Yup, a migraine

That migraine headache was worse than I thought it was. (I'm finally over it; I finally can eat again - I couldn't eat my lunch because the thought of food made me feel ill).

At one point I was sitting in my office with the lights out, and me tipped back as much as I could in my chair. (I couldn't leave campus - had a student coming in for a make-up exam.) One of my colleagues walked by, saw me, and said softly, "Oh, is it a migraine day?" At least they know and understand.

I still feel kind of wiped out but am striving to do the next chapter of the PI stuff while listening for trick or treaters.

Oh, and on car-rental places: our Enterprise closed. There is a local independent place, but I wasn't happy with them some years back when I dealt with them during a recall issue on my previous car. So I don't know. Not sure if I want to go through my insurance for a rental, I'm not sure what that might do for my rates. I suppose I could check. (I know a rental is covered if you're in an accident, especially if it's clearly the other guys' fault, but I'm not sure what the policy is on random stuff going wrong with the car)

It would be so much easier if the repair center were open Saturdays - I could totally drop the car off Friday morning (or heck, even Thursday late-in-the-day), manage for Friday, and then get it on Saturday. But no joy there. It's possible one of my church friends will have a spare car they could loan me for a day...a few of them do, couples where one person is retired and doesn't really drive as much any more.

I'll deal with it when I have the time and energy to deal with it. I think part of my distress these few days is that I'm trying to cram GET EVERYTHING DONE NAOW! into single days, and not making myself stop and take a breath now and then.

At least my OAS presentation is mostly done, or as done as it minimally needs to be.

I give up.

The good news: The car is not unsafe to drive, although the air bags "might" not trigger in an accident where they would be beneficial.

The bad news: They apparently need to take my car to ever-lovin' bits to find out what the problem is. The manager told me that they needed the car for one, more likely, two days.

My greatest dismay at this is not what it might cost (unless it turns out a mouse ate the contacts - which is not entirely impossible - the repair will be covered under warranty, anyway) but the two days of carlessness.

"Not this week" I told him. "Maybe not next week."

And yes, I once again explained that because I was SINGLE and LIVED ALONE and had ONLY ONE CAR the fact that I would be WITHOUT A CAR FOR TWO DAYS presented a problem.

No, I didn't quite use the Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice (I can't quite summon that "voice of legion" effect), but I did sound rather like the baby complaining about how riding the dog like it is a small horse is FROWNED UPON in this ESTABLISHMENT:



(I'd probably never use the service that baby promotes, but some of his ads crack me up).

Next week, after all the funerals and stuff, I MIGHT be able to get someone from church who could at least pick me up from work so I'm not walking home (and it will be dark at 5 pm next week. Well, at least if I have to walk in at 7 am a day or two, I'll be walking in the light). But not this week, I'm not going to lay that on anyone this week. (I might also be able to get my secretary to drive me at least partway home, depending on the day. Not sure where she lives and how out of the way my place would be).

But I admit, the whole idea of having to ask people for rides makes me twitch because the last time I asked for help with something - getting the broom off my roof (Which is STILL THERE, thank you VERY MUCH) the person flaked on helping, and when someone else asked them why they hadn't shown up to help THEM, they got all upset at that person. So whatever. That is why I don't like asking people for help.

I wonder how much it would cost to hire a car and driver, if one could even be found closer than Dallas, for two days. Ugh.

(I don't own a bicycle, and at any rate my balance is sufficiently bad that I'd be a hazard to myself on a bike.)

I'm telling myself:

a. I have been in one minor accident in my entire driving history. (Well, other than the time my mom and I were driving somewhere together, and someone failed to stop, rear ended the car behind us, and caused them to rear-end us. But that was really minor, I think the bumper just needed to be replaced and that was because it was the typical low-test bumper most car manufacturers use now)

and

b. For the first 30 or so years of my life, I was a passenger/driver of cars withOUT airbags.

and

c. I always buckle my safety belt (Air bags are actually somewhat unsafe, from what I've read, if you're not buckled. Especially if you're a woman weighing less than 120 pounds, but that hasn't been an issue for me since I was 14 or so.)

If I just can't deal with it now, possibly it could wait until the end of exam week, when I have two days with nothing expected of me where I could just stay home (And I have four days after that before I have to leave for Christmas, so even if something goes really goofy with the car, they should have it fixed). But I don't know.

But, golly day. I'm ready to be DONE with stuff like this for a while. Driving back here, I "talked it out" stating that I was fed up with stuff breaking or seeming to have broken, that I was at the limit of being able to juggle everything I need to juggle and that I...just...really....NEED...for stuff to....go....SMOOTHLY FOR A WHILE." (And that was the point where my voice started breaking and I started tearing up, all alone there in my car).

The only upsides? I got all my exams graded, and the migraine that was nibbling at the edges of my consciousness departed enough that I can function again, more or less. So I'm going to grab the big giant textbook and drag it home to try to prep the next chapter while waiting on trick or treaters.

You know, I think about how so many kids long to grow up, long to be adults. If they knew what it really was like they wouldn't long for it nearly so much.

"With hope and confidence...."

Now the airbag light on my car (2010 Ford Edge) is on and won't turn off. I'm hoping that's just some fuse acting up somewhere. When I noticed it this morning, I drove the rest of the way in very carefully, hoping the airbag wouldn't suddenly deploy.

The online auto fora I looked at suggested that (a) it's a fuse or (b) there's something very very wrong and OMB GET IT TO THE DEALER NAOW!!!!

Seeing as my day today is devoted to other things, and I have a meeting and piano lesson tomorrow, and teach all day Wednesday, and have AAUW meeting Thursday....taking it to a dealer NAOW can't really happen. (I do have to get it in for an oil and filter change soon).

(My dealer doesn't do "loaners" - so if I drop the car off, I'm on shanks' mare or dependent on the kindness of other people with cars until I can get it back. And I can't do that, not this week.)


***

I will get some knitting time in today as I have an exam to invigilate.

(The title of this post comes from the famous Elizabeth Zimmerman quotation: "Knit on, with hope and confidence, through all crises." Though in her case, I believe it applied to a political crisis she was observing, but whatever. )

I started another project last night. I don't NEED another project, in fact, I need to be finishing some of the things I have on the needles, but there's something comforting about new projects. I dug out the 2 skeins of "Melange" I bought a while back to make one of the little slouchy hats in the Jane Brocket knitting book.

Melange is a very, very nice yarn. It feels good to knit with and it is pretty knit up. (it's 100% baby alpaca, so it's very soft and smooth). The color I got is called Toasted Almond - a very light tan, almost more of an ecru than a tan.

I'm thinking of getting more and doing another hat or two - depending on how fast this one knits up - for Christmas presents. (I have to figure out something for the "anonymous gift exchange" one of my women's groups does, and this might work. Yes, I know, I don't need more deadlines and more stuff pulling at my time.)

***

I think part of the reason I've been cranky lately is that I'm just doing too much. And I'm away from home too many nights (or working at home too many nights). Or around people too much, which exhausts me. I went to the kids' Hallowe'en party that my church does last night - a couple who have a farm outside of town do it at their place. While it was fun, it was also a little stressful as I had to be one of the pairs of eyes watching to be sure all the kids were OK. Though I did get to feed an apple to a horse. (They have horses, and at one point the father got out a bag of apples and said that anyone who wanted to give the horses a treat could. Most of the kids were more interested in playing basketball...so I took an apple and got to feed it to one of the horses. I don't have a lot of experience with them - I once noted that I was kind of afraid of horses, especially as a child - and I have to admit it's a bit distressing to see what slobbery animals they are. (Kind of ruins the mental image of Applejack). I also went on the hayride - originally I wasn't, because of allergies, but rather than being a "lie down in a pile of hay in the bottom of a buckboard" it was more "Sit on a hay bale that's on the back of an open trailer," so I figured I could do that. (Still, my allergies are bad today - though that could also just be from having been outside where there was still ragweed blooming - and I did get a few hives on my hands where I was resting them on the hay).

***

This Saturday is the next meeting of the craft group at church. And even though I'm busy, even though I surely could find some work-activity to fill those two hours, I'm going. Because I want this one thing to be a success - I want it to continue, and to grow, to the point where if there's a month I can't be there, that's OK.

I volunteered last month to make food for this month. My original plan was to bake a loaf of (yeast) bread, but that's been scaled back to making blueberry quick bread. Which will probably be enjoyed just as much.

But I do feel the pressure this week, because that means I won't have Saturday morning to work, so I'll have to get stuff done this week.

I flipped out

I can tell when I'm stressed, because the little stuff I can normally deal with gets to me.

I got home from the reception a bit after 5 pm, also had to make a stop for more butter and more jam for another batch of cookies. (Three funerals - two with receptions, one with just a family dinner, in one week). And the fruit punch for the kids' halloween part tonight.

Late in the evening - maybe around 8:30 - I flushed the toilet.

And then it didn't fill back up. And I couldn't hear water running. So I took the lid off and looked at the "guts" in the tank, jiggled the thing that replaces the old float in the newer "guts." Nothing. Turned the shut-off valve to off, turned it back on. Nothing.

I figured my toilet had broken. And I couldn't see how. That was what really got to me, I think - while I am not a plumbing *genius*, I have replaced the guts of a toilet and I understand the basic workings of one. And I couldn't see anything clearly wrong. I thought maybe the line to the toilet (that little flexible metal pipe) was blocked (though in retrospect, even that would have been an simple enough fix).

I just stood there for a moment, and something snapped. The couple of nights of doing nothing all night but grade, the day of driving a fifteen passenger van out on back country roads not once but twice, dealing with three deaths of people I knew, worrying about getting my OAS presentation done and my soil invertebrate samples sorted and the exam I give next week graded and the next few chapters of PI done, and and and and.

