And some reading

 I finished "Between Two Rivers" (Moudhy Al-Rashid) last night. I enjoyed it. Before reading it, I had known of the existence of cuneiform but I didn't know that it had been used for a number of languages' writing systems, and also, that some of those systems had been pretty well figured out, so some of the tablets can be translated. 

I found the role women played in those societies (as scribes, as priestesses/symbolic wives of the moon god) particularly interesting; a lot of the more "traditional" history I learned in school never discussed that. 

And yes, I did have to put it aside for a couple days during the worst of the "we're going to wipe out Iran" rhetoric, because I was at the point where Al-Rashid discusses the "tell" where thousands of human remains were buried, possibly the victims in a truly cataclysmic battle, and it seems at least plausible that they were actually buried by their enemies (the victorious army), perhaps as a way of avoiding disease transmission.

 And I admit another bit of distress was thinking about the bombing in Iran, and wondering if there are some antiquities that might have provided additional clues to how people lived back then were being obliterated, and that makes me sad.  

And yeah, humans really haven't changed. and that makes me sad. We've had several thousand years, I think, we should be better by now. 

I found the discussion of innovation, and the roles of women in society, and especially Ennigaldi-Nanna, a priestess who may have been fundamentally the first museum curator (in that objects from hundreds or even thousands of years before her time were found in a building she apparently either lived in or managed) a lot more enjoyable and interesting. And then also the idea that in their time, there were things even more ancient than them, as far removed from their time as theirs is from ours. 

I also liked when she spoke just a bit about her small daughter, and how she told her the story of Gilgamesh (adjusted in an age-appropriate way!) and how she saw herself in some of the Babylonian lullabies that had been inscribed somewhere, and spoke of her wonder at seeing a comet (NEOWISE, which I was never able to find a dark enough place with enough space at the horizon for me to see it, and she also saw Hale-Bopp as a child - and I do remember seeing that one, when I was in graduate school)

And so, maybe though the bad parts of humans haven't changed, perhaps the consolation is that the good parts have always been here - love and care for younger ones, and stories, and songs, and the wonder of seeing an astronomical event. 

And she ends the book on what feels to me like a hopeful note, and something I needed to read: "There is something to be said for things that have survived from so long ago, for the clay and mud that tell such a long history that they give some hope for the future. If something ancient is still here, then maybe some part of us will also be thousands of years hence." 

 

I needed to start a new book - I had a dental checkup today, late in the day, and often they get enough behind that you have to wait a while, and waiting without something good to distract me means I am more anxious when I finally get into the chair. So I grabbed a fairly new-to-me book (I saw someone comment about it on Bluesky, it was a topic I'm pretty interested in, and so I ordered a copy from Bookshop): "Hoof Beats" by William T. Taylor. So far, I've read a bit more than the first section of the first "beat" (He arranges it as four "hoofbeats," groups of several chapters that hang together). And I was reminded of a fact I knew, and had passed on to my class, and then worried that I had got it wrong - but I had not: that horses originated in North America (just like camels and elephants did), and then during a period of cooling (lower sea levels; land bridges), crossed over into Asia. Horses here later seem to have gone extinct (perhaps the same early hunters that helped doom some of the other megafauna), but they survived in central Asia, where they were eventually domesticated and even worshipped. 

Years ago I read "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language," and while I don't remember a huge number of details of it, I do remember some of the broad patterns about horse domestication and how important they were, and some of the attempted reconstructions of proto-Indo-European. That kind of early human history (I guess you'd call it anthropology; it predates written language in many cases) is fascinating to me, thinking about how people lived. So I think I'll enjoy this new horse book.  

Shawl is bigger

 I gave two hourly exams this week, so I worked more on the blue shawl. And this evening I took a photo of it for comparison

 I think the last time I took a photo was in October but I admit other than exam times I didn't work on it a lot

 I feel like I can relax a little bit about it, now that I won't be worrying about running short on the second skein, since I bought  a complementary color skein for the lace part

 

The color of the body of the shawl is called "Egyptian stucco" (I don't know if they mean like faience, I don't know of stucco being used in Egypt, but there is a blue style of faience not too unlike the blue of the yarn - famously, the little hippo sometimes known as "William" is done in that faience)

 Here's the contrasting/complementary color for the lace, it's the same yarn line ("Auxanometer," made of bamboo) but the color is "Alabaster"

 The only thing I might have to take care with is when I block it; I don't want to risk the blue bleeding onto the cream color (possibly cool water to wet block, and then use white vinegar to help set the dye)

Something surprised me

 I guess I'm getting cynical with age (and maybe with exposure to wrong doing). 

I was reading through the papers again today before putting more comments and grades on them. Many of the people are students I have had in this class for the first time, so I haven't seen big samples of their writing (most of my exams are short essay type questions, which are different from a whole research paper). 

And I caught myself thinking: "some of these are *awfully* good for what might be a student's first effort" (And yes, I know: I had seem some of these before in draft form and I didn't really think this then. But, too be fair, the drafts were mostly from students whose essays on the exam were a cut above). And then I thought, "okay, how do I check these"

My old trick - of websearching a sentence (with quotation marks around it to return exact matches)  - which caught plagiarism (oh, did it catch plagiarism, though not so much on this assignment in this class because it would be a hard one to lift directly from a website), doesn't work on LLM work. 
 

I mean, there weren't any of the "tells" I used to notice with earlier gens - overly vague sentences, overly wordy writing using words that don't "go" in most scientific writing. So I decided "okay, all I can do is check the sources they cited to be sure they're "real"

For fifteen papers.

It took a while. I mean, in a few cases, they were sources familiar to me, and I was like "yeah, this one's good" but I did search the topics less familiar to me.

All the sources were real; none "hallucinated." 

I assume that means the students DID write their papers themselves, and they're either more experienced writers, or they worked with someone who helped them edit (that's okay, I tell them consulting with others is fine)

But I found myself angry with myself - angry because I suspected my students, all of whom seem like perfectly lovely people - because we hear SO MUCH about AI/LLMs  being used, and the implication is "they're cheating their way through" and I think it's damaged some of my trust. I mean, I am not great at trusting people to begin with, that's one of my problems (to be fair to myself: I had several "friends" or people who pretended to be such when I was growing up who betrayed me in some way)

But we do live in a society of declining trust; I think it accelerated after the pandemic, and I KNOW my ability to trust other humans has gone downhill even more (after a couple experiences of finding out later through the grapevine in the earlier days of COVID that someone had tested positive but chose to be out around people, including me, including people I know with immune systems less robust than mine)

But not trusting your students is bad, and is kind of a breach, and I admit I spent part of the afternoon wondering if maybe it's getting to be time to retire, if I'm just burned out and I can't keep up with how much things have changed.

And then I asked myself: why does it matter to you? why have you always been so hung up on ferreting out cheating, and twisting yourself in knots to try to formulate cheat-proof assignments (truth: it's almost impossible to make a take-home assignment that's LLM proof, and I'm kind of unwilling to take more instruction or lab time to make people sit and write in blue books, and some people's writing is hard enough to read that it would be painful) 

But the other thing? More and more I feel like the cheaters are winning. And so why should I, with my archaic, outmoded sense of honor, someone who is enough of a quixotic fool to do things the hard and long way all the time, stand in the way of people's success? I mean, look at government, look at tech CEOs: the deck is stacked. It's definitely stacked against my students so maybe why NOT let them do what they can to get ahead a little? 

