And another amigurumi

I love making these things. Never mind that they don't really have a practical purpose, they're fun and they make me smile and they are almost-instant gratification because they work up so fast.

I am calling this the Not-so-Big, Not-so-Bad Wolf. The pattern is from Reneegurumi - she has some free patterns on her site and some for sale, this is one I purchased a while back. It's a fairly detailed pattern though the assembly instructions were maybe a little less clear than the crocheting instructions. (At any rate - I assembled my wolf in a different "position" than the pattern showed - on the pattern, the wolf was leaning back onto his hands, and had one leg cocked over the other. I couldn't get that to look good so I went with a "neutral" position)



I'm pretty fond of the result. As I said earlier, even as a child I suspected the "big bad" wolves in the fairy tales were getting a somewhat bad rap (perhaps early ecological understanding, perhaps influenced by my mother?) (Though then again, I never lived in the Russian or German forests of the 1700s...) Also, I remember a cartoon - one of those one-off ones that was based, I think, on a book - called something like "The Big Good Wolf" (I am not sure of the exact title, but I remember it was shown on The Great Space Coaster - anyone remember that show? - and that the wolf was named Cuthbert.*)



However, I'm calling my wolf Burt, because it seems to suit him, and it's also a little bit of a pun.

The original pattern doesn't really specify the yarn weight, but I'm thinking it was a fingering weight (it referred to the yarn as "4 ply" which is sometimes Brit-speak for "fingering weight" and also the size of the crochet hooks was small enough to suggest this. And the wolf's vest was to be made of embroidery floss.) I used a worsted weight - just inexpensive old Vanna's Choice (yes, THAT Vanna), which is actually pretty nice for making amigurumi out of. And the vest is a tiny bit of a sportweight sockyarn that I had actually left behind at my parents' house a couple years earlier when I finished a project I was making of it.

I'm particularly pleased with the eyes I used - I didn't bring my "bag of eyes" with me on this trip but I had a few pairs in my knitting-needle box, and those bright green cat's eyes turned out to be just right. The eyes on my wolf are larger than on the one pictured on the pattern, but again, I think that gives more of a benign appearance...I really can't think of this wolf as being "big" or "bad."

*(Edited to add: it was called "So nice to have a wolf around the house" and you can find it on YouTube. (It was originally a book by James Marshall, but I know it best in the video version). part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. I'm pretty sure the narrator/voice guy was the same person who did the "Teeny Little Super Guy" segments on Sesame Street.)


Also, a bonus photo. I got the first small harvest of beans from my garden today! I don't know how many more I will get (beyond the ones that have set and begun developing; it's hot here now and it looks like the flowers are mostly withering. Oh well. The packet of seeds was cheap enough even if I only get a few meals out of it.



They're fairly small thin beans - the colander I have them in is about 6" across. (And that colander is one of the most useful small kitchen tools I've ever bought - I use it for draining the small amounts of pasta I cook, and for washing salad, and for draining canned beans, and for rinsing off vegetables and things like berries. Because it's so small I can keep it up with my salad bowls so it's easily accessible.)

I like beans that small; usually the grocery store and even farmer's market fresh beans are picked at too mature a stage for me. (These are a stringless variety - I grew up eating the "stringless" beans, and also picked small. It was a disconcerting experience the first time I was eating string beans and found one that the cook didn't get fully de-stringed. I think I was at a church dinner so it was compounded by the fact that it was difficult to gracefully and politely get the string out of my mouth and onto the plate (And no, swallowing it was out of the question. I would have gagged, which would have been more uncouth)

When they're this small and fresh, usually all I do is briefly boil or steam them, and then put a tiny bit of butter and a tiny bit of lemon juice on them at the table. I think I'll have these with another bison burger patty (I found ground bison at the grocery and wanted to try it - it tastes good, better than hamburger, but it does get a bit dry. I think this go-round I'll try soaking some breadcrumbs in milk and mixing them with the meat before I cook it.)

Well, darn it

They upgraded my campus computer (OH HAI WE UPGRADED UR RAM) while I was gone, all my passwords are lost, and now, here on campus, Flickr is disavowing any knowledge of my existence. (And when I try my e-mail address to re-find my account, they claim it doesn't exist. I must have done it under some other account. But I'm leery of messing with it too much, because I don't want to lose access at home).

So the next post with photos will probably come later on today.

I'm actually a little hamstrung in what I can do up here today; in the upgrade my Adobe tools got lost and I can't open .pdf files from the article-search services. Which is an annoyance. I have a call in to computer services, but they're scrambling to upgrade labs before classes start so I don't expect to have it fixed soon. (Apparently you now need to be an "administrator" on the computer system to download programs. I understand why - they've had some bad, bad issues with people doing illegal or virus-filled downloads in the labs, but still...)

I also can't use Pandora because Flash is borked. (I told them, "Yeeeah...I need the Flash player for some of the animations I use in teaching. Which is true, but I primarily use it these days for Pandora. I don't know the "official" campus policy on whether that kind of use of bandwidth is OK or not. I don't watch streaming video in my office or do a whole lot that would seem to suck a lot of bandwidth, but I'm deciding this is one of those "better to ask forgiveness if necessary than to ask permission" things)

Project parade begins

I'm going to start by showing the last project I finished over break. I started these, I think it was, on the 25th. I finished them with just a few moments before I had to leave for the train on the 27th.

I think of them now as my "Woman vs. Wool Challenge" mitts, because during part of the time I was working on them, I was watching "Man Vs. Food" on Travel Channel. (I admit it: it's one of my total-guilty-pleasure television shows. Though I will say I enjoy the interesting regional restaurants more than the "challenges;" as one of my friends says: "He sweats when he's eating that massive an amount of food; that can't be right." But I still enjoy the show.)

These are the Genmaicha Mitts. The pattern is available for sale on Ravelry. It's a pretty clear and easy-to-follow pattern, though, for those who are chart-averse, you should know that the cable pattern is totally charted and not written out line-by-line. (I actually prefer working from charts, so that was not an issue for me). This is actually the second go-round on these; the first time I was using yarn that was sold to me as a fingering weight and as I began to knit it up I realized it was more like a dk weight - I tried dropping down to size 0 needles and nearly got gauge but the fabric was so thick and the knitting was so tight it was unpleasant to work on, so I ripped those out (they will become a different pair of mitts in the future) and took out some green sock yarn that I had in my stash, and decided I'd rather have mitts of it than socks of it.



The yarn is Simply Sock Yarns' "house" brand yarn, the color is called "wheatgrass." It's a really good basic sock yarn - easy to work with, and last I checked, it came in a bunch of colors, so it would be good for either making a very specific color of socks, or for doing colorwork projects.

The pattern was easy to work...as I said, it's all charted out and it makes sense. And the cables look really wonderful. Cables are not that hard to do but they come out looking far more complex than the work it takes to make them (which is why I like doing cabled things). The cabled rib also serves to "take up" the fabric a little, so the mitts stretch to fit. (Like many knitted items, they look better on the appropriate body part than they do "empty"):



Of course, right now, it's far too warm to think of wearing mitts (though a couple of days up in Illinois, I might have welcomed having these done). But they'll be nice when the cool weather comes back.

Home, sweet home

I'm back.

