Monthly Archives: May 2005

At least it’s not Webster

I had my first reoccurring dream of adulthood last night. That is to say, I’ve now had the dream more than once.

I was in Chicago, but not a neighborhood I knew, and a group of friends from AmeriCorps and I were doing something superheroish, and we were all captured by Ali Issa and a band of villains. He took us below ground to a large cavern with a dirt floor. We were scheming a way to escape, and I discovered a hidden passage that went straight up. We engaged the villains in witticisms to distract them, and I made a run for the passage along the wall. My hands were bound, but I somehow managed to wiggle myself upwards, like up a chimney but sideways, away from the villains. I knew they’d follow me, so there was both a sense of fleeing and a sense of dark-small space. The upwards slant turned downwards, and I rolled down it hitting a plywood flap that flipped up, depositing me on a bright orange seat of a ferris wheel. “Huh, this secret passage ends up at Chicago’s oldest ferris wheel,” I thought. “Now I know of TWO cities with secret passages.”

(To clarify, this was definitely not Navy Pier, and I don’t know of any other secret passages in other cities. That was only factual in the dream.)

I ran down the street, which looked a lot like Wrigleyville, and ducked into an apartment building because I saw villains tumble out of the ferris wheel. They spotted me, and I ran zig-zag until I found another building to hide in. I was able to get into the building because there was a party. I went into the stairwell, and down the stair, and noticed my friend Noah sitting on a chair in the middle of the landing, getting a haircut. The person giving the haircut had taken scissors and cut most of his hair close, leaving a mohawk. He had shaved close around the base of the mohawk but was having trouble getting the clippers to cut. I asked if I could try, and started buzzing close to Noah’s head. I was doing a good job, but stopped paying attention and buzzed off part of the top of the mohawk. I was trying to figure out how to fix it when I woke up.

I’ve definitely dreamt about being a superhero, the secret passage and the ferris wheel, and running from villains down the streets of Chicago, but never have I given a haircut in a dream.

I blinded myself with library science

vdsheblindedI have just been offered a graduate assistantship in the chemistry library at the U of Illinois. Woot! I’ve been stressing about this for months now, even though a lot of GAs aren’t even up for grabs yet. Getting hired as a GA was the last thing on my list of stuff I HAD to take care of before August. See, assistanships pay for instate tuition, benifits, vacation, etc. There was no way I was going to go to grad school without a graduate assistantship. This particular job is going to be mainly helping the chem library go from being mainly print based to 99% electronic. It’s a stellar experience, because lots of libraries will have to tackle this issue at some point. Seriously, this was the last thing I needed to do. I have been accepted to the program, I have an apartment, I have an hourly gig with the Center for Children’s Books, I have my sweet Abbott freelancing gig, and now I have the last piece all fit in.

History%20of%20Chemistry1

Now I just need to max and relax until August. I’ve learned from Tim that I should take this time of minor responsibility as a golden age, because I will be stressed to the gills come fall. I wonder if I can get the second level of the knitting masters program done before I go …

Knitting retreat wrap-up

I really didn’t take a lot of photos this weekend. It just wasn’t that kind of ‘do. The six pictures I did take, referencing mostly the incredible Bloody Mary concoctions, can be found myah. We knit a lot, we talked a lot. We learned how to make polymer clay buttons/toggles/whatsits, and I learned just how much fun it is to run clay through a pasta maker. I could do that all day.

We also made beaded stitch holders – mine is awesome and orange. I have a bunch of bead stuff at home, so I might just use it up by making stitch holders.

Non knitting events included watching half of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, America’s Sweethearts, and Party Girl. The first two movies were chosen because they supposedly had knitting in them. Breakfast at Tiffany’s crapped out halfway through, so we’ll never know, and I watched the whole goddamn multiple-star vehicle that is America’s Sweethearts and missed the knitting scene. (I was knitting.) Party Girl was the third movie shown because I just got it from Amazon on Thursday, and really really wanted to watch it.

After spending quality time with the owner (Leslie) of Crazy Girl Yarn Shop, I’m determined more than ever to some day run a knitting store. You don’t have to be a business person to have a successful venture. If people enjoy themselves, the store will be successful.

This is exactly why I don’t understand how the Knitting Shoppe in Iowa City is still going. Anyway, I’m totally inspired, and now am scheming a way to make library science apply to the organization of yarn.

Written Saturday night

050520_saddam_hmed_330a.h2

Is there some sort of grammatical interpretation of this headline that makes sense? Jake? Anyone? Post a comment if I’m an idiot for pointing out that “tyrant’s” is posessing nothing. Is it like Tyr-Ants in the Pants or just an awkward way of saying “tyrant is in his pants”?
These knitters are crazy. It’s much like I’ve read about the ALA conferences – it’s always the quiet ones who get really drunk.

