A Little Close to Home

I'm reading some introductory stuff to Buddhism on Buddhanet, and this totally describes my life at present:

A craving to consume the situation arises and we long to satisfy that craving. Once we do, a ghost of that craving carries over and we look around for something else to consume. We get into the habitual pattern of becoming consumer oriented. Perhaps we order a piece of software for our computer. We play with it for awhile, until the novelty wears out, and then we look around for the next piece of software that has the magic glow of not being possessed yet. Soon we haven't even got the shrink wrap off the current package when we start looking for the next one. Owning the software and using it doesn't seem to be as important as wanting it, looking forward to its arrival. This is known as the hungry ghost realm where we have made an occupation out of craving. We can never find satisfaction, it is like drinking salt water to quench our thirst.

Isn't it a little spooky when you see the things that bother you about yourself spelled out in a completely unrelated setting?

Status Report

Today...
...feels like it might go quickly, even though I'm absolutely ecstatic at the prospect of the weekend.
...is already too warm. As soon as I turned on the computers, the room got too hot, and my headache came back.
...I might stop by Rosie's or Ten Thousand Villages after work to knit or window shop.
...I will get to watch Star Trek: TNG or The X-Files with my sweetie. I'm really quite smitten with all three of them.
...I am wearing a fabulous paisley shirt. You have no idea how happy the paisley makes me.
...I'm researching Buddhist groups in Philadelphia in between hopping up and down to note virus and ad and spyware scan results.

This week...
...I made a couple of important decisions.
...has been a little crazy at work. Classes have shown up unexpectedly or not shown up at all (due to bad behaviour), and DreamWeaver kicked my ass (for which I shall seek vengeance!)
...I knit a lot on the Half-Pi Shawl. I'm up to the final set of repeats--woot!
...has gone incredibly quickly, somehow.

This month...
...I attended the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival for the first time.
...I made a friend.
...has been pretty pleasant weather-wise.
...I learned that General's Tofu is awesome, and that the lunch carts at Temple are actually mini-restaurant kitchens--they don't even drive them home at night!
...the cats have spent an inordinate amount of time hoarking.
...I will get to see the west coast for the first time.
...I started going to church for real (Unitarian--don't get any weird ideas about me lovin' Jesus and stuff), and find that I really like it (aside from the damned hymns....gah! I can't read music, and even though I can get a sense for where I'm supposed to go with my voice from the location of notes on the scale, I can't read words and notes at the same time--not cool!).

[via Swirlspice]

How Do You Spell Relief?

K-N-I-T.

It finally occurred to me last night that these weird knitting frenzies I have happen when I'm stressing out. And it really makes sense, you know? I know I find solace in yarn stores--I used to go to Rosie's after the really bad days at The Crimson Assurance. Just setting foot inside took a little pressure off. When I made my way back to the colorful balls of wool and alpaca, the second I touched them, it was like things were all better. I never even bought anything on these de-stressing excursions. In fact, the few times I would buy something, it was like the stress just hung around me. It's something about the yarn itself that I find comforting.

When I can't get to the store, it's amazing what a little knitting will do though. I get kind of lost in the process. I stop thinking about things outside of what I'm doing, and I find it so easy to get my mind back on the work slipping from needle to needle. All of my thoughts turn woolward.

What relaxes you? What do you do when you need to make the world melt away?

Humbled

Today my group was the 7-8 year old girls, and we took pictures of each other. It was a little crazy because every one of them gets so excited to be here and to be doing something cool. So when they're done, they get to have free time, and they love that because they can play games and dress up paper dolls and stuff. Some of them aren't as experienced on computers or as confident with them as the other kids, so I get a lot of questions: 'Miss Krista, can you help me do what she's doing?' 'Miss Krista, will you tell me how to get to that website?' 'Miss Krista, how do I play this game?' And sometimes there are a lot more questions than I can handle, but the kids are getting better at being patient.

That's kind of irrelevent, though. You don't need the context to understand the title of this post.

Ahem.