Like a lot of you, I was horrified this past week by the severe weather throughout the U.S. (As far as I know, all of the people I am related to/know/have had contact with in the affected areas are OK). I really hope this is an end to tornadoes - at least, big damaging tornadoes, because I suppose we'll never really get an end to tornadoes in the spring - for a while. We had some severe storms up where my parents lived - being awakened by what sounds like lightning striking an electrical transformer at 4 am isn't fun - but no tornadoes right near us.

I did get a fair amount of knitting done; pictures to come later.

No yarn buying, though - apparently the yarn shop in my parents' town closed up. I say "apparently" because there was no notice of the closing anywhere, the last time my mother had driven by it it was open, but when we went, it was all empty and gone. (And the phone was disconnected, so I'd think if they had merely moved there'd be some message.) I have to admit that for a day or two that awoke a shaky impulse in me that said "Must buy all the yarn you would possibly need for the rest of your life; maybe the economy really is tanking so badly that all the fun things like yarn shops and quilt shops will go away soon." Then I decided that things like Brown Sheep (a U.S. based, family owned yarn company) have been around for ages (Brown Sheep since 1910), and that there were shops and manufacturers that weathered even bigger problems than an economic downturn in a time when lots of people are knitting and knitting is popular. (Yes, I know - the other direction that impulse could go would me "Must learn to spin my own yarn" but I have a feeling that that would eventually lead to "Must buy land outside of town so I can raise my own sheep" and that would go nowhere good.)

But still, it was kind of sad. So I guess I'm back to mostly online or catalog buying. Or planning very carefully when I go places for meetings and demanding of whoever I am traveling with that time be made to visit any yarn shop in the vicinity.

I had my annual checkup while I was up there - as I said, maybe in the post that got eaten during the Blogger outage, I have issues with doctors and when I find one that's willing to accept that I'm smart enough to know that I'm heavy and don't need an annual shaming lecture about it, I stick with them, even if they're so far out of my "network" that I pay for the visit out of my own pocket.

I will say my weight was down this year. A tiny, infinitesimal bit, but the fact that (a) I wasn't actively dieting this past year, (b) I hadn't been very active these past couple weeks thanks to the bursitis in my hip, and (c) I'm a woman over 40, who even at younger ages had a hard time dropping weight, I'll take it.

(The verdict: "You're very healthy, I'll see you next year." So OK, maybe I'm bigger that I "should" be, but apparently at this point it is not having adverse effects. And I wonder if a certain amount of that "heavy" is actually more muscle development; when I went in for the annual screening-of-the-breasts, the radiological technician commented that I had well-developed pectoral muscles for a woman. Heh. "Lady pecs," like they say on "Regular Show." (But they mean something else, and I think "lady pecs" is one of the funnier euphemisms for breasts that I've heard.))

I will say I am going to try to get more active this summer, and maybe continue to slowly shift my diet to a higher-protein one (not crazy, not to the point of cutting out bread or cereal or anything, but I think the near-vegetarian diet I was on for years maybe wasn't as good for me as I thought it was), and maybe next year I'll have dropped a little more. (I have been trying to eat higher-protein lunches, after realizing that I didn't get crazy-hungry at 3 or 4 pm when I got home).

One thing I am going to do is make my own "sausage." In scare quotes because it's not really real sausage - it's just low-fat ground chicken or turkey with some kind of spice added, formed into patties and frozen, so I can then fry one or two up quickly in the morning on days when I know I have an active morning planned. My mom does something like this for my dad - with a low salt spice mix because he's on a low salt diet, and commercial sausage is awfully salty - and I tried some of it and found it good - actually, better to my liking in the morning than "real" sausage, because "real" sausage is too fatty for me that early in the day and I get indigestion from it. But the turkey or chicken sausage worked fine, so that's going to be something I try now.

I also want to bake more bread this summer, with (hopefully) more free time because of not teaching. I made soft pretzels just for fun when I was up visiting my parents and realized that I forget how much fun it is for me to make bread from scratch. (And the pretzel recipe turned out better than any I've tried before; it's a modification of an Alton Brown recipe and you do boil the pretzels in a "brine" of water and baking soda before baking them - and amazingly, they get that shiny outer coat, and that dense chewy interior, like commercial soft pretzels have.)

It's going to be strange this coming week to ONLY be gearing up for research, and not gearing up for summer research AND teaching. Sort of nice, actually, I think.

And the bursitis is mostly better. I think part of it was an issue of time, part of it was not stressing it by not doing vigorous exercise for a while, but also, I took the recommendation of one of my parents' neighbors (a retired trainer for the women's teams at one of the colleges in their town) to take a very low dose of an anti-inflammatory in the morning and at night - and to keep that up for a month. (It stands to reason that that should work; after all, bursitis is an inflammation.) I did do some walking while I was up there over break and that seemed to help as well.

The flip side

...which is where I will catch you all.

(I often feel tempted, before leaving on a break, to try to paraphrase the old line from The Blues Brothers about "a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses..." "Hit it!")

Anyway. I do have a nearly full tank of gas, half a duffle bag of yarn, it's sunny, and I'm getting ready to hit the road.

Dear old Poirot

I finished reading "Evil Under the Sun" last night. (I pushed to finish it - I don't like taking books where I have less than 30 pages left to read with me on vacation).

I enjoyed this one. Yes, it had some pretty large and smelly red herrings in the plot, and sometimes Christie doesn't exactly play fair - by Golden Age Mystery standards - by having the police or Poirot be privy to information not revealed to the reader.

But, to be honest? I largely read the series-mysteries for the fun of reading about the detective character. I even sometimes forget enough plot details that I can re-read the book and not remember who did it.

Most of the detectives I read about, and enjoy, are from the so-called Golden Age - Inspector Alleyn (though I've run through most of the novels in that series), Albert Campion, Poirot. And on the American side, Nero Wolfe. (I also enjoy Inspector Brunetti - a modern series set in Venice - but those are very different). And Maigret, though those are more police-procedurals than really character-driven stories, I think...it's harder to know the sort of man Maigret is than it is to know the sort of man, say, Nero Wolfe is.

I admit I am not as big a fan of Christie's writing as I am of Ngaio Marsh's (Alleyn's author). I do not think - and for some mystery fans, this is heresy - she was as good a writer as some others. (And often her portrayals of people under the age of 20 or so seem rather stilted and unrealistic).

But I do love Hercule Poirot. (And of course, I also love the portrayal that David Suchet has given him over the years. Suchet makes SUCH a perfect Poirot.)

This novel had a couple of wonderful lines from Poirot. It is set at a seaside retreat in Britain, where Poirot has gone for vacation. He meets up with someone he knows a bit as she lives nearby and he has heard of her work - Miss Rosamund Darnley, a/k/a Rose Mond (her dressmaker's business).

Poirot seems quite fond of Miss Darnley, which makes me smile, because I don't remember quite this level of appreciation of a female from any of the other novels about him.

Miss Darnley is - I am not sure how old she is but one gets the impression she is well past the "expiration date" where a young woman in those days should have been married. And she is aware that the world looks differently upon unmarried women, no matter what other qualities they may have:

"Yes, I'm really the perfect type of successful woman! I enjoy the artistic satisfacion of the successful creative artist (I really do like designing clothes) and the financial satisfaction of the successful business woman. I'm very well off, I've got a good figure, a passable face, and a not too malicious tongue." She paused. Her smile widened. "Of course - I haven't got a husband! I've failed there, haven't I, M. Poirot?"

