More birthday loot

The "mysterious Amazon box" I referred to WAS a present - my brother and sister-in-law sent me a set of the Poirot movies from my Amazon wishlist (the set with Murder on the Orient Express, excellent!)

I really, really love the David Suchet Poirot movies so it makes me happy to have more to watch. (I know: someday there will be infinite channels, and you will be able to watch anything you want that has ever been filmed on demand. But that day's not here yet, so it's nice to have a small library of favorite things on dvd)

I also received a table runner and a new field hat from my parents - the hat is in the Lawrence of Arabia mode, with a "curtain" of fabric hanging down in the back (otherwise, it is like a brimmed ball cap) so the back of your neck does not get sunburned.

My "big" gift - a quilt kit I had mentioned wanting - will be here in April. My dad ordered it for me but apparently it won't be available until then. But that's fine; I have enough to occupy me. And it will be nice to have something new to open in April.

And I got a few cards - a nice e-card from Charlotte, and a card from a longtime family friend, and one from my parents. And my Sunday school class all signed a card for me, which made me happy.

Also, a few other things I bought for myself:



That is the "silly" thing I referred to. A Hello Kitty "I love nerds" lunchbox. I don't intend to carry my lunch in it - I remember from childhood how metal lunch boxes would get dinged up and scratched and a little rusty after you'd carried them for a while. Rather, I'm going to use it to hold knitting projects in; it will be just right for a pair or two of socks or some other small project.

The poison-green yarn is for a pair of long armwarmers, and the multicolored yarn will be yet more socks.



Some of the fabric I bought, plus a quilting book. The book is called "Simplify," it is simple geometric patterns of the kind I enjoy making, and a lot of them are designed for small numbers of fat quarters, or for those jelly roll sets of strips.

In fact, there's one that makes a lap quilt with just four fat quarters with a contrast sashing fabric. Those reddish-purple fabrics - they are all from the same line, they all feature chairs and a small yellow bird(? Odd, but I like them) will be used for a version of that quilt, along with yellow sashing. I will have to look at the solid yellows I have; I may have one on hand that will be right for it. (Or I might use white. I will have to hold the fabrics up against yellow and against white to see which works best)

I also got yet another jelly roll set; this is a zinnia-themed line, and the yellow fabric is from that line (for sashing on the quilt I will make). The other fabrics are just bright novelty fabrics that made me happy; they will eventually go together with other fat quarters in a quilt pattern to be determined later.

Also, down in McKinney, I stopped at a second restaurant - that was my next-to-last stop of the day (it was almost 3 pm; I had eaten around 11). I decided I wanted a piece of cake. There's a new restaurant called Gather; they have a sort of minimalist-fancy decor, seemed very calm and quiet (though that might be a function of the time I was in there; they weren't busy at that point). I had a big piece of coconut cake (it was very good, obviously from-scratch bakery-made, rather than from-mix bakery-made) and a small pot of vanilla flavored black tea.

(I wish there were a restaurant like that near me. Somewhere where I could just go, late in the day, and get a cup of tea and something to eat - not cake, certainly not every day - but something like a sandwich or a scone - as a pick me up on days when I feel like I need one. We have a coffee place, but it's on the other side of town and I don't know if they do tea. And it's certainly not as restful a place to sit as Gather is.)

My last stop was the second quilt shop, Happiness is quilting, where some of the fat quarters came from.

One of the big attractions for McKinney for me is that you can park your car and then WALK everywhere in the little old downtown square (and they have a fair amount of parking near the square, and it's free). So I park, and I walk, and if I either buy something breakable (like the teapot) or heavy (like the stuff from Loco Cowpoke), or if I just accumulate a few bags, I walk back to my car, lock them in my car, and go back out, unencumbered, for more shopping. I'd much rather be able to drive once and park once, and then walk the rest of the day, than have to drive from store to store and fight traffic and parking. That's actually one of the "calming" things about McKinney for me - the ability to just walk around and around the square, explore the little side streets off of it, without having to drive and find parking more than once.

Grand day out

(If this comes off as a bit subdued relative to how it might actually be, I'm sort of tired. I spent a couple hours today serving as "pudding stick"* at church and I'm sort of worn out)

(*I seem to remember reading somewhere that in Colonial times, an unmarried woman (in those days, usually a woman who just wasn't engaged yet) who served punch or coffee at a reception was called "pudding stick" but a quick Google search does not turn up that term. Perhaps I imagined it. I don't know. But that's my usual role at receptions (well, that, and lifting the heavy trays of stuff that the older women with arthritis in their wrists don't trust themselves to lift))

I started off fairly early yesterday. A person could, I think, spend an entire day (from when stores opened at 10 until 5 pm or even later) just in downtown McKinney if you went and shopped every place. (And especially if you went and got a hair cut, or nails done, or any of the "spa treatments.") As it is, I tend to skip the clothing shops and the really FANCY antiques stores (there are several), and stick to the gifty-type places and the antiques shops that sell more "vintage" and less "true antique" stuff.

But I find plenty of things as it is:



The rabbit is very pleasing in a tactile sense - about the size of your hand, and very smooth and rounded. It's going to be part of the eventual Easter decorating I do on my mantel this year.

And I decided I had to have the cottage teapot - that's another one for my collection now. I think I have five or six, if you could the little sugar-and-creamer set and the salt and pepper shakers in that form. That will probably be my summer mantel.

And I liked the little plaque. On the back it's stamped "Hand painted in Italy," so I don't know if it's a piece of souvenirware or if it was made there and imported over here. But I like it. I haven't decided where to put it up just yet but it will match just about anywhere in my house.

I did eat lunch at Churchill's - it was an an interesting and rather atmospheric place. (The real bar, I guess, is upstairs...they also broadcast European soccer matches up there. In the restaurant proper, where I ate, it was a lot quieter). They had a lot of Queen Elizabeth II memorabilia up on the walls, and the ceiling was dark and low, with beams. I chose one of the high tables that had tall stools at them; there was also a sort of banquette along one wall with several tables, and a big family-style table in the middle of the room.

I ordered something called the Sir Winston Churchill club sandwich - ham, turkey, lettuce, tomato, bacon, and a hard-boiled egg cut up on it. I would not have thought to put a hard-boiled egg in a meat sandwich, but it was good. The sandwich also had a lemon mayonnaise on it (not too much, either, which was good) and the whole combination was just good to eat. I also ate most of the fries (or, I should call them, "chips") that came with it because they had malt vinegar out on the tables. (I prefer malt vinegar on fried potatoes to catsup. I guess vinegar used to be a more common condiment; I remember one of the early, early Nero Wolfe novels has Archie make a disparaging comment about how Fred Durkin put vinegar on all his food... in a later book, that changed to catsup.)

After that, I did a bunch more shopping. Loco Cowpoke yielded a birthday present (various hot sauces and a chili mix) for my brother. (He can be hard to buy for, but as I said once before, I think that some kind of "specialty" food that you know the recipient will enjoy makes an excellent gift, because (a) they can use it up and don't have to find a place to put it and (b) if they really decide they DON'T want it, they can usually re-gift it to someone.)

I also bought some books.



I've read some of van Dyke's essays (He's probably best known today for the story, "The Fourth Wise Man,") and this looked pretty fascinating - a trip through the Holy Land in an era before hotels, before easy transportation, even really before cars. (The copyright date in the book is 1908. More than 100 years old, which amazes me a little. And yet - it's in fantastically good shape. I will say I find a lot of pre-1920s books seem to have lasted better than more recent books; I think it has something to do with the formulation of the paper. I think the paper back then was more prone to be "acid free," and then for a period starting around WWII, the paper was more acidic (I have some WWII era paper backs that are crumbling to dust), and now, just recently, many publishers have realized the importance of acid-free paper again. A lot of the scholarly books I buy have a little note in them to that effect - some even somewhat smugly state, "This is a *permanent* book")

It's actually an ex-library book, apparently: it's stamped "Nellie Davis Library" and has a small pocket that could have held a check-out card. But it's in remarkably good shape so if it circulated, it must have been taken very good care of.

Besides wanting to read it, I find it just an incredibly beautiful book. I love that cover decoration.

More old books:



The one on the bottom is recipes, ostensibly from some of San Francisco's famous restaurants. A lot of them are ethnic recipes (I think there's a Kibbe recipe in there, and a yakisoba.) One or two I might want to try, but a lot of times the cookbooks I buy are more for the fun of looking at them than from actually cooking from them.

The soil book is almost 100 years old - it's copyright 1913. (And again: in excellent shape). I bought it, in part, because I wanted to see how much had changed between now and then in the teaching of soils. (A quick thumb-through suggests: not as much as I had thought.) Another interesting thing about the book: it belonged to J. W. Allen, who gives his (I presume) address as K. S. A. C. Box 498. I'm assuming that's Kansas State Agricultural College.

Also, the book is of a series edited by Liberty Hyde Bailey. I'm familiar with that name - he was a fairly well-known botanist in the first half of the 20th century. He was the first to talk about "cultivars" of plants, and he was instrumental in re-introducing Mendel's work on genetics.

But I know him best for the jocular name my mother said students of her generation (which was, actually, a generation of botany students after his death, but his textbooks were still used) referred to him as: "Free Skin Bailey."