So when the kids were headed out just a few moments ago, one little girl came up and hugged me, and when she saw my peace sign necklace, she said, 'Your necklace is right. You do bring peacefulness.' I was absolutely in awe of this child's sweetness, and I thanked her, a big ol' smile plastered across my face. It wasn't enough to make her understand how much her comment meant to me, but a couple of other things she said really gave me the impression that I had somehow made her day better by showing her how to play a game and taking her picture when her picture-partner left. I guess knowing that she had a good time in here is my reward.

One of the things that makes this job a little bittersweet is that I have no way of letting the kids know how much I appreciate them individually. It's not fair to show favoritism, even though I desperately want to on occasion. Some of these kids are so great, I wish I could give them cookies or new bikes or something, you know? It never ceases to amaze me that their personalities are just so great, and I really hope they don't lose that when the world really comes down upon them.

Overplanning

I've signed up for another knitting thingamajig. It's sort of a knit-a-long, and it's sort of a competition, though not really. It's called Amazing Lace. Get the pun? So there will be some stuff about that coming up this summer. As I will be spending at least part of said time working on this--Fiber Trends' Shoalwater Shawl. I've been wanting a shawl to wrap up in when I get cold, and since this one can be knit in everything from lace weight to DK, I'm all set. I'll be ordering the yarn for it later this week. Yea!

I don't really know why it happens, but every once in a while I just get this urge to knit like a fiend. Right now, I have this idea that I'm going to work on a whole bunch of stuff this summer. I think that some part of me still lives in mythical faerie land and thinks I still get summers off. Why does summer just feel like this huge expanse of time, even when you know that it's not any longer than any other season? I've always kind of thought that it had to do with the length of days--when I'm done working, I feel like I have a lot more day left, you know?

But anyway, I get impatient with myself. I want to just knit and knit and knit, and I'm only one person, so I think that's why I hit low points in my knitting cycle--I get burnt out on the not finishing things quickly enough part of it all. Maybe I should try combatting that by working on more things at once. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but part of the frustration in not finishing is that I have to keep working on the same things ad infinitum. So if I work on several things, it'll take longer to reach that 'why can't I knit something eeeeeelse?' point. Does that sound reasonable?

One of the cool things about going vegan-ish is that I've lost a bit of weight in the past several months. So I don't have to think about modifying parts of patterns anymore, at least in general. Squee! So on the yarny horizon, I'm looking at the Ribby Cardie, the Rogue, and assorted socks and maybe shawls to satisfy my greedy need for self-knitted goods. Muahahaha!

Out of curiosity (though I doubt anyone who reads will be able to offer advice), does anyone know of any good yarn shops in Seattle? I'll be there next week, and I'd like to visit a few. Does anoyone know of anything that simply shouldn't be missed in Seattle? I won't have a lot of time, but I've never been there, so it would be great to not miss something amazing. Let me know!

HS Mix CD...Continuing in the Spirit of Lateness

Well I'm finally getting my high school CD swap discs in the mail today. I know I suck at these deadlined things since I stopped having deadlines that really affected me (ie, I miss the deadline on X paper, and I fail X class). But since I didn't talk about my Quintessential Now! mix from November (what with the site being all fucky--thanks Wordpad! fucker!), I'm totally sharing about this mix. Also, I think this mix is more shareable because there are memories attached to songs, where as I just like the music on the other mix. Anywho, I'm rambling...

If you're in my groups and don't want to be spoiled in advance, don't looky!

1. Freshmen - The Verve Pipe
Yeah, I chose it. You know why though? Unlike every other Jane who heard it on the radio and thought it was cool or saw it on MTV, I knew the song's beginnings. I'm from West Michigan, and our 'big city' radio came from Grand Rapids. The Verve Pipe was from my area, and my then favorite radio station, 97.9 WGRD played a lot of the local bands--19 Wheels and Mustard Plug are the other two I can remember. Anyway, I remember this song from its earliest incarnations where the melody was less tragic and everything was acoustic, and I wish I had a copy of that version. Anyway, the song meant something to me because I've always felt that only two groups could call this song theirs: the high school freshmen and the college freshmen at the time. In hindsight, I think we should have made it our class song.