(I will pause to observe that I am glad I live in different times from Miss Darnley. Though perhaps not so different - having met the occasional person who claimed to "pity" me because I did not have a husband, and off whom I got the distinct sense that they DID feel I had "failed," in some way, in life.)

But Poirot, dear sweet Poirot, has a wonderful response:

"Mademoiselle, if you are not married, it is because none of my sex has been sufficiently eloquent. It is from choice, not necessity, that you remain single."

(My standard response to queries regarding my single state - which I consider awfully personal questions, but whatever, is to simply state the truth: "I have not met the right man." By that, I mean, I have not met the man who has successfully convinced me that life living with him in the same household is preferable to continuing my life lived by myself. Granted, I have not dated much in my life, but I do tend to believe there are worse things in life than remaining alone.)

Later on, after Miss Darnley again comments bitterly on people seeing her as an old maid, Poirot gallantly responds:

"To marry and have children,, that is the common lot of women. Only one woman in a hundred- more, in a thousand - can make for herself a name and a position as you have done."

.

(And yet, the silly - she still tries to argue him out of that! I'd hope that I'd be more prone to quietly smile and think, "Yes, perhaps the little Belgian is correct.")

Later, to another woman (who turns out not to be what she seems), he remarks, "To count - to really and truly count - a woman must have goodness or brains." (As opposed to "it").

(And yes, yes, I realize this is Christie putting words in an invented character's mouth. But I still love to imagine them coming from Poirot, to imagine that this life-long detective feels that way about women.)

Later on, he is described during an observation of the rooms (following the murder) as staying a moment in Miss Darnley's room, "linger[ing] for a moment in the sheer pleasure of the owner's personality."

Ah, could M. Poirot have a bit of a crush? I find that both wonderfully touching and amusing. (Later on, when speaking to a man she fancies but may suspect, Miss Darnley kind of throws Poirot under the bus, so to speak, by remarking that he is "awfully old" and implying, with the term "ga-ga," that he is not in his soundest mind. I liked her considerably less after that.)

(Sometimes I wonder if part of my fondness for characters like Poirot is that they are fundamentally loners - not the sad, creepy type of loner that finishes by having people say about him, "I would never have guessed...he just kept to himself and was very quiet" - but the loner who has chosen that state, either to pursue a higher calling, or be an artist, or observe human nature. In some ways I am a loner - I don't have a large number of extremely close friends, I am not bothered by going and doing things by myself, like shopping, that society tells me I "should" have a pack of female friends for. In fact, I'm actively annoyed the times when I happen to stop in a restaurant to grab a quick lunch and have the person seating people look at me and go "Only one?" with that note of pity and surprise, as if they cannot believe a woman would choose to eat at a restaurant alone.

I wouldn't necessarily say I've chosen a higher calling - though I wonder at my colleagues who have small children at home, how they manage - it must be very hard to have a family and teach college full time (doubly so if your spouse also teaches). But I do like Poirot, and Nero Wolfe (who, though he does have Archie around, and Fritz, and even Sourpuss Horstmann, is somewhat of a loner). Perhaps it's because I see a kindred spirit in them, someone who has arranged their lives pretty much to suit themselves, and do not want any pity from meddlers who think they would be better off married off.)

Mind the edge

You know how some canned foods with a pull-top lid have a warning on that lid about it being sharp?

Believe them.

I have a potluck today and was making a batch of Sweet Potatoes Recife. I was trying to carefully drain the crushed pineapple (Carefully-so-I-didn't-lose-any-of-it, not, as it turns out, carefully-to-protect-my-hands) and somehow got my right pinky finger in the way of the edge of the lid at the same moment the microwave beeped, startling me.

I will remark I am always surprised at the capacity a "clean" cut has for bleeding. I grabbed paper towels and wrapped it and applied pressure (Several years ago, I cut my thumb on a paper-cutter - similar type of cut, but scarier, because I thought at first I might have decapitated the thumb). Now I've got the largest adhesive bandage I had on it. It makes typing difficult but at least it does not seem to be bleeding any more.

I presume because it was a clean cut, I put pressure on it right away, and it bled profusely (after all, that cleans the cut), that all I will need to do is keep it bandaged until it begins to heal.

The upside? I'm noticing the bursitis pain (which got worse after spending 2 1/2 hours sitting on one of those molded plastic chairs at graduation yesterday) less.

(The speaker at graduation was very good. He is the mayor of Addison, an immigrant from (I think?) Taiwan (I forget exactly where, I think it was Taiwan). He seems like a very hardworking guy and the bulk of his speech was devoted to the idea that you can get much of what you want in this life, if you set goals and figure out how to achieve those goals. And he also spoke of the importance of being kind, of taking other people into account - which you rarely hear graduation speakers say, and I thought that was a good thing. If I were ever called on to speak at a graduation, part of my comments would be about the idea of being kind, of remembering that the universe does not revolve around YOU.)

He also remarked that if you do something you enjoy, you will always be striving to do it better, or do "more." I thought that was an interesting variant of the "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" maxim (Which really isn't that true, I think: I love doing fieldwork and I generally love teaching, but there are days when it still feels like WORK.) I like his concept better - that if you hold what you do for a living in esteem, you will value it and want to be as good at it as possible.

And I think that could be taken even farther: the idea of honoring and respecting your work, whatever it may be, by doing a good job at it. (And I am reminded yet again of something I read way back in my doll-collecting days, about a convent that elaborately costumed a Mary as The Queen Of Heaven figure - they made incredibly detailed, perfectly hemmed undergarments for the figure, even though no one in the church would ever see them. They did it because, as I think one of the nuns was quoted as saying, "We will know they are there, and God will know they are there.")

***

I still can't believe I'm done for the summer now. Other than the various church-duties today and packing - I have no responsibilities, really, for the next two weeks.

I have a couple more sets of yarn to wind off. I decided to rip back the Genmachai Mitts I started last break - the yarn I had, while sold to me as fingering weight, is NOT - it's closer to a dk (I kept wondering when I wound it off, I should have gone with my instincts). And I couldn't get gauge, except by going down to size 0 needles, which made for annoying knitting plus a very stiff fabric. I do, however, have a green-tea-colored sockyarn that I didn't really have a sock pattern in mind for, so it will become those mitts, and the yarn that I was using, I think, will become the Aegean mitts out of a back issue of KnitScene. (Those mitts call for a sport/dk yarn.)

Speaking of work, though: One of the things I do want to do over break is hit the university library up in Illinois and see if they have any lab-exercise books for ecology or related classes. One of my plans for this summer, when I have some time, is to revamp the ecology labs, discard a few that don't work as well, maybe try to restructure a couple that do to make them better. And maybe work in more "animal" labs, although most of our conservation students tend to get more "animal" than "plant" courses, and as a person interested in plants, I tend to be better at thinking up good "plant" labs.

Thoughts on outages

It was instructive to see people's responses (and continuing responses) to the Blogger outage.

Now, granted, my attitude is probably different in part from the standpoint that I do this as a hobby - for me, the blog is part lecture podium, part soapbox, part salon, and part pressure valve. I don't make any money off this and I'm happy that it's that way. (I will say, once in a while, I'll get an Amazon package sent by a reader, and I appreciate that very much, though I certainly do not expect it).

So maybe I'd feel differently if it were part of my business.