Because of "Liberty Hyde," get it? (I suspect the nickname was found funny because it sounded a bit like something more ribald than it actually was...)

The top book on the stack just looked interesting to me. It was $3, so I figured even though I'd never heard of the author, it was worth a try. It's about a young British man who winds up in a (fictional) Middle Eastern country ("Media") and apparently winds up working for an oil concern. It just looked kind of intriguing. (One of my dad's friends - now deceased - worked for one of the British oil companies in Libya, in the days before Gadafi. He had all kinds of interesting stories, and it's from John that I learned you NEVER show a person in an Arabic culture the bottom of your shoe or your foot, as that is seen as an extreme insult - sort of saying "You are even less than the dust below my feet" is how he presented it. Which is why you see video of protesters there beating shoes on pictures of (a few years back) Saddam Hussein, and more recently, Mubarak and Gadafi.)

It wasn't until I got the book home and started flipping through it that the really curious and interesting thing revealed itself:



Where the book was originally purchased. It was printed in the UK (The author himself was a Brit, someone living and working in Iraq), but this copy was originally purchased in Baghdad. (The copyright date is 1955. I have no idea what was going on in Iraq then but obviously there were bookstores selling British books).

This is why I love buying used books so much. To sit and imagine the path a book might have followed, the hands it might have passed through, on its way to me.

My guess - which I think is not entirely unreasonable - is that an oilman in Iraq bought it, and either he was a Texas oilman who then came back home with the book, or he was a Brit, and this is part of the library of books that the owners of Morningstar Treasures (where I bought it) purchased from the estate of a British man (if that's the case, then I have some of his other books, as well - I bought a number of the ones that the owner specifically told me had come as part of the library they bought).

But it's amazing to me to think that that book, first printed in Britain, then passed through Baghdad - and then to Texas, where the exchange of $3 put it into my hands so I can read it.

There are some other things I bought - some yarn and some fabric and one rather silly and amusing thing - but I think pictures for those will come later.

Weekend is here!

Just finished my last real responsibility for the week. For once, I'm going to go home early, relax, and spend the evening knitting (and probably watching Criminal Minds re-runs on A and E).

And tomorrow, McKinney! I got my money yesterday (I also had two small checks to cash), and I found my "mad stash card" (if they still do that at Quilt Asylum), so I'm ready to go. I really need a day out to just do stuff for ME.

And Sunday, the retirement reception! Which means I will get cake and finger sandwiches and the Universal Church Punch (ginger ale + sherbet).

Last evening's work

Suddenly*:



Cream cheese mints.

(*Well, not exactly "suddenly" - you have to mix 3 ounces of cream cheese and one tablespoon of corn syrup with ONE POUND of powdered sugar, which is no picnic to do. And then you chill them for a half hour. And then you mold them, which is one of those idiots-delight things that goes down a lot easier if you can watch television while doing it).

This isn't even all of them...there are a couple more pans drying on the top of my (cold) stove. (They have to sit out for the better part of a day to develop a "crust" on the outside so they don't fall apart)

I actually made two batches; I finished the first one and realized there weren't enough (the church secretary said "we could have as many as 150 people at this.") I think I have just shy of 12 dozen (one gross) of the mints now.

I'm not sure I will bake myself a cake after all; I'm kind of burned out on doing this kind of stuff right now. (Also, the last time I talked to my mother, she offered to make Nusstorte (hazelnut torte) with chocolate ganache when I was up there for my spring break, so I think I will let that take the place of me baking myself a cake. I still reserve the right to ORDER cake with my lunch tomorrow.)

More on books

The 1066 book I am reading it "1066: Year of the Conquest" by David Howath. I find it pretty interesting and it's mainly a quick read. (I should go back to it soon).

Also, a question for those who have finished Bleak House: Does Harold Skimpole redeem himself in any way later on in the book? I want to punch him in his smug, sponging face right now: taking ALL of an orphan's hard-saved money to pay a debt he ran up, and then telling her she should be grateful to him for allowing her to be generous?

(I don't normally ask for spoilers but I admit I'm taking to skipping the sections where Skimpole bombasts about how he is utterly incapable of taking responsibility for anything, and how it's the duty of the world (i.e., the people around him) to care for him and pay his way)

Maybe a cake

I don't know if I'll make myself a birthday cake. I do some years.

If I do this year, it might be this one. Because:

The recipe first appeared the year I was born
The "redux" of the recipe is date-stamped on my actual birthday
It's an almost-flourless chocolate cake, which I have always enjoyed.

Not sure if I will, though. Or maybe I'll do it NEXT weekend - this weekend is the retirement reception for the organist at church and I will probably get cake there.

Then again: that's an AWFUL lot of chocolate and an AWFUL lot of butter. I think I have a lighter "flourless" chocolate cake recipe somewhere...

Hah. That's better.

(Sorry, when I have headache issues, I also get mood-swingy. But.)

I ran the test that I was doing to placate the picky reviewer. The results are SIGNIFICANT. That means that the trend I was saying - purely on the basis of descriptive tests - was a trend, IS.

I will admit my first reaction was, "In your FACE, picky reviewer." But dang, does it feel good that what I did earlier was justified and justifiable.

Worst. Greeting. Ever.

Okay, so Sunday is the day when I can clock another successful (in the sense of, I'm Not Dead Yet) orbit around the sun. And I've got a few cards (and a mysterious Amazon box, which I have not opened yet, assuming it must be a gift, as I have not ordered anything from them lately).

I got a "card" yesterday from my health insurance.

Um, yeah. Nothing says, "OH HAI, you are one year closer to decrepitude" than a card (a flyer, really) from your health insurer. In English AND Spanish.

I wasn't really very happy with what it said. But then again: I suppose this is what you get if you are a conscientious/concerned person in a world where too many people are not.

It was a list of "healthy habits." And a strong suggestion that I follow those. (The unwritten, but assumed-by-me, subtext: because then you will cost us less money*).

(*Despite the fact that I weigh more than what any guideline I've ever seen says I should, the only thing I cost them - besides routine checkups - is treatment of my allergies. And the only way I could have prevented that, I think, is to have picked parents who wouldn't have given me a genetically tetchy immune system. Or maybe to have got myself colonized by parasitic worms at an early age; there's some research that suggests people who had worm parasites as a child are less prone to allergies.)

I can't remember all of the suggestions, but there were the standard "Eat more vegetables." "Eat less food overall." "Exercise more." "If you are overweight, get your weight down to what guidelines say it should be**" "Be sure to have the necessary tests for whatever someone your age should have."

(**some of the guidelines say I "should" weigh 140 pounds. Not unless I develop some horrible wasting disease. I think a lot of those "guidelines" are written for women who don't have much in the way of muscle mass. I know, I know: I'm carrying more fat than is ideal, but I'm also fairly muscular, thanks to regular workouts and the field research I do. And if I DIDN'T have that muscle, I couldn't DO the field research I do.)

Okay, with the exception of "weight within the guidelines" and arguably "eat less food" (because what is LESS, anyway? I don't eat a huge amount but I'm not going to make myself walk around hungry), I do all of the things they list.

And yet, it still makes me feel guilty and bad, like I'm not doing enough.

I tell myself: this is because there are people who don't think anything of eating a big Mac and large fries and shake on a daily basis. Or people who never exercise. But I still feel kind of bad about having a finger wagged at me (or that's how I see it) yet again: "bad fattie. BAAAAAAAD."

And I realize, this is largely my perfectionism talking: I think what I'm doing is telling myself, "You had the strength of character and willpower to earn a Ph.D., to earn tenure, to juggle all the million things you must do. WHY DO YOU NOT HAVE THE STRENGTH TO MAKE YOURSELF A SIZE 8?"

The last suggestion on this flyer-of-woe?

"Limit stress."

Sorry, health insurer. Way too late for that now. And you know, it's kinda your fault.

What would have been nice? Would have been at least one suggestion that was not either a "thou shalt not" or an invitation to something unpleasant (like a reminder that if you're over 50, you really should get regular colonoscopies). Something like, "Hey, enjoy the fact that you're alive!" or "If you have good health, be grateful for that!" or maybe, even, "Treat yourself a little on your birthday." (Though even then, I'd probably be all "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO HEALTH INSURER!")

Anyway. If they wanted to save some money they could just not mail out the darn fliers, I think.

(I may be in a slightly sour mood this morning because I didn't work out today: I woke up at 4 am with an incipient migraine (there are storms on the way) and figured it was better not to risk making it worse with the physical stress of a workout. Also, I am trying to up the intensity of the workout and found I have pulled a few muscles over the past few days, so I probably need a rest day)

We'll see if I get a birthday postcard from one of my elected representatives. I did one year, but I think that guy is out of office now. (The postcard did note, in big letters, that neither it nor its postage was paid for with tax dollars.)

So anyway, despite the fact that I'm super busy, and gas prices are peaking (Though if Gaddafi is replaced by someone kinder to the people of Libya and who "plays well" with the rest of the world, it will be worth it, I think), I'm going to McKinney Saturday. If for nothing else to go to Quilt Asylum and spend some time there ignoring the fact that I am really too busy.

I think of Holly Golightly, and how she said that she liked Tiffany's because it seemed like "nothing bad could happen to you there." That's kind of how I feel about Quilt Asylum (and quilt shops in general), and also a lot of the stores in McKinney (ever-changing though they may be.)