I just flipped out. Flipped out at the toilet.

"NOOOOOO!" I shouted at it. "NO YOU CANNOT BREAK NOW!! I CAN'T afford the time to get a plumber out on Monday - I need ALL MONDAY AFTERNOON TO WORK*! And I can't afford a new toilet right now! NO NO NO NO NO NO I CANNOT COPE WITH THIS!" And I stomped around more, and yelled more.

(*And I also feel a bit guilty, even if I should not, about begging off on helping either Families Feeding Families - it's our turn right now - or at the reception for Monday's funeral)

And then I thought: could there be a broken pipe under the house. Oh yeah, great, that would be JUST what I needed - to have to get a plumber out for an emergency call on a Saturday night (or turn the water off from the street - which I didn't think of at that moment - and just exist again in a house with no water).

I turned on the sink tap - water came out, but (I didn't notice so much at the time) slowly. So I decided to grab one of my buckets from my PREVIOUS experiment in living without water and fill the tank with it, so I could at least flush when I next needed to. Put the bucket in the tub. Tried turning on the tap.

Almost no water came out. Then the penny dropped.

So I called the non-emergency police number (what you're supposed to call with city water issues after hours) and asked the woman who answered: "Has anyone else reported low water pressure in town?"

And she laughed ruefully and said, "Have they ever."

Apparently, a main broke somewhere - she said crews were out searching for the problem and would fix it, but that "it might take some time." I told her I was just relieved to learn my toilet wasn't broken.

It must have been quite a large break, or a break at a major point, because people from all over town were talking about it in church this morning. (Water pressure has since been restored, and nothing here is broken, after all.)

But yeah: I think I've got too much on my plate when I'm screaming a my toilet a 9 pm on a Saturday.

This is interesting.

Sat down to prepare tomorrow's Sunday school lesson this morning. The passage is Matthew 5:1-12.

Which, some of you will immediately recognize, contains the statement, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

***

I've more or less come to terms with Mr. B.'s death. (Because, really, what else can you do?). If, in fact, something did go very wrong during the surgery or aftercare where there was, I don't know, a period of time when oxygen wasn't getting to his brain or something, and he would never have recovered mental function to where he was before - or if he had remained totally dependent and in a rest home - I do not think he would have wanted that.

I think part of the frisson that gets to me about these is that I'm beginning to acknowledge that fact that (unless something goes very wrong*), there will come a day (please God, not for many, many years), when I'm making that long trip back to my parents' town to help bury one or the other of them.

(*I know people who have lost children - even adult children - and to a person, they say, "This is not how it is supposed to happen. The parent is never supposed to bury the child.")

***

I've decided to take today 'off' from work. (I still have Sunday school lesson to finish, and the cookies to bake, and the funeral/reception to attend). But I'm kind of worn down. I will say that I spent most of yesterday afternoon prepping the lecture material for PI on "the search for the structure of DNA" which is one of my favorite cellular-molecular type topics to teach (because there are so many cool experiments that were done to figure it out), and that helped keep my mind off things. I COULD be working on the next chapter, or on my OAS presentation. But my ability to work is just kind of run down right now. Maybe taking some time off will restore it, I hope. (I still have until the 11th to finish the OAS presentation, and it's probably 3/4 of the way done).

While I'm not exactly thinking about my own mortality - and as I said once before, and I still stand by it - I think I'm less troubled by the fact that I will someday depart this plane than I am by the fact that a lot of people I care about will do so before me - still, seeing a lot of deaths in a short span of time puts one in a philosophical mood.

I think about how when I was in my 20s, how desperate I was to Do Something Big with my life - make some discovery, or write a book, or do SOMETHING that people would remember me after I was gone for. (I was never really of a mindset to want to have children - which is a way many people can leave the world a better place, by raising a good citizen or a kind person - so I didn't think of that.)

When I got a little older, and realized that to make a Big Discovery you pretty much have to devote your entire life to that (I also realized early on that stuff like being an Olympic figure skater, or a concert pianist, or whatever, required a level of single-minded devotion I was not capable of). So I changed my focus slightly and thought, "Well, maybe I can count my life as a success if I make other people's lives better." Which is partly why I became a professor: it always fills me with joy when I hear of one of my students getting into (and better yet, succeeding at) med school or dental school or nursing school or vet school. Or someone going into the conservation field and doing good work. Or - as is beginning to happen, and it makes me happy even if it makes me feel a bit old - a few of my early students showing up as dentists or PAs or pharmacists. (The youngest associate at the dentist's I go to was one of my students. And the PA of my allergist was one of my students).

And of course, just simply being kind: there are a lot of little things a person can do that will then be remembered. There are things people did for me over 20 years ago (I still remember Dr. Tosney and her willingness to spend time talking with me about what to do next when I found out I was being "released" from my first graduate-school program). Sometimes you don't even know when you do something that's very important to another person. (Which is why I try to do little things that other people seem to need, even when I'm tired - because I know there were people there for me when I needed it.)

But I realized something else this go-round. You also need to take time to be happy. (And ironically, the Sunday school lesson is also on the two kinds of happiness: the contentment-sort of happiness that most people would recognize, and the "blessedness" sort of happiness where you learn to sort of surrender and accept that things happen for a reason, and that there are things you can't control). I found myself thinking yesterday afternoon, "I should just go online and order that yarn that I wanted, not worry about whether I will ever have time to knit it up, because it makes me happy." or "I shouldn't worry so much about the cookies I eat; the occasional Fudge Stripe is probably not going to materially shorten my life, and always saying "no" to the things I want to eat is a miserable way to live."

And while I didn't order the yarn (In fact, I think I am going to take the money I would have spent and donate it to the memorial fund in memory of the people instead) and I didn't eat all the cookies, I did realize: I do need time to do what I need to do, I do need to take time to relax and refresh myself and knit or sew and be happy. (It's been a long week, there have been several nights where I took a big stack of grading or other work home with me and just worked until it was time for bed). Maybe I need to ease up a little on my self-imposed insistence on having exams graded and returning them THE VERY NEXT CLASS DAY. Maybe I need to get better at recognizing that work fills the time allotted it, and block out more time for myself again. I find I'm working harder and longer hours now, after tenure and after becoming Full Professor, than I was when I was still bucking for tenure. And while I still need to be excellent at what I do...maybe I don't need to push quite so hard. As they say, no one ever says on their deathbed, "I wish I had spent more time at the office."

***

And finally, something silly and sweet and happy and grabbed from one of those I follow on Twitter: An Open Letter to Hello Kitty. Pull quote:

You are everywhere and whenever I think I might want something to do with Hello Kitty, then there you are! In airport gift shops, in malls, at drugstores, at nearly any conventional and convenient location, you too reside. Your overwhelming availability to be enjoyed and appreciated by the adoring Hello Kitty fans worldwide is further proof of my favorite thing about you, Hello Kitty, that thing being the way you give comfort and the way you are a constant and universal mark of something precious and whimsical and delightful and sweet. You are something loved by very small baby girls and very mature working women and everything in between and thereafter.

.

Because I find it sometimes very good to enjoy things that are sweet and simple and maybe a little childish. (Almost the same thing could be said about MLP:FiM, except the Ponies - at least, the animation-style Ponies - don't have wide availability, and those who love the Ponies are almost more likely to be men in their 20s ("bronies") than "very mature working women." (Though there's at least one "mature" - not sure I'd call myself "very mature" - working woman who loves both Hello Kitty and the Ponies.)

I made my bed with clean sheets last night, and put the vintage Hello Kitty pillowcase I got in an online swap on one of the pillows.

I have to admit, one of the things that intrigues me about Hello Kitty is her longevity. She's been around some 35 years, and I remember her being really popular when I was in the 5th grade (which would have been about 31 years ago). And she's still popular. Somehow, I find that comforting.

Stop it, Universe

Wow. This has been an awful week for my congregation.

First, a retired biology prof - who had been a long time member (he was retired long before I moved here), passed away. He had been in hospice and the people who visited him all said he had made his peace with his impending mortality.

Then, a lady I had known from church, who had developed Alzheimer's and had gone to live in a care facility near her children passed. While I'm sad she's gone, I was sadder when she developed Alzheimer's and could no longer function on her own. I almost think of the point when Alzheimer's gets severe as the real "grief point," because the person you care about and know is slowly slipping away. (And in a way, it's almost a blessing when someone who gets to the point she had gotten to dies...)

Now, Mr. B., (I think I referred to him as J. before - that's his first initial), the man from my Sunday school class. The minister said in his e-mail that Mr. B.'s passing was "peaceful" but still, it makes me sad. (Well, right now I'm more shocked than sad, because for a while it looked like Mr. B. was going to pull through - he had heart surgery, went downhill, seemed to be getting better....)

I'm already on-deck for cookies and help at the reception for Dr. K., and I'm expecting to need to make cookies for Mrs. O.'s reception.

But, wow. Three deaths in one week. I realize that we're an aging congregation, but still.

Their families are in all of my prayers. And wow, is there going to be a big gaping hole in the Sunday school class when we all realize Mr. B. won't be coming back.

I hope it's true what they say about deaths coming in threes, and that we'll be spared for a while. I always find it hard to wrap my head around the "I was talking with this person just a few weeks ago and now they're gone" - especially Mr. B., who was actually doing okay before he went in for surgery.

More on education

I mentioned the other day my dismay at the seeming lack of attention to detail that some students possess.