I don't know. So many things about these times make me profoundly sad. And yes, I also admit I worry that in a few years, LLMs will be advanced enough that the general decision will be "the exceptionally wealthy, connected, or brilliant will get to go to one of the remaining universities; for everyone else there will be "chatbot professors" and it won't be good but it'll be seen as economical" and while I'm close enough to retirement that losing my job that way might be unlikely, it still makes me feel like......I did all this for nothing, that I worked at a job that's now gone. 

But also, yeah. The feeling that the cheaters in the larger world have won, and insisting on ethics all those years was stupid, that hurts me too.

And I don't know if I'm just getting old, or if the world seems more terrible than it is, or if it is just getting that terrible. 

And I admit, some days it feels like soon there may be no place for me left in it, and I don't even know. I hope I'm wrong about that. But you see things like administrators on some campuses talking out both sides of their mouths, promoting faculty's "academic freedom" (such as to disallow AI generated work) while also giving money to the companies making them and incorporating them into the departments that permit it. And I do worry that either i'm a fool for rejecting it, or that I'm going to be completely left in the dust and my ethical compunctions won't matter when I never manage to get another paper published.  

semester's almost done

 This is the last week of classes. I have one more lecture in one class, and then an hourly exam in two of them, and student presentations in the third. I collected the "big" papers from the one class (the one doing presentations, it's over the same project they did their paper over) today and got about half of them read and comments on them.

Most of them were pretty good; several people took me up on the offer of "get a good draft into me by day X, and I will put comments and give it back and you can rewrite" 

except one person did that, and then.....didn't make any of the changes I suggested. I suppose time got away from them but it annoys me to spend my time on that and not see a paper improved any over the original draft. 

So it'll be a mostly-work week this week. 

I have been picking away at the various socks; I'm a bunch farther on the current striped pair 

looking for joy

 Some of these weeks lately have felt very, very long, and some weeks I don't really take time to get OUT and do things. I go to work and I go home and home is good, I guess, but I think 2020 may have broken me a bit from wanting to stay at home all the time.

Also, I needed to grocery shop, and to be honest? Aesthetics matter to me when I have a choice. And Albertson's has the most pleasant aesthetics of the groceries accessible to me*. SO I thought about trying to get out there - even given expensive gas, even given a busy week. 

Tomorrow it's supposed to storm, and also I have Zoom knitting, and it's hard to get down and do anything much and get back in time for that. It was supposed to storm today, too, but not until after 4 pm and I figured if I left right after class I could get home by then.

Also, a post that came across Bluesky, from author John Scalzi, made me think:

""Joy is resistance" is not just a platitude, it's actual f(redacted) praxis" 

Okay, I don't know much about praxis; I'm not a philosopher. But maybe yeah, looking for things that make you happy (in moderation, of course, you don't want to be totally self-centered and never think of others) can help be an antidote to the worse bits of the world. 

And I KNOW I feel better when I get a little time to decompress, and I can't always decompress sitting at home so well.

So I went. I also DID have a "loyalty coupon" at the yarn shop, and I figured I might as well spend it. 

I had half-thought of getting another skein of the Auxanometer yarn (which is what I'm making the Syysalaulu shawl out of) in a contrasting color for the lace part; I fear I will run short for the lace part and there's NOTHING worse in knitting than running short on a yarn. I figured since the yarn is a dark indigo blue, a cream or off white would be best. (I chose  a color called Alabaster; it should work well, and now, I can knit the garter stitch part BIGGER which will fit me better - I am a bigger person and while I am not *unusually* tall for a woman, I am taller than many women.) So that soothes a minor worry I had while working on it - now I can just knit it up until it's "big enough" and fits the correct number of repeats for the lace section, I don't have to count so much and watch the yarn as it gets shorter.

this is the most recent photo I have of it; it's bigger now but doesn't look much different; it's just a big triangle.

 

But first, I needed lunch

 This is my usual at the downtown coffee shop (CJs). Most of the other sandwiches have sprouts or other things I don't like or can't eat on it, and sometimes you don't want to be "that person" asking for a special order. This is scrambled egg with cheese and ham on a croissant. And a large iced chai tea. (I am coming to the conclusion that the spices in chai, which usually include cardamom, do NOT bother me - and maybe I need to try carefully adding cumin back in to cooking to see if I was wrong about it upsetting my stomach)

I also walked around a bit and went to my favorite fancy soap store, and to a place that is now called Niche, used to be Coffee Collective. They do have a coffee bar (and a few food items), but they are also a shop - they sell houseplants, one of the few places I know of that does, and they have a LOT of vintage clothing, and some things like costume/not fancy jewelry. Sort of what I think of as a "hipster shop," even though the hipster type is maybe out of vogue now.

And I did make an impulse purchase

 

It's some kind of fossiliferous mineral, I am pretty sure those are crinoid "stems" in it. It's cut and polished so they show up. And yes, it's a much larger ring than I normally wear, and I have to wear it on my pinky because the ring part is a bit small for my usual ring finger on that hand. I'm not sure often I'd wear it but it does make me happy. 

 

And yes, yes, yes, I know buying stuff is a very hollow path to "joy" and I'd be better off working to find some more friends (when? in what time? and what if it doesn't work out and they wind up hating me or they have certain things about them that are dealbreakers to me) or have more experiences and YES I want to go to museums and parks more, but since this was primarily a "grocery store" trip, there wasn't really time, and here, you need the better part of a day to get to and visit even a small museum.

So this will have to suffice some times.

Also, getting to the yarn shop does get me a few minutes of conversation with the owner, who has similar interests to me, and I don't get enough conversation about non-work, non-service things.

And yes, I bought a couple other skeins, one for socks, one for mitts:

 

 

 This is a new-to-me dyer; apparently Quixotic Fibers is just starting to carry them. These yarns have flecks that light up under blacklight (the owner had a blacklight pen to show me when I was paying for them) and while it's unlikely I'd ever have that experience while wearing them, still, I like the bright colors. 

But yes. Trying to find even small joys. It's hard sometimes, or at least for someone like me, who tends to maybe be self-critical to the point of not being able to be satisfied with what we do, or are too prone to feel like being serious is the only way to be a "real" adult, and to be too worn down and saddened by the sadder parts of life, and I admit in some moods I could be annoyed with Mr Scalzi's admonition, like "I am living through all THIS and I also have to strive to find joy, too? And if I don't, the Bad People win?"

But maybe sometimes just having a nice lunch you didn't have to fix, or a short conversation with someone who shares a hobby with you, or being able to pick out food slightly nicer than what you can find in town, is enough? 

 

digging out books

 I have a LOT of books, and in recent years (especially when I was having renovations done), I moved a bunch of them around to different places. This is always hazardous to try because then I forget where I put things.

As I was taking a short break from "Between Two Rivers" (which I will finish soon), I was reading one of those British Library collections of older mystery short-stories. This was academic/school-related mysteries and one was a Raffles* story where he and Bunny returned to their old "public" school as Old Boys....and I'm not done with it yet. Apparently no murder, which is nice, most of these do involve complicated thefts.