I have deep purple stains on my lips from the cheap-ass wine,
I’m full of pumpkin pie,
and my SWATCHES ARE DONE! I just kept on knitting – like the little proverbial that could.

Overall, the weekend has been fairly low-key and friendly. I always worry that because we only have knitting in common, an extended period of stitch ‘n bitch will end up in random pleasantries and talk of children and grandchildren, which honestly, I find tiring.

The Chicago SnB had its own flavor of disconnection. The knitters were way more intense and really not pleasant. (I’m sure that’s changed, now that the Wicker Park unit has fragmented.)

Here, everyone is from Iowa or living here now, so there’s a deliberate head-on-shoulders attitude that Chicagoans brag about but rural folk really exhibit. The whole weekend has been refreshing because of that. These knitters have good taste (no Red Heart!) but they don’t get hoity-toity about the whole thing. That’s what I need – noncompetitive knitting.

That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a discussion about [edited for content.]

Good God, I’m tired. I’m going to fall asleep before the cops show up. Asleep is an alibi, right?

Someone explain this to me.

050520_saddam_hmed_330a.h2

Is there some sort of grammatical interpretation of this headline that makes sense? Jake? Anyone? Post a comment if I’m an idiot for pointing out that “tyrant’s” is posessing nothing. Is it like Tyr-Ants in the Pants or just an awkward way of saying “tyrant is in his pants”?

Kitten Belly

I’ve been eating too much lately. I’m not talking about seven-meals-a-day-gonna-get-fat, but when I do eat (lunch, at work) I end up with the ginormous portions that make me feel too full like I need to lean back in my chair and rub my belly for a half hour. I don’t like it, but I keep forgetting that I don’t have to eat everything. I never used to have a problem being picky. I blame it on my sig.oth.

OK, so I’m leaving for the weekend to go to a knitting retreat put on by the Crazy Girl Yarn Shop so in my car is a box filled with yarn, needles, reference books, mastery instructions, all the unblocked swatches I’ve knitted so far, two dowels I plan on making into needles while I have access to woodworking tools, and some clothes, I think. I cannot wait to see my mom, and I cannot wait to spend the weekend knitting with her and a bunch of other people who will undoubtedly be able to give me some advice on my mastery stuff.

I called the shop today to see what classes and whatnot there would be this weekend, and she said the consensus was that everyone wanted a loosey-goosey environment, so there will be polymer clay to make buttons and bead stuff to make stitch holders, but not scheduled events. I don’t know if I’ll love that or hate it, but I’m just jazzed that I’ll be there. I doubt there will be any ability to remote blog, since we’re at a camping facility, but then again, I rarely blog on weekends!

Famoose

Hey – you know what’s not a good idea? Shoving metal into your old piercing hole without a large tube of Neosporin around. It was cute for a day, and then it got unhappy. So it’s out again, Mom.
I posted the first seven completed swatches I knit for the master program on Flickr. I also posted the pictures I took of the yarn I Koolaid dyed. It was really easy – and all the pigment was sucked into the yarn,
leaving the water clear. That was my favorite part.

Feel free to post a comment about the swatches,
if ye have any knitting expertise. That means not you, Jake. You are to only make knitting puns.

Echo the CounselorDid I ever tell you about the time I was a Girl Scout camp counselor for Camp Little Cloud in Epworth,
Iowa? NASA had just discovered that the astronauts they were going to be recruiting for a Mars trip were approximately 9-11 years old, and pushed a big science/math initiative. I was trained by NASA scientists/educators on how to teach neat Mars/space/planet facts to kids. The photo is from our big field day. I was in charge of the baking soda/vinegar volcano that also doubled as a multi-layered, multi-colored homemade playdough mountain that we took rainbowalicious core samples of with straws!

Now I get NASA calling me on the horn all the time for model release forms so they can publish photos for educational material.

Bragging Rights

Hey – you know what’s not a good idea? Shoving metal into your old piercing hole without a large tube of Neosporin around. It was cute for a day, and then it got unhappy. So it’s out again, Mom.
I posted the first seven completed swatches I knit for the master program on Flickr. I also posted the pictures I took of the yarn I Koolaid dyed. It was really easy – and all the pigment was sucked into the yarn,
leaving the water clear. That was my favorite part.

Feel free to post a comment about the swatches,
if ye have any knitting expertise. That means not you, Jake. You are to only make knitting puns.