last few things

(I am in my office between finals).

The sunscreen brand is a Walgreen's brand but I understand Neutrogena makes one as well. It does not seem to contain any of the chemicals that some folks are sensitive to - it looks like it's mainly a mineral block. It does leave a little bit of a whitish film on your arms, but not burning is worth it.

I probably won't be blogging over break - won't be near a computer often (and my dad's connection is extremely slow)

And: I am very glad to be going home. (Even though I don't technically consider where my parents live "home" so much any more, the longer I live here.)

(Hee. Some of you will get that and hate me for it.)

almost all done

Two exams to give (and grade, but I caved to time pressure and did them as all multiple choice, Scan-tron exams) and the grades to figure up, and I'm done.

I'm pretty much all packed.

I'm only taking small projects this go-round, I just figured I wouldn't feel like/wouldn't have time to get much done on something like Thermal or Honeycomb. So I've got a bunch of socks to knit, and a hat, and fingerless mitts. And I have a kit for a toy sheep I bought the last time I was at Hobby Lobby. (It's a sheep, but ironically enough the yarn to make it is not wool, it's a cotton/acrylic blend.) And I have my books. (And my poster. And my giant heavy field boots. And my spf 70 no-PABA zinc-oxide-based sunscreen)

This time tomorrow I should be eating breakfast, on the train, in St. Louis.


****

And: I love this. "Be silly. Be honest. Be kind." Good rules to live by.

(I also like this - someone posted it to a thread on CPAAG when someone was asking for "happy pictures" to cheer her up)

More good rules to live by.

the right time

I think I picked the right time to go on break.

The predicted high for Saturday here: 101* F (And that's without heat index factored it).

The predicted high for Saturday where I am going: 84* F.

One more sleep

...I have today, and I have the first part of tomorrow, and then I'm on my way.

I've already packed up the poster, so it's ready to go. I do have to figure out what clothing to bring - something dressier for the poster day, but I'll also need field clothes (including field boots, which are huge and heavy) for the field trip.

I've got the projects I'm taking sort of loosely figured out. I wound off the yarn for the reversible slouch hat in Knitting 24/7, and I dug out the yarn for the armwarmers.

I also think I'm going to try toe-up socks again. Veronik Avery has a pattern in "Knitting 24/7," where she solves what I regard as two of the major problems I have with toe-up socks:

1. It uses a heel flap, which I like, rather than the "hourglass" type heel, which fits me badly.

2. Instead of the tight, fiddly, figure-8 cast on, she has you do a provisional cast-on, and then Kitchener stitch the toe at the end, after removing the provisional cast-on.

I have some nice Claudia Handpaints yarn (bought in a fit of buying from Simply Sock Yarn when she had a number of the colorways on a good sale) in a color called "Strawberry Latte" - pink with cream and a little brown. I think that will be the toe-up socks.

I also started the Midsummernight's Dream crochet shawl from the new Interweave Crochet, but am finding it sufficiently fiddly that I think it's going to be a "work on it at home" project. (Also, I'm afraid of it getting unraveled in transit).

Socks at last

I finished the Weasley Homestead socks last night:



I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. Now if it would just get cool enough to make wearing wool socks a possibility again.

****

Thanks to Lynne's comment, I went to my bookshelf and found my copy of "To Say Nothing of the Dog," which I bought back after I finished reading "The Doomsday Book." I think that's going to be the novel I take with me on break. I remember how much I enjoyed Doomsday Book - I don't know if it was just the story or if it was also Willis' style of writing, but a glance at the first few pages of this book suggest to me that I will like it. (Also, it's described as a "comedy of manners," which I generally enjoy. Many of the Victorian-era British books I've read would be similarly described.)

I think - upon re-reading my list - I think the reason why I read relatively little sci-fi is that I've read so much that wound up being a Dystopian sort of thing (Though I admit, I question the inclusion of "1984" in a sci-fi list. Though I guess it's considered speculative fiction...). I've read enough stories about dystopian societies to more than last me for my life. And I think I have the kind of vivid-bordering-on-morbid imagination that makes me susceptible to being depressed by those kinds of scenarios. It's too easy for me to imagine a world where, for example, people who read books are dangerously suspect. Or a world where society has collapsed (they've begun running ads for the second season of "The Colony."). Or a world where some of the youth turn ultra-violent.

(in addition to the ones on that list, I remember reading "Brave New World" and "We" - by a Russian author, similar in many ways to "1984.")

I guess I prefer books that tend to take a more hopeful worldview - Wrinkle in Time, for example, is a case where Love ultimately defeats Hate and Conformity. And ultimately, Doomsday Book is a "hopeful" book. And what fiction of C.S. Lewis' that I've read - the Narnia books (read multiple times), "The Great Divorce" (which is more of a parable I suppose), "Till we have Faces" - all of those are ultimately hopeful. I suppose I'm somewhat unsophisticated in that I want books with happy or at least hopeful endings - where the protagonist doesn't wind up going down in a hail of gunfire, or where he or she doesn't sort of shrug and accept whatever horrible thing has happened as a result of the main conflict of the book. I would have hated Wrinkle in Time if Meg and Charles Wallace had ultimately succumbed to IT, and the book ended with them sitting there, staring glassily forward, and mumbling the mantras of IT.

100 sci-fi books

There's a list making the rounds of "100 Sci-Fi books everyone should read."

Rather than doing the whole list, and bolding the (embarrassingly few) that I've read, I'm just going to list and comment on those I HAVE read. (you can go to either of the links for the full list, and for their comments on them)

So, here are the ones I've read:

The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury (Though I can't remember if I actually finished it.)

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury (Scary book, and one of those books, like "Brave New World," where, in my bleaker moods, I wonder if society isn't VOLUNTARILY moving towards that kind of depauperate existence)

(I've also read his "Dandelion Wine." Not really sci-fi, more of a memoir, but I remember finding it quite beautiful, the summer I read it when I was 13 or so).

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (I think most geeky kids growing up in the 80s read this. Maybe even multiple times.)

1984 – George Orwell (Scary book, but I think its future is less likely than the one laid out in "Brave New World," where people voluntarily choose to infantilize themselves)

Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut (I know I read it but I do not remember it now. Not a single plot point. Can you count a book as "I read it" when you don't remember it? I just remember that I decided I didn't care for Vonnegut. I know people love his writing, but I just can't get into it.)

A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess (Read this in high school. Another book I found scary, mainly because of the seeming soullessness of the droogs.)

A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne (I remember LOVING this as a 12 year old or so; I tried to re-read it a couple years ago and got so hung up on the scientific inconsistencies that I couldn't enjoy it any more.)

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne (Haven't ACTUALLY read it but it's on my list)

Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton (I liked it better than the movie because I think the book did a better job of raising the question "Just because we CAN do this, SHOULD we?")

Doomsday Book – Connie Wills (Oh my goodness yes. I LOVED this book. This is one of the very small number of books I push on people. It's fascinating and challenging and sad and exciting...)

Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes (Another one of those that raises some important sociological questions, and the whole spectre of "If we can do this, should we?" and also "is it better to have a short period of an "ideal" life and then lose that ideal, than to never know what it was like?" Actually, this is another book that made me sad when I read it.)

Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein (I found it very unsettling. Did not like Valentine Smith at all, did not like Jubal Harshaw (and did not trust any of the characters.) It was a good story but I'd run fast the other way if I met someone like Smith. Or Harshaw, for that matter.)

A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle (I have read this many times, first at the age of about 8, when I was probably too young to understand it. I still love it and it seems to get deeper with each re-reading. I've read most of the others in the series as well.)

Out of the Silent Planet – C. S. Lewis (Another "haven't read yet" but I have the entire trilogy on the bookshelf. Aha! Maybe I should take the first volume to read on my trip - I was trying to figure out a not-too-heavy (physically heavy) fiction book to take, and my copy is paperback)

A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge (Started it three or four times, got lost or bored every time.)

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (I don't know. I kind of felt like I was being beaten with a feminist stick for much of this book. Yeah, yeah, misunderstanding religion can make people do bad things.)

Didn't quite finish

Despite working on them most of the weekend, I burned out a few rows before the finish of the Weasley Homestead socks. I'll probably finish them before break, just not today.