A check of the website reveals that Loco Cowpoke is still there (good! I can stock up on some of the gourmet food items), and the old-timey candy shop, and Morningstar Treasures. And "Smitten," which is where the Antique Collection (formerly my favorite antique shop) moved to when their building was taken for another purpose. And "Heirlooms," another small but nice antiques shop...

And Happiness is Quilting is still there, so I will be able to visit two quilt shops in the day. So really, the places I consider "important" destinations still exist (that's always a concern; it seemed the last time I was there the economy was really affecting the downtown shops). I'm going to get some money out of my savings account (which I normally keep for emergencies, but because of my usual frugality, there's a lot more in there than what most emergencies would require) and just plan on having a spending spree. I don't do this often (maybe twice a year), but it is just kind of fun to go with money in your pocket and the knowledge that if you see something you really want, you can buy it without worrying about it.

There's also a British Pub and Restaurant called "Churchill's." I may want to eat lunch there, seeing as the former Prime Minister and I are something like sixth cousins. (I joke that "fortunately I resemble the other side of the family...")

Statistics are underway

I did the necessary additional calculations and now just have to run the test.

I hope this is enough to keep my 'provisional' acceptance status; it does seem a bit much for someone to ask for a total re-analysis of data when the time-frame for the revision is two weeks. (Of course, probably not all academic scientists teach 14 hours and do volunteer work outside of school. And probably many of them have less-heavily-employed spouses or partners who can pick up the slack on laundry and cooking).

I'll be glad when this is done.

****

I did take some time last night to knit; I worked a bit more on the Cranford mitts.

I also started reading a novel again: I had been reading two non-fiction books: "1066" and "The Ghost Map." "The Ghost Map" is fascinating (the story of early epidemiological research in London during one of the mid-1800s cholera outbreaks) but it's hard to read because I keep thinking of the human suffering of the people crammed in those small apartments...even if they didn't get cholera.

"1066" is about the topic you would expect it to be about. I'm up to the point where William is planning his invasion. Two interesting things about the book: first, the writer notes how often it's hard to know what "really truly" happened that far back - he reports some of what the Norman chroniclers said, and some of what the Brits were saying, and there are (understandably) discrepancies.

But even beyond jingoism or propaganda, there also seem to be cases of times being collapsed, or people meeting at a time when they could not have met, or references to marriages that might not even have happened. And it makes a person wonder: some thousand years in the future (if the human race hasn't fought itself into oblivion), what would be "accurately" remembered of our history? I mean, yes, we have the Internet and all - but how much of what's reported on it is accurate? (I mean: I'm pretty truthful in terms of what I SAY, but there are also a lot of things that I DON'T say, or things I obfuscate about a bit to "protect the innocent"). And even at that - I could see future historians be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of trivia. (Will they think we worshiped the Great LOLCat? Will they, based on the spam and "enhancement" sites that survive, think we were even more obsessed with the, uh, male member, than we actually are as a society? There's a picture book called Motel of the Mysteries, and an older essay called something like Lives of the Nacirema, that play with the idea of "what would anthropologists make of our culture, and considering how 'wrong' they get it, how 'wrong' are our interpretations of older cultures?)

The second thing is the author's assertion that most peasants (not slaves, not serfs - people living under more of a true-communism system, where land is communally held and everyone has an acreage to work) really did not have all that bad of a life: there was useful work, there was worship, there was some rest time in the winter, there were feast days. And that, in that time before consumer society, the nobles might have had slightly MORE or BETTER food or clothes, but they would have had little that the peasants did not have. (I am not so sure about that one.)

Anyway, I also re-started reading (maybe third time will be the charm) Bleak House. Right now, I'm enjoying it - the density of the prose is a good escape. And I've been going to bed around 8 or 8:30 these past few days and reading until I feel tired, because my allergies are just getting me down and wearing me out.

Brain is tired.

I don't know exactly how long I worked on the revision today...I know I put in a good five to six hours at the computer, but of course some of that time was spent surfing around when I got "stuck."

I incorporated nearly all of the one reviewer's ideas. Fewer of the other one's, because incorporating all of his* comments would effectively gut my discussion and obviate the reason for even trying to publish the dang thing.

(*I'm gonna just use the generic pronoun here, okay? I was originally taught that "he" or "his" could stand in for both genders. I know that's Not How It's Done most places today, but I'm tired and don't feel like doing the "his or hers" or whatever right now. As much as I hate the idea of making a third genderless pronoun system - to apply to either males or females, or a mixed bunch - sometimes I wonder if maybe that's not what English needs, some kind of collective pronoun that means "him or her")

Anyway, his comments were not entirely helpful. The biggest thing was that he was requesting further statistical analysis, including something that I believe is not a valid analysis of the data, given how they have been collected.

So I dinked around with the other suggestions, adding in all the clarifications I could (Seriously, when you are rewriting a paper, you come to believe your reviewers must be as dense as Stimpson J. Cat, though of course it's partly because YOU did the research so YOU know what you're talking about.)

Then I gave up, partly so I could go get my allergy shot** before having to go to piano.

(** third time was the charm, today. I never had to do this before but the first time I went in - unannounced, but I was delivering something to a nearby office - the nurse was at lunch, and the second time the place was packed, and I asked the nurse if she was "slammed" right then and she nodded kind of weakly so I left and went back to work on the paper for a while...for one thing, I don't like waiting around when there are lots of people there because the waiting room is small and who knows what microbes might be being transmitted through the air. Also, just the human comedy that passes through that office sometimes...it's more than I feel like observing some days)

While I was waiting for the nurse to give me the shots, oddly enough, the solution to my statistical issues popped into my head: there WAS a way to analyze the data more, it's kind of uncommon and maybe not ideal, but it will work and will be valid for these data.

(Field data are rarely ideal. That's something ecologists just learn to roll with).

So: problem solved. I'm not sure if I'm going to have time to work on it tomorrow, but I will on Thursday.

I also ran home over the lunch hour and baked the Funeral Cake while I was eating. (It's a super easy cake, really, it's as fast as a mix cake: 2 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, you stir those together and then in another bowl mix two beaten eggs, a 20 ounce can of crushed pineapple with its juice, and a cup of chopped up pecans. Then you mix the liquid and dry ingredients, put them in a greased 9 x 13 pan, and bake for about 30 minutes at 350. After it comes out (while it's still warm) you put on an icing made of 1/2 cup butter, 8 ounces of cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of milk, some vanilla, and 2 cups or so of powdered sugar.

We call it Mexican Fruit Cake but I think it goes by other names. (I have no idea why it's "Mexican." I suppose it's possible the recipe was first passed on by someone from Mexico.)

I did that, dropped it off at church (It is supposed to be refrigerated for the icing to set up, but I had no room in my fridge) and went back and finished my day.

And then I had piano, including more work on the whole chording/"walking up"/improvising from a chord sheet thing, which I know is valuable to learn but my brain doesn't work that well with something so open-ended, so that made me tired, too.

I thought of bringing home the exam I gave today to grade tonight, but meeeeeeeh. I'm tired. I plan to do it tomorrow night, instead. (The class' next meeting is Thursday, so grading it tomorrow night will still allow me to keep my plan of handing back exams the next class day (unless someone needs to take it a day late because of illness))

So, I'm not sure what to have for dinner...I thought of making pancakes, but all my big cooking bowls are in the wash and I don't really feel like handwashing one for pancakes. I might melt down a couple of frozen eggrolls I have and, I don't know, if the salad greens I have are still good, have a salad with them.

(Times like this I really wish I had a Fritz Brenner working for me.)

Pushing through revision

That's my day today. (I give an exam in my only class of the day).

I've incorporated most of the first reviewer's comments. (I figured the only sane way to do it was to take one reviewer at a time, because often reviewer comments contradict - and it leads to a brain deadlock for me to look at two contradictory comments simultaneously.) So now I go look in more detail at Reviewer 2, and hope he/she isn't going to tell me to put back in a bunch of the stuff Reviewer 1 told me to remove. (I do ALWAYS keep an original copy of the paper....I renamed this file "REVISED [papername]" just in case).

I never know which comments to follow, and which to ignore. I probably incorporate more reviewer's suggestions than some folks do, just because it's my nature to assume other people's opinions are somehow more "correct" than my own. (Though I will admit to rewriting a few sentences in response to Reviewer 1 which were more in the IF YOU HAD READ WHAT I ACTUALLY SAID YOU WOULD SEE mode, only a lot more "coded" than that.)

I dunno. I kind of hate revising because there is the whole "check your ego at the door" aspect of it. Yes, some of the reviewer comments really did lead to "tighter" and better writing. But it irks me, after spending multiple rewrites to get an organization that works in my brain, to be told "WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN....REARRANGE EVERYTHING."

My plan is to finish the rewrite today, and then do one last read of it Thursday (and maybe another Friday) just to be sure my moving and changing and shifting has not led to any bêtises or infelicities.

