3/25/04

The few times I've decided to take a break from writing here, within a day or two something happens that requires comment. And sure enough, this morning my fear of moving vehicles has been reinforced, as well as my incredible clumsiness.

Required story background: Every morning I take the same bus to school. I have the schedule memorized. To get to said bus, I need to cross what is typically a very busy one-way two-lane street. Because I hate cars when they're moving towards me, it takes me several minutes of waiting for a decent space before I cross.

Oh, also, because said bus is very popular with students, there are typically two of them running at the same time, arriving at the bus stops within 30 seconds or so of each other. If one is stopped and picking up people, the second will pass by. If the first one is too full, it will occasionally go by your stop, at which point you have to hope the second isn't as packed and will actually stop.

Now, story. I knew I was cutting it close this morning because I was 1 minute late (this is how well I have the schedule memorized). But there is also a third bus on a different schedule I can pick up 4 minutes later (but doesn't drop off quite so close). I just got to the corner and saw that the bus I preferred was headed down the street. There were some nearby cars, but the arrangement was such that I knew when the bus stopped I'd be able to slip by it and avoid them.

Note that I was thinking "when the bus stopped". I should have been thinking "IF the bus stopped".

So I start to jog across the street, but the bus isn't slowing down for the people waiting, not slowing down at all. There's no way I can get past it without getting hit by it, so I backpedal, and trip.

And fall on my ass.

As a long line of cars going 30 miles an hour at 8:41 in the morning are worrying about getting to work by 9 and are 3 seconds away from my head and OH MY GOD I'M LAYING ON MY BACK IN THE MIDDLE OF GORHAM I'M GOING TO DIE I'M GOING TO DIE.

Then I rolled, or crabwalked, or something, as I imagined the 10 car accident caused because I was watching some stupid Today show thing about finding the next Martha Stewart instead of putting on my coat.

Obviously, since I'm writing this, none of that happened. It was a pretty fargin' close thing, but all my parts are intact, save a bit of skin from my hand.

And then, I missed the second bus because I needed to sit on the curb for a second, counting my fingers and wiggling my toes before I could stand up and wait to cross the street.

I'm such a spaz. This is one of many reasons why I shouldn't be allowed to have small people.

3/24/04

Just a quick update: my aunt is doing better, in that she is not worse. I tried to explain this to someone this morning by explaining that both her first and second derivatives of health are no longer negative, which in itself is better than what they were predicting over the weekend.

The person I was explaining this to, being a biologist, backed away from me slowly, but since I was smiling, took this to mean "good news", which it is. My stomach still drops every time the phone rings, but I'm feeling more hopeful about the whole situation at the moment.

I suppose, squashy mammal that I am, that it's hard not to feel some hopefulness when it's suddenly 60 outside, the lake is beginning to melt, and three sprigs of a daffodil plant have popped up next to my aparment building. Life is starting to happen out there, and although the last I heard Julie still isn't awake, I hope she can feel it.

3/22/04

My father's sister is seriously, suddenly ill at the moment. I might be going home soon. You might remember that I recently talked about how I've been living somewhat non-analytically lately, putting my energy into finishing things rather than thinking about my motivations for doing so.

After hearing the news from my mom, I spent the whole weekend listening to a Harry Potter book on tape, finishing my sweater (might be done by the end of the week if I keep this obsessive activity up), crying over poor-quality eggs I didn't particularly want to eat in the first place, and just generally not talking much, mulling things over, and inappropriately responding to stimuli.

There are a lot of things I want to talk about at some point, about my family and the fierce weaknesses I pretend I haven't inherited, and about the way we all live our lives in relation to those around us, about my sorrow and confusion and thoughtlessness. I'm thinking about it all, but I'm not sure where to start, and I'm not sure how to balance it all in a way that won't hurt.

I know I've been quiet here lately, and I suspect I'll be even quieter for a little while.

In the meantime, keep my aunt, uncle, and their two kids in your thoughts.

3/15/04

J's been encouraging me to have opinions about the state of the tv lately.

"Do you want to watch this episode of the new Futurama DVD or the other one?"

"flip-flip-flip-flip-flip. Did you want to watch any of those shows?"

"I'm heading to bed. Do you want me to pop in a tape while I'm up?"

My reaction is usually somewhere between "eh" and "I dunno" on the passionate opinion scale. I think it's just the presence of tv-hood that leaves me cold.

For me, tv is that thing that makes noises into my head while I knit, read, write out bills, or work on a paper. I don't have a favorite show. The only shows I can think of offhand that offend me enough to change the channel are Friends and Fear Factor.

Those two make me want to yak.

My second semester at Wisconsin, I had one of those tiny black and white 13-inch tv's that you need to tune like a radio. NBC came in the best, and it was a pain to get the sound proper, so I left it on that while I did whatever I was doing.

I can't quite figure out how to describe this. I don't dislike tv--even when I had the tiny one, it was on all the time. It's just that its job is to make noise and engage the part of my brain not knitting or cleaning the house.

Its job isn't to be *good*.