2. Possession - Sarah McLachlan
I got into Sarah McLachlan before she hit it big with her Surfacing album--back when she was known as a college radio favorite. I had heard this song on the adult contemporary station at some point, and it just haunted me. Then I received this album as a gift, and I loved it even more. I was going to say that I associated this song with a sad and sorry online romance I had for a couple months over the summer of my freshman year, but by that time, I was listening to her next album, and that was the one that I used to voice and enhance my heartsick sorrows.

3. Muhammad My Friend - Tori Amos
This song reminds me very strongly of my French class freshman year. There was a group of us, I think four people total, who sort of had the same type of musical appreciation. Two of them got the other two of us into Tori, and things were never the same again. This song is almost always the one I think of when I remember the early years of my life as an Ears with Feet, and I think it sort of embodies the sound that I will always think of when I think of Tori.

4. Monday, Monday - The Mamas and the Papas
I had a bit of a hippie thing going on in high school. I wore thrift store, throw-back clothes, had long hair, and totally fell into the poet's life. I loved this group in general, but this song specifically I remember because my friend Elissa and I used to sing it on the bus. Maybe we only did it a couple of times, but it stands out in my mind. (As an aside, I bought myself a hot pink tie dyed dress my senior year that I called my Mama Cass dress because it reminded me of her...I never wore it because I couldn't find the right sweater to go over it, and the sleeves were too short, but I was very proud of what it represented to me.)

5. Sara - Fleetwood Mac
Along with Tori Amos, my other big music obsession in high school was Fleetwood Mac. I bought a bunch of their albums as a group and solo (even some really, really bad ones), and I absolutely worshipped Stevie Nicks. She was just so cool and ethereal, and I wanted to be like that. This was one of my favorite songs of theirs--Mick Fleetood asked Stevie to write the song about his wife when they were going through a tough time. I think they ultimately ended up divorced. Ah well.

6. Hell - Squirrel Nut Zippers
How could I resist? I loved this song and Put a Lid on It enough to buy the CD, and I still enjoy it. This falls into the category of songs that mostly just represented the type of music I enjoyed at the time--pretty much the stuff that GRD played.

7. Spice Up Your Life - Spice Girls
What can I say? I loved the Spice Girls, and I think that they were pretty seriously underrated. Some of their tunes sound a little underpolished when I listen to them now, but I still think they were a damned fine pop group, and I wish Ginger Spice hadn't thought she could make it on her own. Ha!

8. Five to One - Doors
Classic rock was my other favorite genre of music during my adolescence, and I loved the Doors something fierce. They were one part of the holy trinity--the other two being Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix (who I tried to love, but never seriously got into, though I thought the world of him anyway). This song was one that my friends and I used in a video for a class where we presented on drugs in rock and roll. Hehehe.

9. Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin
This is my favorite song of hers by far. I love that she was famous even though her voice was so rough and raw--those were the times, though. I never felt any kind of strong draw from the lyrics, but now when I listen to the song, I think she's only half serious. I think she wants things, but I think she's being ironic too.

10. Undone (The Sweater Song) - Weezer
Yep. This just reminds me a lot of the guys I was really close to my senior year--Kevin and Earl (his real name wasn't Earl...don't know why we called him that). No specific reason. Just the tone of it, I guess. And the song is one of their best, too, so again I say, yep.

11. Casual Affair - Tonic
Another group I liked enough to buy the CD. They also represent my general musical interests at the time. Songs in this vein (Hell, this one, another that I'll mention) kind of remind my of my friend Kim because we had very similar alternative tastes...she wanted to marry Dave Matthews. Hehehe.

12. Banditos - The Refreshments
If you haven't heard this song, I'm shocked. It was SO HUGE to everyone I knew. And being Trekkies, we just geekily adored it because the chorus is: 'Give your ID card to the border guard. Now your alias says you're Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the United Federation of Planets, 'cause he won't speak English anyway.' Yea for random Trek references!

13. Take a Picture - Filter
Now that I think on it, this song sort of represents the wave of sound that I would ride for the next several years. I'm still riding it, I think. But everyone loved it, and I remember riding in my friend Keith's car when this song was on. We were at a stop sign, and we were going to go to the Speedway to get gas.