Edited to add:

It's not always "reviewer 3." (There is a legend, in the journal-article-writing circles, that it's always 'reviewer 3' who demands unreasonable changes, seems to willfully misunderstand your experimental design, and suggests (read: demands) incorporation of theory that is at best tangentially related to the question at hand). (In fact, it's such a legend, there used to be up on youtube a reworking of a famous scene from a movie about Hitler, where they had re-subtitled it to make it as if Hitler were responding to the comments of the third reviewer. It was utterly hilarious (well, as hilarious as anything referencing Hitler can be...and yeah, it's one of those, "I'm probably spending a few more days in Purgatory for laughing at this one, but I'm laughing anyway" things). It was called something like "Peer review circa 1945" but I think it's since been taken down because of a copyright dispute between the movie's original director (? I think) and all the parodists)

Suffice it to say, anyone who had seen that bit who has written articles for publication...they can relate.

I don't have three reviewers on this; I'm having some issues with the second one, though.

A journal article acknowledgment you will never see, but that I suspect many wish they could write: "I thank my co-workers and funding source. I also thank one anonymous reviewer, whose comments made the paper stronger and better. The other anonymous reviewer, however, can go pound sand."

***

Another thought on the hipster-chick glasses issue: one of my Twitter friends ("Twitends"?) pointed me to a picture of the true hipster-chick-glasses phenomenon: for one thing, they're very self-consciously heavy black plastic frames. And for another, I suspect at least some of those glasses of having plate glass, rather than prescription lenses, in them. So they're not so much Hipster Glasses as Poseur Glasses. As opposed to those of us who wear glasses because we need vision correction and are squicked out by contacts/have too many allergies to wear contacts/work in a lab where the fumes would make contacts dangerous/just think we look better with glasses than we would with contacts/don't want to mess with all the cleaning processes. (Several of those apply to me).

So perhaps this is the best last word on the subject:

Presented without comment.

Or:

Amused or annoyed?

Not sure which to be over this.

(And YES, I have begun the paper revision. Have incorporated most of the comments about the introduction and am working on the materials and methods).

Anyway: the NYTimes seems to be declaring blogs as "like, so OVER.": Blogs wane as the young drift to sites like Twitter.

They observe that there was a 2% drop in blogging last year for 18-33 year olds. Along with pull quotes that essentially sum up to, "Writing words is, like, haaaaaard, man." (I'm sure there are younger bloggers out there who DON'T feel that way, but most of the quotes they had seemed to portray the younger internet users as people who were bored by long sentences.)

What they don't say in that headline - and this is where the "amused or annoyed" comes in - is that blogs by 34-45 year olds increased by 6%, by 46-55, by 5%, and 65-73 year olds, 2%.

I'd say that's hardly a "wane," which is what they seem to be implying; it's more of a demographic shift.

FWIW: I turn 42 on Sunday. (I'm hoping, but doubting, that this is the year I learn the secrets to Life, the Universe, and Everything.)

The week ahead

The biggest thing I have to do is to synthesize two somewhat-disparate sets of comments into a single revision of my new paper. (Stuff keeps cropping up, though: if my students didn't get soil for Wednesday's lab, I'll have to do it. And I have to bake a Funeral Cake for church for Wednesday; one of the long-term shut-ins died and they asked me to fix "something" and I finally said, "It has to be something I can do Tuesday and drop off, because Wednesday is my biggest teaching day.")

If I don't get this done, I will have to scrub my birthday plans for Saturday. I was going to do as I usually do and go to McKinney. But the revision is due in on the 2nd. (Which, I will observe: two weeks to revise a paper? That's really not very long.)

I really hope I can get it done. I'm going to say a flat NO to anyone else who wants to try to take a piece of my Tuesday, that was the day I was budgeting to work on it, because I just give an exam that day.

Sunday (which is my actual birthday) is out because (a) nothing's open and (b) it's the retirement reception for the long-time organist at my church.

Next Saturday...well, I could do it then, but it feels almost like too much time has elapsed and there's no point in doing it. So I don't know. I'm gonna have to push to get this revision done, I think.

Back to Potter

(Literally: I am within four rows of finishing the back).

It was a fairly productive yet peaceful weekend. Friday afternoon into evening I cleaned house and did a few other things I needed to do (like took the shower head off and soaked it in vinegar. I have to do that periodically because the hard water here clogs it and the water pressure goes down).

Saturday was the annual honors-recruitment day. I interview prospective students and based on their responses (and how they present them), as well as an essay they write, some of them get a shot at scholarship money. (There's a wide range of people. Some are easy to talk with and can present themselves well, some seem fairly with-it but just really scared...and there are a few where you kind of go, "um, yeah" and try not to telegraph that you are doubtful they are Honors program material).

Then I washed my car. We don't use road salt here in winter but it had picked up a lot of dust, I think some from the grit that is STILL present on a lot of the streets. (That's a problem with sanding/putting down grit on roads: salt melts, but grit stays until it can get washed away. And as many streets here really don't have storm drains...)

I also worked off and on on Potter. I'm almost done, as I said, with the back. Then there are the two fronts, and the sleeves. I might consider doing the sleeves at the same time since they have minimal shaping and won't require a lot of attention. I don't know.

Right now I'm kind of in the typical end-of-weekend doldrums: tired, sort-of, but it's numerous hours too early to go to bed. Not sure what to fix for dinner. I think part of it is that I'm so used to being busy that a big chunk of time without obligations (after church today, the only thing I really "had" to do was piano practice) kind of leaves me feeling unsettled.

A statistics comic

These are rare enough, so I have to share them when I find them.


see more Memebase

(Hipster Kitty is one of those "exploitable" meme things:

I kind of love Hipster Kitty, even though if she were a really real person she'd be exactly the kind of person who irritated the daylights out of me...)

Adventures in cosmetics

That's about the best three-word title I can come up with. Though what I made last night maybe isn't literally cosmetics.

I did make the sugar scrub. I ventured out to the health-food store (they DO have a few food items, but not the stuff I generally buy, and they DO sell a lot of supplements. But they had the essential oil, which is what I was looking for)

Essential oils aren't cheap (I paid $10 for an ounce of lavender, which is surely not the most exotic one a person can buy), but it only takes a few drops for something like this.

(And on the bottle of the lavender oil, it said you can also mix a few drops with a few drops of peppermint - and I have MUCH PEPPERMINT OIL, thanks to buying it to use as mouse repellant - and mixing them with a "neutral" unscented oil, and rubbing it into the temples to alleviate headaches. While I'm not sure I'd want to do that for a migraine (all smells bother me when I have one), I think it might help a lot with a plain-old allergies headache or a tension headache).

So: 2/3 a cup each of brown and white sugar (I contemplated using turbinado sugar in place of brown, because it's coarser, but turbinado sugar is also a lot more expensive. And I don't want to waste what I have because it's what I put in tea, when I put sugar in my tea). I didn't measure the olive oil. (I mixed the stuff in a metal bowl, rather than in the jar I was going to store it in). Then I added maybe 1/2 t vanilla (all that was left in the "old" bottle of it) and 3 drops of the lavender.

I wound up putting the mix in an old jar I had saved - it had once held a rosemary/clary sage/lavender bath salt, and it was a nice jar, and I also thought that I'd eventually buy some plain epsom salts and maybe some essential oils and make my own scented bath salts. I figured if any of the residual scent (and there was some) in the jar was picked up by the scrub, all the better.

The scrub actually works really well. This delights me, because the scrub is cheap, can be made from stuff around the house (now that I have the essential oil...), and it is less harsh on my skin than other commercial exfoliants I've tried. (I have to be careful as my skin is somewhat delicate, I've found). I can even use it on my face without any problems.

Also, the olive oil helps with the dry skin issues. I bet if a person had sweet almond oil, mixing some of that in with the olive oil would make it even better...

Sugar skin scrub

My skin is doing its late-winter dullness thing (I get dry skin, it gets itchy and crummy, and is uncomfortable). Once upon a time I had a jar of sugar scrub for taking care of that but used it all up.

Of course, you can make your own. And it's a lot simpler than I thought it might be- equal parts brown and white sugar, "enough" olive oil, and then scent. (The person at Petite Elefant used vanilla, but I wonder if I could find some lavender oil locally and use that; I like lavender better than vanilla. Or - both together. (One of my favorite skin lotions is a lavender-vanilla scent).

I may have to run out once I finish this grading and see if the "health food" store here that I always maligned as "probably just a place selling supplements" also has essential oils...

Cookies and mitts

Hard to top the events of yesterday, but here are some things I did recently:

I made about 120 chocolate/vanilla chip cookies:



I have to say that stacking baking rack, while not very expensive, was one of the best investments I made for baking. It's great if you have limited space (as I do) to cool stuff.

I packed up about 4 dozen and took them over to school with me. (We are a department of 10, but several of those 10 are pretty snack-mouth-y and I anticipate some of the cookies being eaten BEFORE the lunch. And if there are leftovers, I can just leave them for people who feel they need an afternoon snack). The rest are packaged up for me to take down Friday morning to be served at the drug court graduation ceremony (I don't have time to go see it; they invited us all to come and said it was a pretty powerful thing to see).

(You know, I wonder....there's an old song that says "Every good thing you do, comes back to you." This week I send off a box of small gifts to a friend who was going through some difficulties, then I volunteered to make cookies even though I was concerned I wouldn't have time...and then yesterday morning I got those three pieces of good news. I'm not entirely convinced that's coincidental.)

I also finished the first of the Cranford mitts (just in time for the temperature to get back up into the 70s! Oh well.)