I was thinking about this more, in light of another discussion over on Ravelry about the pitfalls of giving small children iPhones or tablet computers as a diversion...the concern being that if children spend too much time in the "virtual" world, they become less good at navigating the actual world. That led into a discussion of the "digital generation" - the claim that the current crop of college students should be extra-good at finding and evaluating information on the internet, seeing as they grew up using the internet. (But in a distressingly great number of cases, the extra-good-at-finding-and-evaluating is not so. It's more like some schools or some parents went, "ooh, flashy!" and put the children in front of a computer and expected them to learn by osmosis. The so-called "digital generation" is good at texting, and some are good at playing games online, and I suspect they're good at shopping online and using applications like Facebook...but I find every semester I wind up doing mini-lessons on how to find useful scholarly information on line, and what's drek and what's not. (And in many cases, Sturgeon's Law applies pretty well)

One of the people in the discussion noted something to the effect of the fact that the web was just cranking up as she was in grad school - that she learned a lot of the skills that computers were supposed to do more, and better, and faster, and that she learned them the old-fashioned way. So that while she knows how to use a computer as a tool, she also knows when not to, or what is going on (more or less) under the surface while that tool is working.

And I fit into that category as well. I was a kid just as home computers were becoming possible. (We had one of the old TI modes - 99/4A, I think? I've talked before about how I learned some BASIC on it, and how I learned to play chess using one of the game cartridges sold for it. (There was also an excellent music application, where you could score in music or write your own. The playback was not so great by today's standards - it was basically primitive MIDI - but it was pretty amazing to me at 11.)

But I also remember my 6th grade math teacher (Mrs. Constance Bynum, and yes, I remember her name after all these years) would not let us use calculators...I remember griping about that but now I thank her. (She also would only let us use algorithmic "short cuts" if we could prove we understood how or why they worked.)

And so I learned a lot of stuff the "old fashioned" way. I still write important stuff - manuscripts of articles, research proposals, exams - out longhand on a legal pad first, and then type them, revising as I go. (And I sometimes revise papers by printing them out, and cutting them up and taping the sections back together. My brain works better being able to see the whole thing at once and manipulate it, than it does seeing it a page at a time as electrons on a screen.)

And while I'm aware that everyone learns a little differently, I wonder if we maybe aren't losing something with the big push to "go digital" for everything. I've already seen virtual lab exercises being promoted. And that makes me a little bit sad. There's something valuable about doing the wet-lab, or actually going out in the field, in experiencing the world in its messy reality, instead of having a simulation where (I am assuming) things always work out, the plant always photosynthesizes for you when you are testing its oxygen production, where it's easy to dissect tissues cleanly, and so forth.

And I also think of something I read in some book on childhood development (or something like that). The author suggested that there was value in teaching children to knit, or crochet, or build things with wood, or cook, or draw....or any number of things. Because, the author said, it gave the child a sense of "agency" in the world - that they had something they could control, something they could "make." And I think there's value in that.

And I've also read a number of studies that express concern about plonking a child down in front of a screen and going "My job parenting here is done!" Some of the people in the discussion were observing how some parents would take their child out to restaurants and then just hand them the tablet computer, and have them play or watch videos all through dinner. And while I think in some cases - like if a child is fussy and otherwise inconsolable - maybe an electronic pacifier is not such a horrible thing. But I think of when my brother and I were kids - when we'd be out at restaurants with our parents. We'd play I Spy, or my dad would ask us how many things we could think of that started with the letter "r," or we'd play simple math games, or if there was a paper placemat to turn over, we'd play hangman or tic-tac-toe on it. And while I'm sure there's a Hangman app for smartphones, the point was not so much the game, as it was the interaction. Also, I think there was a subtle lesson being taught there: "Look, you have enough resources within your brain to avoid being bored during a wait without some sort of outside stimulation." (As I remember, in my family, books were pretty much off-limits at mealtimes: you were expected to interact with everyone else). Also, they talked to us a lot. (And I remember my mother once recoiling a bit at someone doing extreme-baby-talk to their small child, and later she told me, "The childrearing books I read when I was expecting you all said NOT to use baby talk, because it slows down a child's language development." So we'd have conversations around the table and stuff.

And we learned a lot of stuff out of school. We were always encouraged to make stuff, even messy stuff...we could paint at the kitchen table, there was always either Play-Doh or that homemade flour-and-salt clay in the house. I remember getting (very mildly) in trouble for using up all my mother's cornstarch to make a non-Newtonian fluid (which is now more commonly called "gak" or "oobleck," but I learned the real name for it when I was a kid. And it was worth getting in trouble over, because it's really fun to play with.)

And I learned to sew and to knit and crochet. And my mom would let my brother and me make cookies or bake cakes (from scratch) sometimes. Or help with things like making bread or pizza or other meals. And we learned that cooking was fun, and interesting, and you could make what you wanted, and it was worth doing.

And I remember my mom showing me, after I learned basic embroidery stitches, how I could take a drawing I had made, trace it onto tracing paper, anchor that tracing paper over a piece of cotton cloth, and embroider my drawing.

Lots of stuff like that. Stuff that was comparatively cheap but fun to do. And I learned a lot of skills, some I still use in hobbies, some (like the dexterity developed from years of crocheting and embroidery and sewing) that may apply to some of my labwork.

I have to admit: in a way, I'm grateful I grew up in a less-technological age. I wonder how I'd turn out if I were a kid now - would I be a bratty, attitude-filled tween if I spent a lot of time watching tween shows on television and carrying around a smart phone? I mean, instead of the shy, bookish, sort-of-young-for-my-age kid I actually was. Would I still manage to resist the 11-year-old doldrums that some girls seem to hit? ("Reviving Ophelia" talks about this some.)

And I wonder about future students - will I have to drastically change how I teach and what I teach in order to cope with an up and coming generation who has less real-world and more virtual experience? Already I see things like students wanting to photograph with their cameras, rather than draw, specimens in lab, and I have to explain that the drawings are not valuable as drawings qua drawings; they are valuable as an exercise in taking time, looking at the detail, deciding what's important, what you need to see....in a lot of my botany classes, we had to draw things, not so we had a copy of the specimen, but to cement in our minds what the key characteristics of that species were. And I see some people not wanting to put in the time on stuff that I know it will take. People ask me: "How do you know the plants so well?" And it's like the old joke about getting to Carnegie Hall: lots of practice, man, lots of practice.

I worry that the "digital age" does everything so fast that people get conditioned to want to circumvent that, that it's harder to tolerate the idea that something might take a year or more to learn in an "instant" world.

And for that matter: a decline in feeling comfortable making things or fixing things or manipulating things - well, that could lead to an even greater crisis in the skilled trades. (Already I've read that in some cases, it's hard to find enough people who know mechanics or fabrication of parts or similar skills). That the push to make everyone a "knowledge worker" is leading to a shortage of (for lack of a better term), "stuff workers."

I don't really have any solutions. I suppose, limiting screen-time is a good one. And maybe teaching skills like fixing stuff, or building stuff, or needlework, or watercolor painting, or whatever the child expresses an interest in - and encouraging that interest over time - might help.

I know I feel happier and more balanced when I have time to cook, time to knit, enough time to practice piano in addition to my teaching duties. (And also, how happy I am doing field research, or playing around with my soil invertebrates.)

But the world has changed SO MUCH. When I started teaching college, cell phones were, if not in their infancy, still in their childhood. More people than not didn't have them. Now, so many people have smartphones that do everything (except, apparently, make clear phone calls). And while smartphones can be fantastic for some things (like, texting someone who is late for field research and telling them where you will be at the field site - or texting your spouse that you're on your way home - or letting someone know, "hey could you pick up some orange juice on your way home?"), sometimes I think they get way overused. And I think there are some people who have lost the ability to sit and entertain themselves with their own brain - or interact in a friendly neutral way with strangers.

I don't know. Sometimes I feel like we're at a crossroads where we've gone way overboard with things like texting and being online every moment of every day, and in a few years people will dial back and go, "Whoa, we were really wasting a lot of time with that texting junk!" and go back to having face to face conversations, or being "unplugged" for a while every day, or whatever - or that we could go the other direction, into an increasingly cut-off and "virtual" world.

I don't know. In many ways I love and am dependent upon the internet - I have friends that I never would have met were it not for things like Ravelry. I have a fast way of communicating with family or friends or students or co-workeres. But I also know that I can get sucked in too much, and spend a lot of time online I'd be better off spending reading or working or knitting or something. (One of the reasons why I have held off getting a smartphone is that I'm afraid it would enable me to spend too much time online. The other reason is that smartphone plans are far more expensive than my dead-basic, mainly-for-emergency-calls cell phone plan, and I don't feel like spending that money).

But I think one thing we as a society - maybe we as humans - are not good at is balance. We go too far one way, or too far another. (I know some people who have totally signed off the Internet, and who totally reject it as a waste of time or a thief of privacy). I think the challenge IS going to be to find a balance between the virtual and the real, the digital and the analog. I just hope we can.

Some surprising costumes.

I commented somewhere else that I don't really "do" Halloween costumes, in part, because so much of the expectation that retailers have for adult women is that they want to be "sexy [x]" where "x" can be any quantity from "Sarah Palin" to "a peacock" to "a banana."

Well, there's a (slightly tongue-in-cheek, I'm guessing) site called "Taking Back Halloween" that has costumes for women that are strong/smart/powerful but not necessarily sexy. There are even instructions on how to make the costume.

For example, Ada Lovelace. Or you could be Demeter (I think I'd actually look rather good as a Demeter). Or Queen Victoria (so 'we' could express how greatly 'we' are not amused by those Sexy costumes). Bonus: there are women from a variety of different ethnicities, so you could pick one that fits your background.

There's also a pretty fierce Boudicca...with my hair out loose, I could probably rock that one as well. (Supposedly part of my heritage is Celt, so that one would especially work).

They have one Biblical woman (Jezebel), but you could probably come up with others...though I'm not sure how many people would recognize, for example, who Lydia was (my personal favorite Biblical woman), even if you carried a length of Tyrian purple cloth. (Then again: how many of the general public would recognize Ada Lovelace as something other than a generic nobility-type?)