I also re-started reading "Guns of August," a highly-lauded Barbara Tuchman history of the beginning days of World War I. I started this last year and stalled out. I admit it, I have some difficulties with the history of World War I. It was not well-taught, I think, in grade school American history. I know much more about World War II, though that may be in part because one of my history teachers was a WWII buff, and also possibly it was more heavily taught. I suppose the "narrative" of WWII as a "just" war for the US to have participated in makes more sense, especially when you're teaching a grade-school crowd. And also, they may have emphasized WWII, knowing pretty well that some of the kids likely had grandparents who had served. (In my family - my parents were about 10 years older than most of my peers' parents, having chosen to start a family later, and their parents were older than many of their own peers' parents - I had a great-uncle who served in WWI (my grandfather on that side would already have been close to the upper limit for conscription) and on the other side, my grandfather had been an experimental Army Air Corps pilot, but he never saw overseas service.

(and as an aside: now how I wish I had paid better attention - or he had been more forthcoming with stories of his service. He died when I was eight and now I wish I knew more about his time as a pilot. I do think my one uncle has his diaries and is trying to put them in a more-readable narrative format, so maybe someday I will get a chance to read them)

Anyway, I knew relatively little of WWI other than some isolated facts. For example, I remember one teacher commenting on how the Germans had perfected some kind of synchronization device so they could forward-mount the guns on their planes and fire *through* the propellor blades mid-spin, rather than the rear or wing-mounts of the British planes. And I remember that was the war of the Red Baron, though frankly, the Red Baron makes me think more of Snoopy pretending to be a WWI flying ace than anything.

And I knew that it was trench warfare, and from the sense I got from the history classes it was mostly brutal and miserable, and it seemed a lot of the men didn't really understand what they were fighting for and why - it seemed that it was more a war for the glory of the officers than anything. (Though perhaps in any war, a lot of the enlisted men get to the point where they either don't know or have forgotten what they're fighting for, and it just becomes a matter of marking off days until the next leave or until they can muster out).

And I remember hearing about the poison gas, how inhumane it was, how much suffering it caused.

(And on a more humane side: I've read of the Christmas Truce, when German and British troops briefly ceased hostilities to celebrate the holiday - a game of soccer was played, and carols sung....and yet, the next day, they went back to shooting each other.)

And I read a lot of the poetry - WWI produced a lot of poetry, most of what is in the anthologies today seems to underlie the idea that the ordinary fighting man didn't really understand - the Irish Airman foreseeing his death, for example, or that Wilfred Owen poem that ends with a mention of "...that old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (And of course, many of the poets saw service themselves; some, like Owen, never actually returned.)

And I read "All Quiet on the Western Front" in high school, and saw the old movie (I think it was called "Grand Illusion"?) about the two deserters. And the interesting thing is, in none of those cases do you really come to understand - or at least, did I really come to understand - the reason why the war was fought.

And I think the way a lot of history is taught in the schools maybe affects this. It's hard - or maybe educators just think it's hard, and so don't try - to teach nuance to schoolkids. I always remember that "WWI started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand" but it seems much more - from what I've read of the Tuchman book - to be the Germans wanting too expand, and violating Belgium's neutrality on their way to try marching into Paris.

(I think of the old episode of the Simpsons, where Apu was trying to earn US citizenship. He had very nearly passed the test when the examiner asked him about the cause of the Civil War. He started into a discussion of states' rights, and the bored examiner looks at him and says, "Say 'slavery.'" That's also kind of how it's taught in the schools...)

So anyway, I'm trying to fill in that gap in my education. I admit it is slow and sometimes difficult going - almost none of the names are familiar (the way the names from WWII would be) and also, there are names that sound German but are actually of French generals or other officers, and likewise, French-sounding names of Germans.

But because I'm maybe too good at trying to see the connections between things, I feel the need to go on - to understand. Because it's the war my Great-Uncle Burt (even though I never met him) was an infantryman in (and he was one of the lucky ones; he got to come home) and was the war my grandfather was training for, even if it ended before he saw service.

And also, though I understand that I really CAN'T learn everything, still, I'd like to try. So I'm trying to set aside goodly chunks of time to read on the book (it seems to get more traction on my brain that way), and I'm going to take it with me on break and try to actually finish it this time.

Leisure time needed

I got a rough draft (but no Literature Cited and no tables) of the paper typed up yesterday (And it's not absolutely due until the end of August - so I would even have time to finish it up after I get back).

So I decided to take today and tomorrow off. (Well, I try, as much as I possibly can, to take Sundays off from work (and from "commerce," for that matter), as some kind of a pale shadow of the old Sabbath-keeping. Because, Ten Commandments aside, I think it's important psychologically for people to take off one day out of seven and to avoid some of the more frustrating aspects of modern life. (I will, however, clean house or work in the yard on Sundays if I feel so inclined, and I realize that's out of the old spirit of Sabbath-keeping, but as I don't regularly weed or dust during the week, and, as I've said before, at times when I needed to pray or work something out in my own head, it actually seemed to go better with some kind of low-grade physical work like weeding...)

I am greatly pleased to see that in a few minutes, a "marathon" of my new favorite cartoon is beginning. (Oh, I've probably seen every episode that exists at least once so far - one of the challenging things about cartoons is that they take more time, effort, and money to make than, say, a game show - but it's still enjoyable to me, even repeats).

I'm working away on the second Weasley Homestead sock; I have a vague goal of finishing these and the Mini Mochi socks before my short break so I can feel like I can begin some new things over it.

(I am very much looking forward to break. Both the meetings, and just being able to get away to somewhere that MIGHT be cooler - though one person on CPAAG who lives about 35 miles from my parents posted yesterday that their heat index was 106 - and then the whole getting-away, having a chance to eat meals that I didn't have to cook, and all that.)

less drama please

I think I need a t-shirt that says, "The drama. Make it stop now."

Yes, I'm still dealing with interpersonal crud. I managed to stop just short of telling one of the people involved that the whole situation was the reason why I was going to be very wary about accepting "independent work" students in the future. Because that would have helped nothing.

On the upside, the poster is done (though not printed; I'm waiting for Monday when someone who's used the large-format printer more recently than I have to be in to give me advice). Because I believe in Murphy's Law, though, I am saving my poster to a flash drive (the backup flash drive I have; the one that is attached to a keychain with a small stuffed Little Bear on it so I don't lose it) and take it home. Just in case one of the students happens to find an envelope of cash and decide to go all Milton Waddams on our building.

I'm going to run a few errands and go out to lunch, and then come back and try to type up the big mess that will eventually be a paper based on this research.

Two new socks.

Over the past week, I finished two half-pairs of socks. I'd been working on these off and on since May.

First of all - a "just simple" sock, made of Wisdom "Poems" yarn. It starts out with a 2 x 2 rib and then I changed to a 3 x 1 rib for the leg and foot top



As I said before: I love the color shifting, do not so much love the splittiness or scratchiness. I will probably wash the pair (when I get it finished) before I wear it. Maybe even use vinegar as a final rinse. (I have heard of people doing that, alternately to soften the yarn and to remove any excess traces of dye).

Second, the first of the "Redheads should not wear pink" socks - the "redhead" connection coming from the fact that the pattern is called The Weasley Homestead:



I forget what company made the yarn (I may have the tag tucked up inside the ball) but I really like its stitch definition; it's a very nice yarn. And I love this pattern, this is such a great sock pattern - it's easy enough that you're not referring to a chart every few rows, but it's not boring in the way that ribbing can get boring after a while.

I like these better than the other pair I made (out of a yarn called Chalkboard; the color combination looked more like tennis courts to me) because the stitch pattern shows up better here. I've cast on for the second sock and if I can push myself to get the poster finished and the draft of the paper typed up this morning, I'm going to go home and knit on those.

***

Still some fallout from the incident I alluded to yesterday; got a very complainey e-mail from one of the parties. I have not responded yet because I don't want to - in my frustration - say something that will make things worse.

I don't know. For all I maunder about being "immature," I think I'm actually pretty mature in ways that it counts*. If I'm working with someone and they tick me off, I let THEM know, not some innocent third party who should not have to be dealing with it.

Oh, that makes me think of how I feel:

So I don't know. It's going to take an awful lot of enticing to get me to do a research project with students again.

(*My alleged immaturity tends to center more around the types of tv shows I like - I am still fond of SpongeBob SquarePants, and I like "Adventure Time!" and my current favorite is called Penguins of Madagascar. These are all shows apparently aimed at the under-12 set. And I would rather buy a pair of pajamas with owls or garden gnomes on them than ones that were a plain color. And I still have a fondness for things like Re-Ment toys and amigurumi. But when it comes to fulfilling responsibilities and doing what I "ought" - some days I feel like I'm the only grown-up in the room.)