14. Innocent - Fuel
This CD was pretty good all around, but this is another one of my representative songs. It was one of their singles, so some of you might remember it.

15. Mother - Pink Floyd
This one's complicated. Earl fell madly in love with Pink Floyd's The Wall, and his major project for most of our advanced creative writing class was turning the album into this acoustic, one-person performance. He was going to play guitar, and he asked me to play the lead because I got what he was doing. It was a trippy time. (Another aside. During our advanced creative writing class, one of the things we fell into in the last couple months was musical interpretation. We'd listen to songs that had no words, and we'd write poetry about whatever the song 'said' to us. I got some interesting things out of it, and it's one of the coolest things we ever did.)

16. Cowboy Take Me Away - Dixie Chicks
One of these is not like the others. One of these things just isn't the same. I know, I know. But I really like/d the Dixie Chicks, and this song was big right before I graduated. And even though it had nothing to do with anything in my life, everytime I heard it, I would tear up because I was graduating and leaving all of my friends behind. Weird.

17. Stay (Wasting Time) - Dave Matthews Band
Before These Crowded Streets didn't leave my CD player for MONTHS. I just adored it, and it was probably my favorite album senior year.

18. Ciega, sordomuda - Shakira
This song means, perhaps, the most to me of all these songs. See, for those of you who don't know me in real life, when I was a senior in high school, my Spanish 4 class was really special. We adored our teacher, and we got along so well and had so much fun while we were learning. Señora used to play this song right before class sometimes, and she and I were good friends, so she let me listen to the CD a lot otherwise too. So this song represents that special class bond, my friendship with her, and my exuberant interest in Spanish at the time. I fully planned on majoring in Spanish, and things stayed on that level until sophomore year of college when everything went nuts. So I never took another class, and I lost most of my interest in the language, though I'm very proud of my ability to read and understand so much of it still. I miss the stuff that this song represents more than a lot of other things from this period of my life.

So there you have it. That was my high school career in a compact disc.

Squee! Socks!

I'm about a week overdue on this post. What else is new?



Those would be the fabulousness of my sockapaloooza socks. Aren't they gorgeous? I was absolutely stunned when I opened the box because they're probably the most beautiful knitted gift I could have ever received. They're absolutely perfect--they fit well, the yarn is soft but has a nice weight, the colorway is lovely, and they're mine! The rest of my socks are completely unworthy of their presence, so I shall need to find an alternate locale for the storage of my new pretty socks. Hee hee.

My sock pal was Dawn from skein, and when I visited her blog, I was humbled to learn that she had knit and reknit the heels of my socks three times before she was satisfied. Daaaamn! But they look so awesome, and I'm absolutely tickled beyond tickling. Seriously.

And along with the socks came some bathtime soapy stuffs and two skeins of Rowan wool (it's chunky weight, but I can't recall exactly what the name of it is right now). I'm going to add the yarn to the stash at the moment to let it simmer, but I'm leading toward mittens. Beautiful lavender or blue mittens...or maybe some kind of hat. Sigh...ah, how I love the wool. Oh yes, and because I am a complete dork, I've got to mention that my sock pal is from the UK, so I got an international package, which always makes things so much more exciting. Yea!

So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you Dawn! I'm well beyond 'grateful' and 'ecstatic,' and I shall wear the socks proudly.

Aaaaaaargh!

One of the higher-ups here just interrupted my lunch to tell me that this week (the one that ends tomorrow) will be my last week with my current group of students. The group of students that I just started working with on a project. She asked if I had something I was working on with them, and when I told her about the web pages, she said she'd rotate my oldest group back in.

How infuriating! Why does no one think I'm doing something with these kids? They can't remember my name, so I'm The Computer Teacher, but they all just assume that I'm playing games with them or letting them surf the web all the time. Sure, they get to do those things, but only after they've finished with their actual work (and it's astonishing how motivating the prospect of games on Nick.com is to a 10 year old). But the kids' counselors send them down whenever, and then when I'm in the middle of a lesson, more kids (ones who aren't even in that day's group) will just show up on their counselor's orders 'because [they] were bored.' I'm in the middle of class, dammit! You can't just dump off the kids you don't feel like watching!