An attempt at an arty picture, at the piano:



(D major chord, root position... one of the things I'm working on - and I think I'm finally getting the hang of how to do the chording now - is to improvise off of "Sweet Hour of Prayer," which is in D...or at least, in our hymnal it is. Once my teacher reminded me I could "use your passing tones" in going from chord to chord, things began to make more sense).

Here's a better photo, showing the stitch pattern better. It's a modification of the Horseshoe Lace pattern:

Week turned around

Well, this week has turned around nicely from the disappointments of Monday!

Not only did I get word of having passed the third of four hurdles to Professorship, but I got an e-mail from one of my former doctoral committee members. Asking MY advice on research. I was able to e-mail her a copy of a recently published paper, and she suggested she and I should meet next time I am up that way (which will be in a few weeks; my parents live in the same town and I will be up there over spring break).

AND I just got an e-mail about my most recent manuscript! ACCEPTED WITH REVISIONS. Woo! (Accepted with revisions is about as good as it gets in scientific publishing: they think it's valuable but some rewriting is needed. And a quick scan of the comments seems to suggest it's mainly stylistic issues that need to be reworked).

I guess once in a while the universe does decide it's dumped on you enough...

Three of four

So, I came in this morning.

There was a letter in my mailbox. From one of the offices on campus. From, in fact, the office that is the next one in the chain-of-command in re: promotion.

I looked at the envelope. And I thought, "Given the way this week has gone, I will not be too surprised if it's a 'Sorry, we have no budget for promotions. But nice try anyway.'"

(An aside: My "senior" committeemember - the one who's been here the longest - tells me that back in the "old days" there was some regulation that only a certain percentage of the faculty could be tenured, and a certain (smaller) percentage could attain the rank of Professor*. So if you applied and there was already a full quota, you had to wait for someone to leave, retire, or die for you to get your tenure or promotion. Which just seems laughably wrong to me - I think "good" people, who would have a shot at a career somewhere else, would just leave a school upon being told, "Oh, sorry. We already have 25% (or whatever) tenured faculty. You're number 8 on the waiting list, though." )

(*Oh, and for those not in academia: typically there are three levels within the professoriate. (There is also a growing number of "adjunct" positions, which are generally poorly-paid without benefits, and unfortunately, to make ends meet, a lot of universities are increasingly relying upon them). The lowest level is Assistant Professor. They do not have tenure yet, but are on the tenure-track. Somewhere - after between 3 to 7 years of teaching, depending on the institution - they apply for tenure, which involves making a large portfolio including data on your teaching, your research, and your service (things like committee memberships). If everything goes well, you then receive tenure. Usually, most places, you get your first promotion at the same time (I had to actually make two packets, identical, one for tenure and one for promotion. It was kind of silly but whatever). The first promotion is to Associate Professor (which is where I am, currently.)

Then, usually after 10 years of teaching - and, I think, five years as Associate Professor? (or at least that's how they do it here), you apply for Full Professor, or as it's really officially known, just Professor. That's generally the final promotion (some schools have "Distinguished Professor," but that's also sometimes an award-level, where rather than applying for it, you have to be nominated and voted upon). It's Professor that I'm up for right now, and am waiting on the final word for. I already have tenure; have had it since 2004.)

Okay? Enough suspense? (Though longtime readers have probably already guessed what the letter said).

Yeah, this administrator is recommending me, too. This was actually the one I was most worried about - this is the person who is closest (I think) to those who control the purse-strings and the one most likely to hear mutterings about there not being enough money for stuff.

The one remaining hurdle is the President's office. And while I'm not going to express confidence of any sort - seeing as things could still go terribly wrong - but as I said, this was the one I was most worried about.

A little easier

I realized, while driving down to the pet store to buy crickets (it's a long story but at least I am getting reimbursed for it eventually) that instead of baking a cake AND cookies, why not do a double batch of cookies and take some to the lunch and some for the graduation?

Because (a) Cookies are a little lighter than cake, especially after lasagna and (b) I could do them all tomorrow night and just be DONE with them. Or if I feel super motivated after piano, do them this evening and just be DONE with them.

I think I'll do chocolate chip. Or perhaps mixed-chip, where I do half chocolate, half butterscotch.

I will not, however, do as the entomology prof at my grad school did, and put crickets in the cookies. (Trufax, he did. He called them "chocolate chirpies." No one was happy the week his lab had charge of providing the pre-seminar food).

I'm still tired

I really hope the aches and pains are related to the fact that my allergies have ramped up, and are not the early warning sign of the flu strain that was not in the flu shot this year.

Most of the cake went last night. The "extra" cake had been made for a children's party and had lots of fluffy pink frosting, and I guess that time of night, the women decided they preferred a plainer cake with raspberry sauce (the way I make it, it is not very sweet) instead.

I have a few pieces left over (and the sad second half-cake, which, I don't know, I might just freeze for myself. Or try a piece to see if it's edible and then freeze it).

For Thursday, I'm going to do a chocolate Texas sheet cake. I've decided not to worry about the fact that the main dish is lasagna and that Texas sheet cake is maybe a bit heavy after lasagna, because if I think about it too hard, I will be trying to make zabaglione or some dang thing on the departmental stove 15 minutes before the lunch and that way lies madness.

And anyway, Texas sheet cake is easy, and most people seem to like it. And you can frost it while it's still warm and the frosting is sort of semi-liquid.

I also, um, need to do cookies for Friday now. I probably shouldn't have volunteered, but the local "drug court" (a thing where low-level offenders go through a process of rehab and restitutionary justice, and usually the recidivism rate is lower than the folks who go through the conventional court/prison-punishment system) is having its "graduation" and the judge in charge asked to use our church. They asked us (the CWF) to provide food and they wanted to do it up nice, so they were asking for people to make sandwiches or cookies and not very many people volunteered.

I'm debating doing the cookies tonight. They'd probably still be fresh enough for Friday. Or I could do them Thursday afternoon, I have less stuff then.

I need to learn to get better at flaking. Or rather, get better at keeping my mouth shut/reminding myself I'm a busy person when these kind of things come up. I'm too good at volunteering for things and then kicking myself later because I have to fit it into my schedule like everything else. (Flaking is not good because people are already depending on you. Not volunteering is OK because then people know you won't be planning on doing it)

Then again: if being shown some level of respect and kindness keeps one person who went through that court on the right path, I suppose it's worth it.

I have to force myself to do that grading this morning.

Happy Valentine's Day

That is meant sarcastically. So far, I've had

- one person who promised me, cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye, to hand in a LATE PAPER ASAP never did. (I REALLY said, "I want it by 5 pm [last] Friday" but no one ever "hears" that when I say it).

- I still have a bunch of grading to do and I am all graded out.

- I kind of hurt all over. I just realized that sitting down to the piano to practice: my upper back and shoulders hurt, my knees kind of hurt. I don't know why. Also, I can't get my fingers to do what I want them to do on the piano and I am losing patience with myself.

- A person I was depending on for something flaked out 100% spectacularly on it. Like, a sitcom-grade flakeage. It would be really funny if it were not happening to me. Or to anyone in their real life for that matter. It would be hilarious if it were happening to a character where I knew the actress was making more in a month than I make in a year to put up with that kind of foolishness.

- I may not need the cakes I baked because there is "leftover cake from last night" that apparently "needs to be used up." Oh, so I just used six eggs and a couple cups of sugar and even went out and bought a box of cake flour for nothing. Oh well. The smaller cake turned out badly, it looks - it collapsed and pulled away from the pan edges, I don't know what went wrong. If I don't use it tonight I will probably just throw it away because it looks so sad.

- Running errands this afternoon, I was stopped by a funeral procession. That's not the bad part. The bad part is, in the middle of the procession, someone turned and I thought the procession was over and pulled through the intersection they were going through and then after I was through realized the procession was still going. I FEEL TERRIBLE ABOUT THIS. I was not raised to be the kind of speshul snowflake who pulls through a funeral procession because they think they are a hurry. I tried telling myself "the intel was bad" because of the person who turned but I still don't feel any better.

- My spring allergies have started up.

- Even though I am nearly 42, have been doing this for at least 32 years without any success, I still walk to the mailbox vaguely hoping there will be a surprise valentine for me. Just like Charlie Brown. And just like Charlie Brown I am disappointed. And then I'm irritated at myself for being disappointed because I am nearly 42 and should totally know better.

- We're in the throes of flu season here which means people missing class, missing tests, missing due-dates and I have to tap dance all over the place to keep up with who needs to do what and who has an excuse to hand what in late. And it's making me tired and cranky because I really wish things would just be simple for once: 24 students in a class, 24 papers due, 24 papers on my desk on the due date. IT NEVER WORKS OUT THAT WAY. Someone always has an excuse.

- I have an evening meeting tonight but what I'd really like to do is go to bed. I can't, though, because I have responsibilities at this meeting.

- I have another cake to bake for Thursday.

Just popping in

To say that other people are frustrating the Hell out of me right now.

This is not Monday; this is Monday on steroids.

Something for Monday

And something NOT Valentine's Day related.

(I thought I was OK; I truly did. Then the local news channels started running all their annual stories on it. Blech. Though I did have a good laugh at the guy trying to read off "I love you" in all different (non-English) languages, because the two with which I have some familiarity (French and German) he totally butchered. "Ick libby dick," indeed).