****

I'm already beginning to think about next week. This time next week I should be in St. Louis, on my way to visit my parents for a day or two before going over to Iowa for my meetings.

I am very, very glad of that. As long as I get my poster done. (I'd like to have the paper done, too, but they're not actually due until a couple weeks after the conference - so I'm thinking of just getting the paper ready, and then waiting until after I'm back, in case anyone has any suggestions based on the poster).

I'm already thinking about what projects to take. I really want to start some new things. I think, however, I am going to take the Honeycomb Vest (which I've not worked on in a long while) and work on that. And probably at least one of the pairs of socks-in-progress.

But I also think I'm going to take my new copy of "Knitting 24/7" (a Veronik Avery book. It has a lot of things in it I want to make). I have yarn put aside for the armwarmers in there, and I want to make the slouch hat. The slouch hat calls for fingering weight yarn, and as soon as I saw it, I knew what yarn I wanted to use. I had a Black Bunny Fibers yarn in the stash, in a colorway called "Mary Cassatt" (white with pastels). I really liked the color, but decided after buying it that I didn't really want to make socks out of it, for fear it would get stained (light colored socks, worn in Birkies or sometimes in clogs, can get stained, especially if you have to go out in the rain in them). So the hat seems a pretty perfect option for the yarn. I even have a size 2 short circular needle - I bought one for a lace cowl that I have not yet made. (I had been keeping the needle with the cowl yarn, and I managed to track it down).

The other reason I want to take that book is it has other projects I'd like to make in it, and I'm hoping for a trip to the knit shop up in Illinois when I'm up there. And having the book will provide some inspiration of what I might want to get yarn for.

Also, sometimes, my mother knows the right thing to say. I had called her yesterday afternoon - mainly to get a little commiseration on the interpersonal student stuff - and she commented, "You're going to be here for a few days after the conference ends, right? Well, this time when you're up here, we don't have that family reunion thing, and we don't have the sick cat to worry about any more, so maybe we can do more things with you, more things that you want to do."

I don't know for sure what that would be - but the thought of being able to do what I want to do makes me feel better. (And also the acknowledgment that my last visit did not happen under ideal circumstances).

(That said - referring to the cat - I still can't walk past the pet department in the local wal-mart without feeling a little sad.)

Corgis in Heaven?

If indeed the Afterlife contains the things that please us best and bring us great joy, I expect that there will be many baby corgis in mine.


see more Señor Gif

Just watching that silly grainy little gif file makes me feel some better.

Not feelin' good.

I had two people working for me this summer, right? And it turns out they don't get along. And I get to hear the crumbtastic details of their interpersonal conflicts, in stereo, each person's story, at separate times.

I dealt with one person earlier, telling them "deal with it" but in more and gentler words. When the other one came, I was in the middle of trying to do two things at once, and I just looked at them and said, "You will have to work this out yourselves."

And I feel crummy about that because I shouldn't snap at students. I should be gentler and more tolerant. But I'm just at the end of my rope, the paper was technically due today, and yet, I have no papers, in part because of the interpersonal stuff.

I'm tempted to just give them both incompletes now, and tell them "I will look at your papers when I get back mid-August." But I don't want to generate more bad feelings.

You know what? I'm going to make more than one person doing research with me at the same time contingent upon those people actually being able to demonstrate that they can get along, and not be snippy to each other (as one side alleges) or be passive-aggressive to each other (as the other side alleges).

What really makes me want to scream? I'm doing this as an overload and I'm not getting paid for it. This darn well better factor in to a positive promotion decision this fall (I am applying for Full Professor. If I don't get it, I will still keep my job and all, but it will be a major blow to my sense of self and my belief that I'm good at anything)

I can deal with a lot of difficult and challenging things but the banal crummy interpersonal stuff, where two people snipe at each other and then come to me to talk smack about the other person just wears me out and overwhelms me.

I guess if I'm going to continue supervising students, I will either have to stop caring or master the art of the Leroy Gibbs dope-slap.

"A little nonsense...

....now and then, is relished by the wisest men."

Someone posted this on the completely pointless and arbitrary group and it made me laugh so hard I had to gank it and repost it here.

Edited to add:



I love Patrick Stewart even more after seeing this.

Walloon -in-law

More genealogy stuff, this time on my dad's side. Apparently the second wife of my great-great-great grandfather was a woman from Belgium (or of Belgian heritage) living in Prussia; she kept a diary which my uncle is having translated. He sent on the first part and it talks about them being able to go to church again after the Walloons were "expelled from the church" due to "unrest from the war" (this would have been sometime between 1790 and 1810. I don't know what war is referred to for sure, apparently it was between Prussians and French). She also apparently had a very unhappy first marriage.

She makes the comment: "The legal proceedings were skewed by bribes but I still won through the strictest justice and a majority. Additionally, he and his son will not escape God....."

So apparently, she managed to get a divorce and remarry (apparently Walloons were a Protestant group, so divorce would have been possible at that time, even if it was very likely frowned upon). (Or perhaps her first husband died while they were separated; I have only the first few pages and they're a pretty rough translation in spots. I'm not totally sure of the language it's written in; it looks German but also not quite: perhaps it's a dialect, or perhaps, like some women of her time, her education did not extend all that far and her spelling and syntax are not perfect. Also the translation makes me think that the person who translated it doesn't have a good grasp of the idiom of the language; there are some things that appear to be literally translated but that do not make good sense.)

I say she's an "in-law," because I don't know if her children were the ones in my direct line, or if it was from my great-great-great-grandfather's first wife (I THINK he had a first wife who died...) who were.

But still, it's interesting. (And a little bit sad, that she had to flee her first husband, apparently. There's also an entry where it talks about her brother fighting her husband.)

Stuff like this makes me curious about those bits and pieces of European history that I know little about. I kind of knew who the Walloons were but I had to look up to be sure. I have a number of books of European history - mostly from the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, because that time period interests me - and I really should make up some kind of plan for reading them.

I want to read (or actually, re-start) Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" which is in that time period. (And I should really try to finish "The Guns of August" - which is about WWI but is partially set in Walloon territory - the Sambre and Meuse valleys being where the Walloons were centered, and where a lot of early fighting of that war took place)

***

Right now, though, I'm reading a book that alternately fascinates me and makes me want to throw it across the room. It's called "A is for Ox" by Barry Sanders. It's about oral culture versus literate culture, and while I am really interested in what he has to say about the idea of how cultures changed (in the Middle Ages, right at the end) from being primarily oral to primarily literate - and how our way of thinking is different when we are literate (He also talks about the transitions children go through, from being unable to read to being able to read), I find his constant drumbeat of "we are killing ourselves as a culture with the world wide web" very tiresome.

I don't know how much of his arguments to accept or discount. He does have footnotes and all, and some of the data he provides seem solid. And I agree with his premise that children who spend their early childhood plunked in front of a tv screen all the time instead of having parents who talk with them and take them to the zoo and read the labels of the cereal boxes to them in the grocery store have a much more difficult time managing in life than children who do, I think he's searching for a single big answer to the problems plaguing some inner cities, when it's really a lot of problems.

He basically is making the claim, as I understand it, that violence is rising in cities because kids who don't grow up in a culture where they're spoken to and learn the intricacies of language - and later on, become readers - don't develop a sense of self the way kids who are read to and talked to and all that do. And as a result, they're more likely to become sociopaths who kill other people, because human life means less to them. And I find that very hard to swallow, somehow. Like, it's too simple of a solution for a big complex problem. And at the same time, it's a very pessimistic view - that these kids are essentially unsaveable, because they have passed through the critical stage without experiencing something.

I don't know. On the one hand, he seems to be celebrating some of the pre-literate cultures, where people were "engulfed in orality" and at the same time, he's roundly criticizing (mostly) urban, inner-city families and schools for not properly socializing their children into literacy. (And part of me wants to say: when the family's worried about whether they're living in a safe place, and if there will be enough to eat, probably making sure the kids have access to books is low down on the scale of priorities).

He also, somewhere, makes the comment that "10% of the population reads 70% of the books." If that's true, then there must be a lot of socioeconomic/profession skew to that number, because far, far more than 10% of the people I know are avid readers.

