever talked to about it as an adult claims to have been an unpopular child).

And yeah, somewhere deep within me is the remnant of a child who would give away her new Barbie (not that I was that big a fan of Barbies) to a friend who told me, "If you don't give me your Malibu Barbie, I won't be your friend any more." While I wouldn't - figuratively speaking - give away my Barbie these days, I'd still probably think about it before rejecting the request. (But who knows...I still might give the Barbie away. I do have to be careful not to let people use me.)

Interesting meteorological fact:

On Nov. 11, 1911, Oklahoma City reached a high of 83 degrees early in the day (a record high) and then dropped late in the day to 17 degrees (a record low), because of a massive Arctic air mass moving in. A temperature differential of 66 degrees, in one day.

I do not think I would like to see that happen.

Today is Veterans' Day. Huge thanks to all who served, wartime or peacetime, and my thoughts and prayers with the families of those who gave their lives serving. This year, it seems particularly somber, considering what happened last Thursday at Fort Hood.

I remember several years ago getting into a discussion with one of my classes - they were arguing whether this day was Memorial Day or Veterans' Day. I said it was Veterans' Day, and then said, "The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month." Surprisingly (to me) no one in the class either knew (or remembered) hearing that before - that Veteran's Day (formerly known as Armistice Day) marked the official end of hostilities of World War I (formerly known as The War To End All Wars).

I suppose part of the fact that I know that is that I am old enough - and my forebears had their children late enough in life - that I had a grandfather who served in WWI (even if he never saw action - he was an experimental pilot in the earliest incarnation of the Army Air Corps, and actually did much of his training in Texas) and a grandmother who talked about a brother who had served (he had been in France and Belgium, in the infantry). And also having had really good history classes in school. (Mr. Haas, where ever you are now, I thank you for 8th grade American History). And being a history geek.

But I think it's important to know stuff like this, partly out of the sense of honoring those who went before, but also - for me, it's kind of like the liturgical year stuff at church - it gives me a sense that even though I may at times believe we are all hurtling towards our doom, there are still things that are constant and that can be held on to. It gives me a sense of stability, in an odd way.

****

I finished "The Victorian Internet" last night. I stand by my earlier comment that it is a better and more interesting book than "Jacquard's Web," for one thing, I think it is "tighter" - there are fewer pointless excursions onto other topics. I also like how Standage (the author, apparently he has also written for Wired magazine) draws parallels between the telegraph's impact on society and technology with the Internet's. The final chapter of the book - where he wraps it all up and brings things to the "present day," is particularly good.

All along he had been talking about how the telegraph connected places, made news travel faster - how it changed the expectation of what was "news" and what was "timely."

And I think now - again with the being older than the students I interact with - how I grew up in an era before 24 hour news channels on the television. How a "breaking news," where they broke into regular programming was a BIG deal (I remember learning of Reagan getting shot that way). It was reserved for things like heads of state dying or major tragedies. Now, some of the news channels use "Breaking News" alerts for really rather trivial things at times, and I admit I still have that old ghost of the "Oh no, what's happened now?" reaction come up every time I see one - and feel distinctly annoyed when it's, like, "Jon and Kate Gosselin have decided to split up" or some other thing that is not geo-politically meaningful). But now, when something happens, where do most of us go? The internet. One thing I remember as being striking about September 11, 2001, was how the sites bogged down, how I kept hitting "refresh" to see if there was any new information, and how so many of the sites were just unavailable. (Actually, a lot of the information came via a bulletin board I was a part of at that time.)

Standage also discusses how the telegraph led to people falling in love long distance (in some cases, the operators - at many locations, women were hired as telegraph operators as well as men). And there were apparently instances of "alienation of affection" that involved the telegraph. And there were swindles, just like there are on the Internet today.

He also discusses - and some of this went over my head a bit, being not all that clear on the technical details of connectivity - but apparently there are some remnants of old telegraph protocol, or some of the old limitations, that still exist (or existed, as of the time the book was written) in modem protocols.

Oh, and another thing: the "leet" vs. "n00b" division existed in the days of telegraphy:

"Highly skilled telegraphers in city offices would lose their temper when forced to deal with hopelessly inept operators in remote villages; the same phenomenon was widespread on the Internet when the masses first surged on-line in the early 1990s, unaware of customs and traditions that had held sway on the Internet for years, and capable of what, to experienced users, seemed unbelievable stupidity, gullibility, and impoliteness."