(I suppose it's also possible part of the extreme reactions were fear of "What if Blogger is gone forever?" I admit I considered that at first, but then decided, "Naaah, they're a HUGE company, they're part of the Google Empire, and it would be a giant PR black eye if they couldn't fix it." So I decided to just sit tight and wait.)

But I found it really...interesting? (I guess, I can't think of a better word) to see the OUTRAGE!!11!!!! that other people were expressing over Blogger being down.

Well, for one thing, it's a free service. (And even paid services can tank badly. My campus uses BlackBoard, which I understand is quite expensive, as course-management software, and there have been times where BlackBoard has tanked quite spectacularly. And Flickr- which can be free, but which I pay for more storage on, can go down). That's why I don't fully trust "the cloud" - unless I have a digital, or, better yet, print copy that is on actual storage medium that I can hold in my hand, I figure the file can be lost through no fault at all of my own.

(Yes. I still keep print copies of things that are vitally important to me. And I have multiple backups of things like teaching stuff - which is why I wasn't more freaked about the possibly-baked-hard-drive on my office computer. I did NOT have all the AAUW minutes backed up, but in my mind, those were less important (and any way, as it turned out, the president had an entire file of them. As I expected she would).)

And for another thing...well, it's blogging. Yes, I know, I love blogging and would really miss it (and would probably scramble to find some other way of hosting the blog and getting software for its mechanics) if Blogger went away. And I love reading blogs. But it's not the same thing as being able to get medicine. Or food. Or electricity. Or whatever.

As I said - it's not part of my business, I don't earn money off it. I tried to think of a comparable situation with teaching - if I had a teaching blog and needed to transmit something before the final exam, well, I'd probably have e-mail addresses of most, if not all of the students. Or I could send out e-mails to the ones whose addresses I knew and asked them to PLEASE try to get in touch with their peers if at all possible. Or just eliminate the last assignment from grading, if that was what got lost. I mean, if you think a little, you can come up with an acceptable solution to most problems. Or you just shrug and punt, because stuff has tanked.

(I guess I really have learned to be more flexible, over time. To roll with the punches better.)

I know, some people probably sell stuff over their blogs...but there are other things that can cause brick-and-mortar businesses to have to shut down, or otherwise adversely affect them. (I am thinking of the closure of part of First Street here for several weeks while they worked on an intersection - it was very hard, if not impossible, to get to businesses on that stretch).

But all that aside, I was blown away by the DEMANDS - the "why won't you TELL ME what is wrong and when you're going to fix it?!?!?!" Many, many messages to that regard. Also many messages on how terrible blogger was for this downtime. (Uh, yeah. Do they use Twitter? That service is lousy with downtime, it seems.)

And I find myself puzzled by that - after all, Blogger had posted some information (maybe not as much as I'd have liked, but whatever) and they had an announcement saying essentially, "We know there is a problem, we are working on it." It was almost as if the individuals writing the posts were personally offended that Blogger was down, and it was as if they felt it had been done specifically to inconvenience them.

And I don't know, my main reaction was "people need to get a GRIP." For one thing, the information that was going to be forthcoming was already out there, most non-programmers probably wouldn't get a technical explanation of what was wrong or what was being done, and anyway, the team doesn't have time to answer every single person's concerns individually.

I'm really not saying this to be an apologist for the system - there were things that could have been handled more intelligently (like: not having your status blog on the same system that was crashing. And also maybe trying to give some kind of estimated ETA, even if you overestimate it a little). But it just blows my mind how entitled and demanding some people can be.

I wonder, if perhaps, this is maybe a bit of a generational thing. I remember a librarian I know told me about Gen X vs. some Gen Y in the library - Gen X kids would come in and say to the librarian, "I need to look up something in the encyclopedia, please tell me where they are?" and she would point to them, and the person would go after what they needed. But she said some of the younger students she'd get coming in, they'd not just ask where the encyclopedias were, they'd also want to know which volume to look in, and how many pages the article was, and wasn't there a SIMPLER source they could use? I realize that's stereotyping and ageist but she seemed to think that the up and coming generations were more dependent and demanding than the older ones were.

Because I don't know... a lot of my colleagues, a lot of the people on Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks, talk about how some of the students they have (usually, but not exclusively, in the 18-22 age cohort) ask for or even expect things that the faculty member would never have even considered asking for as a student. (One of the big things that gets me? The student coming in wanting extra credit after the semester is over. I explain that I cannot ethically offer extra credit to one person and not the whole class (even if I WANTED to...I have a "no extra credit, don't expect it" line in my syllabi). And occasionally, the person will say to me, after my explanation, "Oh, but I won't TELL anyone if you do it for just me."

Um. So not the point. Allow me to define the word "ethical" to you.

But anyway. I'm glad Blogger is back and even if my Thursday post is gone forever, that's okay.

WHOA IT'S BACK!

Blogger was gone...inaccessible...since Wednesday afternoon or so. (I think if you commented between then and now, sadly, your comment is lost to the ether. As is, apparently, my post about using a belly-dance exercise show as a way of trying to work through what I think now MUST be bursitis in my hip. Oh well.)

It was weird being unable to blog. I found myself fretting that people might worry about me; I know I occasionally get "are you OK" e-mails or comments when I don't post for more than a day or two.

At any rate...the semester is done, my grades are (almost, pending one last student getting their directed readings paper to me) in. I'm cleaning house today in preparation for leaving on break. (I always like to leave a clean house, for various reasons).

I'm kind of relieved the semester is over. I'm ready for a break, ready to do something different.

Oh, and they managed to at least partially restore my office computer. It was kind of fidgety and crashy yesterday - it shut itself down twice, and then went through a scandisk procedure, and then seemed OK - and Firefox was very crashy and the Flash plugin would not work (No, I did NOT "upgrade" to Firefox 4.0.1. I've heard bad things about it). I'm hoping I'm scheduled for a new computer in the fall, I think it's time for me to get a new one, and they can just migrate all my files and stuff over to it.

So, as I said, today I'm cleaning house and thinking about packing and contemplating winding off yarn for over-the-break projects. I will definitely take the two socks-in-progress with me, and the Marple shawl. And I want to do some amigurumi over break - I have the partly-done Amineko (which I may work on before break, but only up to the point of needing stuffing - it's easier to carry it unstuffed). And I'm taking yarn and patterns for the Tuzki and for another critter that I bought a pattern for - it's a Reneegurumi pattern called "The Big Bad Wolf" (except he is not that big, nor does he look that bad. Even as a child I suspected the Big Bad Wolf got a bad rap in the fairy tales, that he was just a predator trying to make a living in the world...)

I'm also thinking about winding off yarn for two pairs of socks from van der Linden's "Around the World in Knitted Socks" book - I have some Smooshy in a color called "Plum Paisley," which is a deep purple with greenish overtones here and there - I want to use that for the "Scent of Lavender" lace socks in there. And I think my Bugga! in the color Bog Fritillary (which is a lovely light brown - sort of a golden brown) will become the Tea Time socks (which are sort of Aran-patterned.)

Maybe it's funny but I am most interested by the socks representing cultures that ancestors of mine came from - I also like the Alpenglow (German) socks in there. And the Herringbone from Kiel (also German, and it's a colorwork sock - normally I don't like doing colorwork). I also like the Irish socks but I would TOTALLY do them in different colors - these are colorwork socks with a shamrock and diamond design, but they are in kelly green and hot pink which is just overpowering to my eyes. I could see a soft tan and green, or a cream and green. Or even a dark color background with cream for the designs.