One thing done

My students finished their exam a bit early (I hope what that means is that they studied hard, knew the stuff, and earned pretty good grades), so I ran over to get my flu shot.

This was the easiest and least-stressful time I've ever had of it. Last year, I went to a local pharmacy and waited over an hour - and then, the pharmacist hit my arm a little too low. This year, the county health department set up on campus - and they brought their "shot nurse," who knows how to give these kinds of shots fast and so that you (mostly) don't feel it.

Also, there was no one else there when I went in - I was able to go and pay (it costs us $25, unless we're old enough to qualify for Medicare, but $25 is worth it if I can avoid the flu), and then get the shot before I had a chance to work up much dread over it.

Other years, I remember:

a. Going to the county health department, waiting in a long line, being behind someone with a 7 or 8 year old child who had to get the injected vaccine and was NOT happy about it

b. Going to the student health services on campus and being crammed like a sardine in a jumbled mass of people, and no one knew for sure who was next in line. And the room was overheated.

c. Waiting in a line that snaked out the door of the student union. (I think that was a year they were warning it was an especially bad strain of flu going around - or maybe that was the year that the swine flu was part of the shot).

Waiting in a crowd, being around crying children, and being in an overheated place are all things that make me go "I'm gonna bail. I'm going to chicken out and not do this." (And yet, I never have...probably because I remember the last time I got the flu, back around 1994, and was sick for a month and had to go on an inhaler because it progressed to asthmatic bronchitis.)

But now I need to GRADE LIKE THE WIND so maybe I can go home this evening and put my feet up, especially if I'm feeling a little bad from the shot. (Sometimes I get some minor symptoms; what's happening is your immune system is going to work against the inactivated virus so you do sometimes feel a little sick.)

Yesterday was long

(First off: my comment about being "bitter" and single is (mostly) joking. 90% of the time, I suspect I'm probably too busy to establish or maintain a relationship. No, I'm not sure how people who are employed/do volunteer work/have hobbies do it. Obviously they do. Part of my complaint was that the couple couldn't stop being hugged together long enough to get across the street safely - I really, really don't like PDAs, especially when those PDAs make a situation even less safe than it was.)

Wow, I really don't like Wednesdays this semester. I agreed to teach two lab sections of ecology because at that time, I had 27 students, three over the absolute limit, and those three were people close to graduating who, for various reasons, couldn't get the class earlier. (I also admit: some guilt over not having taught this summer - which I normally do - may have played a role). Of course, then, three students dropped, meaning I could have gone back to one lab section, but the four people in the late-afternoon lab had scheduled classes in the early afternoon - so we couldn't.

So I wound up driving out to the forest site (about 20 miles away) twice yesterday. In a fifteen-passenger van. (I don't like driving those, and these vans are old enough I worry about stuff falling off them).

Then I went home and graded Biostats exams. And then came back here when I realized I left one of my answer keys here. (I do multiple forms with different problems on them). That was ALL I did last night, was grade. (And I give an exam in another class, today).

I'm, how shall we put it, not exactly pleased? I notice a trend over the years in direction-following-ability and attention-to-detail, and it seems to be a downward trend. I know I'm hyperresponsible and kind of compulsive, but when I put two parts (an a and a b) on a question, you'd kind of think people would go back and answer part b after answering part a. (This is an exam that was a take home and the students had a week to do).

I'm also having a hard time being cheerful because it's the campus flu shot clinic today. I know I NEED a flu shot (every doctor I've ever gone to has told me, "with your lowgrade asthma, DO NOT get the flu), but I really dislike injections (and I cannot take the flu-mist because of the lowgrade asthma.)

But of course, tomorrow is Friday. (Not that that matters much for me, these days)



Heh.

a bad night

I did a lot of things yesterday - typed an exam, wrote most of an exam for another class, did a bunch of grading, taught my class, made arrangements for a bunch of stuff. And I have a lot of things on my mind - I take my lab class on a field trip this afternoon (provided it's not storming), I have to make time to grade an exam I collect today, make time to grade the one I give tomorrow, I have to bake cookies for the memorial service of the man from my church who was in hospice. (I think I mentioned him before - he was a member of my department but retired long before I came here, and I think had had a couple of strokes before I met him as well. The goal was to get him home so he could die at home, and that happened, though perhaps sooner than everyone expected)...so there's a lot going on.

I always sleep badly and have somewhat oppressive dreams when there's a lot on my mind. Not really nightmares, per se, but dreams packed with stuff where I wind up waking up almost feeling more tired (well, intellectually so, not physically so) than when I went to bed.

(Actually, being emotionally/intellectually tired is worse, I think, than physical tiredness. Like the sort of physical tiredness that comes from a day out hiking, or a day doing chores or yardwork - you can fix that kind of tiredness easily by sleeping, and actually, sometimes it even feels kind of good to be tired in that way. But the strung-out, anxious, hyper kind of tiredness that comes from having to fit too many things in too little an amount of time - sleeping doesn't necessarily fix that, especially not if you dream-rehearse what you are having to do in the next day).

This and that

*There's a new Interweave special publication coming out called "Jane Austen Knits." I pre-ordered a copy. I'm a total sucker for these kinds of things.

*The new Piecework had lots of knitting in it. And an article on four "rare" breeds of sheep (Navajo Churro was one, Leicester Longwool was another. And Leicester Longwoll sheep are cuuuuuuuute. Seeing the pictures of them brought out my "want to cuddle!" reflex.)

*There's also a re-creation of a Coptic sock done using something that looks like nalbinding. I'd like to learn to do it but it looks like it would take FORever. I guess that garments were much more precious in the days when they took many, many hours of work to make. (As opposed to an hour or so of working at your career to buy...and I do know I darn/reknit damaged portions of my own handmade socks, but if I blow through the toe of a purchased athletic sock, in the trash it goes. I suspect we'd value our possessions more if we had more invested in them.)

*I learned last night that if I prop my copy of "Bleak House" on two stacked up bed pillows, it elevates it enough that I can sit on my bed and read and knit. (Much preferable to flipping television channels and trying to knit while I try to find something that doesn't involve a big-haired guy talking about "Aliens!" or extreme couponing...)

*I broke through my stall on the book last night. Esther recovered from her illness (smallpox, I presume, based on her talk of her ruined face), Lady Dedlock delivered some surprising news, and the fifteen different storylines are beginning to slowly weave together. (I'm on about page 515 of 800 or so). I STILL dislike Mr. Smallweed the senior, and when Mr. Skimpole reappeared I inwardly groaned.

*My next "big" book - it's a toss-up between The Three Musketeers (I found a translation that boasts that it's "less bowdlerized" than many) and Sense and Sensibility (yes, I admit with some embarrassment, I've never read it. But I know many people who say they liked it even better than Pride and Prejudice, which I liked pretty well, so...)

*I finished a "simple" sock while reading last night. It's from a striping Lorna's Laces in pink and brown. I've decided that of all the self-patterning yarns, I love the ones that make stripes the best. (Especially the ones that make WIDE stripes, like the ones from String Theory Colorworks). There's just something about stripey socks that makes me happy. (And I'm plotting to do a pair of Fibonacci-sequence striped socks, using some of the big stash of random balls of solid-colored sockyarn I have.)

*I never posted a picture of Friday's stash-enhancement. Here it is:



The pewter-colored "Lustra" is for a scarf, the green and white are for a Mochimochiland critter, and the sock yarn is for socks. I also bought a Clover ergonomic size E crochet hook - I thought I had one but cannot find it ANYWHERE. (It will probably turn up, now.)

*Someone on Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks (on Ravelry) posted this treasure trove of knitting Victoriana. Apparently these are books out of knitting-historian Richard Rutt's collection, and they've been scanned and made into .pdf files. So you can go and read them - or see the patterns they contain. Now I need a lot of time when I have access to a fast internet connection to look at these.

*I'll really be glad when DST FINALLY ends (Nov. 6, this year). Right now, driving to work at 7 it's still dark here. This morning, driving through the apartment-complex area that's on the way to my classroom building, a couple in completely dark clothing (dark jeans, he had a dark hoodie with the hood up) ran out in front of my car. Luckily I saw them in time. (What kind of fool goes out in the dark in dark clothing? Did their parents teach them NOTHING? I remember there even being PSAs on television when I was a child, that you needed to wear visible clothing if you were out when it was dark). Also, the fact that they were a couple and COULD NOT BREAK THEIR EMBRACE even long enough to properly walk across the street bugged me. Yeah, you're in love. You have each other and don't need anything else. You love each other so much you can't let each other go, even for fifteen seconds. Good for you! Now let the bitter spinster who is ALL BY HERSELF IN THE WORLD actually get to work unhampered, please.

Feeding a crowd

I made almost four quarts of spaghetti sauce yesterday afternoon. And cooked up a truckload of spaghetti in my big stockpot (three standard sized packages, and yes, I probably should have split it between two large pots but I only had the one big stockpot).

And I served carrot sticks and celery (which didn't seem to be that popular; one of the mothers who helped me out took the leftovers home - since I can't eat either one because of my food intolerance of things in that botanical family). And three of those big frozen loaves of garlic bread. And two boxes of those frozen "push up" things. (I have the better part of a box leftover...I don't think all the adults took one when I put them out).

I think I counted 20 people, kids plus adults.

I had one serving's worth of spaghetti sauce left at the end of the evening. So I guess they liked it. Several of the kids went back for seconds and thirds. (Which was a relief, because I know how picky kids can be, and I've seen kids freak out over a spaghetti sauce in which you can see pieces of onion, and that's how this spaghetti sauce was. And also, I used that "plus" variety of spaghetti - the one that has chickpea flour in it to give it more protein. I happen to like it better because it's not as gummy and starchy as regular pasta. But I was concerned the kids wouldn't go for it, I guess they did.). One of the older boys - he's 12 or so and not QUITE old enough for the teen group - gave me the thumbs-up over the food.