(Heh. I can imagine an old time telegraph operator cursing and saying, "Why must he key in all capital letters? Does he not know that is the equivalent of shouting?")

(Yes, yes, I know: there was no capital and lowercase in Morse Code. But it's the cleverest joke I can come up with)

I'm a little sad that the book is apparently OOP; it's really interesting. (Perhaps Standage is preparing an updated version). I learned a lot about telegraphy and it also made me think about our expectations as a culture on how fast information should move and how "free" it should be.

The campus nurse gave me a couple of people I might try for sports medicine. She also suggested getting massages, which I am not so sure about because of:

a. the cost (surely my insurance doesn't cover them, and they're like $40 a pop or something. The cheap, I has it.)

b. I am still uncomfortable about being touched, especially by a person I do not know well. I am not sure if I would find it that relaxing. Or heck, I don't know, maybe it would help, though I doubt I could do what I envision as a "massage" - the strip down to nothing (or just underwear) and lie facedown on a table. That's too much giving-up-of-control for me. But maybe a chair massage, or one where I don't have to disrobe extensively, might work.

She also told me what I already know: use moist heat and ibuprofen if you can (I may have to buy a buckwheat bag just to keep in my office; we do have a microwave over there). And another thing: I may not be drinking enough water. Apparently in some people mild dehydration can bring the tension headaches. And I know I don't drink enough water during the day - the bubbler fountain is not all that appealing and I forget to fill up and bring my Sigg bottle most days.

I think I will call (when I get a few open moments) one of the two places she suggested, at least to talk to someone about it. The good news is so far this week I have had no neck issues.

some comment catch-up:

- I see the nurse for my shot today, I think I'm still going to ask her even though I had the odd experience driving in of getting behind a horrible old beater Cadillac* that was belching malodorous smoke, and I almost immediately felt my neck start to tighten and got a little headache (it's gone now). I think I have a sensitivity to bad odors.

(*I think it's even sadder when a Caddy turns into a beater than when other cars do. That may just be because I remember a couple people who had older model Caddies that really kept them up beautifully.)

- I have a few Asterix books (In English; I am not quite awesome enough to read those in the original French) but not the 12 labors one. I should maybe look into getting more Asterix books; I enjoy the ones I have.

And actually, yesterday's experience reminded me of why I work on a smaller college campus: as size increases, so does the intractability of the bureaucracy. Here, you can still (particularly if you KNOW the administrator in question from somewhere like church or an off-campus civic group) go into their office when some "unreasonable" demand is made, sit down, smile sweetly at them, and say, "you REALLY expect us to do that?" or, alternatively, comment on how the added burden is going to hurt either your teaching or your "scholarly productivity." And a lot of the time they listen. Too many larger bureaucracies have sort of like the school zero-tolerance policies, where stuff happens even when it's stupid because someone somewhere made a rule, and the rule has to be followed to the letter.

And also, in bigger organizations, there's a better chance of getting someone who (a) doesn't know you and (b) doesn't care about your request because of (a) (or because they're just putting in their time, and don't want to go over and above).

I have to say on a few occasions as a grad student at larger schools, I helped guide nearly-tearful undergrads through the maddening maze of financial aid, or getting transcripts sent out, or whatever. Here, enough of the people in offices know me (and being a prof helps), that I can usually call up the office in question and say, "Hey, I have a student in my office who is having problems and needs your help. I am sending them over. Please help them fix their problem." But the subtext under my polite "please" is a "you better..." My dad always said he hated to see students become "ping pong balls" (being lobbed back and forth between offices) and would do what he could to cut the red tape and get them the help they need. And I hate it too. It's not nearly as bad here as on larger campuses but it can still happen if someone is non-assertive and they get a secretary or whatever who is having a bad day.

Here are a couple of photos of the completed Fortune Cookie Bag. I haven't felted it yet. I did make one change to the pattern - they wanted you to do something like I-cord, only crocheted, by going around and around and around in a spiral. Well, I tried it, got off, and the spiral kept getting smaller and tighter. Also, I find I can knit faster than I can crochet (I know the reverse is true of most people, but I really can knit faster), so I did a knitted i-cord instead, figuring it wouldn't matter after the thing was felted.