(*Raffles is also known as The Amateur Cracksman; theft of valuables from people richer than him. And I admit, there was something on Bluesky today about some guy who wrote a "theft is okay, maybe" essay, though in this case it was theft from (public) museums into private collections, and that feels particularly wrong. I mean, I suppose I could forgive the Jean Valjean type of theft, where it's food for someone genuinely starving (though I would HOPE in a civilized country there were enough things like food banks to make sure no one HAD to), but stealing to further pleasure or enrich a selfish person? absolutely not. Or shoplifting for the "fun" of it, which damages public trust and leads to things like people like me being asked to show our receipts walking out of wal-mart when the control person could clearly see I went through a checkout with a checker and paid for the stuff. And yes, that rankles me, and someone who had never interacted with me on there before caught a block from me after sniping at me that I shouldn't be allowed to be annoyed at the "minor inconvenience" of it being hinted I was a criminal because....I don't even know).

But anyway: Raffles isn't real, and he mainly, in the stories I read about him, he is stealing from pretty awful people, and in some cases the proceeds help someone else.

And it's a very particular type of late 19th c. type of story; I joked that "surely Raffles/Bunny slashfiction exists" (and yes, it apparently does, and what's more, is that possibly Hornung was AWARE of the cryptically-gay impression but never really denied it - which he might have had to, back then, after all, Oscar Wilde went to prison...)

And in a ways, Raffles is sort of an inverse Sherlock Holmes - committing crimes rather than solving them, and Bunny is his Watson.

But I remembered that years ago, back when I was in grad school, I had run across a Raffles story and wanted to read more, and special ordered a compilation volume (I think it was from the old and now-gone Borders' outlet in my parents' town)

I wondered where I had put it, and if I could find it (or if I'd given it away in a fit of cleaning once). 

After doing my afternoon workout (I didn't feel like it this morning), I took a couple moments and checked the shelves in my former guest room (now mostly a boxroom).

And yes, there it was:

 Yes, they're old stories, and like a lot of these there is some casual racism and other stuff objectionable now, but I also realize that's how people wrote and thought back then and hopefully we've improved today. 

I also found another book I had bought a long time ago, pretty sure this one was from the dear, departed A Common Reader catalog. (I used to get those, back before they folded in 2005 or so. They were nice catalogs, small newsprint pages stapled together and full of descriptions of unusual and often-scholarly books - not bestsellers but what I'd describe as "books you didn't know you needed until you read about them." I'm sure Amazon and their ilk was what did them in but I do miss them).

I had wanted, a while back, to learn a little Latin but being busy got in my way. Finally, last summer, I ran through what Duolingo had on Latin. So now I can say things like "I like the tables in the inn" or "Corinna has a plate and a cup" but I don't know the RULES and I admit I don't understand the noun declensions (a form of which exists in German, and I still don't quite have the hang of THAT). So finding this book made me think I could learn a bit more. (I also have a copy of Wheelock somewhere, I know better where that is. I had forgotten I had this one)

 

Wednesday evening things

 * I had to go out and buy some salad greens for dinner; I could not face the idea of eating another serving of that pasta/cheese sauce/ground beef/garlic thing. I SUPPOSE I should freeze it but it really does not appeal to eat more. It made way too much (four servings my foot; more like eight) and it really was too garlicky for me (sometime things that are very garlicky don't agree with me)

* Even though I SHOULD be limiting trips because of gas costs, I need to get out of town this weekend. I drove around town a bit today and saw the fifteen or so vape/dispensaries here (including one that replaced a longtime small caterer/lunch restaurant and I admit seeing all the weed and vape shops weirdly makes me feel unwelcome here. There are SO MANY of them - several in some blocks - and it's not something I use or would choose to use, and there's almost nothing here that feels like it's "for me." So once in a while I have to get to Denison where there's the yarn shop and a used-book store (actually, two, now) and the Albertson's and a nice place that sells candles and fancy soaps. I don't know. I wonder what I'll do after retirement. Will I stay here, seeing that I own a house and moving is a giant pain? Will going places for stuff be less difficult when I don't have a class-officehours-research work schedule to keep to? Or will inflation and global instability make it too expensive to go out of town for things, and ultimately I do decide to move? (which would be expensive, and I'd also have to jettison so much stuff)

But honestly, a lot of my life has been feeling "unwelcome" or like no one cares about my interests, this is not new, but it does seem to rankle more now.

* I did pull out another stalled project

 I'm still not sure I love them, the colors feel kind of meh to me. I might feel differently when they're done. Not sure what I'd do with them if I decide not to keep them, though. 

 

Back to vest

 I pulled out the long-stalled English School Slipover tonight and added a few more rows. It's now divided for fronts and backs, so not only is every other row a purl row (which is slower, and is kind of awkward on this yarn), but I also have a bunch of stitch holders flopping around. They are like giant safety pins, only a thicker wire. And yes, I know, you CAN use waste yarn but I always worry given how I stuff things in knitting bags and the like that I'll drop stitches off waste yarn and make even more work for myself.

 I have about six more decrease rows for the armholes, and then just have to knit plain until it's long enough. Then the front is similar (but has a deeper neck opening, so more decreasing) and once that's done, it's just the arm and neck bands. 

I also started the "sort bags" of soil today, and since I had only the one (early) class, I managed to finish four, which is 1/9 of what I have. I might be able to do a couple each day the rest of this week. I'd really like to get through all these samples before I go to visit my mom in mid May; I am tentatively planning a June sample date and I don't want to get too many samples stacked up ahead.  

too many feelings

 This is just my brain being....my brain. But I'm sad and also disappointed but also angry at myself for being disappointed because I'm disappointed for a silly reason. So I am writing this all out in hopes of GETTING it out so I'm in a better mood and can do piano practice. I already have dinner sorted - I found a recipe online for these beef-garlic noodles and I have leftovers (don't use the full pound of farfalle if you make it, it makes too much. 3/4 pound would be plenty). I also mixed up a just-instant white-chocolate flavor pudding to use up the rest of the half-and half, and I'll open a can of what we used to call "Mexicorn" (is it racist to call corn with peppers and onions Mexicorn?)

Today was the faculty appreciation "hour." (It used to be a whole evening and they fed us dinner; now it's an hour on some random Monday near the end of the semester, and there's a plate of dining-hall cookies and crudites as refreshments). 

I went, mostly to support the people winning. I had been up for a teaching award (I talked about it back in February) but I knew honestly that I wasn't going to win - there are people more deserving than I, and as it's voted on by faculty, it's people better known across campus than me.

But I confess, stupidly, I got my hopes up a tiny bit. More about that later.

But what made me sad? They do in memoriams and there were three people I had known pretty well - the former Print Shop Lady (we all called her that, she didn't mind, her name was Pam), and a woman I had been in AAUW with. And then my friend Jane E., who had been a fellow congregant until her health declined to the point that she had to move closer to her adult children.  I had forgotten she had died and so it kind of opened the grief back up a little. 

I THINK I was also sad because once I opined "usually the winner of the teaching award is someone who is retiring, or someone who has received a serious diagnosis, and yeah......it was a colleague who is battling a major medical thing, and recently had a complication, they actually could not be present because they had a medical appointment and....it just makes me sad. I like this person. the students like this person. They're really young, and I feel like this is just another horrible unfairness of the universe that they're dealing with and I hope with all my hope they beat it. 

But the disappointment, which was stupid and silly - before I knew the other nominees*, I had allowed the tiniest hope I might win

 (* I don't vote in these when I'm up for one, I feel like I should recuse myself). 

And another colleague won for research, which is also deserved. 

But I feel bad. Bad that I'm so mediocre compared to other people and again I bitterly think that it's probably bad for parents and teachers to praise their kids for being good at school because then those kids get used to external validation, and they don't learn the internal kind, and I've *always* been bad at internal validation.