But what really pisses me off is that no one indicated to me that there would be a change in my group schedule until two days before the change takes effect. I think I deserve at least enough warning to know that I shouldn't plan a big lesson with the kids. And it makes me sad because I'm finally starting to know these groups. I'm remembering names and personalities, and I'm learning which kids want to be pushed and which ones just want to get through with the project so they can listen to Bow Wow on Yahooligans. Some of these kids are really cool, and I don't want to be done with them yet. It's only been a month, dammit!

I just want to scream. Give me a little respect, people, because I have given you nothing less.

Stitches for Sale

As those of you who read Sarah's blog know, I have to make some money to pay for a portion of a conference trip for work (it's in Seattle at the end of this month). She has been incredibly wonderful and has offered a deal that everything in her Etsy store that is purchased from now until then will go toward paying for the trip. So now it's time that I pull some of my own weight as well.

To that end, I am offering up my knitting skills to anyone who's interested. I can knit lots of things, and I'm pretty darned good (not an expert, but more than competant), so I hope some of you might be interested in helping a gal out. I am willing to knit hats, mittens, gloves, toys, baby items, socks, bags, some shawls, some scarves, and some other accessories (depending on their level of difficulty--don't expect an heirloom lace wedding veil, as I simply don't have the lace skill or experience to be able to do that). I will not knit blankets or adult sweaters because I don't have the time for the first or the experience for the second. To entice you further, I will work really hard on getting some entries up with all the things I've knitted since I started in 2004.

Basically, here's how things will work:

• You e-mail me (kira AT thymewarp DOT com), and tell me what you'd like me to knit (you can be as generic as 'a man's winter hat' or as specific as 'the Coronet hat from Knitty' and we'll hammer out the details). You DO need to tell me what color(s) you want and what material you want (wool, cotton, acrylic, alpaca, cashmere, silk, linen, etc.). Keep in mind that some fibers are machine washable, and others are not, so if you have a preference, please let me know.


• I will e-mail you back with with pattern ideas (if you didn't have a specific pattern in mind) and a price quote. I'm not going to select crap yarn, but the price will reflect the fiber choice, and it will reflect the quality of it (i.e., if you want a pair of mittens knitted out of yak yarn, you will be paying more than you would for wool mittens).


• If you're okay with my quote and the pattern, you will e-mail me back and let me know that you want to place an order. I will send you a Paypal request for payment, and once you have paid, you will be placed in the queue in the order of your order.

Payment is due at time of order. I will be knitting your orders as I get to them (within reason, but understand that I have other obligations), but you WILL receive your orders. Since summer is coming up, and it's not a really a knitted-garment-wearing season, think ahead to what you will want to be wearing this fall and winter or something you'd like to give as a holiday or birthday gift.

If for some reason, I manage to make more money through orders than I need for the trip, that money will go toward paying off our credit cards. Sarah has three jobs to make a dent in that debt, so this really is the least I could do...

So please, consider placing an order. The money will go to good use, and you will receive a quality, fabulous hand-knitted item in return.

If you have a pattern you know you'd like, that's great, and if you'd like some inspiration, check out Knitty's archives or any of the innumerable knitting patterns available online. If you just want 'a pretty hat' but don't have a pattern in mind, you can tell me to just pick a pattern. It's up to you.

The Past Hour

You know what? I really enjoyed working with the kids today. They did a project for their mom's for mother's day in the art program, and they were sweeter and more kid-like than I've ever seen them before. It surprised me a little because I was really dreading this hour, but most of all, it just made me feel good.

Antsy Pantsy

I've been a little anxious all day. But it was really good for getting my bitch on with a class that was using the lab this afternoon. I think I just want to be a bitch for a while. Being liked is all fine and good, but it's not a priority so much as being respected and being obeyed are. I just hate being the authority figure. It's not a comfortable role for me on a lot of levels. But aside from all that, I'm anxious because I forgot my keys at home this morning, so I can't leave the lab, and I'm sure it doesn't help that all I've had to drink today is half a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew for breakfast and a can of Diet Cherry Coke with lunch. Silly me!