Here it is opened up. It's not a very large bag.



And here it is closed, with the flap folded totally over the bag.



I admit, I'm not totally mad about the colors in it now that it's finished. (I can't help but think that, for me, it would be cuter in fawn or brown, with either a red or cream-colored stripe). But I chose the denim because most people wear denim and I was making it to be an "anonymous" gift in a gift exchange. I'm working (doing only a row or two a day to avoid inflaming my wrist again) on another one, paler denim with a dark stripe, for my sister-in-law.

I also bought - and will have to buy another one for my sister-in-law, I suppose - a little "coin" charm sort of thing. So there's something to go in the purse. You know, so you're not giving an empty purse as a gift. I have no idea if that superstition is widespread but I know my grandmother would not give a purse as a gift without at least a shiny penny in it - I suppose the idea is wishing for the other person that their purse never was empty.

But, as I said, I have no idea how widespread that superstition is, so I thought it might take too much explaining to give the purses with a shiny penny in them (also: it seems to be hard to find "shiny" pennies these days). So the little "charm coins" suffice - they are small pieces of pewter (?) stamped with an image and a word on the back. The one I chose for this gift has a bee on it and says "happy," I may chose one of the more overtly religious ones (they had several with angels) for my sister in law.

***

My minimal goal for the day is to write the exams for next week. (Probably no sorting-of-soil: I have five samples to do but hopefully can get those done by the end of the week). I also have to go out and get crickets (at the crazy pet store where everything goes wrong every time) and lettuce and little plastic cups to contain the crickets (we are doing an antiherbivore compound lab where squares of lettuce are painted with things like tea or cinnamon oil and after two days, we score the squares of lettuce to see how much is eaten in each treatment). So I have to build in some time today for "things to go wrong," seeing as getting the supplies involve going both to the aforementioned pet store AND the wal-mart.

I also have some slop-over grading to do, because a couple of people were out sick and had to get extensions. (Once again: I teach for free. They are paying me to grade.)

While sorting soil (yes, still) this afternoon, I got to thinking about all the stuff I take on - things like "having" to get that tax form issue resolved (and seriously, I probably would not have slept well tonight if I had not). And something that came up the other day when my mom called me:

her: "You know the commode in the bathroom you use when you visit? It's doing the same thing that the one in our bathroom used to do, before you fixed it. [on my last visit there. It was that the flush mechanism needed replacing]. (sighs) I guess I will have to get a plumber in to look at it, or...."

Me (sighing a little) "Don't get a plumber. Just buy the parts and I'll fix it when I come up at Thanksgiving, if you can wait that long."

her: "Oh, yes, of course. No one ever uses that one except if you or your brother or sister in law is here. It can wait. Bob said I should call and ask you, but I didn't want to come right out because I know you'll be tired after travelling..."

That's very typical of my dad. And actually, I'd do the same thing myself. (He can't fix it himself, if he got down on the floor he'd probably never get back up because of his knees. And my mom probably COULD, after all, she has a Ph.D. and all, but it's been 50 years since she had to be handy, so she isn't used to it. And besides, she has bad wrists and it does take some hand strength to get the thing back in just right).

But I'm frugal in the same way my dad is frugal: I'd either fix the dang thing myself or find someone who could help me for no cost. (But then again: when it comes to buying Christmas presents, we are also alike: as frugal as we may be in other ways, the budget goes out the window when we see the "just perfect but really more than I was originally planning to spend, but it's so right for that person" gift. Which is probably not such a bad way to be frugal, after all).

But anyway: stuff like getting the tax form sorted, and fixing toilets and all, and all the stuff I take on and then gripe about and smack myself on the forehead about later on: I've concluded it's that I have this need to keep proving myself to myself. To prove myself competent again (if I'm being more pessimistic about it) or to prove my brilliance (if I am being somewhat unrealistic and letting my ego get in the way). As I've said before, I never quite learned the art of saying, "Dang, I'm good" and continuing to believe it, so I have to keep taking stuff on - even stuff that exhausts me - to prove to myself that I am.

