Wednesday morning knitting

I finished a pair of simple socks last night. (These are the "ancient pottery" colored yarn). Just simple socks, 64 stitches on size 1 needles, about an inch and a quarter of ribbing, rest of the leg stockinette, slipped-stitch heel flap, French heel turn (which the 12 year old in me goes "snerk" at over the alternate name: round heel), star toe.

I immediately cast on for a new pair, this time using a new-to-me yarn (Crystal Palace's "Sausalito" in a colorway that Simply Sock Yarn calls Toast and Jam - once again, the name of a colorway makes me want it. But it's still a pretty colorway - tan grading into purple and then back). This is one of those color-shifting yarns where it's two yarns plied together that change colors subtly and at different rates, so there's sort of an ombre effect. I really like that kind of yarn.

I hope this yarn is nice to knit on. Some of the other "ombre effect" type yarns I've tried for socks - Kureyon sock and Mini Mochi and Poems sock - were all very splitty and kind of unpleasant to knit.

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I commented yesterday on the tedium of my new diet. Well, I guess I can't bash it too much. My blood pressure last night was 127/80, with a heart rate of 77. (My heart rate was way too high - it's still too high relative to what it used to be - and that's part of the reason the doc put me on this particular medication). So while most of that is probably the medication, I'm assuming the diet is helping. The diastolic is still considerably too high but 80 is lower than what it was at its worst, and it's lower than what it's been running this past week. The only bad thing is wow, do I feel tired. I had to sit through most of GIS last night and actually kind of snapped at a student when I was up helping someone and he went to steal my chair (because my co-teacher stole HIS chair). But seriously, at that point I felt that if I couldn't sit most of the time, I'd wind up on the floor. I'm hoping this is a transient side effect my body will eventually adapt to.

I didn't do my workout this morning as I have a field lab this afternoon and I decided it was probably a good idea to carefully shepherd my energy until I've gotten more used to the newer, lower blood pressure.

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HOWEVER, I learned some unhappy news (well, for me, for my department) last night. The person who was the thorn in my side this spring? Couldn't get a job. So he is coming back to do a Master's degree. I actually said, "You're (not very ladylike word beginning with s) me!" to the colleague who told me.

The good news is I won't currently be teaching any classes that are graduate eligible (And I will NOT do research with this person. NO. I don't care what the administration threatens to do to me.). However, in fall 2014, GIS will roll around again, and it's a graduate-eligible class. And the thought of this individual in GIS scares the daylights out of me, because all of the things this person has great difficulty with (persisting until a problem is solved, working independently, showing up to work on stuff outside of class, keeping appointments) are all things GIS requires. So, I don't know. I'm hoping it won't come to pass but if it does....well, maybe I will be getting that rx for anti anxiety medications after all. (You would THINK, you would THINK they could make some "accommodations" for the professors so we aren't made ill by students with toxic attitudes, but we generally just have to suck it up.)

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I didn't stay up to watch election results. My thought was: "This is gonna be like 2000, where they're still fighting it out at Thanksgiving." But then I woke up around 4 and decided "I wonder if they have a decision."

So I got up, flipped on the tv, watched for a bit, went, "Oh. Okay." and went back to bed.

I'm glad the election is over. My main feeling about the stuff running up to it is dismay. I've seen people on both sides of the aisle say some pretty awful things in social media. Stuff that made me go, "Now, wait. If you knew your Best Friend Forever was going to be voting for the other guy, would you still say that?" (And part of me wonders: would the person in question de-friend their Best Friend Forever over voting for the other guy?)

I don't know. I don't get a lot of human behavior. (Maybe I'm more like Sheldon Cooper than I like to admit). If I know I disagree strongly with someone on something, I don't bring the issue up. Or, even if I don't know for sure whether there'd be strong disagreement, I tend not to bring it up. I don't know, maybe that makes a lot of my friendships fairly superficial but it seems pointless to me to discuss something that is a deeply held belief that two people differ on, especially if things get nasty or uncomfortable. And there are other things to discuss: work, human behavior, knitting, books....

I wouldn't call someone the equivalent of being a scum-sucking mouthbreather because he or she chose to vote for "the other guy," I tend to reserve that judgement for people who do things like put shop clerks to a lot of trouble and effort and then don't buy anything, and never intended to buy anything. Or people who are rude to waiters. Or anyone who taunts someone mercilessly and then explains it as "I did it for the lulz." I get that there can be philosophical differences in economics and the role of government and your having different attitudes from mine doesn't make you a bad person, just as my different attitudes don't make me a bad person.

And it makes me sad to see that some people (on both sides, as I said) seem to believe that the other side is solely made up of bad people. Or, I don't know. Maybe that's that "hyperbole" thing I've heard of. I can't always tell when people are being hyperbolic.

I hate how our nation seemingly goes kind of crazy for a year every four years. It's like Pon Farr or something. (I know, PMS is probably a more apt and simple metaphor, but....I don't like the comparison. Also there seems to be no chocolate involved in politics.)

(And that's why I don't really talk politics on the blog. I don't want to risk losing any of my precious few readers. Then again, maybe you all are too sensible to start hating someone because you disagree with their politics.)