But I also admit I had the salty thought on the way home: why should I even TRY to stop being mediocre if I never have successes? Maybe it's not worth it and my role is to just live out my career and retire and be forgotten and never have made any kind of impact on anything. (And I suppose a form of that bitterness is actually a supervillain origin story, isn't it - "I can't make the world better but I can damnsure make it worse!" and then you start stealing tiaras or something). 

But I'm also mad at myself because it's such a stupid thing to be salty about. The award winners deserved their awards far more than I would, I frankly kinda suck, and I just need to accept that, that I was never really that good at much beyond taking tests, and in adulthood? being good at taking tests is worthless. 

So anyway. 

There's also discussion on Bluesky again about covid isolation, and one of the really heavily followed and sort of "elder" members commented that even though they were fundamentally an introvert, they did NOT have a good time during covid, and there were a lot of people chiming in that even for introverts the isolation was bad (and the original commenter even acknowledged that they had a partner, and figured it was probably harder for people who were totally single, and YES IT WAS). 

and of course a few people who have to be right all the time weighed in with something like "so you're saying you wanted to go to the bars" or something similarly nonsensical, and another person parodied it claiming that those were the people with the "wire monkey mother" mocking those who chose to cling to the "cloth mother" (it was a whole psychology experiment, it could probably not legally be done today because of animal use and care guidelines)....and yeah. 

Someone else commented: "...but being SO isolated made me fall apart in ways I'm still trying to claw back and nearly ended my marriage." and yeah. "falling apart in ways I'm still trying to claw back" fits me. I feel like I've lost my SPARK that I used to have, and even going to counseling during didn't fix that. I feel like part of the reason I maybe kind of suck at things now is that I just....I got this feeling that my life might not last much longer, so why bother? I think also mourning my dad during that time (he had died in July of the previous year) and a couple friends who died less than two months after hit hard and really made my brain hang out in morbid places. AND I had a low level cancer scare (short version: I thought I had completed menopause, had a surprise! period, my doctor wanted to make me have some fairly intrusive tests done but did say she wanted bloodwork first. The bloodwork showed I wasn't in menopause yet and her assumption was I was close, but the stress changed things....)

So it was a LOT. All at once. And I remember going multiple weeks without talking to people other than on the phone, and that is not the same. 

Another person commented: "People are all like “remember his creatively liberated we were during Covid?” No I don’t. I was creatively hobbled by it. I spent most of 2020 drinking and playing Skyrim."

And yeah. I didn't drink or play Skyrim, I listened to a lot of BBC news on the (now dead, because of copyright holders) phone app and I watched a lot of Murder, She Wrote or Parks and Rec on Amazon Prime. I barely knit at all, even. I struggled to teach online for the first time in my life. 

I remember how at the beginning of the pandemic I bought a bunch of ice-green fingering weight wool and a pattern for a complex cardigan, thinking it would be my lockdown project. I couldn't start on it. I couldn't even wind off the yarn. I ran across it in my stash a little while back and wondered if I'd ever be able to think about knitting it up or if I should just give it away to someone.

I know I've changed and not for the better and while I've tried to get back to the person I used to be, it seems she's not coming back. 

Friday evening discomfort

 Not too bad, actually, but I've got one of the Central Illinois tv stations that live streams online because there are tornadoes there, but it seems like my mom's town escaped the tornadoes. It's still possible she got hail, which she always worries about, because she has skylights in the kitchen and worries about what she'd do if one got broken ("Call your insurance agent" is my answer to her, but that doesn't solve the overnight problem, if one breaks late in the day, and they're too high up for anyone around her to get up and cover the area. I guess you put buckets under the opening and hope for the best....)

We might get storms but it looks like the worst here is smallish hail, and my car is garaged, and I have an impact-resistant roof, so I should be fine.

Today I had a lot of pain, though - my knee had been bugging me (I stepped down hard in a hole on Tuesday in the field and while I'm pretty sure I didn't actually injure anything, I sure jarred myself). And then last night I got sleeping on my left side in such a way that my left shoulder kind of "folded" towards the front of my body and I think it just irritated the ligaments or something (this is the side I probably broke the collarbone on in a fall about 15 years ago, and never got treated).

When I got up I almost couldn't move it. I did most of a workout but only did a little of the arm motions, because it hurt. This is the day I go in a little later (8 am rather than 7), so I took a while and tried first a heated buckwheat bag, and then an ice pack on it (the ice seemed to help more, and I had an ice pack over at school from when I hurt my knee, so I was able to put it on for a while during my office hours. 

It did get gradually better over the course of the day (I was afraid at first I might not be able to dress, and pulling the sports bra off after my workout wasn't fun) and now it just hurts a little if I try to raise the arm, and it's much less stiff. So, yay being over 50, I guess? I don't think I actually damaged anything but I did turn down an opportunity to go help with some fieldwork tomorrow because of it (Well, also, I really need to work on my own research and maybe get a little relaxation time in)

I admit I'm a lot less cavalier about small injuries/aches and pains now than I once was, after hurting my knee, and I think my pain tolerance IS less. At least this time it seems to have been really nothing, and I'll just to be careful how I position myself to sleep tonight.

If the weather isn't too bad tomorrow (it is supposed to rain), I might either try checking  out the new Aldi (I haven't been yet; I wanted the crowds for a "new thing" to die down a little) or drive over to the little shop in Bokchito - it's a gift shop/antique store and it's kind of nice, not too far of a drive. I do need to find some small, easy-to-get to (=not costing too much gas, gas is expensive now) things to do just to not stick in town all the time. 

Thursday evening things

 * Got all the catch-up grading done, taught my classes, and I also changed over to the last extraction (3 of 3) of the soils that I collected (I break this one down Saturday; they get 48 hours). 

* I had some cabbage in the fridge that was still good, so I made okonomiyaki. This is one of my favorite simple meals and I make it a couple times a month. It rarely comes out looking so perfect so I took a photo for posterity:

Yes, that's a bottle of the famous "Kewpie" Japanese mayonnaise next to it; the wal mart here carries it, and yes, it's better than the kinds (Duke's or Hellman's) I've bought before.

*I had a little time to relax tonight (for a change), so I worked more on the mitts. I'm within a couple rows of being done with the thumb gusset:

 The staggered-rib pattern is more clear when you stretch it out (like when they are being worn; there is a little negative ease built in)

 * I've also been working on the blanket but it's not at a photogenic stage, but it does feel like I'm getting close to finishing it. I'll be glad when it's done; I've worked on it on and off (mostly off, to be honest) since 2022.

Second field day

 So there are three sites I am collecting from; we got the first (and hardest) one done Friday, and since the student was free again this afternoon, we planned to do the other two provided it wasn't storming.

This week has ALREADY felt long. Monday was hectic in a couple ways at work and then I had CWF in the evening, and it was a LONG meeting. So it feels like I've been through a full week already.

Also, I didn't sleep well Sunday night or last night because there were a lot of things that just had to fall into place, some of which I had to manage, and it was just too many things to remember (one of them being: send off my state tax payment, which I did yesterday). 

I also had unpleasant dreams, though perhaps that's as much that it's hot and humid now and I don't sleep as soundly. But I know a couple of them centered on having a lot of things to get done and being prevented from doing them somehow, and that's a classic anxiety dream for me. 