So I'm gratified they enjoyed the food. But I'm also glad I won't have to do that again for a while. It's a lot of work. (Next time, I might do something like chili, which is probably marginally easier, and the kids seem to like chili.)

Another finished quilt

A bit over a week ago, I picked up the most recent quilt top I had quilted at the local quilt shop. I was quite pleased. (They do a good job - and the quilting is extremely reasonable. As much as I like hand-quilted quilts, I have to admit I feel less trepidation at USING the machine-quilted ones, because I know if I spill tea on them or get them dusty I can probably launder them without risk, whereas washing a hand-quilted quilt requires special care - soaking the quilt in the bathtub, carefully transferring it to a tarp or something, finding a spot in the yard to lay it out (on a clear, dry day), and hoping the thing dries before nightfall)

And also, with a quickly-put-together, not-entirely-traditionally-patterned quilt, the machine quilting looks just fine.



Funny how it looks a lot more orderly from a distance. This is the quilt I made off the "Citrus" pattern and finished the sewing on a while back. Earlier this month, I got a backing for it (it turned out, thus, not to be an ENTIRELY from-the-stash quilt, but I couldn't find a large enough piece of anything that coordinated well, and I didn't feel like piecing the backing for this. So I used a good coupon I had at JoAnn Fabrics to get this:



I like it as the backing of the quilt - it coordinates well. (I also used the scraps leftover for the binding.)

It's funny, I wasn't sure I liked this quilt when it was done and felt sort of apologetic about it - it's kind of loud, some of the colors don't match just right - but when I picked it up from the quilt shop the woman working there laughed and said, "This almost didn't make it back to you; several of the workers said they 'wanted' this quilt." So I don't know. (Sometimes I think my judgment of what I do is a lot harsher than how other people judge it). And I do think it looks nicer all finished.



And from the "relate everything in life to a cartoon" files, I think of this as my Pinkie Pie quilt - it's kind of loud, it's kind of random, it may not totally make sense, but sometimes maybe it's just what you need. (Pinkie Pie, for all her randomness, on a couple of occasions has the very solution to whatever problem exists in Ponyville. However, since she's not good at articulating "hey guys I have the answer" they go on thinking she's an idiot....until she solves the problem.)

So many things...

Yesterday was a long day, but a good one. (It was long, because I decided to stop at the Kroger's on my way through Sherman and get the spaghetti stuff last night, rather than making a separate trip today - it saved gas, and also saved me a lot of time. I can buckle down and get the last of my grading done and finish writing my exam today, and STILL have time to relax).

I didn't buy as much yarn as I sometimes do...I'm so well-ahead on sweater yarn, and had not seen any sweater patterns lately screaming "Knit me!," so I only got yarn for a couple small projects. (Photo will come later). A couple skeins of a Kaffe Fasset sockyarn in shades of purple*, two skeins of a lovely pewter-colored merino-tencel blend for what is called the "3% scarf" (it's a thin pie-wedge shape, analogous to a 3% segment of a pie chart), and yarn for Mochimochiland's "Gobbledyghost" pattern.

(*Does anyone else "of a certain age" remember the jokes made on the Donny and Marie show about Donny's purple socks? Maybe I remember it specifically because I would have found the kind of teasing he got agonizing as a child. But I often think of that when I knit purple socks...which I do quite often, as I like purple. Though I suppose it's different because (a) I'm a woman and (b) it's not the 1970s anymore.)

(I also, later, at the Michael's, got a ball of black Classic Wool for an amigurumi Jiji I found a pattern for, and a couple balls of the Paton's sock yarn).

I also bought a nice whack of books...the Books a Million in Longview is TWICE the size of the one near me, and may also have a different buyer, because I always find good stuff there. A couple of history books, a new-to-me Hercule Poirot, a couple toy books (one knitting, one crochet) and the new Interweave Knitscene.

There's something about being able to go in-person to a bookstore (or a yarn shop) and browse the shelves. Internet ordering is very nice - I don't know what I'd do here without Amazon and places like Loopy Ewe or Jimmy Bean's Wool - but it's also nice to be able to BROWSE, with nothing specific in mind, and have the serendipity of finding something you realize you want, but you didn't know existed.

***

And before I get back to writing that exam, I have to share this - Charles posted it on his Twitter stream with a note that I might appreciate it, and I find it quite wonderful:

apparently R. Lee Ermey knits.

I'm laughing my head off imagining what he must say when he drops a stitch.

And don't EVER insinuate that knitting isn't a sufficiently manly pastime around him.

Another quilt top

I commented the other day that I hadn't been able to spend any time sewing of late.

I had a partially-finished quilt top (the blocks were sewn, but needed to be set together and have the sashing added) sitting on my table in there.

I got it done today.



It's similar to the old "Chinese coins" idea - the original "Chinese coin" tops being, you took a bunch of scraps, cut them into strips (in some versions the strips are all the same width, in others, the widths differ) and then you randomly sew them together to make long strips, and then set the strips with sashing between them.

This quilt was made using a couple of the 2 1/2 strip packs from Connecting Threads. (The sashing fabric is also from them, as is the fabric I will use for the backing). It was a little tricky because there were relatively few different patterns and colors - unlike the Moda jelly rolls, where there are (often) 40 different fabrics, this strip pack had a lot of repeats.

Here are a couple of close-ups. They are all Christmas/winter fabrics. Many of the fabrics in the strip sets were small "ditzy" prints that are reminiscent of the 1930s-era prints.



The sashing fabric is woodland animals - rabbits, mice, and raccoons - playing in the snow. (The backing fabric is a darker turquoise printed with things like mittens and cups of cocoa and I think even knitting needles and yarn).



I may still try to sew up the seam in the backing fabric tonight; then I could take it down to the quilt shop Saturday to drop it off to be quilted. (I also have another quilt that I just got back from having quilted that I will need to put the binding on).

***

And tomorrow is my Grand Day Out! I don't have any ideas of things I'm looking to buy, aside from (possibly) a skein of sport or dk weight wool in white and one in black - I bought the "Zoetrope" hat pattern I talked about here earlier and would like to make it sometime.

I'm also going to look a bit for potential Christmas gifts. I have something in mind for my father and something for my brother, but there are other people I need to look for...and since I haven't ordered either of those things yet, if I see something even better, I will buy that.

I'm really looking forward to it - I don't often get a full day just to "play."

Now it's fall...

It got cold last night. Sufficiently cold in my house that I had to turn on the furnace. (I know, I know...I was trying to hold out, there are a couple people in my department who kind of play the Energy-Savings Poker contest and see who can hold out longest in the summer to turn on the a/c in their house, and who can hold out longest in the winter before turning on the furnace. But you know? A neck muscle I injured years and years ago* has been acting up, and being too cold - especially when I sleep - seems to make it worse. So the Energy-Savings Poker people can just be smug in that they won this year, I guess. Because I need for my neck not to be all cramped up.)

(*Like, more than 30. I trace my neck problems back to the last day of one of the sessions of swimming lessons I had as a kid - I would have been five or six. It was chilly a lot of summers in Northeast Ohio in the 70s when I was a kid, and this must have been a chilly day. The swim instructors were letting us have a "free swim and play" (with their supervision of course). I was up on one of the slides that went down into the pool, just ready to slide down, someone called my name, and I turned sharply to look. Chilly day + wet little kid that's been in and out of the pool + sudden movement = huge muscle cramp in my neck. (I still remember spending the rest of the day lying on the couch with a hot water bottle on my neck, and the time-restrictions on watching television lifted for that day...) Ever since then, that muscle has been weak and prone to cramping or hurting. I suppose what happened is I tore the muscle and no one realized that that was what happened. (Besides, I'm not sure what they'd do for a torn muscle like that. Surgery there might be kind of risky, considering the number of nerves in the vicinity...)

Also last night, I got around to decorating my mantel for Halloween. (There are still ten days to go, no? Better late than never).



The thing hanging on the front of the mantel is a table runner my mother made for me and sent me this fall. Since I rarely use table runners on the table, I thought I'd prefer to anchor one edge with candles (and my big Petosky stone) and drape it over the mantel. Here's a close-up:



It's made with an interesting, sort of vintage-y "Basement Cat with Hats" fabric. (Some people who read I Can Has Cheezburger have taken to calling black cats Basement Cats...because in ICHC land, God is referred to as Ceiling Cat (and is a white cat), so his opposite would, of course, be Basement Cat.)

I also have my Halloween Domo-kun up there, and a little Halloween Hello Kitty (yes, they made her orange for Halloween) and my own cuddly Basement Cat that I mailordered several years back from Build-a-Bear.

I also finished one little thing over the weekend:



These socks have been on the needles for well over a year. That's mainly because (a) plain knit socks don't generally don't provide the same impetus for me to work on them as patterned socks do, where each row of the pattern feels like you're that much closer to the end - or it's fun to see the pattern develop and (b) I really, really didn't like the yarn.

The yarn is Wisdom Socks Poem, and it's very splitty, and the ball I had tended to go thick-and-thin on me (at one point the yarn was so thin it broke and I had to do a join). And it's scratchy. After putting these on to photograph, I immediately washed them with some of my hair conditioner in the hopes of making them softer.

Also, I think I'm kind of done with the "big blocks of color so you won't get matching socks unless you buy two skeins of the yarn" socks, like the Noro sockyarn socks. (the Noro sockyarn is nice for many other things - I love the shawl I made out of the Silk Garden Sock - but I'm just not in love with it for socks.)