I also really like the argyle-style Scots socks, though that's partly (I think) because the colors are nice and crisp - a charcoal for the main part of the sock, with they argyle worked in a bright green with cream accents.

I also like the Brussels Lace socks (apparently I have a tiny bit of Walloon ancestry), but I'd leave off the beads (I do not like knitting with beads) and I'd rewrite the heel to a flapped heel rather than the hourglass heel they do.

It'll be nice to just have some time to work on knitting and relax without thinking about "what do I need to teach tomorrow."

Grading is done

I just graded the last exam paper of the spring. (Tomorrow: tally up the grades. If the computer dude was able to resurrect my hard drive, I will be doing that on my office computer; he came in just as I was leaving to go to a funeral (an older member of my church died and I know her family well))

I'm glad to be done. This was a long semester.

I spent most of the afternoon grading seated on my yoga ball with a lap desk. It seemed to cause less of a hip ache than the typical desk chair I use does - I don't know if that's because my hip is bent at a less extreme angle, or it's more cushioned, or it's the constant posture-adjustments necessary to keep the ball from rolling away.

I also got a lot done on the Miss Marple shawl while invigilating the exams. I admit, it probably looked a bit foolish or obsessed as all the rooms were humid and one of them was rather warm, but I CAN'T spend two hours walking around the classroom doing nothing.

I'm telling myself the nearly four hours on my feet today invigilating counts as exercise. I'm going to try gently starting back up tomorrow (not trying to do 6.5 miles in an hour as I had been doing - either I will do less time or will go at a slower pace) and see what happens.

I get sort of low-grade grouchy when I'm hurting. I normally never have much in the way of pain or mobility issues so it both bothers and annoys me when I have them, and also just hurting makes me crabby. Fortunately I recognize that I'm feeling that way and can force myself to be cheerful to people.

Now I have to figure out some kind of dinner. I didn't eat much lunch; I was busy and also just didn't get very hungry at lunchtime, but I can feel it now.

Hmmm. Muscle stuff

Or that's what I assume.

Way back in April (April 16), I participated in the city-wide trash-off day. The next day, and the day after, my right hip was very sore. I figured it was a pulled muscle, and waited for it to get better.

Then it briefly got better, I thought "maybe it was just a muscle cramp," and went back to regular activity. Then it got worse again.

It's still not really "better."

I think I may keep re-stressing it. For one thing, I have a bad tendency, when I'm at home, to slouch and "sit the wrong way" in my big chair (it's wide enough that I can sit with my legs tucked up under me, or sit "sideways" - with my back against one arm of the chair and my legs hanging over the other one). It's also, I'm discovering, not the best-made chair ever, and it's showing its ten years of wear (the upholstery is wearing thin in spots, and also, it feels like the support in the back of the chair is not what it once was).

Then, for a while, I thought the hip stuff was maybe arthritis. It SEEMED to get better with exercise, at least for a while, and then got worse overnight.

(Is there anything worse than having pain when you're trying to sleep? Especially pain where you can find NO sleep position that remains comfortable and have to wake up and move every couple hours)

But, I kept dutifully exercising, because, as I said, I thought maybe it was arthritis. And this is a whole body-issue thing for me: "It's your fault, in part, if you have arthritis now" I thought "You have been too big since you were a teenager." And of course, the fact that my annual checkup is coming very soon doesn't help. (Though at this point, there's little I could do, short of fasting, to lose any weight).

I didn't exercise yesterday because it was super-humid first thing in the morning and I just couldn't face doing it. And then as the day wore on, I got too busy to pick it back up. (I was on my feet for a couple hours invigilating an exam)

And then, last night - my back hurt less. I was actually able to sleep comfortably for more than a couple hours at a time. And it's noticeably better when I got up this morning. (Earlier, the muscle almost felt - "Burnt" is the only adjective that comes to mind, it felt like when you get a bad cooking burn or steam burn on your knuckle, only in the muscle - tight, stiff, and, like I said, "burnt.")

So I decided to go another day without working out and see what happens. And again, body issues - part of my brain is screaming at me for not working out, but another part is screaming back that I'm hurt, that if I were sick and throwing up or if I had had to (say) have stitches on a cut on my leg, I'd not be exercising.

So I don't know. (And no, I haven't gone to a doctor. The last time I went to a GP down here for a totally weight-unrelated issue, they asked me if I wanted them to prescribe me a weight-loss drug. I was REALLY offended, and also kind of hurt - do I REALLY look that fat? Then I learned a lot of the general-practice docs here apparently have sidelines in "bariatrics," so they have a vested interest in getting patients in for that kind of maintenance. But still. Makes me not want to go back to a doctor. I go to an allergist here who is pretty sane about it, but most of my other doctors are actually the ones I saw back up in Illinois. Even though I have to pay for the check-ups myself instead of my insurance paying for them. Because I don't want to have to bolster my damn self-esteem after every checkup. And if I ever DO see another doctor down here? It will DEFINITELY NOT be one who lists "bariatrics" among their specialties. I have a hard enough time coming to terms with my body without someone I perceive as an "authority" telling me it's horribly, horribly flawed. I mean, (cussword), I work out an HOUR A FREAKING DAY four days a week. And I eat what I think I "should" eat rather than what I "want" to eat. And I can walk long distances without tiring and lift heavy things and do hard fieldwork and generally manage...and yet, I feel like I have people telling me there's something terribly wrong with my body, and sort of with the undercurrent of WHY AREN'T YOU DISABLED ALREADY BY ALL YOUR GROSS FAT)

(and THIS. This is why heavy people often won't go to the doctor. Dammit, we KNOW we're fat. We KNOW we weigh more than we "should." We don't need to be shamed. If it were easy to lose weight - if it really were 100% a matter of willpower, we'd have done it long ago. Willpower. Heh. If I'm working out an hour a day most days a week, and finding time to practice piano for 50 minutes to an hour, I don't really think there's anything wrong with my willpower.)

I did ask the campus nurse about it, her interpretation was that it was a pulled muscle. So I don't know. I thought pulled muscles got better faster than 3 1/2 weeks, but maybe, as I said, I keep on stressing it and it can't get better that way.

(Based on where the pain is, looking at a diagram of the hip muscles, it's possible that it's the piriformis. I know that dancers sometimes injure that muscle)

So I don't know. I hurt, it stinks, and it doubly stinks because I feel like I should be better already. And it makes me sad to think that the exercise I was doing to "stay healthy" may have been making the injury worse all along.

Can't be good.

Posting may be light in the coming days.

I came back to my office after an exam and my computer - which I had left on, the only program "open" was the campus e-mail client - everything on the screen was HUGE and the wrong color and there was some message about "shut down and restart NAOW!"

So I did. And got a blue screen telling me that because something was wrong, possibly in the BIOS, it would not open Windows. Also, the hard-drive light won't stay lit, which suggests to me the hard drive is failing.

Computer services said they'd "try" and clone the hard drive, hopefully things aren't so messed up that stuff is lost forever. (Most of my soil-invertebrate pictures, because of their size, are not backed up, and the stuff I was writing as a plan for the summer research I had not gotten around to backing up yet. We have an offsite "drive" for backups, but there's a fairly strict limit for what you can send to it.)