Anyway, today I had to prepare the soils for the ecology lab tomorrow, and get out and set up at least most of the equipment (this is the hardest lab, logistically and procedurally) and then I had to be ready at 12:30 to meet with the student, and I had to be sure I had all the equipment, and I admit I am also always apprehensive now about how my knee will hold up. 

The student was an hour late (no fault of her own) and I decided driving out that if she had something later in the afternoon (often students have late classes or jobs), we'd just do the one site.

It was kind of a comedy of errors getting there. You have to cross a double train track to the site,, and as we got up to it I saw a train slowly proceeding through. Okay, fine, we sit. But as it turned out.....there was a train sitting on the second track. Okay, fine, we wait for them to move after the first train (they were parked, blocking the intersection, technically against the law but you see it from time to time). There was a brakeman walking around looking at it and finally I said, "There's a driveway about 100 feet back, I'm going to back up and turn and there's a different way I can get there, if this train doesn't beat us to that crossing. (They did not). So we got to the site and found the sample points and as we were getting the soil, I heard a train horn and said "that'll be the train" so we decided to drive back the shorter way.

 But. There was a THIRD train, but fortunately they were moving. I don't know what was up. Lots of tanker cars so maybe oil is being moved around? Given what's going on in the Gulf maybe more domestic oil is on the move now?

Anyway, I asked her if she had somewhere she needed to be. She didn't, so we went to the second site, which is the shortest one to do, and managed to get all the samples but I was really beat (and my knee is sore) by the time we were done. And I got snagged on a greenbriar and tore the heck out of one knuckle, but luckily I had a tetanus booster in 2023, so I should be safe there.

It was after 5:30 when I got home (I set up the second set of extractions)  

So I decided to splurge again instead of either eating cereal or an almond-butter sandwich, and got one of the good big loaded baked potatoes from the bbq place - sour cream, cheese, your choice of meat (I got smoked chicken) and barbecue sauce. I'm glad I did, I needed a big and fast meal.

 

breaking the stall

 Sometimes I get that way about certain books. Either it's a part I find upsetting, or I get bored with it, or I get annoyed at one of the characters, and I put it aside for a while.

(This is different from "I am annoyed at the author's style or where they are taking the story," that's often when I don't finish a book)

I got that way with Between Two Rivers, which is that history of the Mesopotamian area and specifically cuneiform writing.....which I think might be among the earliest, if not the earliest, form? And the first part was interesting with the "mystery" about whether Ennigaldi-Nanna really had a "museum" of things even more ancient than her own ancient times or not...

(And an aside: Another mindblowing thing to a non historian is to be reminded of how LONG the Egyptian culture stretched in ancient times, like how the Sphinx was as much older than King Tut's tomb as the fall of Rome was to Gutenberg's development of the printing press in Europe - but non historians like me tend to think of "ancient Egypt" on this compressed timeline because it was so long ago)

And there were some interesting ideas about how ordinary life might have worked, and what their religion was like, and the fact that women priestesses were apparently not uncommon......

And then I hit up against an episode where she wrote about two cities at war, and something like 5000 to 10000 people were slaughtered (and of course, each side would have their own narrative about what happened)

And she described the "tell" (burial mound) that one side erected to bury the dead of the other side. Maybe for reasons of honor? (though given that the remains show evidence of having been left exposed for a while, maybe it was actually for stopping-spread-of-disease-and-scavengers reasons) and.....they erected a stele with vultures on it, and that was what got me. ESPECIALLY reading it during a new war ramping up in that part of the world (Through really, hasn't it always been at war, more or less), and thinking for a few hours last week that "if things go very wrong, this might be how humanity goes out; one person drops a nuke, and another country - not Iran, they don't have one currently - decides "oh, that's how it's going to be" and drops one themselves, and then all that's LEFT are bones and cockroaches. And that just got me down, and made me sad and scared, and I had to stop thinking about it.

So I read mystery stories for a few evenings and as I noted one of them broke kind of bad (though perhaps it was a very specific horror - essentially, being buried alive - for me)

But last night I went back to Between Two Rivers and manged to push through the upsetting bit into something calmer. I don't know that there won't be more hard stuff to read but maybe I can get through the book now.  

Fieldwork day today

 I needed to get my first spring sample of soils for the ongoing invertebrate project. Fortunately, a botany student was free this afternoon and wanted to come help me. She helped carry stuff, and ran the tape out for the distances, and she held the bags as I dug soil. And she just was there in case I kneeled down and found I could not get up (that didn't happen but I always worry)

Only one from-the-field picture; we were hurrying as rain was forecast (none yet) and it was already 1 pm when we could get out there. But obviously a fire came through here between the last time I sampled and now, there were a couple burnt trees I don't remember:

 

 We got the sampling done fine. I was pretty tired and sore by the end (my knee has bothered me this week). But we got them back and I set up the extractions. These go for about 48 hours, and if it doesn't rain Tuesday we'll go and get the rest of the soil

 I also got a photo of the "Portable" air conditioning unit that's been installed in my teaching lab. It takes up a lot of space and I swan it looks like those tubes could start waving around and it saying "EXTERMINATE" or something similar. 

 After all that, I went home and washed my hair, and decided to get barbecue for dinner:

 I only ate about half of it; it's a lot of food, but then it amortizes out to feeling less of a splurge (the whole dinner was about $18), because you have leftovers for a later meal. 

***

After that, I mostly watched the Artemis splashdown. I admit, I was apprehensive, these past months have sensitized me to "no good can happen it can only bad happen" and I also remember the Columbia disaster (which I think happened on the shuttle's return, if I remember) and Challenger before it. 

But no, it went off perfectly, and once I saw the chutes deploy I relaxed a bit (I didn't fully relax until just now, when all four astronauts are safely on the Navy ship and off the capsule). This was very cool, despite me not being an astronomer or anything. It was just lovely to see some of the moments of kindness and camaraderie among the crew (most famously discussing naming a feature on the moon for Caroll, the late wife of the commander.)

It was also nice to be able to share it - first, Facetiming with my mom at splashdown, we were both watching it, and then later, chatting with friends on Bluesky about it. 

I feel like our country needed a W, and it seems like we got it.  

A busy week

 Last night were the monthly meetings at church. Because it's getting to be budget time (I am on that committee) and nominations time (fortunately not on that one), it was a longer meeting than usual, so that was basically my day after teaching yesterday.

Today I gave an exam and graded two (yesterday's and today's).

I found out that they kind-of solved the "broken chiller unit" issue - there are large (maybe 4 1/2 foot tall) "portable" air conditioners - I use scare quotes because they have to have flexible ductwork (it looks like the white polymer-fabric dryer vent tubes) that attaches into the building ducts, so you can't move them.

It is a solution, but they're very loud. I had to kind of shout in lab to be heard. The good news is the lecture rooms don't have to have them, the AC on that side still works. Also, there's only like 2 weeks of labs left for me in that room, and I don't teach summers (and hopefully it will be fixed over the summer). 

Someone on Bluesky posted - because everyone is sad and often it seems like cruelty is everywhere - that they wanted people to do one kind thing today and then post about it. I can't find the original post again to post to it, but the thing I did that I remember was to scoop up a jumping spider (we have little black and white fuzzy jumping spiders; they're cute. They're probably a Phidippus but I've never really tried to determine species; they're super common). It was walking down the hall near the lab room and I saw it and thought "someone's going to see that and squish it" and I didn't want it to get squished, so I took the paper I was carrying and gently slid it under the spider (I suppose they COULD bite, but they've never been aggressive towards me) and carried it to the nearest door. There's a small garden in the back of the building so I was able to set the spider down in some leaf litter around a clump of iris. Hopefully it can find food out there. (I know I get a lot of those little guys in the house, I just let them be because I'm not afraid of spiders and I figure they get food somehow or they'd not stick around)

So I don't know if trying to be kind to a spider counts, but that's what I did.

