Done, donedonedone!

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You know, I talked and talked and talked and talked about the master knitting program, wholly aware that I like to start fun challenging projects then leave them behind (see: Alena’s first album title), so you should all be very very proud of me for mailing off my level 1 kit for the TKGA Master Knitter program. Already, I’ve learned a shit-ton, and have implemented it directly into the sweater that I’m making for my bro.

See? That, my friends, is called blocking.
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Here’s the detail: it’s a left- and right-cross cable.
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Tornado mountain rescue coup

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I’ve been having epic dreams, but I haven’t remembered them when I’ve woken up. I’m feeling triumphant that I have a thin grasp on last night’s, and I’m agonna share.

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I was at the family farm. In fact, the twins and I were all living there, like it was back in high school. There was a storm, which there are; and we noticed some funnel clouds, which do occur; and we went into tornado mode. That is, we crowded near windows to look at the storm line. A tornado began to form. I cried out, bringing attention to it, since Anton and Alena had lost interest. We watches with that neat feeling of being near a terror of nature smugly separated from it by a well built house.

We watches the tornado drop down an begin to spin, starting southwest of Eldy’s, following the highway north. Just north of Eldy’s, the tornado stopped and spun in place. I thought that was weird, and then I noticed that the continued pressure from the tornado was drawing the earth up – not breaking up topsoil, but actually drawing the crust of the earth up. Suddenly we felt the house shake. The tornado was drawing that point upwards, like pinching a bedspread in the middle and lifting it up. Suddenly, our house was perched precariously on the side of a mountain. Our flat eastern Iowa farm was now the steep side of a mountain.

We began to evacuate – I went up to my room and tried to figure out what I needed to pack. I was methodically collecting everything when my dad came in and reminded me that we were in a house that was liable to start sliding at any moment. Haste was to be had. I puzzled over whether or not the collective worth of my Pez collection merited the time it would take to find all the boxes.

By this point, things had reached a fever pitch, and we had to abandon ship. There were folks from down below (or several miles away, previously) who came to rescue us. They were mostly from Wheatland, as Calamus was now part of the mountain.

We were evacuated to a sort of lodge, where other survivors/neighbors/relatives (in my area, you’d be all three) were gathered. The team that saved us had arranged a dozen sofas in lines in front of a TV, so we could watch movies and forget the danger we had just escaped from. All of the survivors and rescue team were familiar to me, but the only one I distinctly remember was Jeremy Cook. He invited me to sit next to him on one of the many sofas and, being exhausted from the events, I fell asleep. I awoke to find myself the ‘big’ spoon, curled around his back. My dad was silently motioning to me. He telepathically told me that the rescue team was actually a group of people who were going to take over, and to be on guard. Everyone else woke up, and the rescue team attacked.

There was a brief scuffle, and the refugees won. It happened so fast, all I had time to do was smile coyly at Jeremy Cook and think about how best I could hurt him.

My family collected our stuff and walked outside. Dana Soedt had just gotten a new truck, and my dad said amazedly, “That’s the new Silverado, isn’t it?” She offered us a ride, and we piled into the truck with our duffel bags and suitcases.

Then I woke up.

Lurchy feeling

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There is nothing like shuffling through old binders trying to find a single sheet of lined paper (what kind of technology freak am I?) and running across a post breakup/getting back together letter from an ex. I got this horrible lurchy feeling in my stomach, and nearly melted down, until I noticed that he used the wrong your.

Then I was OK, somehow. It’s magical what grammar can do to a soul.

Bad night’s sleep

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I wrenched something in my back yesterday – so I slept badly and gingerly last night. Flickr says my pictures are an unreadable format, even though they are clearly labelled .jpg. Ah well. I’ll post them tonight.

I’m mailing off my TKGA Master Knitting Level 1 package today. I’m starting to realize that although it only took me a month or so do complete this first level, the next two might take me years. I mean, I’m starting school in (AHH!) two months, and a good 17 days of that are going to be spent on vacation. I don’t think I can handle knitting an argyle sock on a roadtrip.

“Roadtrip” you ask? Yes, after spending an incredibly extended Fourth of July weekend with Graver et. al. at a cabin in Michigan, Jason and I are flying to NYC to hang out for a few days before hooking up with Charles and Silva to begin the epic 2005 roadtrip to Austin, TX. I’ll get back for three more weeks of work at Abbott, then I’m off to fine Chambana.