I suspect that this opinion drives J NUTS. He mutes commercials. He turns off the closed captioning the second it's no longer needed (I turn it on when I'm eating chips or am having a particularly hearing-impaired day). He changes channels, sees that a show isn't on yet, and then CHANGES IT BACK.

He TAPES SHOWS HE LIKES.

I find all this activity incomprehensible. I suppose it's better that one of us cares and one of us doesn't than having fights about it.

I worry sometimes that I get too passive when it comes to things like this--picking a channel, a movie, a place to eat dinner, a color of yarn. Not for myself, so much, because no matter which option is chosen, I'll find a way to have a fine time. It's more the way I suspect people I spend time with look at me when time and time again, I list 5 or 6 choices and say "those all sound good". Do people think I'm being taken advantage of because every choice sounds 75% okay? Do they think I'm being passive-aggressive, a martyr, a fake?

I wish I knew.

I suppose this is why I find grumpy opinionated people so fascinating and hilarious, why I try to find the smallest thing to say that will make them go off on a tangent. They're so foreign to me. Grumpy opinionated people like me, because they think I have the same opinions, since I listen to them, and make jokes based on what they're talking about. And I like them, because I'm glad that someone in the world cares about the color of someone's pants, or a particular brand of food, or politics.

I like to absorb. I like to listen.

I think I just rhetorically circled back on myself to the tv thing again. Who knew?

3/10/04

I love this kind of thing: a computer-generated 20 questions game. (less-than minimal registration required).

It had no problem with everyday objects I thought of, got pretty darn close to qiviut (it guessed "a Nepalese yak"), but seemed to have a hard time with "diploma".

I was most impressed that it got "plastic". I was actually thinking "polymer" but I let it off easy.

3/9/04

What the heck do I usually talk about here?

Whatever it is, that's exactly what HASN'T been happening lately. I've been spending a lot of time living in an external way--working on this stuff that involves a lot of gadgetiness, figuring out which valve should match up to which tube and the gruntwork of measuring and remeasuring a lot of things. I've been working hard, and somewhat unsuccessfully, but that's another story. And then I come home late to eat, watch a half hour of tv while preparing for something else happening later in the week, and crash, having surreal, vivid, and very activity-oriented dreams for 8 hours until my alarm wakes me up in the middle of doing dream-laundry. I now have a partially checked-off list of things to do that confuses me--did I really buy extra veggies to make stirfry, or did that happen last night when I thought I went to Naples to finish my degree?

I realized this morning that I'd missed a family member's birthday, because the dream I had reminding me of the upcoming date seemed so real that I thought I'd sent her a card.

If my processing capacity is low enough to have a hard time distinguishing reality from very realistic non-reality, one can imagine that I haven't been spending a lot of time thinking things like "What does Wisconsin state assembly approving ANOTHER same-sex marriage ban mean to *me*?"

A lack of internalized analysis really doesn't lend itself well to blogging.

It does lend itself to getting things done, however, and I did finish one thing that you can see here. Since it fortunately required no sociological interpretation through the lens of a gender-wacky working class engineering student, it didn't take too much energy. And since I've been getting a lot more knitters around here lately I thought you'd be interested. I wrote up a pattern for the Fair-Isle style hat I designed and made for my mom. I'm working on matchingish mittens, and may write up the pattern for them too, when I actually finish making the things.

External living doesn't seem to lend itself to knitting, either.

Or maybe it's the other way around.
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And because I love science, especially real science that has been turned hilarious by people both funnier and nerdier than I, here are blogs ostenably written by the Opportunity and Sprit Mars rovers.

I would SO love it if these were actual NASA guys doing the writing. They do have senses of humor. Really.
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And speaking of funny and nerdy, Jeremy has decided to fill the shoes of Martha Stewart, now that she'll be busy decoupaging the weight room of the state penn. His tip for today:

Slicing onions can be such a chore, what with the watery eyes blotching your makeup. Here's a great tip to prevent those onions from performing their nefarious deeds: wrap your face in plastic wrap! Swimming goggles also work.

Yes, J spent a good half-hour this weekend with his face wrapped in plastic. It reminded me of an 80's movie, but I have no idea which. Anyone have any ideas?

3/2/04

Nyarf. Busy. Here is some entertainment.

A smart knitter that is as offended by the stupidass federal marriage amendment as I am set up a CafePress site with some clever t-shirts on it. My personal favorite says "FMA? NFW." I haven't bought one yet, but I probably will. (link via Queerjoe)


Here are the socks. I meant for all the stripes to line up, but then put one of the heels on backwards (note that the front of one toe is the same color as the back of the other). They look like socks though. Not bad for a first try.


The front of the Aran sweater I'm working on. Again, it's hard to see much. When it's done, I'll try to get a picture of it in the sun so you can see the details. The stitches look like the link though. I hope it comes out properly--since I substituted yarns, being poor, my gauge is a bit wonky and I'm hoping to block out the difference.



I meant to include another random picture from the trip to Rome, with some tiny cars going around a rotary. I put one on a disk in the usual way, came here, opened it, and this thing came out. I'm not sure what happened, but, as tends to happen when technology goes screwy on me, I kind of like the result, so what the heck, I included it.

Impressionist painting for the digital age.