It would just be nice to be home right now instead of here. I want to knit my sock and maybe listen to my iPod with a nice glass of icy water to drink, and I want my biggest concern to be how to gently shoo away a cuddly kitten who's in the way of my knitting. Why do I always feel guilty when I wish for that?

This past weekend was really nice in general. On Friday, Sarah and I watched one of the best episodes in Star Trek history--The Best of Both Worlds Part 1 (when it comes to loving that episode, resistance is indeed futile), and then I got up at the ass crack of early the next morning to get on the bus at Rosie's to go down to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It was my first time going, and if I go back, I can safely say that I have learned a thing or two about how my time should be allocated. Namely, I now think that the Koigu booth legend is a bit of a farce. Everyone talks giddily about how the yarn is 'pennies on the gram,' but when you consider that at 12 cent a gram, and each normal hank of Koigu is about 50 grams, you're only saving about half the cost, but all you're getting is mill ends. So unless you find several hanks of the same color, you're not going to be able to get a full pair of socks out of the yarn. I love the colors that Koigu comes in, and I think it's deliciously soft and springy, but next year, I shall not be so easily tempted. I found it more enjoyable to wander around and find the great bargains from the less famous stalls (like the fabulous 500 yards of worsted weight hand-dyed alpaca from a farm in White Cloud, Michigan--woot!). That's the stuff I'd aim for if I decided to go again.

I had a good time, though. I got to knit and chat with Marguerite on the bus rides there and back, and I spent most of my time at the festival wandering around with Mac and her considerable baggage (some of which I may have been very tempted to chloroform her for if I had any interest in spinning whatsoever).

Anyhow, I think I'm just going to sit and chill for the next fifteen minutes when my most rambunctious and most potentially troublesome group arrives. It would be very lovely to nap. Sigh.

Sockapaloooza: c'est fin

Pattern: Craftaholic's Mata Hari Pattern
Yarn: Dale Baby Ull in lavender
Needles: US 3
Started: 14 April 2006
Finished: 7 May 2006

And they're done! This pair of socks is definitely my best so far. And the pattern was so easy and pleasant. I really enjoyed working with it, and it didn't actually take that long to knit (because I technically finished knitting them on 1 May...I just didn't graft the second toe or weave in the ends until last night...ahem...). They are all packed up and in a box waiting for me to bring them over to the post office this morning before work. I included a postcard, of course (it's the Liberty Bell made out of a soft pretzel--my favorite postcard from Philly, actually), along with some TastyKakes, some Herr's chips, and some tasty Amish-style pretzels. It's not really stuff I enjoy, but everyone and her mother around here goes apeshit for that stuff, and since it's all Philly snacks, it seemed only appropriate. Anyway, I would have loved to keep the socks, so hopefully my sock pal loves them too.

Job Thoughts

Well my sockapaloooza socks are done being knitted. I need to graft a toe and weave in the ends for my second sock, but I'll pick up something distinctly Philly on my way home and pop it into the mail tomorrow. I made the deadline week, so I'm happy about that at least. Yea! I'll post a picture of the completed pair eventually. This means that I get to start working on a rather lengthy undertaking that will hopefully be finished within a week. I'd just like to get it done and move on. My apologies for being cryptic, but 'tis mighty necessary, yar.

I'm updating in lieu of dicking around on the webbernet. Basically, my room is hella stuffy and my head hurts as a result, so I'm taking short breaks between doing actual work. This morning was wonderfully productive. To bring you up to speed, I've got a room with 15 (counting mine) computers, and the 14 class computers were in total disarray when I got here. The person who had the position previously had left the computers in various stages of software completeness. Hell, half of them didn't even have an antivirus program running... So part of my work the past two and-a-half weeks I've been here has involved getting things set up so that all the machines are pretty much the same. I had almost all of them up to speed last week, and then the tech guy came and fixed four computers that had been royally futzed up, so those four needed to be brought up to speed. I haven't installed any games yet as I want to make sure that the kids can do homework and print it if they need to (so Office and printer set-up), and then I've been downloading the necessary plug-ins for them to be able to go to the websites I've pre-set as favorites to play games during free time (so they don't get bored and frustrated and complain about how I won't let them do anything), and there are the internet settings so they won't get porn if they search for something on google.