So I don't know. I really hope it isn't that the hard drive is totally gone - this is not that old of a computer. I will say that the Windows Updates had been hanging it up of late so I'm hoping that maybe that's what messed it up and the computer dudes can restore it. I don't know. I won't be happy if they can't. (At least all my exams are printed, so I'm not scrambling to re-write exams, and I can access the internet to submit grades and such from home).

German (not-so) Quickly

A couple weekends ago, bored late in the day Saturday, I happened to flip to one of those PBS travel programs. It was on Germany (Bavaria, specifically - they were in Rothenburg). I watched the show with some interest, and afterward, said to myself, "I should pull out that book on learning German I bought a couple of years back and try to re-teach myself some over the summer."

(Not that I ever PLAN to go to Germany. I think at this point the only way I'd ever set foot in Europe would be after a Grand Tour-style steamship trip. The thought of 12 hours or whatever it is on a plane makes me twitch)

The main reason I want to learn it, is like the old joke about climbing Everest: because it's there. And because I can. (And, I suppose, on some level, exercising the little grey cells is good for me. But that's secondary). And mainly, because learning stuff is fun.*

So I pulled the book out and started flipping through it again. I mainly look at it now while I'm eating - normally I read something during that time (a magazine, or a cookbook, or something. I know, the anti-multitasking, be-in-the-moment-ALWAYS people would hate that, and probably some of the healthists would hate it too, seeing as I'm not observing every lettuce leaf or bit of cracker that goes in my mouth...but)

So, I'm literally re-learning German in bite-sized pieces.

I'm not very far yet - I'm still hung up on the whole cases-of-nouns thing. In English, we don't have different definite articles depending on what role a word is playing in a sentences (and as far as I can remember, neither does French - though French also has genders for things that aren't alive, which is something that's still odd to me, as a primarily-Anglophone person. And why is a spoon feminine in French and masculine in German. I find that kind of lack-of-standardization mildly irritating, just as I find the tendency for different plants to go by the same common name in different parts of the country, or for one plant species to have several common names, irritating. [which may be partly why I remember the scientific names usually before I remember the common ones, when someone asks me, "what's this plant?"]).

Of course, German HAS to have that, because it has a more flexible word order than English. (It's perfectly normal, for example, to put the direct object at the start of a sentence in German. I think that would be fairly rare in standard English)

So, I'm slowly trying to memorize the der-die-das, der-die-die, des-(ummm....die?) articles, and reminding myself of what an accusative and what a dative case are. (I think one thing about learning a new language - your "home" language, you take all of the stuff for granted; I don't think about "I'm putting an indirect object here, and then comes the direct object" when I speak or write. But in German I have to stop and think when I'm looking at a sentence and figure out what each part is doing. (An example: "Den Wolf toten die Bauern" which LOOKS like Wolf is the subject but it is not; the Den tells you it is the direct object, so it is translated as "The farmers kill the wolf," and not the other way around. Of course, some sentences are fairly obvious: Das Brot isst das Kind (I can't do the double-S in German on my keyboard) would have to be "The child eats the bread" and not the other way 'round. Well, not in any NORMAL circumstances).

(And again, I sort of regret that we were never taught much sentence-diagramming in school. Or at least, I wasn't. I know I was in the "Gold" group or the "Superstars" or whatever they called the top reading or English groups - yes, this was back in the day when kids were still "tracked" in school - and so the teacher's assumption was "You already understand the mechanics of how this works so I'm not going to go into the detail." Now I kind of wish they had.)

I admit, I also kind of chuckle at the Rosetta Stone ads (though I might still consider buying their German package, as an adjunct to the books I'm working from) where they say "No tedious memorization or learning grammar" because it's actually the stuff that other people might find tedious that interests me - I want to know how it WORKS, even down to the last darn definite article.

Though I will admit to groaning a bit when I got to the next chapter and saw that adjectives also have to agree with the gender and (apparently) case of the noun. Wow, that's really different from English. (Also: "strong" versus "weak" endings on adjectives)


(*It makes me sad that there seem to be a lot of people who either don't believe this, or who don't find learning stuff fun. Being able to learn new stuff is satisfying and diverting and sometimes, even, as T.H. White said in one of his books, a cure for when you're sad)

Weekend at home

I think deciding to stay home and work on various projects - rather than running around, burning gas and spending money - was a good idea. I feel much more rested than I probably would otherwise.

And I got a bunch of stuff done. I started the second "Elegant Sock" and I also finished the first of the cable and leaf lace socks:



Like a lot of lace socks, it doesn't really come "alive" until you put it on. (It's kind of like blocking, in a way - a lace shawl looks like kind of a crumpled mess until you stretch it out in the blocking process. Well, lace socks get stretched on the foot, so it's almost like they're being blocked as you wear them).

I also devoted a lot of time to working on the Miss Marple shawl. I don't think I've shown a photo of it on here yet; it's kind of hard to photograph as it is so large.



I call it the Miss Marple shawl because it's from an article in Piecework - they reprinted an old Weldon's pattern (the pattern from the shawl) from 1930 with the suggestion that it would be the sort of thing Miss Marple would knit. I decided to use the Silk Garden sockweight out of my stash for it. I like how the striping of the yarn sort of intersects with the striping of plain stockinette and the eyelet bands on the shawl. (Its real name is something like "Bands of stockinette and open-work")

I'm just over half-done with it, and I just attached the third of four balls of yarn I had. (I may still be racing the end to see if I have enough yarn, but if I don't, I think I might have some other sockweight yarn that would work for the very last bit of the last point if not).

The yarn has a pleasant "earthiness" to it; it's kind of grabby on the needles and has a slightly crunchy feel. (And some bits of vegetation in it here and there. And I got a tiny blister last evening - which recovered overnight - from where the yarn rubbed).

Here's a close up:



I also have a small bit of relief; I had been watching the floods nervously wondering if my train trip in a little over a week would still go. (I joined one of the train-discussion boards online just to keep up with it; people were talking about how they'd get phone calls telling them the run was cancelled on certain days). Amtrak called me today for an unrelated reason - trackwork in Illinois means I'll be riding a bus from St. Louis to Bloomington (no biggie that; I did that at Christmas) and I asked the woman if she knew if the Texas Eagle was running or if it was cancelled for flooding. She said, "I THINK it's running...let me check." I heard the sound of computer keys clicking and then she said, "Yes, we started running it full way again yesterday."

So, hopefully that means the waters are going down for everyone in Missouri. (And hopefully the waters will go down for the folks in Memphis soon; I've seen that flooding on the news). But I'm relieved to know that (barring anything else bad happening), I will be sleeping in my compartment on the train instead of trying to sleep on a bus - or instead of trying to drive to Illinois. (I think I could do it, if I drove over 2 days, but I don't relish the thought of trying to navigate my way onto Route 55 in St. Louis.)

Happy Friday, everyone

And I am glad it's Friday. Though this was a pretty good week in a lot of ways.

Of course, there's the obvious - getting that "vote of confidence" from the campus. And it's the end of the semester - nearly time for a break. I'm looking forward to having a summer "off" (even though I plan on doing a lot of research, that's different from the hectic pace of summer teaching)

I restarted on soil organism surveying yesterday - I have all my little cups of preserved organisms to go through, to identify the organisms, to count them. I enjoy this kind of work - it's quiet and calm, and while it requires attention, it's not the nerve-wracking kind of attention that some labwork is. And there's the "treasure hunt" aspect, where you don't know what unusual things you might find (As yesterdays' photos showed, there were a few "new" organisms in this sample that I had not seen before).