I got a few more rounds done on the sock cuff; you can see the full progression of colors here. I do think I'll keep doing the ribbing all the way down the leg and maybe on the top of the foot.

 

 

Two quick photos

 Difficult day again. Of course the geopolitical thing, which, I guess I can at least say when I go to bed tonight I can be reasonably sure that society will still be as functional tomorrow as it was today. (I made an anxious run to the grocery to stock up, you know, just in case, and filled up my car, and got some cash out of the bank, because really these days you never DO know)

But also:

- a friendly colleague of mine who is undergoing treatment for a blood cancer, and I thought they had concluded it successfully, had to have a liver biopsy because something else seems wrong, and it's just, can bad stuff stop happening to people I care about? it's too much on top of everything

- they were taking down a tree near my office, I got to hear it ALL THROUGH MY SEVERAL HOURS OF OFFICE HOURS TODAY and between worrying about what was going to happen in the world and the not-great news about my colleague it about undid my concentration. I got some grading done but that was IT. (I did go back after lunch when the tree guys were on break and got some data entered but left when they came back again a little before 4 and started cutting again)

I'm just TIRED. Mostly emotionally tired. Things seem to have been bad and difficult for very long and there aren't a lot of consolations to make up for the bad stuff. 

I had to put "Between Two Rivers" aside for a bit; she is describing some ancient battle and how it seems like thousands of men were killed, and the rest of that army just LEFT, leaving them on the field, and the victors did apparently (finally; there's evidence of scavengers) gather up the remains and bury them in big mounds, and it's implied it was like 5000 people and it's just.....people have always been bad, people aren't getting any better, all we do is kill each other and I don't want to hear about it any more.

And the mystery short stories I was reading, one of them by a little known writer ended with the missing Oxford undergraduate being found (alive, at least) after being kidnapped by a crazed Egyptologist who wanted to make his very own mummy and since I am claustrophobic and have that "fear of being buried alive*" it was a particularly uncomfortable ending to the story

(*not like buried-while-still-alive-in-a-grave, I know that doesn't happen any more, but like.....getting trapped under rubble or something in a building collapse)

I think I need to find a different book. 

I did work some more on the mitts this evening, I'm up to the part where you start for the thumb part (you can't see it in this photo, though, it's on the other side)

 I also realized I never posted a photo of the green waffle-stitch hat, which I finished over spring break. I think it's because I'm less satisfied with it - I washed and blocked it and it stretched, so it's a little too big. I might try rewashing it and putting it in a warm dryer (inside a lingerie bag) to see if I can shrink it a little

I'm trying to smile bravely in this photo but......this week has already been a lot*

 (* I know, I know):

 

A difficult day

* I think part of it is I'm just tired, and I didn't love when I took little breaks to relax and Bluesky was down, maybe forever? (it's back now). But any more everything is so dependent on a few services that if those go down (like AWS), we're all in the dark, and given what may happen tomorrow evening in the Iran war, I'm apprehensive.

* A weird little thing; when I got home from school and went to get my mail, this was in the box: a plastic Easter egg and as I took it out I sighed and said "if there's candy in it, I ain't eating it" (Yes, I'm a child of the 70s and I remember the stern warnings on Halloween candy)

 but instead, it was  this:

 A Bible verse. From Psalm 139. Which, I guess, okay, but it's not completely Easterish. And I admit I would have liked a few more words of hope, rather than basically an instruction. Yes, yes, I know the way I should go.

I wonder if the neighbors got them too, and if they were different verses. The handwriting looks like someone older than a small child - either a teen or a young woman (I could not write that neatly as a child) so I'm wondering if someone did it and then had their kids put the eggs out.

Anyway, it was just unexpected.

It's just that there's a lot to do at school. Too many things to juggle and I admit I am TIRED. Saturday was entirely out in the field (Well, "entirely" - 11 am to 2 pm, and I was too tired after to do much).

And Sunday I filled the pulpit. Yes, none of the people who ordinarily to was available so I did it, even though I'm not ordained and not any sort of theologian. I guess it went okay.

But things have been A Lot lately and sometimes I feel like I don't have enough time to do what *I* want or even kind of what I need to do (research stuff). There's just lots of urgent stuff that comes up and takes time from other things and I find myself staying over at work later and later, and then I wind up staying up at home later at night as a sort of revenge for "but I didn't get free time" and I can't continue in what I think of as "bare survival mode"

 The world just feels hard, and so even little things make me kind of lose my composure a little bit.

I do think something is going on inside me, I don't know what. 

I did see a bit of coverage of the Artemis mission and I watched the liftoff on Wednesday (I had to look that up, I thought it was more recently than that - that's how I feel like my life is out of my control). And I admit, having been around for Challenger and also Columbia (in 2003, I was already living here, in 1986, I was a junior in high school), I said a little prayer as they lifted off and got nervous when the feed briefly went pixelated. But so far everything is good and I hope they can safely land when the mission is over.

And I saw a bit of the coverage of them going into "radio silence' - as they passed around the moon, there was 40 minutes where they couldn't communicate. The part I saw featured was the  “To all of you down there on Earth — and around Earth — We love you, from the moon.”

And I admit, that undid me a little, hearing it, this evening. I had taken a break from doing some cleaning/bedmaking in my room to look at things and I saw it posted. And I sat down and just cried. 

I *think* part of it is being tired, and just worried all the time now about EVERYTHING. But more: it was just a simple, kind, thoughtful message, and in our culture now that's in such short supply. How often do we hear people saying "I love you" as a general statement to humanity. (I admit it: I cannot love humanity a lot of the time. Or perhaps: I don't LIKE humanity and what it does a lot of the time). But there's so much meanness and upsetting coarseness in what's said now that hearing "we love you" from a man who took on the risk to do something like this....it's disarming, because hearing that kind of language seems so rare now.

And there's actually a longer video than what I saw, and Victor Glover referenced Christ's two Great Commandments, and.....wow. I know, I know, maybe some people didn't like it but I presume Glover is a Christian and feels it and believes it, and it's something that's important to me and in fact I referenced these in the sermon yesterday and it does make me feel like I have something a tiny bit in common with him.

I've read that a lot of people who traveled to space were changed by it - more thoughtful, more cognizant of the fragility of life, perhaps even more spiritual

This link to the video is Instagram but it's the best link I can find quickly. 

But I don't know. I need to hear more words of hope, or someone saying something with care and love, and I want to hear fewer people being insulting or bullying or rudely angry, and some days it feels like those attitudes are pushing out the other ones, and it makes me sad. I mean, I can keep trying to be kind, but if all the people around me turn cruel, then *I* never get to hear kindness myself. 

It's dead, Jim

 Allegedly Bluesky incorporated a bunch of Claude code to its running over the weekend and GUESS WHAT?

 

it's down. 

 

I guess it's just dead. You can find me here and.......I don't know. When I posted on mastodon no one ever TALKED to me so I figured they thought I was too weird or dumb for their site so maybe I'm done with social media and will have to learn a way to get through the day without "talking" about things other than work or cracking my little jokes.