One of the people on CPAAG posted this video. It's a little bit geeky and in its own way, a little bit steampunk (oscilliscope!) So I had to share it. (And once again, I'm amazed at the effort people go to for these things. And also - I remember using a tape recorder for data storage on the first home computer my family had. We were out of the oscilliscope era by then, but still...)




*******

Also, I had a dream last night that my graduate institution was planning to award "Snooki" (the reality-tv "star") an honorary doctorate for...I don't know what, exactly. And I was deeply conflicted because I felt that since they were giving the degree out so cheaply to someone, I should, in protest, return my (earned) doctorate. But then a particular unpleasant higher-up (someone with whom I have tangled in real life) told me that the moment I handed back my degree was the moment I became unemployed.

And so I faced that dilemma in my dream...do something I really felt strongly about and destroy my life, or shut up and let it eat at me? (I don't know what I'd do in real life, and I don't know if I'd be as bothered. I mean, I'm sure universities have given honorary degrees to people who offended a larger group of their alums, and for greater cause...) But I'm not in the best mood this morning because of that.

a baking fool

That's what I am, this weekend.

Friday night, in the midst of grading, I decided I was hungry for breadsticks and marinara sauce (a cheaper, and lower-fat - because of no cheese or meats - version of pizza). But I knew I didn't want to drive out to the Little Caesar's, because (a) their breadsticks are salty and fatty, and not that great for you and (b) they're across town and I just didn't want to saddle up again and go back out.

So I used a pizza crust recipe from one of my cooking-for-one cookbooks. It's small, takes like a cup of flour (and a little cornmeal for texture). It doesn't have to rise very long (1/2 hour for first rising was plenty, and after shaping, 15 minutes was enough).

So I made the breadsticks, and wondered why I didn't bother to make small quantities of "real" bread more often. The time factor is part of it. (Especially if you want wholemeal bread - whole-grain flours take longer to rise because they are heavier and typically develop less gluten). But there is something very satisfying on a deep level about being able to make bread.

One of my "historical" cookbooks (that is, it's a newer cookbook but with older recipes - it's one that Arizona Highways put out a few years back; I got a copy for Christmas a few years ago) has a little rhyme in it that they said was from an old, old cookbook. I think I've seen it elsewhere:

"Breathes there a wife with a soul so dead
That she has never to her husband said,
'This is my own, real, homemade bread'?"

Now, I'm not anyone's wife, but I can relate to that. There is a certain satisfaction - maybe even smugness - in being able to make your own "real" bread, taking flour and yeast and water and combining them (and, if you're an American, likely also fat and sugar...the American "keeping loaf" with butter or oil and sugar in it was a product of the pioneers, when women baked once a week and had to make a "keeping loaf." The flour-yeast-water breads are more typical of old Europe, where people living in towns - or at least, near a baker - would buy their bread very nearly daily)

I grew up eating homemade bread. My mom always baked bread; I think now it was (like her extensive gardening) partly the effect of being an intelligent, educated, active woman who had chosen to stay home to raise her children - and so she needed stuff to do. (I am, perhaps, not as unlike my mother in personality as I might think). Also, she grew up eating homemade bread (her mother was an excellent bread-maker, and also, baking bread at home was a really good way to save money in a family that didn't have a lot to spare).

So I got kind of spoiled. To this day I disdain most grocery store bread (I make an exception for Orowheat's "Health Nut" loaf, which is actually pretty good). I don't eat a whole lot of bread, actually: I am not a big sandwich-eater and I generally don't think of starches as a "fill in" at a meal...I'll eat a bigger salad or another piece of fruit or do something like boil up an egg if I feel like I need more. But it is nice, once in a while, to have homemade bread.

I don't generally bake partly because of the time factor, but also because a lot of the good bread recipes I have make multiple loaves. (Again: the farm influence, the baking-once-a-week for a big family). I know, you can freeze bread - but it's a rare day I REMEMBER to take something that's in the freezer out, so that's not the best option. Perhaps what I should do is seek out smaller recipes, or see if the large ones can be cut down. Because it is a pleasure to have "real" bread, and, in particular, toast is a very nice thing to have instead of the same-old cereal every morning. (I found fig jam at the store the other day. It's surprisingly good.)

Also, today I made tortillas as part of my lunch. I had cooked up a big pot of Anasazi beans on Thursday when I was stuck at home (because of the ice). I tend to think beans are best with something like cornbread or tortillas, and I needed my 8 x 8 pan for something else later today....so tortillas it was. I've shared the tortilla recipe before; it's so simple to do that I don't even bother to buy flour tortillas now, because I can have fresh homemade ones in about 40 minutes. (And what's more: the recipe I have makes enough for two servings, so I can eat them up over the course of two days. Back when I bought the packs of flour tortillas, they'd often go bad in the fridge. Also, they were not nearly as good as my homemade ones, which meant I was less prone to eat them up).

(Anasazi beans are an old, old Southwestern bean variety - supposedly the people in the Southwest before the Navajo (they are known to the Navajo as the Anasazi, which I've been told means either "ancient ones" or "ancient enemies"). The beans themselves are a bit like pintos, only the speckling is red and white rather than brown. They're a lot like a New England variety called Jacob's Cattle, and may, in fact, be the same variety. They're a little hard to find but the natural-foods store in Sherman carries them, and to my great joy, I found that the Green Spray has them. I think the Green Spray shows some of the influence of being run by a family group rather than a corporation - they have a lot of neat odd items that some larger stores don't carry. I think they must carry the Anasazi beans because one of the owners likes them).

And now, as soon as the eggs have come up to room temperature, I need to make a cake and a half for tomorrow night. (It's CWF.) I was going to make one 9 by 13 cake, but then the president started worrying about "what if more people show up" (I will be surprised if they do. I am sure many of the young-marrieds will be doing Valentine's Day at home). So, I'm making a cake and a half, and figuring if we don't need to cut into the "half," I'll figure out some use for it - it would be a bit small to frost and bring into my department, which would be the logical thing.

So: one (doubled) recipe of hot-milk sponge in a 9x13 pan, one regular recipe in an 8 x 8 pan. And tomorrow I'm going to make a raspberry sauce because (as I've said before) I'm not mad about frosting cakes, nor am I a particularly great fan of frosting. And I'm going to bring whipped cream, so they can have cake with sauce and/or whipped cream.

I just hope my co-hostess remembers to show up; fixing the coffee will be on her. (I can't make good coffee as I don't drink it myself.)

Back to reality

Thanks for all the nice comments on the sweater. Checking my Ravelry log, I see I started it in fall 2009, so it's good to have it done.

Next sweater will be getting back to Potter, and I also have another cardi - one out of a back issue of Interweave Knits, it's actually one that I got the specific yarn for one birthday a couple years ago - it's made out of the Nashua "fuzzy" yarn, it's sort of a bluegreen color with feather-and-fan bands around the bottom in neutrals (Brushed Lace Cardigan - Winter 2007. Thank you, Ravelry search. If you're a member you can see the cardigan here). I think the sweater was designed to be knit on a size 9 or so, so that will be a nice change from wee tiny needles.

Campus is back open. I had a few scary moments driving in - there's still ice on the streets. And Wilson, which I come up to get to my building, is twisty-turny and hilly. And then, as I was getting up to the first blindish curve, I realized, "Holy cow, is that a Coca-Cola truck coming down Wilson?"

It was. So I pulled over as fast as I could (Wilson is narrow and also the apartments along it permit parking on the street - and because of the person who owns the apartment building (or so I'm told) the cops/TPTB in the town never do anything about the fact that the street is essentially one lane for most of the area by the apartments). The guy slowly edged past me on the ice. I'm glad he was going slowly and that I could get over when I did.

Hopefully by the time I head home for the day it will be close to 50 and the ice will be all gone.

And then it's supposed to be in the 70s next week. If that stays that way, I can use the "assessment testing day" (we need to cancel all classes so they can do testing of some of the students) to get my spring soil invertebrate sample. Though I'm not sure how much I will find given the cold winter...perhaps it would be better to wait until AFTER spring break to do the sampling, I don't know.

Thermal is done!

It looked like this outside yesterday:



The sun is out now and I think things may be beginning to melt. (We WILL have class tomorrow. We WILL.)

And it looks like this in my house today:



Yes, I FINALLY finished Thermal. I am glad I did the slightly smaller size; the fabric it makes is very stretchy. (Anyone who is planning on making this: go down 2 to 4 inches from the typical "finished size" you make, if you want a close fit - which I think looks best with a sweater like this).

I will need to wear something under it as the neckline is very low. I'm thinking most of the time either a t-shirt or a long-sleeved t-shirt would be best; I think a turtleneck might clash a bit with the neckline shape.

The color is off in that photo. (That's what I get for using the "energy efficient" CFLs - they "yellow out" everything). This photo - taken as a close up to show the buttons I chose - shows the color much more realistically. (It was taken in my bathroom, where I insist on still having incandescent bulbs. Because fluorescents make me look ill, and you don't need that at 6:00 am when you're trying to put on make up for the day.)



This also shows the nice broken-rib thermal stitch pattern as well.