So I don't know. I wish he stuck to exploring (a) how oral and literate cultures differ (b) the history of literacy and possibly, (c) the best ways to teach disadvantaged kids to read (he argues that it's NOT plunking them in front of a computer - yet another screen - with a reading tutorial, that what they really require is interaction with real live people, and I do agree with that point) and would back off on the OH NOES WE ARE ALL DOOMED! screediness.

There is another book - a Folio Press book, I forget the author - by the same name (A is for Ox) that is about the history of the alphabet. I should probably be reading it instead; I'm sure I'd find it much more restful. (I find I greatly prefer to read books about the clever things cultures have done, rather than how the cultures destroyed themselves.)

throwing the towel

My "official" office hours are done for today. I'm going home. Because I can't breathe properly (our dewpoint is 75 degrees right now). And I'm worn out. And I just received an e-mail that suggests that there is a dispute brewing between two people, both of whom will expect me to adjudicate the dispute, even though it's really not my job to.

I really, really need to crunch the last few soil-invertebrate numbers and finish the poster up but I literally feel like I can't do anything more today. I'm just that tired and uncomfortable from the humidity. I'm telling myself I have a couple hours tomorrow, all of Thursday afternoon, all of Friday and all of Saturday and that should be enough.

hot summer days

I did not, as most of you know, grow up in the South. I grew up in northeastern Ohio, during what was considered a historically cooler decade than some recent ones. We didn't have air conditioning in the house but most of the time it did not matter.

Living here, now, coping with the summer heat (and humidity, which is really worse for me than the heat), I find myself often thinking of what Scout Finch said about her little town in Alabama, in the summers in the 1930s when she was a child:

"Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

That's how it feels here right now. The air conditioning makes things better, but still - if you go out for any length of time you will perspire, anything of your clothing that was crisp will wilt. The birds are even panting right now.

And there's also the cabin fever feeling, of being trapped inside the cooler house. I haven't even opened the blinds these past couple days in the vain hope of keeping it a bit cooler. It's like living in a cave. A cooler-than-outside-but-still-slightly-sticky cave. Fall cannot come fast enough for me.

I did not sleep well last night; it was extremely humid and even with air conditioning (and a dehumidifier running in the kitchen) I still felt a bit as if a small, spiteful fist was squeezing my lungs.

Not Sleeping Beauty

Given the surprising-to-me revelation that I MIGHT be related (I'm not still entirely sure I believe it) to the Plantagenets and even possibly Charlemagne*, perhaps I need one of these t-shirts.

Because really, I think that's the only kind of "princess" I could ever be. (And besides, I've "rescued" myself - out of as much of a difficult situation as I ever get into - for more than 20 years now, and I think it would be hard to learn any other way.)

(*Though actually, if this chap's math is correct, there are some 100 million plus of us. And apparently half of the "native" European population counts him in their lineage.)

luckily not arachnophobic

Nothing says, "OH HAI IT'S MONDAY" like walking through a spider's web as you head out to the car on the way to work. (I have two tallish hedges on either side of the front door, and the spiders seem to want to span that gap with webs, even though they regularly get defeated in the attempt.)

I also came in to an e-mail from a student, about something due at 8 am today. The e-mail was sent at 8:52 pm last night. Needless to say, they're not getting an answer in any kind of time that would allow them to respond to my response in any useful way.

So I have a feeling it's going to be a day that not even an extended Caturday could make up for...

Figured it out

What the "Hot" graphic from the NWS most reminds me of, so I added a caption:

(Caption is in "Engravers MT." Because sometimes, Impact just isn't serious enough).

Quick critter picture

Lots of these have been showing up in this season's samples. I'm pretty sure it's a juvenile Hemipteran of some kind.

I like how its eyes and its abdomen are a coordinated color.

in on Saturday

I've really got to work up the motivation to start the last few soil invert samples. I've kinda-sorta promised myself that if I get them done, I will go to Sherman today to do "better" grocery shopping than I can do in town. (And look for more hair stuff. The local pharmacy, while it had hairpins, was sadly lacking in other stuff, and I really want to try to find a pair of hairsticks. I had one once but I can't find them.)

****

It's still hot here. I mowed the lawn (sort of against my better judgment, but it had to be done) yesterday afternoon around four when I got home. I got it almost entirely done, but a patch of taller grass in the back yard kept clogging the mower, so I left that 6 square feet or whatever it was undone. (The grass was also wet, because I had been watering the garden before I got to mowing). Yeah, it was probably dangerous to be out mowing in that heat, but I did OK. I stopped periodically to "relax my body and refresh my mind" with water breaks. (Unfortunately, I had no orange slices).

I do think I'm getting more adapted to being able to tolerate heat. (It was also less humid by that time of the day. I've learned that the humidity here drops around 3 pm, so if you have to be out in the heat, it's better to wait until after that time.)

****

I'm still working on the shawl. I don't know why I'm in love with this project again, but I am. I suppose it IS partly the high-concentration-level - for some reason, I find it really relaxing to be able to concentrate intensely on something, to the point where I'm shutting out the rest of the world. (I also do that when I'm working intensively to learn a new piece for the piano.) I suppose it's that old concept of "flow." But for me, it also might be that the parts of my brain that might otherwise be scanning over what I've done in the day, trying to find what it was I was supposed to do and forgot (I frequently feel as if I am forgetting something when I am actually not) or that is involved in self-critique, get shut up by having to concentrate on yarn overs and double decreases, or on runs of eighth notes and remembering to get that B flat in there.

To think about.

I don't know that this is genuinely an "old Cherokee story" or not, but it's one of those things that, even if some college kid made it up in the 1970s, it's good enough that it deserves to exist. (I found this referred to in some discussion of bad behavior and narcissism of a fairly famous person, sad stuff that's come to light recently).

“The Two Wolves (Source: Unknown)

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.

One is Evil.
It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good.
It is joy, peace , love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’

The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed .’”

I try to feed that Good wolf. I don't always succeed but I try.

(it also occurs to me that for those of us of the Christian persuasion, that Good Wolf (heh, I at first typed Wolfe there, like Nero Wolfe) embodies a lot of the good old "fruits of the spirit.")

Playing with hair

I'm kind of chuckling over the response (here and on ravelry) to the updo. That was literally less than two and a half minutes of twisting my hair to make that. (Hm. Maybe I need to wear my hair up more often).

(In fact, one person on Rav commented that "topknots are totally in right now." Who knew? Not me, apparently.)

I'm wearing my hair up again - they tend to turn off the a/c on weekends here - but I did something less idiosyncratic this time - I just gathered up a "high" ponytail (normally I wear the ponytail low, at the nape of my neck) and wrapped the "tail" around the ponytail holder and, in the absence of any hairpins, stuck a pencil in there to hold it.

I have sort of coarse, crimpy (it's wavy, and the last time I wore it short, it was extremely curly) hair, so it tends to stay more or less put once you do something with it. Actually, as often as I've envied the people with fine, straight hair, I think that kind of hair would be more prone to fall out of these sort of updos (at least, not without a ton of styling product. And meh, styling product is more trouble than I want to go to). It's kind of like rayon yarn versus wool yarn: rayon is slippy and slidy and you have to use grabby needles to keep the stitches from falling off, but with a good old "natural" wool, the stitches will grab and hang on, even if you're knitting with aluminum needles.

Interesting. My hair is more like sheep's wool than some people's hair, I guess. (Well, chemically speaking, everyone's hair is kind of like sheep's wool; they are both keratin fibers)

I do need to get some pins and toys though (and thanks for the link, Lydia, I will have to consider getting one of those "toys") and mess around a little more with putting my hair up in various ways. Because we still have perhaps 3 months of summer left....

I also do want to practice for when my hair goes totally white (or grey, but I'm thinking it will go white, based on what happened to my grandmothers, and the fact that the few "age bleached" hairs that have shown up on my head have been white). Because a lot of people still think it's strange for a more "mature" woman to wear a long ponytail, and because I once saw an older woman with long, long grey hair who had it done up in an awesome bun.

(And no. I am not thinking of cutting it. Because (a) the last time I had short-but-not-boycut-short hair, it was poodle curly, which was a really bad look for me and (b) my long hair is one of the few things about my appearance that I'm actually kind of proud of. and (c) I don't want a short boycut ever again. It worked OK when I was swimming and needed hair that would dry fast, but it's just too masculine looking for me now. Some women look good with that kind of cut but I don't think that I do.)