 

I did it before, in the days before social media, but it'll take me a while to adjust

 

well, maybe I get more research done :( 

It's finally Friday

 I started a new pair of socks the other night. They're just going to be simple socks, I might continue the ribbing down the leg and onto the top of the foot; I think that would look good with this colorway

 It's an older yarn from my stash; I had it wound up into a cake for a while (I think I took it as a "just in case I finish everything else" project at Christmas). I think I bought it from Simply Sock Yarn, I'm not even sure if they still it. The brand is Night Owl Yarns and the colorway is Puffins of Fair Isle. I like the colors; a couple of them remind me of lichens. 

I had to run some errands - I was nearly out of one of the cosmetics I use and Ulta is the only place I know that sells it. And yes, yes, I could mail order it, but I didn't want to wait a week or more, and I just needed to get out and look at things. Sometimes I need to get out of town, living in as small a place as I do, and a place with very little that is "for me."

So I quickly plotted out the most efficient path, starting with the yarn shop and ultimately ending with Albertson's (I needed groceries, and I wanted something special for Easter dinner). 

And yeah, I went to the yarn shop first, and spent part of my tax refund.

 I had been looking for that Laine "52 Weeks of Sweaters" - I have several of their other books and I really like them, and yes, they are FULL of patterns. And more and more, I feel like bound books of patterns are probably the way to go. The internet is impermanent, and even having a flash drive and cloud storage of patterns, they can get lost. And I need a printed copy on paper in front of me, because I usually only get a few rounds or rows knit in an evening, I don't want to keep having to scroll back to my place. On a paper pattern, I can put a sticky note next to where I stopped, or even write annotations in pencil. 

The single skein of yarn is a Texas dyer called Chicken Coop; it's a newer yarn the shop is carrying (they've cycled out a few national brands, either because of changes in ownership or because tariffs and such have made them prohibitively expensive) and tried to find some more "local" yarns, which is kind of nice. The colorway on this one is "Mint Julep," and I just like the odd mixture of colors.

The really bright orange-and-pink yarn is a closeout; Dream in Color is one of the yarns the shop is phasing out. I like this colorway (I have a ball of it for mitts that I stalled on and need to restart) and I decided it was so inexpensive I'd get some and maybe make a simple lacy scarf. Those were the last three balls; I think I have a bit more than 700 yards of it. I'll just have to figure out a good pattern.

I did do some other shopping and when I was at the Ulta I saw this - they had been renovating the old JoAnn's and I wondered what it was going to be (I was holding out hope for a Barnes and Nobles, or at least maybe the Ulta expanding and becoming a Really Big Ulta? But Nope)

 

 Boo! or perhaps <Hans Moleman Voice>"I was saying Booooooourlington"</Hans Moleman Voice>

Yeah, I'm displeased. This is just moving from the dead mall so it doesn't count as a new store. And I don't care much for these overstock-discount places; I can never find what I want in them, just lots of stuff I don't really want that MIGHT do but I'd rather not buy unless there's literally nothing else in that category of Stuff to be had anywhere. 

 I suspect it'll be a long, long, long time before we get any "new" stores, given what's happening with the economy, and also the general attitude and finances in the area. 

I did buy myself a few more things, I got food for the coming week plus (including some already-chopped Brussels sprouts; call it lazy but I'm more prone to cook up and eat veggies if I don't have to totally break them down first). I like sauteed Brussels sprouts so I'll make them for Easter, or, failing that, Monday night. I also got a small steak. Beef is horrifically expensive now so I almost never eat it, but Albertson's tiny packages of the filet cut tend to be pretty good, so I got one. 

I also got a few bits of chocolate Easter candy, since it's too hot for it to be sent through the mail now (so my mom won't send me any, and I have literally no one else who would get me Easter candy). And seeing this, I remembered a few years as a child I got a small stuffed animal in my Easter basket, and it was just nice, and is a happy memory.

 It's Chloe, one of Bluey's friends. She's not terribly show-accurate in that Chloe on there is kind of a skinny little girl dog, and this Chloe is plumper (I suspect they use a similar pattern for all the dogs in this line). But she is cute and her ears are pleasingly floppy.

 

Tomorrow is fieldwork with a colleague (a project she initiated but I'll have my name in there along with the students working on it) unless it is still raining. 

week is loud

I don't know if my tolerance is down, or if things are just LOUD now. Sometimes I do hit a point where noise (or it being too warm, or too bright, or a number of other things) feels like it's just too much.

Monday, I had to speak to people in one class about talking during class. Not asking or answering questions or discussing, but carrying on a side conversation.

Yesterday, I had to go down to central campus to help with the children's play. They're doing construction on one of the buildings there and there was a scissor lift with a loud backup beep, and cutting steel, and drilling, and hammering. And then in the building where the theater was, the kids were loud and the music was loud and it was just a lot of people. I had to stay home a bit longer after eating lunch to be in the quiet, but I did get back to campus later to work on some research stuff (but even then, there was noise in the hall). 

And then, late in the day, an e-mail: the cooling system in part of the classroom building died. It'll take 12 weeks to fix EVEN AFTER the money can be allocated for it (it will involve the regents, so that will take a while). Fans are being brought in.

Well, they were here this morning: big, industrial fans that sound a bit like a jet engine. And one of them - the one near the classroom where I teach - had a loud, recurrent squeak. I looked at it in despair when I went there to see what the noise was before class.

I guess I'm too meek and too prone to accept things like that; one of my colleagues came down the hall, looked at it, shook his head, and said "no one can teach with that going. I'm turning it off and calling physical plant"

By my second class, there was a new one. It didn't squeak but it was still loud in a way that sort of invaded my concentration. (I find it harder to pay attention and think when there's noise). It's also very humid in that part of the building now - and this is the part where the AC is still kind of OK). I teach a lab tomorrow in the worst-affected part, so I presume it's going to be unpleasant (I should, if I need it, have time to shower before Maundy Thursday services tomorrow night; I am a reader). 

This afternoon I taught a lab in the field, we were late getting back (every single stinking stoplight, all ten of them we had to pass through, was red when we got to it). I was late getting to the Gen Ed council meeting (I don't like being late) and I had to return the van late (at least the Motor Pool person was nice about it).  But it was a lot and I hate rushing around and feeling like I can't get everything done. 

But it's just a lot.  I'm especially unhappy that things seem to keep breaking in my building - this is the building, remember, we were exiled from for nearly six months while they "renovated" (most of the renovations seem to have been cosmetic). And just, oh, everything. Our most recent job search may fail because the legislators in the state have changed the rules and we can't extend an offer until we get clarification, And now, from Gen Ed council, we're hearing another thing the outgoing governor is proposing may mean a lot more additional work from us. 

And I am just fed up, and kind of in a cycle where a lot of things feel unrewarding because there are so many silly little external thing that aren't really part of what I consider my job, but that I have to deal with. And I feel like I've gotten very few "wins" lately, and haven't really heard any "attagirls," and yes, I NEED some kind of external validation. I know I should not, but I do, and when I got long without any I figure "Well, maybe what I suspected is actually true: I'm not really very good at anything." 

So it's just been a rough week all along, and I don't see much improving with the building environment. 