I also tend to tell people "I don't know if I will have time to do it" or I give them an estimated time of completion LATER than what I think I can realistically do. Part of it is because I like to work in some "flex time" in case something goes wrong (I would personally rather have someone give me a "pessimistic" estimate of time rather than say, "Yeah, yeah, I can get it done tomorrow" and then have them not complete it until next week) but I also admit - and this is perhaps not a very nice personality trait - but I think it does make me look a little more "brilliant" when I say, "Yeah, I mmmmmight be able to get that done by Friday" and I get it done by Wednesday instead.

But whatever. If I could just become convinced of my own "brilliance" once and for all, perhaps I'd get better at saying "no" to stuff I would rather not, or should not have to, do.

Hah!

Stubbornness goes a LONG way. I tried again, requesting the activation information be sent to my personal rather than campus e-mail.

And I got the formerly-fouled-up site to work, AND I successfully submitted the "we are tiny and broke" form and they ACCEPTED it. And it wasn't any 11 pages of detailed info about our receipts and disbursements and all that.

Hah. I'm smarter than a dang website. (I almost wish now the person who was supposed to help would call me - rather than the branch president - back so I could breezily say, "oh, yes, well, since you weren't around to help, I figured it out MYSELF.")

(I am quite serious on the stubbornness. It is what got me - successfully - through grad school. That bulldog-like quality that makes you tell yourself, even when everything is all messed up, "No. I will not let something this stupid defeat me." and you keep trying different ways - or forcing the same way again and again - until you break through.)

Well, this will be a nice little test of whether it is stress bringing on the neck problems.

My local AAUW branch has to fill out some tax document to "prove" we are a non-profit with less than $25K gross receipts. We were directed to do that using an "e-postcard" system.

The branch president and treasurer first tried in September without success. Finally they called me in. (It is due on Nov. 15 or apparently, Bad Things Happen.)

Turns out that the website is FUBAR. (um, that's FOULED up beyond all recognition, gentle readers). And we may have been dropped off the list of exempted branches. Or maybe not. No one really knows. No one really cares, I guess, as long as WE take care of it and the form gets filed.

I tried e-mailing, I tried CALLING. Had to leave a voice mail. Then I realized I really planned to be working in my lab this afternoon. Had to call BACK and leave a second mail asking them to call the branch president instead.

It's a form 990. The online IRS version is 11 pages long and asks for all manner of information I do not have, and do not have time to find. Supposedly the e-postcard is quick and easy and basically says, "We do not have to file this big scary form because we are little and broke." But apparently I can't file that form because we've been dropped off the list...

it feels like The House That Jack Built, I tell you, trying to get stuff done these days. "This is the form we couldn't submit, because of the list we got dropped off of, because of the computer glitch..."

I could call again but the switchboard person I talked to got VERY snippy with me when I called back asking to be re-connected to leave a second voice mail. ("The person you are trying to talk to is on the FIFTH floor and I am on the FIRST. How was I to know she wasn't at her desk?") I don't like dealing with snippy people. So I won't. But I might go curl up in a corner and cry a little if we don't get this in before Friday and someone from the National calls me up to yell at me.

I guess even with the "ergonomic" hooks, I am going to have to carefully limit how long I crochet at one time...I have a sore spot on the outside of my right wrist this morning that I can only trace to having spent several hours (solidly) crocheting this weekend. Ugh. It hurts a bit to type but at least I can play piano without noticeable impairment.

(I did most of my practice for today after getting up extra-early - I've been waking around 4:30 of late - and doing my workout. I have an evening meeting today and I find that I have a hard time concentrating on practicing if I have one eye on the clock, in the sense of "If I finish this in the next 20 minutes, then I can maybe get the grading done for tomorrow before I have to leave).

****

Bought my train tickets for Christmas break today. I had been holding off as I am trying (still) to get out and arrange for new windows for the house, and at this point, the only time when I have a couple days I can be at home (for the installers) is at the end of exam week. I still haven't gotten out to look at windows - part of that is just (grr) my life is so busy now, but part of it is (a) it's a big huge decision and (b) it involves spending a LOT of money. Money I have saved up, but still.

I keep telling myself I will be grateful for them when gas prices spike up and it's more expensive to heat my house in the winter, and if I can get some better insulated ones that may help block out the barking of all the dang dogs in the neighborhood. But I tend to be avoidant of things that scare me, and this scares me a little bit.