I don't know. I still like variegated yarns, but more and more, I find myself reaching for more "predictable" colors (like many of the semi-solids) for things like socks.

Excellent, excellent news.

Things just keep getting better.

One of the men in my Sunday School class - call him J. - had gone in last week for bypass surgery. He came through the operation fine, but then while he was in ICU, he went sharply downhill neurologically. People did keep visiting him (and I think that may have helped) and praying for him. I know the minister was over there almost daily with him.

At one point one of the doctors expressed an opinion (I am not sure on what grounds) that he might be brain dead. (A later MRI showed activity, so it seemed to disprove that claim).

I got an e-mail this afternoon that he's now opened his eyes, seems somewhat responsive, and apparently asked for the television to be turned on.

I have heard of people having really terrible reactions to general anesthesia, where they are completely out of it for days, but then make a full recovery once all the breakdown products of the anesthesia have left their system. I hope this is the case for J., because that will mean he should progressively get better.

But I know it was a huge worry for a lot of people, lots and lots of people (this person included) were praying hard for him. And I could see that the minister was having a hard time dealing with it...so it's a huge relief to see J. getting better.

I am very, very grateful to hear he is doing better.

(Another older member of our church is in hospice right now, but he seems to have made his peace with the fact that his life is drawing to its close. The minister commented that it was difficult to be working with two families, one where the person was fighting hard for life, and the other one where the person was coming to terms with mortality. I can imagine that would be hard and stressful. I confess I am not as good at visiting people who are sick or in hospital as I might be because I never know what to say...)

***

I also checked the websites for my two main destinations on Friday, and they both still live. (I have a "thing" about worrying about stores closing down unexpectedly...because it seems to happen in my town a lot). (But at any rate, Laura would have known if either was closing up shop, seeing as she lives much closer...)

I went and cashed my check today, and got a bit more cash, for the Friday trip. (I like paying cash for stuff on these jaunts; for one thing, it helps me to limit my spending knowing I'm going to be forking over the Jacksons for whatever I buy, and also that means I don't have a big credit card bill looming the next month).

As I said, I don't have anything I NEED, but it will be lovely to get out and be able to look at yarn, and consider buying some of that yarn to take home.

***

I'm also finding lots of good background stuff for the writeup of my summer research, and getting some interesting interpretation of results. I think I've got enough done on this yesterday and today that I can, in good conscience, take Thursday off and do some sewing. It's been too long since I've worked on a quilt top.

I'm actually pretty excited about this project again, I think some of the stuff I've found, while not earthshatteringly new, is interesting and does tell us something more about forests in this area and the effects of human-constructed lakes on natural vegetation.


So anyway, if someone right now asked me, "what are you grateful for?" I'd be like, "Let me start making you a list..."

Meant to be?

So, way back in July, I did some work for a textbook publisher. I get hired to do this periodically. It's interesting work, I can do it on my off-hours, and while it's not outrageously high pay, still, it's decent money. And it's money outside of my normal paycheck, so I treat it as "found" money - it doesn't get moved over into the regular budget; I allow myself to spend it on whatever I want.

Well, I never got the check from them for this bit of work. It was partly my fault; I had worked for them earlier in the calendar year and had assumed that since I had already filled out the tax paperwork for them once, I was good. (That turned out not to be the case). And then the original set of papers I faxed over to them (because, of course, the way my Adobe reader is configured, it won't allow me to save filled out forms and forward them via e-mail) got lost. So I faxed another.

And waited. And waited. And wondered what was going on. Hadn't heard of any textbook publishers filing for bankruptcy but began to get concerned. I said to myself, "If you don't have the check before the end of mid-fall break, you better call them and ask what's up." (I hate doing stuff like that; I hate being the squeaky wheel. But sometimes you have to).

I was thinking as I pulled in my drive yesterday afternoon: It would be really nice if the check were there in my mail. Because then I could cash it and spend it on my trip to Longview, and I wouldn't have to harass the publisher.

But I immediately discounted that thought.

But guess what was in my mailbox? I was very delighted to see the publisher's return address through the envelope window, and that particular shade of blue they use for their checks (I presume that's to prevent them from being copied.)

I tend to give too much symbolic weight to things that might mean nothing (but then again, I remember once hearing some theologian interviewed, and he remarked, "Sometimes 'coincidence' is God winking at you"), but it almost makes me feel as if this trip Friday is meant to go well.

To get: corduroy

The person who writes the "Draw, Pilgrim!" (heh) blog has a free pattern for a cuddly Chewbacca doll.

It's awfully cute. It takes 1/2 meter (slightly more than 1/2 yard) brown corduroy. Not hard to make at all, it looks like. I may have to stop at a fabric shop on my jaunt out later this week and pick up some corduroy and black and silver ribbon (for his bandolier).

And the yarn...

A comment came in last week, when I remarked I was going to a yarn shop, even though I had "too much yarn": "I refuse to believe there exists such a concept as "too much yarn.""

I have to admit, if I had had more energy and motivation, I would have dragged out alllllllll of my yarn stash - the totes of sockyarn in the guest room, the tubs of someday-sweaters in my sewing room - and photographed it, to see if it did, in fact, look like "too much yarn." (But as I said: no energy to do that). But I do own a lot of yarn.

But then again:
it makes me happy

I'm not spending money I don't have on it - yarn is 100% bought with "disposable income" money

As my mother is fond of pointing out, I have few other vices - I neither smoke nor hang around in bars (as if. I cannot even imagine myself doing that), I don't buy fancy electronic gadgets (my cellphone's special feature? It makes phone calls.), I don't eat in restaurants all that much, even.

I do wind up eventually digging at least some of it out and knitting it up - I'm currently working on a pair of socks from yarn purchased shortly after Simply Sock Yarn opened - it was a special Lorna's Laces colorway done just for them, in their trademark pink and brown. And I ran across a ball of Opal "Wintermarchen" yarn that I decided I want to use for my next pair of just-simple socks.

But there is a sort of funny psychological quirk among some knitters and quilters, to want to deny that they keep a stash. And there are some people who just DON'T, and that's fine - there are people who only buy supplies as they need them for projects. (They are also usually the lucky sorts who have multiple sources of supply within their town). And there are some who either are, or pretend to be, actively disgusted by the idea of other people having a stash of yarn or fabric - that it represents a sort of materialism and greed, I guess. I don't know. I cringe a little when I read the occasional blog-post or Ravelry post criticizing someone for keeping a lot of yarn or fabric on hand. (Of course, I also cringe - even harder - at the comparisons to the people on those "hoarders" shows. Actually, I think it's a matter of degree - I'm sure to someone who lives in one of those sterile stylish boxes of an apartment, I look like a tacky, hoarder-type with my little cottage with its brightly-painted walls and lots of pictures up and lots of books on the shelves, and stacks of rubbermaid tubs of yarn in my storage closet.)

I dunno; I just generally cringe when someone sets themselves up as a tastemaster and figures that what they are doing, how they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Yeah, I have a lot of yarn. And I admit, I sometimes feel apologetic about it, especially since it's probably something I'll have to consider the disposition of in my will (When I get around to writing one, and yeah, I know, I really need to).

Then again: there are people out there who have even larger stashes than I do (and who are far, far less self-conscious: I think it's interesting that the woman in question was comfortable with (apparently) stripping naked, covering all the strategic bits in skeins of yarn, and allowing herself to be photographed. I could never do that, and not because I'm thinking of something idiotic like planning to run for elected office someday...)

But she also has this to say about those who would naysay her stash: "I think people are entitled to their opinion. I’m not too interested in what people say. I’m not hurting anyone and I love to knit for charity. I’ll be knitting some helmet liners for the military this year and some of the blogs I read have causes they knit for. I like to participate in those. Lastly, it’s my hobby!"

(Two things there: I wish I did have more time to knit for charity. And I also especially wish I was better at being disinterested in what people said - and not just about women with large yarn stashes*.)

(*Heh. I'm now thinking of the "Huge tracts of land" joke from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail.")

Looking forward to

One thing I realized as a kid was that a certain amount of happiness in life can come from always having something to look forward to. It doesn't have to be a big thing (like Christmas), but having something on the horizon that looks pleasant makes things a lot nicer, and makes any difficulties easier to tolerate. (Hence my doing things like having promised myself a trip to my favorite quilt shop ever after having endured my first-ever crown preparation).

My friend got back to me - she's free on Friday, so we will meet in Longview for lunch and hang-out time. (Yes, Friday. Feel free to insert a Rebecca Black joke here if you wish.)

(I have taken to thinking of these mid-fall-break trips as My Own Private Rhinebeck, since I never get to go to the much-vaunted Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool festival. Okay, so there won't be sheep where I'm going...but there will be wool. And good food. And books. And other things. And I probably would actually be rather overwhelmed by the crowds at a place like Rhinebeck.)

This is about perfect...it will give me Thursday to either get caught up on work-stuff, or do a bit of house-cleaning, or just decide to be lazy and either knit or sew and watch cartoons at home. (And I will have a chance to get to the bank and withdraw some money).

It will also give me time on Saturday to go grocery-shopping. I (possibly foolhardily) signed up to feed the youth groups on Sunday night - we've been having trouble getting people lined up, and while those who teach were traditionally not expected to cook...well, it's been difficult to get people lined up to cook, and sometimes the little goad of "Look, look, I'm busy, I'm teaching, and I still managed to cook something" sometimes helps.

(I'm going to do spaghetti. I got my mom's good, relatively easy sauce recipe - I figure making it from scratch will probably be better and likely will be cheaper than buying already-made sauce. And I will probably get salad as well. Not sure about dessert....if I could find those little Italian ice cups, even though they'd be pricy, I'd do those, just for the kids to have the experience (some have probably never HAD Italian ice), but I've never seen them for sale here, so I might just do Rice Krispie squares or something like that.)