(Actually, my hair may never totally turn. My mother still has salt-and-pepper hair, and my maternal grandmother, even into her 90s, still had some dark brown hair. And one of my aunts - who made it to 90 - kept her strawberry blonde color (without benefit of dye) until the end of her life)

New summer hairstyle

I call it the Little My (Sadly, I am neither small nor fierce.)



Also: serious girl is serious.

(I really need to get out to the pharmacy sometime and get some hairpins. How is it that I have long hair but no hairpins? You can also see the shoulder straps for the smallest, skimpiest outfit I own - I had turned the a/c up in the house this morning (because I was actually cold when I got up) and I turned it too far and it was about 80 degrees in here and humid when I got home. So I put on my little owlet pajamas and was a little cooler. Especially when I, um, stuffed an icepack down the front of the top and let the Empire waist seam on it hold the ice pack in place.)

Thinking happier thoughts...

(Though first, I think the anonymous commenter who noted that a lot of the body-size bossiness is a way of reducing people to a number - and therefore making them "less" and "not count" - was spot on. We don't do that with IQ any more, so I guess we have to find some new way of pigeonholing people.)

***
This is the progress, as of night before last, on the shawl:



You can just see where the color changes over to the next color. (There are four more in the progression - through violet and into a light purplish blue).

I find that knitting on a lace shawl, because of the level of concentration it takes, is actually better at "decoupling" my mind from the stuff that's bugged it during the day than many other forms of craft. I need to keep that in mind when I get home and think, "Oh, man, do I have the energy to work on this?" Because actually I feel better after having spent time on it.

****
The soil invertebrate work continues. I'm not quite half done with the samples, but I have all day tomorrow and all day Saturday that I can work. (And it works out well: campus is closed tomorrow but one of my students who had been ill was going to try to come in this afternoon to finish a project, but when she called me on another matter, I told her if she would rather take another day to feel better, I could let her in to the building Friday morning.)

Actually, it's kind of peaceful working on them. I can work in my office where it's quiet, and I can put a classical internet music channel on while I work. And it's fun seeing what's there. Kind of a treasure hunt.

***
I had earned a 25 dollar gift certificate from the Loopy Ewe (I have several "favorite" online yarn sources; they are one, Simply Sock Yarn is another). I had thought of saving it longer, until I really REALLY really needed a treat, but then I got to thinking about the Bee Fields Shawl pattern I bought a while back, and how I really wanted sort of a golden yellow yarn for it, and how I had no laceweight in that color...so I went looking. The yarn I chose is actually a sockweight, but it should work fine.

Yes, I have about 10 shawls worth of yarn in my stash, and it can take me a year to finish one. I know. But there's something about buying yarn for myself that feels like I'm taking care of myself. (I suppose it's actually not such a positive thing; like the husband who brings home flowers for his wife after stomping out of the house and being angry with her, I sometimes buy myself stuff after I've been not-very-nice to myself - like with the whole "I'm fat and I suck" post below).

But anyway. I like the idea of knitting on a shawl, I like the idea of it growing under my fingers as I create the lace.

I think also working on a difficult or complex project, when I'm maybe not feeling that great about other areas of my life, helps. Like, I can't be a total mess-up if I can at least knit a complex shawl. Or something like that.

***

I really need to finish up and go home. It will be nice to have an evening off.

I realized something

This morning, half listening to the news, I heard some story claiming, "Women with hip fat may be at greater risk for Alzheimer's." And first I wondered if I heard it right - after all, for years they said that women who were heavier in the hips were better off than apple-shapes, healthwise. And second, I thought, Well, if that's true, then we're all just screwed.

I looked it up online. Yeah, there's some claim that being "hippy" makes you slightly more at risk for Alzheimer's.

And I gave in to a moment (well, more than a few) of despair. I loathe the way health news gets reported, I loathe the constant doom-and-gloom and we-will-dance-on-your-graves, fatties attitude that seems to pervade a certain amount of it.


And I also feel frustrated. Because I'm kind of fat. I've been "big" since I went through puberty. Both my grandmothers were heavy women. My father is heavy-set. All the old photographs of the German forebears seem to show heavier people. Attempts to lose weight have been mostly unsuccessful, unless I become dangerously obsessive and do stuff like write down every food I eat and restrict the portions to the point where I'm consuming 1250 calories a day (I actually did that, for a short while, in college. It was MISERABLE. I was miserable. I made the people around me miserable).

And I realized this morning, thinking about it: this is another perfectionism thing for me. And this is another part of my tendency to 'awfulize' things (as the counselor I went briefly to in college put it.) I tend sometimes towards all-or-nothing thinking. I do this in my work: "If I'm not getting 100% positive evaluation comments, it must be that I am no good as a teacher." And I do this in my life: "I must not be working out hard enough or eating the right way if I'm not thinner." And then I start to feel like a failure.

And I do think it's because I'm still somewhat of a perfectionist - it's hard for me to look at my life and go, "You strive to get a couple servings of fruit and vegetables every day, you don't eat fried food, you work out an hour most days of the week. That should be good enough." Instead, I look at my life and go, "You're not what they're telling you you should be. You need to work harder."

And you know? I'm too TIRED to work harder. The thought of doing an extra half-hour of exercise a day makes me want to weep. The thought of, I don't know, eating plain Bran Flakes without sugar on them instead of the Chocolate Cheerios I've been eating for breakfast kind of makes me want to weep. On the one hand, I feel like I need to work harder to be more...I don't know, "perfect"? On the other hand, I feel like what I'm doing should be ENOUGH, dammit.

(It doesn't help that I know skinny people who eat pretty much what they want and don't exercise to the point where they are so bored by it they could scream)

But I do think a big part of it is that I'm a perfectionist. And some of the stress I used to put on other areas of my life has somehow got transferred to health and body size. Not an improvement.

I think the other thing with my perfectionist, all-or-nothing thinking, is that I don't always remind myself that there might be a difference between "fat" size-16-me and a fat person who weighs 500 pounds or something. Or someone who's overweight but never exercises and doesn't strive to eat a healthful diet. But I just lump myself into the "fat" category when I hear these news stories and kind of come to believe that people hate me and judge me and all of that bad stuff, because I'm not a size 8.

(Shameful confession: when I go to the grocery store, if I want to buy cookies? I make sure I also buy fruit or vegetables - canned, if I already have enough fresh on hand I know that I wouldn't, for example, be able to use up another bag of spinach before it went bad - just because I don't like to think of people looking in my cart and going "Oh. Fat chick. Buying cookies. Typical." And I KNOW that's stupid and awful and I should feel free to buy whatever damn food I want, but that's just something I've done for a long time. And it's very hard for me to just walk into a Braum's and get an ice cream cone, even if I really want an ice cream cone. Because I feel judged. Because I KNOW there are people out there who look at fatter people eating and judge them negatively. And I know - I should just judge those people myself, judge them as jerks, but I can't, quite. I tend to be too likely to listen to other people's opinions, even when I should not.)

Recognizing this won't make it go away, but at least it'll help me maybe step back once in a while.

I also need to be less good at blaming myself for things that are not 100% under my control. Like genetics. And body frame.

And nobody died

We did fieldwork yesterday afternoon for lab.

It was hot. I don't know what the heat index was then, but it was 105 when I got home around 6 pm.

I think I'm becoming more adjusted to the hot weather; I remember the first or second summer I was here, I had to end a lab early (it was the tree-identification lab) because I was getting shaky and lightheaded and running out of breath in the heat. This time, I didn't have any problems. And I was running around pretty much (partly to make sure people had no questions about identifying trees but also because there's one person in the class who had a Scary Health Incident a year ago and I wanted to quietly keep an eye on him to make sure he was OK)

I felt OK out in the field but was pretty wiped out by the time I got home, and I feel sort of tired and headachey today (though that could also be allergies; there was a lot of pollen out there and the humidity kind of kept it suspended in the air.)

But we managed and we got done, despite the Heat Advisory or Extreme Heat Warning or whatever they're calling it.

I'm not unfashionable

I'm just old-style.

(Link is to the Victoria and Albert Museum - they have a pair of 3rd to 5th century socks from Egypt. They note that the socks "were designed to be worn with sandals.") However, they're not knitted - they're made using an older technique often called "nalbinding," which I understand is extremely tedious.

Yes, I wear socks with my Birkenstocks in the winter sometimes. I figure that once you earn a Ph.D., you are permitted at least one thing that might be considered a fashion "violation" in some circles.

girly girly girl

But first off:

I don't like this one bit:

This is the image that the NWS is using to indicate our weather for the rest of the week. I'm not entirely sure but that might be the eye of Sauron, there.