I wonder how I can rig up the camera during the roadtrip…

Technical difficulties.

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I tried connecting the camera back up to the sleepy-time apparatus (you try coming up with a better term for it) but it wouldn’t connect to my computer. I’m so sorry. I know you wanted to see a third night of me sleeping, but you’re going to have to wait until tomorrow. I stayed up too late watching Comedy Central and doing laundry, so I was too brain dead to figure out what was wrong with the connection.

On the upside, my weekend was both awesome and good. Friday night was full of hanging out, which I love. I got to watch the second installment of “I Don’t Know You, Chuck Munion, but You’re On a Reality TV Show” and drink girly drinks.

THEN, on Saturday, I binged on fructose and commerce. Jason, Jake, and I went to Target, and while Jason searched for new jeans, Jake and I drank copious amounts of Dr. Pepper with chocolate syrup from the Coke break syrup machine next to the soda fountain.

High on sugar, we split up and I went to Joann’s. I was looking for a cord and drawstring bit so I can finish the epic iPod cozy. Joann’s was as barren as an ant farm left in the front window of a Buick during August.

I went over to Micro Center, where Jake and Jason had already purchased jaw-dropping amounts of computery goods (this was premeditated, it just added up fast). Giddy on their purchases, they were looking at a MIDI keyboard that, when used with Garage Band, allowed us to make fat beats. Whacked out on Dr. P, I suggested that we purchase it, knowing full well we’d be spending the rest of the evening playing with it.

I was right. I made myself a nice Peaches beat, and promptly abandoned it for a craft project. I guess some things just don’t change. I might as well have been a toddler.

Anyway, it was fun, and despite my “drop it like it’s hot” neglect of the new toy, I think there is a distinct possibility that I might have an album ready by Christmas.

Awesome people who give me subconcious lifts

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As I was thinking about the list list list of things I want to be when I grow up, I realized that for every item, I have a person who I acquaint with that particular skill. I didn’t necessarily know them when I made the list, but I like that I can correlate. (Although, as we all know from Psych 101, correlation does not mean causation.)

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1. Midwifery. My friend Kim is a doctor, and she gets to deal with people’s bodies all the time. Supercool.

2. Trucker. My aunt Lora did this, and she’s about the best general role model a person could have.

3. Sign language. I met Amber after writing the list, but I think it’s one of the reason why I took to her like a prestidigitous kitten to a toy piano.

4. Teach for America. My AmeriCorps teammate Jenn is TFAing right now. Much like midwifery, you are in charge of people’s children, under various amounts of pressure. (Sometimes the kid, sometimes me.)

5. Children’s librarian. I would not be pursuing this career if it weren’t for my elementary school mentor, Ms. Bernard. JUST KIDDING! She was scary. My mom was a children’s librarian when I was a kid, and it was the best job ever. If I could be the children’s librarian for the Francis Banta Waggoner Community Library in DeWitt, Iowa, I would. The quilt she made for snuggly window-seat reading is still there.

6. Masseuse. My friend Alaethia is studying Oriental medicine right now, which is way more complex and advanced than just massage, but when we talk about it, I get all excited and squiggly.

7. Canoe Mississippi. Pebbles (Em) is the most hard core, crunchy, granola, sweet-fern-tea drinkin’, outdoorsy outside cat I know. Her passion for canoeing nears a fever pitch. She doesn’t want an engagement ring, she wants a canoe tied to her finger.

8. Master knitter. My grandma taught me how to knit, as well as crochet, sew, embroider, tat (who even knows what that is?!), and refer to snacks as much needed “medicine”. She’s nonchalant about makin’ stuff, but it’s always functional. That epitomizes what I want to be as a knitter.

9. Live in far Northeast. Again with the Pebbles. Her aunt learned masonry and built herself a 16-sided stone house in Maine. I want to live there, near Pebs, and go fishing a lot.

10. Master some other language. Alena seems to slip and fall into pools of language, and when she gets up, she’s fluent. She started college with Spanish, and somehow ended up with a Russian major. RUSSIAN!

So, those are people in my neighborhood who have affected me, either previous to the much esteemed list, or have been Celestine-Prophecy-like drawn to me, possibly because we have shit in common.