It's like every time I think I've gotten everything up to speed, I realize that I've forgotten something (like when I realized that even though I had the google toolbar installed on the Admin account, it wasn't showing up on the Kids account). And now that things are almost ready for me to start installing the less important stuff (ie, the games), I'm encountering other small-seeming issues that are just baffling me. I feel like there's a really obvious fix for these things, and I'm not seeing it. For instance, I've got one machine that won't play flash, so I try downloading the flash player, and it fails with no explanation as to why. So I search for an answer, and I get nada. So I try installing shockwave, but that won't work because there's a problem with flash. But I don't know what the problem is with flash, so I can't fix the problem with shockwave. Gah!

And I'm trying to get some lesson plans together for my oldest group of boys (most of them are 11). They make me so proud without even trying. Know why? They want to learn how to build web pages. With HTML! I'm geeked! And their counselor wants to have a refresher, so he's geeked too. And my youngest group of girls (most of them are 9) want to learn how to do research. RESEARCH! I was so worried about how I could tailor some lessons to these kids learning how to research and still keep things fun and interesting because the teens around here come in and don't have a clue how to actually do research (when I was in fourth grade, I used to write reports by copying an entry out of the encyclopedia because I didn't know any better, and I suspect some of them are doing something similar; they also haven't a clue how to do an effective search using google or ask.com or wikipedia...so they get nada for results, and that's always discouraging). I'm glad I'll get to help them learn stuff that might be important to them later. I think that a lot of my kids would be considered at-risk, and if I can help spark an interest in something that makes someone want to pursue a career or continue on academically, then that's actually a pretty great thing.

Old School

This is seriously the funniest thing ever. EVER.

Followed closely by this and this.

You think I'm kidding, but I swear on my kidneys (both of them) that you will laugh.

Today is a Good Day to Giggle Die

Ahem.

Cool things on the internet, all of which are Klingon in nature:

Google in Klingon
Klingon Fairy Tales according to McSweeney's
Actual jobs for Klingon language speakers
A blog in Klingon
Klingon Recipes according to McSweeney's
Klingon Personal Ads according to McSweeney's

And all of it gold, I tell you.

Sockapaloooza: The Penultimate Update

Very very quick post as I am hosting a quintet of computer folks who are trying to fix some problems in my lab (oy...). And for some reason, my apostrophe key is not working. In fact, things in general feel a little wonky on my machine today...what else is new.

BUT, I need to update on my Sockapaloooza progress. I will almost definitely have my socks in the mail tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow night, but tomorrow definitely. I had a problem that I tried posting about last week (computer problems), but it has resolved. I started knitting the Simply Lovely Lace socks like I had mentioned, but they were too small. Lovely, but too small.

So instead, I whipped out the purple Baby Ull from my failed baby sweater, and I decided to try the 'Mata Hari' socks that Grumperina was talking about several weeks ago (forgive me for not posting a link...I'll do that later after I've mailed this off to Donna...). They have spirals of yarn overs running down the length of them, and they're simple, but awesome. I love them. They're probably the most satisfying pair of socks I've knit.

Anyway, I have finished the first sock (the picture that links to is of the sock as modeled by the imcomparably lovely Sarah), and I am about halfway through the gusset of the second sock, so I have about six inches of foot to knit before I do the toe. Totally doable if I keep my ass glued to the sofa (gosh, what a horrible, horrible task...). So that's where I stand. I'll link to a picture later this afternoon when there things are not so crazy around here. Sigh.

Even though I'm enjoying the socks, I am soooo desperate to be knitting something new and exciting. Woot! Only a couple of socks left to knit before I can get to that...

And Jimmy, I promise I didn't forget about your birthday. I'm simply very lazy, and I haven't finished your gifty yet... I've finished Leah's gifty, but the past two weeks have been a bit nutso, so you'll both have extended birthdays this year. Surprise, surprise.