****

A couple of girly-girl sort of things. As I said before, I think I'm becoming more girly over time. I'm not sure whether it's a response to the sense I have of becoming increasingly "invisible" (not that I ever was exactly VISIBLE, in the sense of turning heads  on the street) or if it's that I've finally decided that I can be a little girly and still be taken somewhat seriously.

New toenail polish:



The color is called "Cherries in the Snow." I chose it in part because I think that's a color that's been around for a long time. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the lipstick version of this color was one of the colors deemed "acceptable" for WAVEs and other military women to wear during WWII. And I don't know why, but I always like those little historical links.

Besides, it's a nice color. Not quite bright red, but not really pink either.

(Ugh, my feet are really veiny. Actually, it's because my skin is so thin and so fair. The blood drive people like to see me coming because they can always find a vein.)



And these are the socks I've been working on off and on. The yarn is Wisdom Yarn's "Poem," the color (I was told, the ballband just has a number) is called "Girly girl." I'm just getting to the point where the sequence starts again.

I like these sort of ombre yarns but so far every one I've tried (the Kureyon, the Mini Mochi, and to a lesser extent, this one) are splitty and kind of rough or scratchy. (Though the Kureyon did soften up upon washing). I also have some K1C2 "Ty-Dy" in the stash that seems like it will be softer, though maybe not have the same intergrading quality that these yarns have. (I suppose it has something to do with the plying, that it both allows for the intergradation but also makes them scratchier.)

"Brainiacs are fragile."

Now that I think of it, perhaps Princess Bubblegum's words are partly an explanation of the random injuries that so many of us in my department seem to suffer.

(Though really, I SHOULDN'T be that fragile, given my musculature and the fact that I work out. Maybe I'm just inflexible rather than fragile)

So I dunno

The shoulder is some better right now. Getting up and moving around (including doing ~30 minutes piano practice) seem to have helped it.

It feels like - from having looked at online anatomical diagrams - it's the deltoid that hurts. (So, I'm guessing it's either a pulled muscle, or also possibly a cramp. I tend to be prone to getting muscle cramps easily (I know, I probably need more potassium or something. I drink orange juice and I used to eat bananas before I developed a mild allergy to them).

I'm going to watch it, but if it continues to feel better, I think I can assume it was maybe a minor overuse injury when the polycart tipped over and made my arm twist into (what is for it) an unnatural position.

I probably also need to try to force myself to start doing yoga again; I have problems with not being very flexible and tending to hurt myself when I twist in funny ways.

random for Tuesday

I did something to my shoulder; I can't tell if it's a pulled muscle (I hope it is) or something worse (like, arthritis beginning all of a sudden, or that I separated it, or that I tore a muscle). The thing is, I don't remember any big stressor - pulling my empty polycart back up to the house Monday it did tip over and kind of wrench my arm as it went down (they are big and top-heavy and don't always roll as nicely as you'd like them to).

It was hard sleeping last night as it was difficult to find a position in which my shoulder did not throb. I finally wound up sleeping on my back (which I rarely do) and I had to break out one of the eyeshades because it's really too light at night here to be able to sleep comfortably on my back.

***

Some surprising and sad news: one of my old high-school friends e-mailed me to let me know someone we graduated with had died. It still comes as a surprise even though we've now entered our 40s and I suppose it will start to come the time that it needs to be expected. (Or something. That was a bad sentence, wasn't it?).

This is someone I remember well, which is what makes it pretty unsettling. There was my little crowd of friends, there were the "obvious" kids that everyone knew (whether you considered them a friend or not), and then there were people who sort of faded into the background. This guy was one of the "obvious" kids - I remember him as generally being pretty friendly to everyone, too.

We've lost a few others - I include the classes immediately above and immediately behind mine in that. But those tended to be people I didn't know as well or remember as clearly. (I had to look up, for example, the student in the class behind mine who died in the World Trade Center bombing.)

I realize that the alternative to growing older is even less appealing than growing older is, but some of the changes the passage of time brings are not changes you want. I can cope just fine with the grey hair and the occasional aches and pains, but dammit, I don't like losing people around me. Even people I've not spoken to in over 20 years.

***

I traded out projects last night. Part of it was concern over my sore shoulder (I hope knitting isn't making it worse. I would hate to have to give up knitting or quilting just to relieve some dumb arthritis)

I finished the first and second rounds of the "Gates of Dawn" section of the shawl. You have to count verrrrry carefully until the pattern is sufficiently established - I actually found I had either lost or forgotten to do a few of the yarn overs, and so I had to "fudge" them in the next row (luckily, on this pattern, you're not "knitting plain" on alternate rows - every row is pattern - so missed yarn overs are easy to fudge)

I also worked a bit on Thermal. A couple more inches and I can finish off the back. (I hope I will have enough stitch holders for everything. I know, you can use waste yarn, but with the way I flop this thing around I'd be afraid of dropping stitches.)

I'll be glad to have this done, once it GETS done. I'm hoping I can press on and finish it for fall.

The funny thing is, I've been pulling out back issues of magazines - while cleaning up my desk area, I found the spring (I think it was) issue of Knitscene. It's the one with the Tudor Henley in it. Which is very similar to Thermal - knit-round sweater in a fairly simple stich pattern made of very fine yarn. And now I want to make that. (I have the yarn in-stash; it was some undyed fiber from Elann. Though now I'm wondering if I should consider doing a dying adventure to dye it - it's offwhite and I know the first time I wear an offwhite sweater somewhere, I will get invited to join someone in a spaghetti lunch or something. Though I like the idea of it being a light color to show off the cable on the cuffs. Then again, as I said before, I think I'm supposed to hate the Tudors now, as an alleged Plantagenet descendant...)

restarting a project

I think probably many people who do some kind of a craft have partially-finished projects tucked away. Sometimes you wind up leaving them - and who ever inherits your stuff gets them (and if the project is lucky, the person finished it). Sometimes you wind up tossing them. Or taking them apart and reusing the supplies for something else.

But sometimes, you come back to them and start them up again.

I had left the "Rosy Fingered Dawn" shawl for nearly a year - perhaps just about a year. I started it last summer (IIRC) and worked on it a while, then, I think what happened was that I went on vacation, decided it was too "fragile" (in the sense of the likelihood of stitches being dropped off needles) to bring along, and I kind of got out of the rhythm of it. I had kept it on a small side table in my living room and periodically looked at it and thought about restarting it. Or I thought, "I should not leave that ball of yarn sitting on the floor; if I get carpet beetles hatching out again they will eat it."

But I never got around to restarting.

Finally, yesterday, I decided to. It took a little while to figure out where I was in the pattern (I guess I picked up the row-counter I had been using and started using it for another project), but going by the chart I was able to figure out where I was.

So I finished the section called "Dawn's Chariot Wheels" and am now working (just barely started) on "The Gates of Dawn." Which also means I've changed colors - I am on the second of six colors now (they grade slowly from pink through violet to a medium blue).

Unfortunately, the shawl won't be very photogenic for a while - I have it bunched up on a single long-ish circular needle, so I can't really lay it flat to photograph. (I might, at some point, be able to spread out one side on the needle, bunching up the rest, and photograph that).

And no, I don't really know when or where I will wear it. I don't wear the Song of Hiawatha shawl very often. But with these, for me, it's kind of an Everest thing: I knit it because it is there. Because I want to prove to myself that I can do it.

(And really, like any big project, it's mostly mental: not letting yourself be dragged down by the "oh man, this section is 30+ rows of really densely spaced complex yarn overs, decreases, knits, and purls and I will have to pay attention to every stitch." I think I described Hiawatha as being the knitted equivalent of a doctoral dissertation; this is similar. And like doing a doctoral dissertation, it's only partly skill and knowledge; an equally big part is having the persistence to finish).

Luckily, the shawl is entirely charted. I find that for me, working from charts is much easier. Being able to see, in kind of a "picture" format, what I'm supposed to be doing, where I've been, and where I'm going next, is a lot easier. Line by line written instructions, I find, unless they're fairly simple (not too many different things in a line), it's really easy for me to skip over sections or to repeat sections.

I also prefer the "symbolcraft" format for crochet patterns - which is sort of the crochet version of charting. (And I'm happy that Interweave Crochet, by and large, includes the symbolcraft diagrams with its patterns, especially the lacy ones).