Tuesday evening things

 * I pulled out a stalled project tonight; these are the "book lovers mitts" (The original design has you change colors every time the ribbed pattern shifts, so it looks like books on a shelf, I guess). I decided to just use a variegated yarn

I started these at Christmas but got involved with other projects and lost my place. I managed to find it again (I think, I had to rip back a little)

I'm using a yarn dyed by Purl's Yarn Emporium; it's one of their DnD themed yarns (that also have a slight Tolkien feel). This colorway is called "Healing Hands," which seems appropriate for mitts. 

It's kind of the wrong time of year to work on stuff like this; we're rolling into the hot months (and March was abnormally warm and dry this year). But you work on what you feel like working on, and if I only knit in the winter I'd almost not knit at all.

* Tomorrow is April Fools' Day. I do not love this day. I tend to be literal minded and I also get wrapped up in what I'm working on or thinking about and so I get "caught." And with my past history of having been the butt of jokes (once or twice even by a TEACHER) as a kid, I hate it extra. It makes me feel stupid and I don't like feeling like that, because I feel "if I don't have my smarts I don't really have anything"

Anyway, I'm going to have to pay attention tomorrow. Because while there are sometimes just funny and silly pranks that are okay, there are also enough meanspirited people who like to be able to laugh at someone else's expense - or people who are literally thoughtless (in that: they don't think) and who don't know me all that well, and don't realize that that kind of thing is very painful to me. 

Because I don't make a big deal about it. I don't get mad, or I don't chew the person out, or explain that I don't appreciate it, because one thing you learn as a bullied child is to react as little as possible - even if it sometimes means putting up with some forms of mistreatment. Because if the person you speak out to is genuinely a jerk, they may actually enjoy your being unhappy and may do it all the MORE.

* And yeah, it does feel like there are an awful lot of mean-spirited people out there, and it makes me sad.

I ordered for myself a small giclee print an artist did - it shows a curled-up opossum on a bed of leaves, and has the legend "The world is cruel; therefore I will not be" and yes, that's true, and refusing to be meanspirited is a form of resistance In These Times but it also does sometimes feel kind of weird and lonely and may set you up to be laughed at. 

I hate how often now doing what I know to be right gets you stomped on or laughed it. I suppose it was always thus but it somehow feels MORE now. 

*Though I also saw a sweatshirt that said "I could be meaner" and sometimes I admit, yeah, maybe I could be. Maybe I could guard myself a little more tightly or yell at people more when they trespass on my feelings or not be so accommodating to other people. But I don't KNOW how to be meaner, and I suspect I would feel bad about myself if I were. 

*It's hard trying to be a "soft" person in a world full of sharp elbows :( 

The finished socks

 I worked on these some over break, but didn't finish them; sometimes plain knit socks get hard to finish the foot on, because it takes a while and it gets a little dull. But I pushed at it over this weekend and got up to the toe, and now they're done

 The colorway is called "Cosmic Dust" - the base yarn also has a silver thread running through it. To me, they look like either a 1980s video-game arcade carpet, or maybe a movie theater color scheme from that era. 

I like them.

And I kind of wonder if the fluorescent-colored bits would glow under blacklight (I don't have one, and I don't think there's one in the department - sometimes we have those for botany classes to show the ultraviolet markings on flowers, nectar guides)

I'm not sure which to start next. I do have other ongoing projects (Mitts, the unicorn, a couple sweaters, Lithos, the shawl) to work on too. I am keeping the shawl for invigilating knitting, at least until I get to the lace part (about 40 more rows)

I might do a cabled pair out of a handdyed yarn I ordered off Etsy; the colorway is called "succulents" and the colors do kind of look like some of the succulent plants that have been popular recently. 

 

a dinner out

 But not at a restaurant!

Our graduate student - who is from India - was cooking for the international student club tonight, and invited us to come and have dinner with them. I went ahead and accepted, even though I am (a) a bit of a picky eater and (b) have some food sensitivities (but he asked, and I told him, and he responded that he'd leave the carrots he might have put in out). 

At first when I got home, I thought, "do I really want to go? I'm tired, I probably won't know anyone there, and I might be the only person over 30 who shows up." But then I decided I HAD RSVPd, and it's possible if not many people showed up, the student might be disappointed. So I went.

It turns out I wasn't the ONLY person over 30. Our horticulturalist (who is younger than me but older than the students) was there; she had served as sort of a sous-chef for him. And then my two youngest colleagues with their spouses in tow showed up (They are probably not OVER 30, but they're CLOSE TO 30). 

It was a simple meal - chicken biryani with raita, and a modified version of roti (the student said they were nontraditionally prepared; I think roti have to be cooked on the inside WALL of an oven and I think they made these on a griddle). Another Indian student - originally from a different region than our student - had made dessert, a sort of bread pudding with almonds, cinnamon, and condensed milk (she warned us "Indian desserts are often quite sweet for Westerners" and even though I generally don't like extremely sweet things, I liked this, partly because she put a lot of cinnamon in)..

 

I did take some of the raita even though it had raw onion (which I have to be a little careful with) because our student warned that "the biryani might be hot for some of you" but it really wasn't. It was seasoned well but it wasn't "mouth burning," it was just flavorful. But the raita was good on it, too. 

All of us from the department sat together and the horticulturalist did come and talk with us a little. So I wasn't all by myself, that was nice. I saw a few people I'd had in class in the past. All told there were maybe 20 people at the dinner. There was plenty of food and the student encouraged the other students to take leftovers (we held back; generally when there's food and students we prefer to let the students have first crack at it; a lot of our students are on tight budgets where having leftovers would be a bigger thing) 

 It was nice, though. It was quiet and sort of a peaceful meal, and I remembered that way, way back when I was an undergraduate I did occasionally hang out at the international student center with the international students, because in some ways I felt I fit in better with them than I did with the average undergraduate. And the international students were interesting people with different experiences to share - but also they often found out that people from other cultures had a lot in common. 

(I was thinking, but didn't mention - nearly every culture has some kind of flatbreads like the roti; of course in Mexican cooking there are tortillas and there's pita in Middle Eastern culture)

We hung around until slightly after 8. Most of the students had left and I got to thinking it might be good to go to let the folks still hanging around from the club clean up, so we walked out together.

But it was nice, a lot less awkward than I thought I'd be, and just a good break in the week. 

small new project

 Yes, I have a lot of things to finish up ALREADY but I got to thinking about a kit I bought a while back at Quixotic Fibers - it's one of those Toft kits (they make up into small, very simple-looking, stuffed animals). This one is a cream-colored unicorn. In typical Toft style, the animal is sort of semi-bipedal (sitting up "like a human"), so not totally realistic. 

I was remembering the little whale I made and thought, "well, at least this one isn't BLACK" except the yarn for this one is the trademark Toft alpaca yarn, and it is a bit splitty.  

I am slightly amused that the given name is "Chablis," I read "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" years and years ago and there was a character in there named the Lady Chablis who was one of the typical flashy/showy show business people, and she also appeared on Bizarre Foods once (The Savannah episode). So I might keep the name even though this Chablis is considerably more monotone than the performer by that name was.

 That's the front of the pattern (it's very simple, just one page, and although it's a British made kit, the ones for sale here have the American terminology (It's important to check, though usually you can tell on an amigurumi because the main stitch in American terms is single crochet, which is called double crochet in the UK (and I think, Australia). 

I only got the first of four legs done (the legs are my least favorite part in quadrupedal creatures you crochet). It's kind of fiddly and the first attempt, I skipped over the third round's increases, and had to rip back and redo it.