I am really looking forward to a break. (To the point of which, I am already telling myself: If you can get good research work done today and tomorrow, you can take Thursday off and stay home and sew or whatever).

I don't really NEED anything...then again, I find the shopping trips where I specifically NEED something are the ones that tend to frustrate me (either because the store I go to is out of it, or because I'm otherwise in a hurry and it seems that everyone else out shopping is doing their best to thwart my ability to buy my stuff and scram). I am giving half a thought to thinking about Christmas presents for people already...though I usually do most of that via catalog shopping, still, if I see something good for someone, I will buy it.

And there will be yarn. I miss being able to go into a real yarn shop, a shop whose main raison d'etre is to sell yarn, as opposed to a general craft shop with a few shelves of yarn...also, in a lot of the general craft shops, it tends to be believed that Washability and Reasonable Price are the main virtues of a yarn, and while those kinds of yarns are nice for a lot of things (amigurumi, for example), sometimes you want something that's less...practical.

(I think that's actually my complaint with a lot of the "superstore" mentalities on stuff - everything seems to be chosen for sheer practicality. Or for minimal cost. And while it's good to be able to buy things at a reasonable price...sometimes you want to splurge a little and buy things that aren't simply the most economical version. Again, too many "petty oeconomies" make me tired.)

It's also supposed to (FINALLY) get cooler. Today it's going to be 90 (wharrrrgarrrblll. I wound up leaving youth group early last night - I didn't have any of my kids there but did help out one of the other teachers - because I was getting a bad headache, and I will not be surprised if I get one today, because of the cold front) but the rest of the week it's supposed to be in the 60s and 70s - which is what I think of as perfect traveling weather. (and it's supposed to be sunny).

New flapjack recipe

Flapjack in the British sense is very different from what we Americans call "flapjacks" - our flapjacks are pancakes. British Flapjack is kind of like a cross between a granola bar and a cookie, and I like it very much.

I had been using the recipe in "The Gentle Art of Domesticity" but suspected that in the Metric-to-Imperial measurement translation, something went wrong, because they always came out WAY too much caramel and butter.

My mom sent me the recipe she's been using - off of the Lyle's Golden Syrup website. She did have to translate to our measurements, but her translation seems to have worked. These have a higher proportion of oats to butter, which makes them more of a bar cookie and less of a "pool of hardened caramel with oats in it."

I love these things. I'm sure they're not that great for you, but then again, few things that taste really good are. I like making them because they're simpler than most cookies: you don't have to cream together butter and sugar, and there's no messing around with raw egg. (Also - for people who are egg-allergic, they work. And I THINK - provided the Golden Syrup is gluten-free - they'd be gluten-free for people with Celiac, because you can even get gluten-free-certified oats.)

What you do is:

Melt 1/4 cup plus 1-2 Tablespoons butter in a saucepan. Add 3/8 cup of brown sugar and 3 Tablespoons of Golden Syrup. (I suppose, if you can't get Golden Syrup - though many groceries carry it now, and you can order it from Amazon - you could probably use honey, but the flapjack would taste different).

When that's well-combined, you add 2 1/2 cups rolled oats (either the long-cooking or the quick-cooking). You can add other things if you like. I like to add 1/2 cup of toasted slivered almonds and maybe a teaspoon and a half of Penzey's "Cake Spice," which is similar to apple pie spice. You could also add raisins or coconut or other nuts or even chocolate chips. If you add much other stuff, you may need to add a bit more butter and syrup.

Then, when it's all combined, press it into a well-greased 8 x 8 pan and bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. It's best to at least score the bars while they're still warm; they can be hard to cut after they've cooled and set up.

I like the way they taste - it's nice to have a little square of the stuff with a cup of tea in the afternoon - and I really like how simple they are to make. (If you were feeding a lot of people, you could probably double the recipe and do it in a 9 x 13 pan, though you might have to "shield" the edges with foil to keep them from getting overdone while the center finished baking).

In a way, they're like a more-sophisticated version of the old marshmallow-rice-krispie bars.

A busy week

I'm kind of worn out right now.

(I can tell: if you are cursing at lamp set-ups or empty beakers at 7:15 am because they "won't" do what you want them to do, that means you're worn out).

I have to go out this afternoon and collect the fall sample of the soil invertebrates. Even though we've had essentially no rain, I still need to do this. I don't plan on finding much, but I have to verify that. (Which is why I had to set up the lamps and beakers this morning - so everything would be ready to put the soil in when I drag back in at 4 pm or whenever). I had to set up in a different spot - the usual area I use is being used by my grad student, for what is (hopefully) her last run of experiments before she writes her thesis.

So now I'm off to the Animal Use and Care Facility, which really isn't used much for animals. (One of my colleagues is going to do a food-choice trial with channel catfish later this month, I guess, but that's in a different room.) The Animal Use and Care Facility is slightly spooky - it's on a different air handling system (the plan was, I guess, people could even raise Plague Rats in there without putting the rest of us at risk...though given how things work in this building, I'm glad no one did). It's behind several heavy doors, any of which look like they could lock you in. (I didn't check to see if there was a phone in the facility. I probably should have).

I'm also a bit apprehensive because one person who has used the facility in the past is also one person who has complained about the fact that I have - gasp - brought SOIL into the building to do research on. And I'm having to bring soil into the facility. So I think my mood was affected by the fact that I was trying to have to figure out soil-containment procedures to minimize sweeping at the end (setting each Berlese funnel setup in a deep plastic tray, which makes the likelihood I will knock one over at a bad time that much greater). Also I have to haul everything I need into that room because it's empty of supplies.

If the person complains, I will bring my dang Shark Steamer from home and use it to steam clean and sterilize the room after I'm done. And I will do it very OBVIOUSLY and with MANY COMMENTS as to what I am doing.

So anyway. Already this week I had CWF meeting, elders and Board meeting, I helped my CWF group feed one of the campus church groups' students lunch, I worked some on the summer research that I really have to get whipped into shape if I'm going to submit it for presentation at the end of this month...



I'm really hoping my friend gets back to me about what day she'd like to meet for lunch. I think I really need a day out right now. (I'm trying not to go all pessimistic - I'm not a fan of Eeyore solely because I like the color blue - and think she hasn't gotten back to me because she's going to be too busy after all).

I do get a little break tomorrow. The minister's wife is trying to establish a once-monthly Saturday morning "meet and do craft" group. This is something I've looked for for a long time. There's a quilt guild in town, but since they meet on Wednesday afternoons, pretty much anyone who works for a living is closed out.

But a Saturday morning group I could do. (I actually lobbied, when she was looking for suggestions of times, AGAINST a weeknight. Because, as I said: "I have so many things I HAVE to be at in the evenings, that I'd be less likely to go out for something 'just for fun.'" Several of the women - especially the mothers of young children - agreed with me). (They are planning on having childcare if anyone comes with children)

They're going to have a different person provide a light breakfast (she suggested something like muffins and fruit) each month, and they're going to have a short devotional, and then people can work on what they brought, or some months we may recruit someone to teach or demonstrate a craft. (I may well wind up getting tapped to teach knitting, if this takes off. I am fine with that.)

I hope enough people attend to make it viable. This is something I feel like I need. I've talked it up to a few people and I hope they come.

I also didn't mention - but probably should have - that if anyone knits or crochets and has yarn in a hank that needs to be made into a ball, I could bring my swift and ball winder. I may mention that at the meeting this month...I could always run home if I needed to (I live four blocks from church), or I could bring them the following month. Or even just have the person drop by my house some afternoon and I could set them up for them to use.

On cartoon book characters

(This post wound up going a different direction than I originally planned...)

Eeyore is also my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh character. I don't find him so annoying (though in the original Milne books he is actually more cynical than he is in the Disney portrayals). I think the reason I always liked him best (even as a child) is because of an idea someone put forth about "sad" or "negative" characters in children's books - that, on the one hand, the child feels good about it because it acknowledges that the child isn't always happy and cheerful (And while I was, in many ways, a pretty happy kid, I also had bouts of melancholy). But on the other hand, the child thinks just maybe THEY could be the person to cheer up that character - and it makes them feel "needed" in some way.

I was also awfully fond of Puddleglum in the Narnia books. (But interestingly, now, after re-reading as an adult, I'm struck not by his pessimism but by how constant and steady he was - when everyone else was bewitched and convinced Aslan did not exist, that he was just a dream, Puddleglum went, and at some risk to himself, insisted that the truth was the truth, and broke the enchantment).

In the Moomin books, the fillyjonks (of course) were always my favorites. I think, as a child, I related better to their fussiness than I did to the "let it all hang out" spirit of the Moomins. (I actually think I would have found the Moomins annoying in real life, as they were mostly kind of clueless. Moominmamma was probably the most reasonable one, but even she seemed kind of vague at times. And Snufkin, with his tendency to just leave when he was done being in a place, just leave with no goodbyes, that kind of thing would bug me too.) Actually, I think I probably would have liked the hemulins as well; they also tended to be fussier and even more academic. (There is one hemulin who is described as "The Botanist," and he carries around one of those old cylindrical tin cases that plant collectors used to carry for their specimens).

(I'm trying now to remember other books I read as a child...there were a lot I read once or twice but don't remember so much, at least not in the sense of letting its characters inhabit my mind and populate the stories I made up in my head...I read a lot of the traditional fairy tales, though I mostly found the princess-in-need-of-rescue ones kind of boring (and got the idea that being a princess would probably be pretty boring from them).

I had a deep fondness for "My Side of the Mountain" even as I recognized that running off and living off the land would be impractical if not impossible. I largely liked it for the descriptions of how Sam lived, where he got his food, how he made "salt" from hickory twigs...I also liked "Island of the Blue Dolphins" for similar reasons, the description of how the lone protagonist managed to find food and make tools and such. Years later, when I had to read "Robinson Crusoe" for school, the most interesting parts to me were actually how Crusoe tried to manage on the island.