I suppose it's because in a lot of ways I'm a visual person, and also seeing the "big picture" helps me out - I can tell if I've made a mistake, usually, before I get too far along.

I know some people really dislike charts or find them hard to follow. I suppose the best thing for designers to do is to include both.

***
Speaking of symbolcraft, I really love the "Midsummer Night's Dream" shawl in the new Interweave Crochet and actually already bought the laceweight Malabrigo (in a different colorway however) to make it. I might look the pattern over and see if it would be straightforward enough to use as a traveling project; I'm going to be logging a lot of car-time where I won't be the driver when it comes to going to the Prairie Conference the end of this month.


***

And Ivy Block works.

Well, mostly. I have a tiny bit of rash on the inside of my left wrist, but as that's where I was winding the rope from the circular nested quadrat when we had to move from point to point, it probably had the greatest exposure, plus it likely rubbed off the Ivy Block.

I will say that Ivy Block is apparently very drying to the skin; my skin looked kind of like it does mid-winter after wearing the stuff.

But at least (as of now) there's no rash on my face or directly on my hands.

****

Fieldwork is done.

My students and I went out this morning - it was drippy and wet but it didn't storm - and we finished (thank goodness) the fieldwork for their summer project.

There was poison ivy EVERYWHERE in the second forest we did. I went out and bought a product called "Ivy Block" yesterday and put it on before going out this morning, and also immediately after the sampling I went home and got in as cold of a shower as I could stand ("conventional wisdom" is that cold water, no soap to start off with is the best way to remove the poison ivy oils).

We'll see if it worked. I really sincerely hope that it did, or else my hands will be all rashy, and I need my hands this week.

I came back here (my office) and went through the first sample and keyed out and counted the critters. I don't have the energy to do another one just yet but at least I have the set-up all ready for Monday. (It takes me ~1 1/2 hours to do a sample, so if I really push, I should be able to do 3 Monday, 3 Thursday, maybe 2 Tuesday, and a bunch on Friday, since I am now done with going out in the field).

Even if I don't FINISH the samples, at least I'll get a few done to see general trends before the Prairie Conference. (I just hope my identification of the critters is good enough; I am far from an expert and am mainly using a key to identify them).

But now, I'm going home. To knit.

Holy flipping heck

I just got a call from the "computer guy" at my ISP.

You know what was wrong with my e-mail, apparently? One of the helpdesk people - he made the distinction between his job and their job - TYPED MY PASSWORD IN WRONG when they verified/reset.

So, at least the current story is, my e-mail wasn't working because someone on their end mistakenly changed my password.

Well, the e-mail works. FOR NOW. We will see if it's working this weekend.

I think this makes story #4 on what went wrong with my e-mail.

(I really hope it's as simple as what the computer guy said it was, because if it is, it means he fixed it. He did claim that the helpdesk people "aren't real good with computers" which makes me wonder WHY they are on the helpdesk to begin with.)

"He's still working"

That's the latest word from the ISP.

The other unsettling thing is that they asked for my account number. In the past, it was last name, first name, e-mail address, and then (sometimes) last for digits of the social security number.

As I was at work, I had to explain that I didn't know my account number and had no access to a past bill to look it up.

Considering the length of time I had to wait for an answer both yesterday and today makes me suspect I'm not the only one having problems. Whatever. I'm just hoping I don't have some OH NOES URGENT e-mail from the Prairie Conference that I can't get at. I stupidly gave them my home email address as it's been more reliable in the past than my work one. (yes, it has).

Holy rain, Batman

Apparently they closed the closest cross-street to me yesterday afternoon because it flooded. (I had had to go to the post office, so I came home by another way, and I guess I missed the barricades).

Also, unfortunately, a young teenager drowned in a culvert here. She and her friends were playing around the culvert and she got pulled in.

I walked up to the campus building from my car today and suddenly found myself thinking of Hawaii. You know how they say that the scent-recognition center of our brain is close to the long-term memory section, or something, and some scents conjure up memories? Yeah, I guess the wet, wet-vegetation, and incipient-mold smells made me think of the time I spent on the Big Island nearly 20 years ago. It rained pretty much every day, usually in the afternoon.

So I'm in this morning, with the lofty goal of finishing writing a manuscript and starting to analyze the summer samples. I hope I can force myself to make that happen; I have to leave for the conference in 20 days and I really need a finished poster and hopefully a finished manuscript.

***

Still no e-mail access. I'm waiting a bit to call and harass them yet again. At least this time I have a ticket number. Still, it bugs me that I get a different explanation - and contradictory explanations - every time I call.

And I'm kind of rejecting the Hotmail or whatever workaround - because, dangit, I pay for webmail access as part of my monthly internet fee. I shouldn't willingly accept less than I pay for just because there are a couple idiots in that company.

Not Khan, though

Lynn, I remember that story. I think there was also a story - maybe in the NYT - about some guy who turns out to be descended from Genghis Khan, and they figured it out from his DNA. (And it is entirely plausible that lots of common folk are descended from royalty, both the time-elapsed-since-then thing and also the fact that a lot of them had a lot of kids, and also a lot of "wrong side of the blanket" kids)

It still amuses me, though. (I figured my family would be farmers/peasants all the way down.)

I also have an example I use for the DNA fingerprinting stuff I teach in general bio; there are the remains of a 9000 year ago man from Cheddar, England, and when they sequenced DNA of people in the surrounding area, they found a schoolteacher who was apparently a direct descendant. That at least some thread of the family lived in that area for 9000 years is pretty amazing.

There used to be a company where you could send off a cheek swab and they'd tell you which (supposedly) of seven matrilineal lines you came from in Stone Age Europe. (There's a book out called the Seven Daughters of Eve that addresses that). I assume I'd come up as either "Celtic" or "Gaulish" (if those were in fact designations, I don't know what groups they talk about as having been the seven tribes*). But I was too cheap to cough up the $150. It would be interesting, but not particularly useful, knowledge.

(*Actually, they don't. They don't use any of the old ethnic designations, probably because they didn't exist in the Stone Age. Instead, they give hypothetical names to the women: mt DNA and human migration. If I had to guess, I'd say I was most likely a descendant of "Helena," but of course I don't know for sure. And I admit a little bit of annoyance with the cutesiness of "naming" those hypothetical women.

That same website references "Irish with Spanish heritage" - which, for years, people have spoken of "Black Irish," that is, Irish people with very dark hair, and there was hypothesized that shipwrecked sailors from Spain had come ashore and intermarried.)

explanation number 3

...is what I received for why I can't access my e-mail again. (I could, briefly, yesterday afternoon, and I suppose if need be, I can tell them to dump everything out of all the boxes - oh, wait...no, I downloaded all the pdf patterns to my desktop, so that's OK).

That tells me No One Knows Anything, and it annoys me. I mentioned the "I was told I was supposed to call to 'verify' my e-mail but I didn't, because the message you allegedly sent looked like phishing" to the person this morning and they said nothing in response to it, which makes me think that it was entirely possible the person who told me that earlier - who was effectively blaming me for my webmail not working - was blowing a lot of smoke.

I do not like feeling like I am being lied to. Especially because I pay upwards of $35 a month for high-speed internet access at home, and that's SUPPOSED to include webmail access.

If it's broken, they don't know why, they're working on it: tell me that. I will be satisfied. "I don't know" is always a better answer than some kind of a dang lie.

I know tech help people get a lot of certified idiots calling them, but not telling a person anything - or telling them something not true - is really not a solution to dealing with that. (I'm still irritated from when I set up the high speed internet, when the creepy technician they sent to my house wound up giving me a broken modem, and when I called to try to get tech support to log on, the man told me "See....the.....'e'...on....the...program....list? Click...on....the...EEEEEEE." like I was a particularly slow Golden Retriever. (I icily told him, "Actually, I prefer using Firefox to the Microsoft web browser products." Seriously, he thought the reason I couldn't log on to the internet was that I was too dense to operate the browser.) I may lack a great deal of expertise in wiring things or writing code, but I'm NOT stupid. And it irks me to be treated as such.

I may look into seeing if there's a way I can (at least temporarily) set up a hotmail account or something and have my mail forwarded. The person I spoke to most recently claimed that she couldn't open my e-mail box (even though my address and password came through as "verified,"), so I don't know if I could even set up a new webmail to harvest mail from my old webmail.

This and that.

Argh. My e-mail is messed up again. I'm really unhappy with my ISP, considering that this is the second (well, really, third) time I'm going to have to call and get it restored.