Creepy sleep sheet

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I found the thingie I needed to use my Mac to control the remote capture for the camera.

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Last night I set up for four minute intervals. I think I slept harder, which is obvious by the lack of movement. There are 173 photos, but I’ll have to add the rest to Flickr when I get home tonight. The best way to look at them would be to view the set as a slideshow, and set the speed to 1.5 or 2 seconds. It’s brief, but I think once I get all the photos up, it will look really cool … really cool to me.

Annie Lebowitz/Cindy Sherman

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I’ve been dreaming of a photography project based on a photographer I absolutely cannot find, even when I put in all the words I can think of in Google*.

The project is to suspend a camera above my bed, set up to capture images throughout the night, then view the images in quick succession, effectively creating a movie of how I move while I sleep. The camera captured an image every five minutes, and there are now 94 images.

Thanks to Jason and his PC (stupid camera doesn’t support Mac for included remote capture program) I was able to rig up everything and last night was the first night of shooting. The downside is that unless I figure out how to do this with my Mac, Jason will be in all of the pictures. Unless he sleeps on the papajeaun.

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I was going to upload a set to Flickr, but I seemed to have used all my bandwidth for the month.

I wasn’t sure how dark the shots would be (sans flash) so I left the lights on. There was some discussion that it would affect sleep, and therefore affect how we moved, but neither of us felt that we slept any worse for it. I think having a flash of light every five minutes would be awful, although it’s probably worth a try, maybe on a weekend night, because of how it will give the picture a Cindy Sherman frozen look, with darker shadows. As it is, there is a subtle change of light because there’s a window (upper right in the picture) that starts affecting the images. You can see it a little in this photograph. The flash would probably overpower that, but maybe trying low light (going more for shape than detail) the light would be a big part of it. I plan on experimenting with this for several more nights. There’s a definite pattern to movement that probably correlates to sleep cycles. I’m already insanely satisfied with the outcome.

*The photographer I’ve been inspired by brings models into her studio and has them fall asleep on a spread of black fabric. From a second level looking down, she photographs them as they sleep. She develops that film and projects the positive image onto textured surfaces like barn walls and photographs the wall. The total effect is a ephemeral sleepy old-timey image. I can hardly describe it. It makes you feel calm and warm, but because you’re looking at the person through a mask of rough texture, it’s not as voyeuristic. You look less at a guy curled up asleep, and more at the shape of a human at a moment when they are peaceful but unaware of their peace.

Stupid sexy interslice

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Children, sometimes the internet breaks. It’s always always Jason’s fault.

I wanted to blog this morning, as I have been in a goofy mood since last night, but the server that holds this magnificent blog, Jake’s haiku-only blog, and the Jeaun crapped out.

So now I’m not full of imagination, silliness, or airplanes; I have to pee like a raceproverbial because I drank too much tea; and I really ought to whip out the IJ.

On the upside, it’s file clean-out day, and I get to wear jeans, and have scored a sweet free copy of the Qur’an.

Shudder to think

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Last night I went to my usual pilates class, and my instructor was running late. When we settled in for class, she announced that she had some negative news, but she wanted to tell us before class so we could get on with our class and put some positivity into the world. (I approve of her choice!)

She was late to class because a woman who had been raped, throat slashed, and left for dead had come to her house for help. You can read the story here. Beyond what information the Trib story gives, I also know that the guy was wearing women’s undergarments under his clothes.

The whole story left our whole class stunned. This area is so far north of Chicago that there’s still a rural feel to it, and this is one of those really unfortunate things that leaves everyone feeling vulnerable. I guess the attacker was released from prison in November, and he’s a registered sex offender.

Anyway, I’m lucky enough to not hear many of these stories. The year before I went to St. Ambrose, a student was raped. For my freshman year, everyone was adamant about not walking across campus alone. By senior year, the caution had slacked. That was the last time I was aware that my otherwise-safe environment was not as it appeared. I can’t decide if I should turn my naturally low internal alarm up a notch in general, or just when the environment dictates. I don’t want to become paranoid and exhausted by my cautionary efforts, but I don’t want to live cavalierly when it’s apparent I should be more careful.

If you’re interested/scared shitless/wary/angry, there’s an online registry of sex offenders in Illionis.