I remember reading "She Was Nice to Mice" which was about mice in Queen Elizabeth (the 1st)'s court. (It was an imaginative story; the mice were humanized, they weren't like real mice). I tended to read a lot of "talking animal" books as a kid.

Oh, I also read "The Mouse and His Child" by Russell Hoban many times. (And when it came back out in hardback a few years ago, I bought my own copy to have). It was a compelling story but I admit feeling a little sorry for Manny Rat, who was a "bad guy" at the start but then lost his teeth and sort of reforms (And I seem to remember him sacrificing himself for the good of the others? Or maybe I'm wrong. I should probably re-read the story). In places, it was a very sad story - a surprisingly large number of characters die, or are lost, in a book for children. I remember always feeling like there was some deeper message to the story I was not quite getting.

I also read the E.B. White "classics" - Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and the Trumpet of the Swan. I have to admit I liked Stuart Little the best of the three. I actually had a toy mouse that I named Stuart and did things like made tiny skates out of paperclips and suchlike for him. The ending of the book always made me feel strange, though - Stuart setting off in the miniature car, in search of Margalo...and you never hear from him again. (This is another book where I felt that there was something JUST BELOW THE SURFACE that I couldn't quite get at, either because I wasn't old enough or didn't have enough life experience...)

I also read The 101 Dalmations, which was fairly different from the Disney movie. The biggest thing I remember is the "Twilight Barking," the sort-of relay system dogs used to send messages across the countryside.

And I had the whole set of Margery Sharp's "Miss Bianca" books. I loved the idea of Miss Bianca and what she did and her Porcelain Pagoda and all of that. (I liked the Disney movies, too, though they were simpler than the books and changed a lot of things from the books). I didn't fully understand the idea of "prisoner's aid" because I wasn't as aware of the idea of people being prisoners of conscience or political prisoners, but I understood the mice taking pity on someone who seemed to be wrongly imprisoned. (Again, this was a series of books - kind of like The Mouse and His Boy - that used pretty complex language and syntax. I think a lot of the books I was given to read as a child helped shape my love of language and whatever ability to write that I have - and at the very least, I can recognize "good" and "poor" writing because of early exposure to well-written things).

(I should go back and re-read some of these. I actually have most of my childhood "chapter" books still - still have the set of Narnia books, have an entire set of the Moomin books (some of which I only obtained as an adult; most of the ones I read as a kid came from the library), I have the Miss Bianca set. Sometimes I find that reading most "grown up" stuff is kind of taxing - I keep finding myself picking up and putting down "Bleak House" because parts of it are fairly grim (right now, where I'm at, Esther is in the clutches of some disease that has apparently made her go blind, and I've just passed the point where Mr. Krook has spontaneously combusted) and even sometimes crime dramas, if they're too realistic (I'm reading one of the Scarpetta novels right now, after hearing part of it on Book Radio, and it's pretty grim) get me down. I commented the other day in a discussion on Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks that I "needed" stories where the good guys won - which is often the case in the "classic" children's "chapter" books*. Actually, maybe re-reading some of the Miss Bianca stories would be a good thing to do this fall)

(*It's funny, I don't remember them EVER being called "chapter books" when I was a kid - to differentiate them from the shorter "picture books," but that term seems pretty widespread now)

As they say

THIS:

It would be lovely to have this sign in front of every restaurant

(And for that matter, bookstores, craft shops, antique stores....)

I don't know if you have to be a member of twitter to view that photo or not. In case you do, and you aren't, it says:

CELL PHONE:
Please be considerate of others
And turn yours
OFF

(I was once at a restaurant with my parents - the last evening of a visit of mine there - and we wound up near a man who made the air above him blue with awful words delivered to the travel agent on the other end of the phone, who apparently made some kind of mistake or could not get the man the flight he wanted. Finally our waiter went over to the man and told him to either hang up, quiet down and quit using the expletives, or LEAVE. I think my dad doubled the waiter's tip after that happened.

It made me sad to hear him abusing the travel agent in that way. Even someone who's incompetent doesn't deserve the kind of vitriol the man directed at her. (And one of the uglier words he used suggested to me it was most likely a "her." But enough said about that.)

The new watches

Thursday evening, something happened to the Eeyore watch I'd been wearing for some 10 years. I think I must have smacked my wrist hard against something without thinking, because the second hand of the watch came loose and lodged under the minute hand - stopping the watch.

I discovered this at the AAUW meeting. I probably would have expressed more disappointment if I had been home alone, but I was in the middle of taking notes for the minutes when I realized what had happened.

Despite the fact that many people now seem to get on without wristwatches (cell phones seem to have taken their place), I still like wearing one and don't feel "right" if I don't have one on. So I knew I had to replace the watch. (And no, it wasn't fixable - I tried taking it apart to see)

I also knew I wanted another Eeyore watch. There are two reasons for this:

1. If you've read here for any length of time, you know I'm a creature of habit. Having familiar things is comforting to me, in a world I often find baffling and difficult. And while I'm not quite Raymond-Babbitt-grade creature-of-habit ("Time for Wapner..."), still, when I can have something that I like and that is familiar to me, probably eight and a half times out of ten, I will go with that, rather than with the new thing, which might be good but which also might be bad. (It's likely that this attitude was reinforced by a few instances in my life - for example, I remember suggesting "Let's try that Turkish restaurant!" when I was with a group at meetings, and I had never had Turkish food before, and they had a very small menu, and I had a terrible time finding something I could eat - and even at that, I didn't like what I ordered very much). So I tend to stick with what is familiar, because often what is familiar also carries good memories with it*

2. There's a little backstory behind the Eeyore watch. Back when I was applying for jobs, I had to buy a new watch. A Person Who Shall Remain Nameless overheard me express a desire for some kind of cartoon-character watch, and expressed an opinion that Adult Women Seeking A Professional Job Don't Wear Watches With Bugs Bunny On Them.

Because I was more impressionable then than now, and because this was a person who had more success in placing people in jobs than I obviously did, I went along with it, and bought a plain-vanilla watch. (But now, it seems ridiculous to me: would having a watch with Mickey Mouse or the Powerpuff Girls on it REALLY serve to undo the impression I made with my research presentation, interview responses, or statement of teaching philosophy? And then again: would I really want to work somewhere that was so uptight that a cartoon-character watch would DO that?)

But anyway. I got the job, moved down here. Then, one day, while teaching lab, the band on the plain-vanilla watch (it had been a VERY cheap watch; I was on a grad-student salary when I bought it) snapped, the watch fell off my wrist, hit the concrete floor, bounced twice, and stopped working.

And I realized: I needed a new watch. ("What time is it when your watch stops working? Time to buy a new watch.")

And I also realized that I had gotten a job, I had moved far from the influence of the person who criticized my desire for a silly watch - and there was nothing stopping me from getting the watch I wanted. So I went to the local Wal-Mart (pretty much the only place in town at that point for inexpensive watches - I'm sure the local jewelry had them, but they would have been expensive and also, I was running out at 7 pm when all the downtown stores were closed). And I found a watch with Eeyore on it. And I bought it.

And I wore that watch every day. I replaced the bands as they wore out with new bands. Changed the batteries when they ran down. I wore that watch through presentations at numerous national conferences, a couple of international conferences (Well, "international" in the sense that they attracted people from around the world; they were still meeting on U.S. soil). Through the (successful) tenure process, through all the years of being Associate Professor, and even through the process to become Professor.

And never once did anyone say boo to me, or take me less seriously, because I wore a watch with Eeyore on it.

And so, when the original watch broke, I wanted another, similar, one. I couldn't, of course, find the exact one (I suppose a careful search of eBay might turn that particular model up but, meh). So a search on Amazon (and a dismayed tweet about not finding what I wanted, and one of my Twitter followers obviously able to search better than I was pointing out a link to me), I found two possibilities.

One thing I like in a watch is a second hand. While I rarely need to time anything using one, still, it's a nice thing to have and provides an at-a-glance answer to "Is the watch running, or did the battery run down?"

So the first watch - the one pointed out to me - had a second hand, and I bought it. But there was a second watch that was also quite cute, wasn't very expensive, but didn't seem to have a second hand.

So I ordered them both, figuring if I was having one watch shipped halfway across the country, I might as well have two.

They came yesterday.

Here's the first watch. I forgot one of the issues I have with metal bands.



You can see it there. While I'm Not A Small Woman in many respects, my wrists are apparently on the slimmer side of average - so the watch, as it is, flops all over my wrist. I'm going to see if one of the local jewelers can remove a couple of links so the watch will stay put. (If not, that's fine - I can just wear it at times when having a watch sliding up and down my arm won't bug me. For example - not when I'm playing piano).

The second watch had a little surprise. See the pink flower detail? I thought it was just a little decal on the inside of the crystal.



When I set the time and pushed the stem in to turn the watch on, the little flowers started to MOVE - they are like a second hand! (no where on the advertising for this model, that I could see, was it mentioned that it had anything like a second hand). I squealed with girly delight when I found that out, because, as I said, I like having a watch with a second hand.

So that's the one I'm wearing, until I can get some links removed from the band of the other one.

I've never actually owned more than one watch at a time; it will be different having a choice every morning which watch I put on. Luxury!

(*I AM going to Longview for Mid-fall break again. My friend is free for lunch, even though she said she was on a strict "no buy policy." So even if I only see her for lunch - if she doesn't want to come to the yarn shop or bookstore too, lest she be tempted - at least I will get to see her and hang out for a while. And yeah, I plan to buy some yarn, even though I already have too much yarn.)