Edited to add: I tried to get a truer-color photo, but because my arms are short and the bathroom is small, this is all I was able to get:



And yes, I'm wearing the little sockyarn hat I knit over the summer. I turned the heat down in my house to try to save a little on the gas bill for this month and I got cold. But the hat sort of matches the sweater, so it's all good.

As I said, I'm glad I made the smaller size. And also glad that I went with my own measurements (and trying them on) for the sleeves; if I had followed the pattern they would have been too long for me. (I guess I have proportionally short arms, or something: that's often a problem with garments I make)

I have two full skeins and a partial skein (and a tiny partial skein) of the yarn left over. I'm thinking I might make a pair of long fingerless mitts out of some of it. (It's a discontinued color of KnitPicks' Gloss. I suppose I could also check on Ravelry to see if there's anyone who's desperate for a small amount of this color to finish a project...)

Annnnnnnnd yet again.

No class again tomorrow. (Thank all that is holy that we are going to have a "change" in the weather pattern starting this weekend, and all the weathermen are claiming this is the last winter storm we should get this winter.)

On the upside, the roads (sample size of 1, here: the street in front of my house) look slick and dangerous - glaze of ice, with little ice-ridges from where people drove on the snow. And it's supposed to get cold enough tonight to freeze the somethings off of a brass something, so that ice isn't going anywhere, at least until tomorrow afternoon.

On the downside: I miss teaching the group of students that is turning out to be my favorite class this semester (Yes, I know. It's probably wrong for profs to have "favorite" class groups but really, give me a room full of students who are polite to me and to each other, who clean up after themselves in lab without being reminded to, and who ask interesting questions, and they will become my favorites)

But on the upside yet again: I will certainly finish Thermal now.

And I decided on my Invigilating Knitting for Friday (and yes, there WILL be class on Friday. There WILL.), I will get out the somewhat-stalled "Miss Marple Shawl" and work on that. Because it's something already all cast on for, and all swatched, and partly knit. And it's also basic enough that I don't have to constantly watch a pattern to keep up with it. (This is another project that stalled - like the most recent socks - because I'm afraid I may run short on yarn. I'm going to have to watch and maybe cut out a pattern repeat or two, depending.)

"Ball of Fire"

One of the benefits of being home in the middle of the day for a snow day is that sometimes you get to see things you might not otherwise get to see.

TCM ran a movie called "Ball of Fire" today. I had never seen it, started watching it while finishing my lunchtime tea, and got thoroughly hooked on it.

Of all the cable channels I get, I think TCM is the one that has most consistently given me things that delighted and entertained me, or that were thought-provoking and moving. (This movie was the former).

"Ball of Fire" is, I guess you could call it a "screwball comedy" (I never know exactly what the parameters are for something to fit in that genre, but this is definitely a comedy and has enough screwiness to make me laugh out loud - alone, in my living room - at several points during the movie).

In short, it chronicles a group of professors working on an encyclopedia. The English grammar specialist - Gary Cooper - realizes after speaking to a sanitation worker that he knows NOTHING of current slang - and so, sets off to recruit helpers (A college student, a paperboy...) to teach him. Along the way he winds up in a nightclub where Barbara Stanwyck is playing a "burlesque dancer" (though of course, this being a movie made during the Code era, the fact that she sometimes took off her clothes on stage was only barely alluded to).

Stanwyck's character ("Sugarpuss O'Shea") is being pursued by the DAs office because of ties she has to the mobster Joe Lilac (played by Dana Andrews). She first sees Cooper's character as an annoyance...and then winds up at the (huge, gorgeous, and made me envious of it) house where Professor Potts (That's Cooper) lives with seven other professors. She shows up there (and completely discombobulates all of the other professors - who are all much older and apparently completely unworldly - watching them scatter as they realize a WOMAN is in the house and there they stand in their pajamas and dressing-gowns (or in Professor Oddly's case, a long white nightshirt) was one of the funny moments)

One of the reasons I enjoyed the movie is that it did feature pretty much all of the good Hollywood character actors of that era - "Cuddles" Sakall, and Henry Travers, and Oskar Homolka (as well as a few others I was not familiar with. Richard Hadyn, when I first heard his voice, I wondered, "Could that be Shepard Mencken, playing a character much older than what he would have been at that time?" because the voice was not unlike what Mencken used as the cartoon character (greatly beloved by me) Clyde Crashcup some 20 years later. Hayden was, however, playing a man older than he actually was - at that time he would have been in his 30s and was playing a man of perhaps 80.)

All of the professor characters - at least, the non-romantic-lead ones - were somewhat stereotyped. And as much as I roll my eyes at the stereotypes of scientists and academics that I sometimes see in movies or television, I was actually kind of charmed by these portrayals. Perhaps because they were portrayed as benign individuals - perhaps a bit unworldly, perhaps a bit childlike (one of the professors, in offering his room to Miss O'Shea, noted he occasionally "bunked in" with another one - during electrical storms. ("it's true." the other professor remarked. "He's afraid of lightning.")

(Perhaps I wasn't bothered by the portrayal of the professors as they were - slightly unworldly, bookish, maybe a bit childlike, and interested in the sort of things most "practical men" might not care too much about - because in this case, for THIS professor, the stereotype kind of fits...)

Part of it is I just love movies that have a lot of interesting "character" roles. I think that's maybe one of the difference between the movies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s and a lot of modern movies - the "character roles" now don't seem to be as strongly developed, or something.

And also - I cannot, as an academic, help but ADORE a movie where, towards the end, the "cavalry" comes in to save the day singing "Gaudeamus Igitur" as they break down the door.

I think another reason I love movies like this one is that they end with everything made right. The two characters who "should" fall in love, do, and the movie closes with plans for their marriage. And the professors get to continue their encyclopedia - originally, the humorless daughter of the benefactor was going to cut off funding after the "scandal" raised by the nightclub singer being linked to one of the professors. But then during the ensuing excitement, capture of thugs, and chase to 'rescue' Miss O'Shea, she declared that she was having the time of her life - and that the funding was back on. And I guess I can imagine the little world created by the movie going on - the two romantic leads getting married, the new Mrs. Potts becoming perhaps a bit of a mother figure to the other professors, and the encyclopedia's work going on...

I wound up finishing the neckline for Thermal and sewing in most of the first sleeve while finishing up watching the movie. Hopefully it will be done soon; I may have a photo up tomorrow or Friday.

Yup, another snowday

Not much snow as of yet but I guess the bulk of it is supposed to arrive soon.

On the one hand, I'm not happy about missing a second lab in one of my classes - I will have to "piggyback" two one week and that's going to frustrate students. On the other hand, if it's truly hazardous out there, I'm glad not to have to go out in it.

And I'm glad I got my second Friday exam typed and copied yesterday, and already handed out the lab info (and pushed the students to do the little bit of necessary prep) for my soils class next week.

Today, I'm just going to stay home and either knit or sew on the current quilt top. I'm getting pretty far on the newest fingerless mitts ("Cranford" from SpillyJane). I'm really happy with them - it's a nice pattern, and the yarn I chose (some sport-weight Regia Silk - a silk and wool blend) is not just really pretty for them (I am using a dark brown with cream for the accents) but also it is very soft and will be perfect for fingerless mitts.

I do also want to think of a more-easily-portable project (one that requires less attention) for Friday's exams. I'm thought about swatching for Delphine but now I see that (a) it would take more attention and (b) it calls for a size of circular needle (a 2) that I don't currently have. Le sigh. (Though it looks like the size 2 isn't used until late in the pattern. I will have to see. If I don't finish the fingerless mitts I might do those instead, I don't know)

Winter, part Deux

We're under a Winter Storm Warning. Not a 'watch,' not an 'advisory,' but a full-on Warning.

We might get "up to 7"" of snow. ("get seven inches." I can hear my friends on CPAAG going "snerk" from over here). They're telling us to "complete any necessary errands TODAY."

I don't know. I have to laugh a little in the face of the apocalyptic warnings. I have plenty of food. The effects of this storm should last, at most, 2 days. If it's snow, the loss of power is highly unlikely. If the roads are at all bad, I lose another day of teaching (not good) but I don't have to go out in it (not so bad, at all). Last week's storm doubtless was worse but if people can avoid going out in it...it's really not that horrible. (I know - this is my Northernerness showing)

I'm ready. I have one exam for Friday (I expect we will not have class Wednesday, but we will Thursday and Friday, based on the predictions I've seen) all ready to go and will type the other one this morning.

(Part of the reason I'm in a good mood today, I think, is that I was very efficient yesterday: the lab I taught was one that involved a lot of sitting around doing nothing - in fact, for a big chunk of the time, I was in the room alone, just there so the room could be kept open, until the students came back and checked the hydrometer readings a second time. So I wrote my second exam during those three hours or so, and I also read and applied comments to the first few ecology project-proposals that came in. So, three hours that could have been wasted sitting around were spent doing something I needed to do anyway and had been planning on taking home with me)

Also, I re-jiggered the lab schedule so that the lab for tomorrow (if we meet) is one with minimal preparation - no having to go out and dig up snowmelt-soaked soil, no having to go get crickets (only to find that classes are cancelled and they can't be used). We're going to do a demographic-analysis lab based on cemetery data - which I already have in big binders; it's mostly a number-crunching lab. Some of the students hate it (because of all the math) but some think it's kind of cool (because of the patterns you can see). (I tend to come down on the side of "interesting patterns, I wonder what you'd see if you compared THESE two groups...)