I have decided to take Saturday as a stay-at-home-and-do-what-I-want-to day. Gas is too expensive right now for me to really want to drive down to McKinney, and besides, the traffic - and I don't really NEED anything (though I never really DO, when I go to McKinney). I have a couple of quilt tops planned, so the thought of going shopping for more fabric doesn't appeal until I've used up some of what I have.

I'm thinking I might watch some of the Poirot or Campion dvds I've been saving up, and either knit or work on the quilt top in the frame or do some embroidery and just stay home on the sofa and relax.

A few animalcules

I'm working through the spring sample of organisms - counting and identifying. A few new things this time.

This is a young grasshopper (grasshopper nymph). It was so big I could only photograph the head and mouthparts.

This isn't a great photo (it is very hard to take the microscope photos using a camera that works through the eyepiece - you have to totally reset the focus so if you "lose" the thing, it's a big rigamarole to find it again), but it's a psuedoscorpion.

This last one, I'm pretty sure is a pauropod. I know, in the photo it looks like a rolly-polly, but it doesn't have the gills underneath it, and the attachment of the "legs" (the fringey thing) is different, and the texture on the body is different - it's not plates that it can use to roll up, it's more like dimples.

More weird stuff

Want to read "Metamorphosis," but the idea of a giant cockroach squicks you out? it's been rewritten so Gregor changes into a kitten.

I don't know...I know a lot of people love these books (this is from the same line as Pride And Prejudice and Zombies...but I don't know.

Though I might read this one, because, kittens.

In the news

Wilson, Oklahoma, is Chuck Norris' hometown. They have it painted on the water tower there.

Well, earlier this week the Class of 2011 pranked the water tower. They hung a banner saying "Seniors 2011" over Norris' name.

People are talking about how "foolish" and "dangerous" the prank was - because someone could have fallen or gotten hurt. What they're not considering is what Chuck Norris could do to those kids if he took it in his mind to. (I think being able to telepathically kick butts is one of the facts about Chuck Norris)

(I will it makes me a little sad to read about people saying that they should paint over Norris' name and replace it with the name of the local high school team or something. Because Norris is nationally known...and he's really not as much a thing of the past as people are saying.)

I will say I don't think the kids should face charges...maybe they and their families should be charged for the cost of safely removing the banner (I presume the firefighters or someone could do that), but not criminal charges. (And the whole "someone could be killed" - yeah, sure, but that could also happen when they're riding the bus to or from school. Yes, climbing a water tower is risky, but so are lots of other things in life)

I need this.

Next week is exam week, and things have a tendency to get loud out in the halls...

I am a little bit too timid to print this out and hang it on my office door for when I'm writing exams/grading exams/trying to work on research, but I'd certainly be tempted by it.

My favorite saying

A couple of times on here I've commented on here about how one of my favorite sayings is the French "Revenons a nos moutons". It's from French, I don't know where I originally encountered it (probably for something I read for French back in high school).

Literally, it means "let us return to our sheep." Meaning, as I take it, to go back to tending the things that are important. I think part of the reason I like it is that it reminds me of the last line in Candide, about how we must cultivate our gardens. (Or the line from the end of the Wizard of Oz, that says something about your heart's desire really being in your own backyard all the time).

Also, from some time back:

My first impulse was to riff on that old ad, "{famous football player guy} what are you going to do now that you've won the Superbowl?" "I'm goin' to Disneyland!"

But that is not an accurate picture of what it is like, at all.

Rather more, it's like the old story about the young novice who seeks out the wise sage. He finds the man in his garden. And he asks: "Oh, wise master, what did you do before you found Enlightenment?" And the sage replied: "I chopped wood and carried water." And the novice asked: "And what did you do after you found Enlightenment?" And the sage replied: "I chopped wood and carried water."

(What I wrote back in 2004, upon learning I had tenure).

So: revenons a nos moutons.

I worked more on the lace-and-cable sock last night; there's something I find pleasing about knitting socks that follow a chart because you can see them grow, you know that each round you do adds to the design. (I wonder if that's also related to my fondness as a child for things like those charts where you colored in different squares, and a picture appeared). Also, I think each round feels more like an increment towards the sock being done, than each round on a sock where you knit in stockinette "until 2" less than the length of the finished sock" (the standard point where you start doing the decreases for the toe.)

I'm looking at more of the sock books and wanting to start more and different socks. It's not that I NEED socks - goodness, now I have far more than I ever get a chance to wear during our cold season - it's just, knitting them is fun. (I do sometimes knit more "practical" warm socks to send to charity groups that need warm things, it's just, I'm not sure how useful a lacy sock would be to someone who needed badly to stay warm).

I also started a new Amineko cat (Flickr group of pictures).The basic pattern for this is online, but I also had bought the book that came out - which also includes instructions for a "big" Amineko and for some accessories such as a pair of swimming trunks and a fish-shaped pillow, as well as an extremely cute, rather "Aranzi Aronzo" like photo-essay featuring the Amineko cats.

I had had some hot-pink spray-dyed yarn I bought a while back for this project, and just never got it started.

I also ran out after my dental check up - one other small piece of good news, no problems with my teeth, so I can wait six months before having to have someone's hands jammed in my mouth again - and got some more acrylic yarn for amigurumi. (I don't much like acrylic yarn for making clothing items with, but I will say it's probably the best thing for making amigurumi - it holds its shape well, it's fairly easy to crochet with, and, around here at least, you don't have to worry as much about the possibility of carpet beetles or something munching on your creation.)

I want to get back to doing more amigurumi. It's fun, it's almost instant gratification because they work up fast, and there are a lot of clever patterns out there. I found a pattern on Ravelry for a Tuzki and decided I wanted to make one - so I had to get some white yarn. (I had various shades of off-white - but they were all wool, anyway). (I will say I had forgot that yesterday was the day the people who get Social Security checks venture out to stock back up; the place was packed, even at 2:15 in the afternoon. Ugh. I won't do that again.)

(As for Professor Badass: I suspect he probably started out as Teaching Assistant Kick-Butt-and-Take-Names. And from there moved to Assistant Professor Toughguy and then Associate Professor There's-No-Crying-at-University)



And finally: today is "Star Wars Day." May the Fourth be with you!

(It occurs to me that the appropriate response to that would be, "And also with you!" just like we say in church when someone says "Peace be with you.")

Still can't believe

Thank you for all the kind words.

No, I still can't quite believe that I'm done...done with the whole chasing-after-promotions thing. That I've got something I really wanted, and would feel really bad if I didn't earn it.

I didn't really "celebrate" last night - I had the student papers to put comments on (the second step of grading), so I mostly did that.

I'm considering something for the weekend, though. Not sure whether to do a Grand Day Out (even though I will have no paycheck for June and July and will be living off what I have in my accounts now) or just taking it as an entirely stay-home-and-do-what-I-want-to day.

I think of one of the profs when I was in grad school...he had a little button up on the wall of his office that said, "Tenure means no more Mr. Nice Guy." (which I thought was extremely funny - though I never told him that - because he was one of the, shall we say, more difficult personalities I've dealt with through the years).

While I can't quite see doing something like that, maybe I will feel a little more secure in my own abilities.