Also there's the issue of having to have my ENTIRE house clean at one time for the installers. I can usually manage 2/3 of the rooms at once, and then wind up using either my bedroom or the guest room as "boxrooms" to stow the stuff I need to keep but that I don't have a good place for...and my bedroom and the guest room will be places that need new windows, in fact, I would like my bedroom to be done first for the noise-reduction.

And then there's just the disruption of having to move stuff to clear a path for the installers, like, my sofa is right under two of the windows. So I've kind of put off ordering the windows, but have come to the conclusion that I can't put off ordering tickets any longer, or they might not have space for me.

Amtrak has changed its user interface. It's, I guess, more "intuitive," but being used to the old interface, it took me a few moments to figure it out.

And I am surprised to find our classes do not re-start until 13 January. (And then we get MLK day off the next week). For a while, they'd gone to a Monday start, which most people hated. I don't know, I guess I should be used to things changing somewhat unpredictably.

***

I will note with some relief that this is the first day in a while I didn't open my campus e-mail to find at least one frantic student e-mail needing help. I'm hoping that means things have settled down.

I think my brain is "unclenching."

I went down to the local quilt shop today...I had been thinking about the "Good Night Monkey" line of fabrics they had. I first saw them a couple of months ago. And I told myself, "You do not need another quilt made of novelty sock-monkey fabric."

And one day I went in and it was the front-of-the-store display. And I told myself: "You do not need another quilt made out of sock-monkey novelty fabric."

And the last time I was in there, they had it up on one of the big shelves near where you get your fabric cut, and I said to myself: "YOU ARE 40. You do not need another quilt with ever-lovin' sock monkeys on it."

And you know? In the past week, I decided that I did. Oh, I kept trying to talk myself out of it, but you know? I decided that since I kept thinking about it, that meant I really should have it.

And besides, I really am fond of the first sock-monkey quilt. I have it spread across the foot of my bed right now for nights when I need a bit more warmth on my feet. And a few times when I felt unwell (a couple weekends ago, I had a tiny touch of the stomach thing going around - nothing BAD but a slight upset stomach and chills and a few muscle aches) or sad, I wrapped up in it and it made me feel better.

So this afternoon I went down there. And at first I could not find it and felt the same little sadness and bereft-ness I felt as a child, on a few occasions when I saved up my little allowance for weeks (or even months) for one particular thing I wanted, and then finding that it was sold out (or that it was a one-of-a-kind and they weren't getting more) when I got down to the store with money in hand.

But I was lucky this time; they had just moved it into a large crib they use in the "baby" section of the store.

I really like this fabric. It is very different from the other sock-monkey fabric, almost, in an odd way, more sophisticated:


Some of the fabrics are from a related but different line, the one with the bananas (I bought the last bit on the bolt; it seemed lonely - it has been sitting there on the shelf for MONTHS) and the one with all the monkey faces, but they coordinate.

I am not sure what pattern I will use yet; I have a large amount of the monkeys-in-pajamas and the bunk-beds one, so I might do a quilt alternating long strips of those with pieced blocks.

Also, I LOVE little details like this:




See that green book spine? (The fabric is supposed to be books lined up; some of them even have titles printed on them). On the green book, they have parodied the little Modern Library running-figure - turned it into a little monkey.

That makes me so happy. As I said, I love little details like that.

I'm still working on the Pie Crust Pileup quilt - I actually have a backing for it now, too, it turns out I had forgotten the quilt shop was having a 50% off Christmas fabrics sale (and they were HOPPING today, which makes me happy to see). They had one of the very fabrics (the one that looks sort of like Fair Isle knitting) that was in my quilt top in the 50% off group - so for the price of a plain old muslin backing, I have a lovely backing that coordinates with one of the fabrics in my quilt.

I also mostly-finished (except for the long chain handle) the first of the "Fortune Cookie" bags, and mirabile dictu, it works. I thought I had done something backwards, but no - the bag folds up just like it's supposed to. It will need to be felted and I'm seriously considering doing a second one right away (I think I am going to give one to my sister-in-law; it looks like the sort of thing she might like) and felt them at the same time.