***

Next week is Valentine's Day. It's funny how my attitude to this has changed over the years - from sort of a mopey, "Don't remind me that no one loves me!" attitude, to a certain...indifference...this year.

I am a little amused at the threads on one of the online bulletin boards I hang out on, titled things like "I will be so glad when Feb. 14 is over!!!" and I kind of smile and go, "been there, done that, don't need to read the thread."

I don't know exactly why my attitude has changed. Part of it may be having read a one of my mom's 1960s-era entertaining books (this was one of those little spiral-bound Betty Crocker publications). The author made a comment along the lines of "Valentine's Day, like Halloween, is mostly a holiday for children."

And I thought: you know, I like that idea. It takes the pressure off. On Halloween, as an adult, I'm content to hand out candy to the trick or treaters and smile at the cute little kids in their costumes. I'm not sad that I'm not able to go out and do it any more (even though I have happy memories of trick or treating as a child). I'm also not sad that I'm not going out to a party or something. (I did, one year. It was OK but I don't find most "grown-up" parties that much fun, unless there's a specific focus, like "it's a baby shower and we're gonna watch the mom-to-be open up the cute stuff people got for her")

And honestly, the best Valentine's Days I remember were the childhood ones - where instead of having afternoon class (even if it meant missing science class, which was my favorite), we'd have a party with cupcakes and that red Hi-C punch and sometimes the teacher would bring in a radio and let us play music and we brought those silly cartoon-character valentines to give to people (most of my teachers required us to give them to *everyone* if we gave them to anyone, which was probably kinder given the way grade school sometimes went, but it meant some agonizing choices where you didn't want to risk giving the "icky" boy in the class any kind of a wrong idea, so you very carefully chose the card that said "happy valentine's day" rather than the one that said "be mine" on it (that one you saved for the not-so-icky boy, or for a friend).

And we made "mailboxes" out of shoeboxes, and got to decorate them with stuff. And then we got to sit and open all our cards and squeal with our friends over the cute cards they chose, or really squeal if the not-so-icky boy gave us a nice card. And it was just kind of simple and silly and innocent. And I liked that.

(I was pretty much an innocent in those grade school years. Oh, by fifth grade or so I knew the 'facts of life,' pretty much, but I also knew that it would be YEARS and YEARS before I wanted to contemplate putting those facts into practice - which is why it always seems sad and strange to me to read of 11 and 12 year olds having babies).

But it WAS more innocent, I think, and less fraught with the worries that adolescence and adulthood bring to the whole "romance" thing. Having a crush on a boy was so much SIMPLER. And when kids spoke of "going together," they weren't actually dating - they didn't actually "go out," as we talked about in high school - in fact, in a lot of the cases, they seemed to avoid one another. (It was strange, now that I think of it, and another of those things I found a little baffling about human interrelationships). I guess it could have been said I was "going with" a particular boy in my class one year, by that definition. I would have said he and I were "friends." (And "friends" in the most innocent sense of the word)

I don't know. Maybe this is just one of the things that growing up messes with badly. At some point I got shy about talking with boys and then realized I related to them best on a professional level...so I like working with men, I get along well with men, but in a social setting I sort of start to get nervous and probably send off the wrong signals.

Anyway.

Another thing I think I realized in the past year or so is that I do have it pretty good. I have family that loves me, friends who love me, and unless every particle of my faith and every bit of religious teaching I've had over the years is completely wrong, God loves me. And you know, that's enough.

Part of it may be that I've seen so many people (mostly women) that seemed to get the idea that a relationship, any relationship, was preferable to being alone...and so they wound up in bad, sad, difficult situations where the ripples that resulted affected so many other people - children, other relatives, friends, even their professors at school...

And while I know that many (most?) relationships are happy and stable, still, having seen enough unstable ones...it makes me value the relative peace I have in my life. Coming home to an empty house also means coming home to a peaceful house, a house free of crises, a house where the chicken you put in the fridge to thaw for dinner will still be there and where the place won't be messed up even though you just cleaned.

I think the other thing I realized is that even though I'm not following the path of 90-95 percent of people in this nation, I'm still happy. And anyone who pities me or thinks I'm strange or looks down on me because I'm alone, well, that's their problem. That's their failure of imagination - that they can't see that a life different from the one they have can be happy, too. (And I admit considerable cognitive dissonance at the occasional situation of having a woman tell me how "sad" or "worried" she is for me that I'm not married and don't seem to have "prospects," and then in the next few sentences she proceeds to rag on her husband or children for some minor thing.)

And for that matter - I've also had the experience over the past year of talking with a few people who really did NOT have good relationships with their parents, who didn't grow up as I did, where I was confident of their love and that they would care for me and no matter how much of a screw-up I felt like around my peers, they still seemed to see something valuable in me. And the realization that having loving parents is (sadly) not a "given" for people, makes me value mine all the more, and strangely, feel less bad about the gloopy diamond ads or the general attitude retailers try to sell that if you don't have a dude buying stuff for you, you're not really worth anything.

So anyway: valentine's day, whatever. I did send my parents a card, because throughout my life they have been the two humans that I could reliably count on to love me and be there for me. And that deserves a card, at the very least.

Just enough yarn

I finished the Cable Ribbed Socks (these were from a back issue of Interweave Knits and are also in their "25 favorite socks" book).

I didn't run out of yarn, after all. Once I got to the last cable repeat I could tell I'd have enough. I didn't have a LOT of extra yarn, but I had enough:



An interesting thing I just noticed in that photo: you can totally see the point of the gauge chance in the striping of the yarn! You knit the first four inches or so of the socks on size 2 needles (so they will fit over the larger part of the calf) and then switch to size 1 needles (a more typical size for sockweight yarn, and really what I find I need to make a fabric that is dense enough to wear well on the foot)

They look very long and skinny in that picture, but they do "take up with wear":



Also, you can see the cables a little better when they are on the leg.

I've been working on these since Thanksgiving so it feels good to finish them.

I've started two new projects: some fingerless mitts (it looks like we will be in for more cold weather, and a pair of "dressier" mitts I could wear with dressier clothes in class - especially if the heat is out again in the classrooms - will be nice) and a pair of socks (A Nancy Bush pattern on size 0s, so it will probably be a while before I photograph those).

***

Now sure whether to tune in to any of the Super Bowl or not. This morning, I was all "It's the Packers! And the Steelers! Two of the old "original*" teams, and probably the only two with their original names!" (Actually, the Steelers were originally the Pirates, I guess.**). But this afternoon, I got kind of meh about it, especially as it's supposed to run until at least 9, and 4:30 am is going to come awfully early after nearly a week of not setting my alarm because school was out.


(*Yeah, yeah, I know. There used to be an NFL and an AFL and at some point (before I was conscious of the game) they merged, so the idea of "original" teams is kind of muddy. Though I guess the NFL came first, and the AFL was a competitor for a while...)

(**And maybe I'd feel differently about the entire game if the Akron Professionals still existed. Oh, we had the Cleveland Browns (that is, until Modell sold them to Baltimore), but Cleveland was always more remote and harder to get to - I think I saw one Indians game in the 20 years I lived in the region, but multiple Akron Zips (the college team) football games. The "Akron Pros" were actually called the "Akron Burkhardts" for a while. Heh. If I were writing detective novels, that would make an excellent name for a 30s-era detective, I think: "Akron Burkhardt, P.I.")

So I don't know. I might watch a few minutes of it, I might not. I am not that great a fan of the Ball of the Foot, and a lot of times the big games seem so heavily larded with extra stuff (seriously, the pre-game show was listed as being 4 hours long?!?!) that I get bored with it.

(I feel the same way with baseball on tv, though I can happily listen to it on the radio while going about other things, and my one recent experience with an in-person baseball game was a lot of fun and something I'd like to do again)

I can has.

I braved the almost 4" of snow. (We have no snowplows here, and I guess the city gave up on even dropping grit in intersections). My drive was scarier than the streets, though.

I got to the Green Spray, at first thought they were closed. Luckily I walked up to to the door and saw a cashier in there...

So now I have a gallon of skim milk, and more orange juice, and some coleslaw makings, and bacon (I'm going to try making like German Potato Salad dressing for on the cole slaw - I like vinegary cole slaw but not the mayonnaise kind). And I restocked on some of the canned goods (beets and mandarin oranges) that were running out (I think I used my last can of beets Wednesday).

So now I'm good for a while.

It's interesting what different people think is blizzard food, apparently. I was all worried there would be no milk and the canned goods shelves would be bare. But it was pop and frozen pizza that was in short supply. (I think they were all out of Dr. Pepper.) As I don't really use either of those, I was able to get everything I needed.

For me, the blizzard necessities are: canned veggies and fruit (they keep forever, and even if you lose power, you can still eat the fruit). Broth, so you can make soup. Noodles or macaroni for the soup. Dry or canned beans. Milk (I have to have milk.). Peanut butter. Granola bars. Crackers or bread. Tea.

All of those things I have on hand at all times, anyway, and with the exception of milk, don't need to be bought on a weekly basis.

(They were also getting low on bread, but they don't carry the bread I like anyway. I think I'm going to make a batch of bread in my bread machine today.)