Maybe not quite THIS secure, though. (But the picture still makes me chuckle.)


see more Very Demotivational

Saying it simply:

Who's got two thumbs and is going to be a Full Professor come September?

THIS GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

****

Yes, I FINALLY got the final, really-real, it's-gonna-happen letter. Signed by the university president and everything...as I said in the previous post, his secretary called me to tell me she had a letter and my portfolio to pick up.

I thought about waiting until I had completed the day's grading, but realized there was no way in heck I'd be able to concentrate until I KNEW. (And up until the very moment I opened the letter and saw "I am pleased to notify you..." I didn't know for sure - I thought surely something would hang it up - bad budget times, or my not having quite enough publications or quite high enough student evaluations, or something).

I had to drive over to the administration building (yes, I drove, it's still raining a lot here) very carefully as I was already shaking a little. There was that weird, Schroedinger's-box moment. (Though that concept really doesn't fit here: the decision had been made and it existed as a real thing on a piece of paper, I just didn't know until I opened the envelope).

And yes, I wasn't subtle. I signed for the letter and my portfolio, and while she was getting my portfolio out of the box, I ripped open the letter.

I was a little subdued, though, I guess: I just said, "Awesome" and put the letter back in its envelope.

(And I got the jelly-knees walking back down the stairs. And then started laughing uncontrollably once I got back in my car.)

This really did mean a huge deal to me. Not so much in terms of the (small) raise that will come (though that will be nice*).

What really matters to me is, for lack of a better term, the vote of confidence. That I'm doing enough, that I'm doing all right. That I don't need to push myself excessively harder. (And a little bit the status. Being able to have "Professor" with no modifier to it on my business cards.)

(*Huh, in church Sunday they started talking about the yearly pledging - we do it in May - and about how we should consider if we could raise our pledge in this year. And I thought, "If I get Full Professor, I should raise the amount I give." Or maybe I said, "If You make the decision go in my favor, I will raise the amount I give." Okay, so I'll do it, now.)

I admit it, I still can't quite believe it - that the whole agonizing process is OVER, and unless I move to a new school (not bloody likely considering the dearth of tenure-track positions any more), I'll never have to prepare a huge portfolio like this again.

But holy cow. Just, holy cow. It still hasn't sunk in.

Oh holy cow

Just got a phone call from the president's office. My portfolio and a letter from the president are ready for me to pick up.

Having a little freakout right here. Part of me is telling myself the reason they are doing that is they don't want to send a "no" letter through campus mail, or they want to explain that there's no funding. Or something. Trying not to be pessimistic.

I don't think I can do anything more today until I find out. BRB.

A stormy Sunday

I was awakened around 5:30 this morning by the first storms moving in. (I didn't get up immediately; I have a small rule that unless I HAVE to, I don't get out of bed before 6 am on weekends).

It stormed off and on until I left for church. When I walked in the door for "donut fellowship" before Sunday School, the minister exclaimed, "You brought the electricity with you!" Apparently the power at the church had been out for about 20 minutes before I got there. (Funny - because I had power at my house, and I am something like four blocks from church).

It stormed a little more during the service. It's actually kind of chilly and rainy - in the 50s. As I was driving home I thought about how nice it would be to have a hot cup of tea with lunch.

I tried to put my car away, couldn't get the door opener to work. Groaned, got out of the car, went to the button on the wall - still couldn't get the door open. The power was out. I had to leave my car in the drive. (Because of renovations on the garage, there is no way to walk into it from the outside - the room where the button is is a little separate room, like a potting shed. If I ever spend the money to have the garage extensively redone, I'm going to have the person rip down the largely-useless cabinets and wall that was put in to wall off that potting shed, because it is a nuisance to not be able to get in if the power is out)

So, poo. I had to eat a cold lunch and no tea. I set up my camp lantern (I have an LED bulb lantern I use for power outages) and took one of my clear glass loaf pans and put a bunch of tealight candles in it and lit them for supplemental light. And I listened to my little weather radio. (There is NOTHING on commercial radio on the weekends. NOTHING. No news, no local weather - I think all our "local" channels have gone to using a satellite feed out of LA or somewhere. Makes me wonder what a person would do if the power were out and there were a real great emergency. I suppose they expect everyone has smart phones now that can access the internet, and those of us who don't - well, just natural selection in action if a natural disaster takes us out, I guess. (My laptop battery is shot and won't hold a charge long enough for me to connect to the internet via my laptop....)

I sat and knitted but twitched a bit, wondering when the power would come back on. Finally the power came back on around 3. First thing I did when the power came back on was run out and garage my car; we had had a tiny bit of hail but nothing larger than peasized, so there was no damage.

The other thing - I'm bracing for panicked messages from students (if the outage was widespread). There's a major paper due tomorrow and while everyone had most of the semester to work on it, I suspect there are some people who put it off until the very last minute. I don't know whether to sigh and tell them to get it to me by 8 am Tuesday, or to just look at them and go, "You should have planned for emergencies like this." Then again, the power has been back on (at least where I'm at) since 3 pm, and if a person were really hurting they could pull an all-nighter or something. Though last-minute, all-nighter papers do tend to have somewhat of an...odor....of having been done at the last minute).

I just hope the power stays on now. We're getting lots of rain again but the thunder and lightning don't seem that bad right now. (I have a high-test surge protector that this thing is on, just in case we get a power surge from lightning or something).

And I heartily hope the rain bands move out of Missouri for a while; a lot of people I know who have family in different parts of the state have been talking about the terrible flooding, and I heard on the news that they're talking about dynamiting a levee near Cairo, Illinois, in hope of saving the town at the expense of (I suppose) cropland.

***

While sitting in the near-dark, I finished the heel flap and turned the heel of the first of the Ann Budd lace-and-cable socks.

I also, yesterday, finished the first of the so-called "Elegant" socks. This is a Nancy Bush pattern that she based on a Norwegian immigrant's sock in the Vesterheim Museum collection:



The main feature of the sock - perhaps what makes it "elegant" - is the band of eyelet stitch near the top. I used Classic Elite's Alpaca Sox as the yarn on this one.

Alpaca is sometimes called "Poor man's cashmere" because it has similar qualities - soft, warm, fairly lightweight - but is far less expensive. It's probably my favorite fiber to knit with, even though, living in a warm climate, I can't wear it all that much. (These will definitely be winter socks). One of the nice things about using an alpaca yarn for this pattern is that even though it's knit to a pretty tight gauge, it's not a stiff or hard fabric (the socks are knit on U.S. size 0 needles, which is like a 2 mm diameter - size 0s are about the smallest "practical" size. There are smaller ones - 00 and 000 and on down, I think, to 00000 - but most knitters never use those. (They are mainly for extreme lace* and for knitting miniatures)

(*Heh. Knitting as extreme sport?)

(Then again, I think a lot of knitters don't even go down as low as a size 0 for their knitting - or even size 1s. I've had people who have seen me knitting remark about the "teeny tiny needles" but to be honest, the small needles are more comfortable for me to hold and use for extended periods of time than very large-gauge (like 11s or 13s, which are 8 and 9 mm in diameter, respectively) needles. (Trying to knit a hat on size 13 double pointed needles is something I find far more frustrating than knitting socks on size 1 double pointed needles, just because needles that big tend to get cumbersome and are more prone to slip out of the knitting).