If I didn't have so many people who knew my e-mail address as it is - and if there weren't so many people out there that it would be hard to contact - I'd just get a Hotmail account or something and be done with it. Of course, I'd still be paying for home internet access.

***

My father has recently gotten interested in doing genealogy. As one of his brothers had mostly figured out their family history, he's been working on my mom's family, which was originally more challenging to figure out, as a couple of the more recent ancestors were orphaned. But I guess he figured out a way to work around those dead ends.

First thing we learned: my mom's father's family (on my grandfather's father's side) were not Scots, as we had long assumed, but French, with a surname that could be anglicized to sound Scots. Apparently they 'followed the lumbering' - they first arrived in Nova Scotia (and we may be thus distantly related to some of the Cajuns; my ancestors were in Nova Scotia shortly before the "Acadians" were expelled). Then from there to Quebec. Then New York State. Then Wisconsin, and finally, Michigan, where, after my grand-dad's generation, people stopped working in the lumber camps.

That branch originated (apparently) in the Dordogne River valley in France, which made me drag out an atlas to remind myself of where it was.

So apparently, I have ancestors from Perigord or thereabouts.

More recently, he found information that traced further back. I'm less sure about it. Supposedly we (my mom, my brother, all our other relatives sharing that bloodline, and me) are related to the Plantagenets. Yes, those Plantagenets.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to think about it a bit in the sense that some wag described the "Past life regressions" that were popular in the 1980s, where people supposedly figured out who they had been in a previous life. He remarked that everyone you talked to who believed they had had a past life had been Cleopatra or some king or someone famous - no one ever said their past life was as a farmer who died at 28, or as a woman who worked in a bawdy house. So I kind of see claiming relationship to royalty as being something like that. You don't often hear of people boasting of genealogy of a long line of peasants or ditchdiggers or honey-wagon drivers. (Though I would argue, from my perspective, that one big difference is that genealogy is actually, you know, real. I don't believe in the past lives thing - I tend to be of the opinion that life here on earth is a ride that we get our tickets punched only once for).

On the other hand, I find it rather amusing. If it's true. For one thing, I'm probably one of the least "regal" people (at least in terms of bearing and attitude) that I know. And for another, for all those times I rolled my eyes at the self-styled princesses...perhaps (though I'm sure the bloodline would be far too watered down for a claim to actually have any merit), I could actually claim to be one. Heh.

Oh, I guess I'm supposed to hate the Tudors now. Didn't Henry VII or Henry VIII kill off the last of my Plantagenet ancestors? (It amuses me how fast I can slip into imagining a real kinship there. Just like I think of Churchill as "Cousin Winnie" after learning that I am distantly related to him).

I guess this also means I'm related to bad old Richard III. On the upside, I guess that means I'm related to Henry V. (Puts the Shakespeare plays in new light. And I really need to read Richard III, and probably re-read "The Daughter of Time," and read Henry IV and Henry VI.)

(oooh, Wikipedia says that there are "several illegitimate lines." I bet that's where I come from.)

So, to bring in the previous topic, maybe I need to call my ISP and tell them that letting my e-mail tank is no way to treat royalty. Though that would probably lead to them fixing it even slower.

***

I'm already starting to think about "next sweater projects," even though I'm really nowhere near to finished on Thermal. Right now it's a toss-up between "Potter" (a sort-of coat sweater with ribbing) or the saddle-seam pullover (actually a pattern designed for a man) from Interweave.

E-mail came baaaaack!

It just took another call to the place. This time the woman understood the problem right away and reset the thing for me and now it works. So things feel "right" again.

Except for four days of ad-spam from Lane Bryant and House-Mouse Designs and Connecting Threads and everywhere else that I now have to delete.

I also decided to cancel lab (we can make it up later; I worked in a "dead week" in case of this) because it's raining off and on and we're under a flash flood watch and I don't feel like barking at the students about muddy feet in the vans (I wouldn't, except the Motor Pool Director then barks at ME for allowing students to get into the (20 year old, 100,000 miles plus) vans with muddy feet.)

thermal grows slowly

To prove that I do, in fact, still knit:



This is the back of Thermal. I have, I think, 6" to go on the upper back before I start binding off for the shoulders.

(And I have to admit I kind of enjoy the challenge of constraining post titles to three words; there is something haiku-like about it.)

still no access

Yeah, my ISP still hasn't "restored" my e-mail, even though they told me that it would be back in 24 hours "or so."

I don't have the energy to mess with it today but tomorrow if it's still borked, I'm calling them again.

What bothers me is the first person I talked to had no idea of the "you needed to call us and tell us you still wanted e-mail!" issue, and that the second person brushed the not-knowing off as, "Well, we have some new people here."

Um. Ever heard of a "memo"? Ever heard of "getting people up to speed"?

Gah.

In other news, it's raining, and students are already calling to ask if lab is cancelled (we were supposed to go out to the woods). I'm telling them "not yet" because I'm in a mean mood and also because I know if I officially cancel lab the rain will stop and the sun will come out.

three word titles

Okay, since I now have to title my posts, I figured I needed a "thing" - some people use song lyrics (which I can never remember, and I tend to like obscure songs no one knows any way) or clever puns (I am not good at that kind of cleverness) or something.

So, the first 2 posts I posted with titles had three words in their title. So I will now (as much as possible) limit post titles to three words.

***

Anyway. I saw this link over at Not Martha and found it intriguing, and also found myself nodding a bit: Dystopia Fatigue. About how lots of people "embrace" (their word) shows like Glee and things like the Pixar movies.

"How many hopeless, miserable depictions of the future can we possibly digest?"

Yes. That's one of my frustrations. When you feel like the world's going to Hell in a handbasket, you don't really want to watch movies or television shows about it. Or even when you feel as if something's vaguely wrong, that perhaps things will get better eventually, but things aren't so great right now.

I've seen most of the Pixar movies. I think "Monsters, Inc." is my favorite, with "Finding Nemo" a close second. I also have, on my shelf of movies, "Babe, the Sheep Pig," "Cats Don't Dance," a box set of the Animaniacs...and I openly admit to enjoying many cartoons. I also like musicals and the silly old comic movies.

What these things have in common is that they tend to have happy endings. Or that some problem is solved in the end. ("Monsters, Inc.," I think, has a fairly brilliant "Here's a big problem that could have implications for our society of monsters" followed by a "Oh. Here's the solution, and it's really quite simple and now everyone is happy" ending.)

And I do think most people feel a certain relief in that. Yes, we're supposed to put away childish things when we cease to be children - but I think we continue to have that need to be reassured that everything is going to turn out OK. And I think a lot of the "happy" movies like that carry that message.

I've noticed that I'm particularly susceptible to getting caught up in misery. The few bits and pieces of that show "The Colony" (about a post-human-disaster group of individuals trying to survive with no phone, no lights, and no motor car* in a warehouse somewhere) really affected me and made me essentially decide that if society was coming to an end, I'd rather offer myself up as a human shield or something than live out whatever years that remained dreaming of a time when there was climate control and t.p. and antibiotics and clean clothes.

Even though it was a stupid show. Even though the people involved knew on some level they'd be going back to "real life" after the cameras were packed away. Even though I knew that a lot of the interpersonal drama (which is what made me twitch and be sad and ultimately switch the television off) was faked up and "enhanced" for television.

If I'm going to see unreality, I'd rather see it as a happier-than-normal unreality, rather than as unhappier-than-normal.

And I periodically have to stop watching the news for several days to a week, because I get so discombobulated by man's capacity for cruelty to his fellow man.

For that matter, some of the comedies that have been on in the past few years, I just couldn't get into, because the humor was based on other people being uncomfortable or too unhappy. I never liked those shows much where someone got pranked, badly, and then had to stand around and look sheepish while the host or whoever pranked them laughed about it.

But I have to admit it's kind of a relief to realize that I'm not the only one who would rather sit around and watch stuff like "Adventure Time!" and my Animaniacs dvds, and who prefers movies that, while they may be aimed at kids, tend to end happily.

(I think Madeline L'Engle once commented that she didn't like anti-heroes, and she didn't like movies/books/whatever that had anti-heroes, or were generally pessimistic in outcome. And she felt that children - her primary audience - felt that way too).

(*Gilligan's Island would probably be a tragedy in real life - probably like Lord of the Flies but with adults - but it's a comedy in the world of vintage TV. Sometimes I admit I'd rather live in that world than in the real one.)