Think she likes it?

Amanda made Casey a new catnip mouse for Christmas. Think she likes it?

Happy holidays to all!

Well, I made it home and through Christmas. I have been in full hibernation mode. The little cold I started fighting off 2 weeks ago has decided that it wants to be a full blown sinus infection when it grows up (ugh - that was my thought when I once again woke up feverish this morning).

In my hibernation state, I have read much junkish reading material (my latest is a series about vampire soccer moms - likely not what an MD/grad student wants to be caught dead reading but it suits my mental state quite nicely), knitting and playing with camera (unfortunately having troubles transfering photos from my laptop to my dad's desktop so only have a few to show). I also revamped the HIV talk I"m taking to the high school in January.

I almost finished my knitted gifts (note the pair of gloves phototgraphed). Also made a hat and some gloves for my dad: I hoped to finish them Christmas day and asked to back up gift-exchange time - as dinner approached, I realized that I was running out of yarn (there is a second ball in my appartment). My dad received one glove gift-wrapped and a promise of the second glove to be finished when I return to my place for New Years. We spent the rest of the evening holding bets on which finger I would run out of yarn on (middle finger - I thought it was a very clear message to me from my yarn).

Oh, and I did find the awol gift for my mom. Now that she has received it, I can tell the story. She had asked me for socks and underwear for Christmas so I bought her sock yarn and a pack of underwear. I had my purchased gifts laid out in the middle of my kitchen table and realized while getting ready for our department Christmas party that my date was going to be there any minute and that there was a big package of underwear in the middle of my kitchen table (I keep thinking of the reference to mommy pants in Bridget Jones' Diary). I freaked out and quickly hid the underwear only to later discover that I had no idea where I would have put them (found them pulling my duffel bag out of the closet the morning I was leaving). I figured that even if I only found them later, at least I"d have a good story for my mom at Christmas...

How to royally piss off Casey...

Is this (found on Ravelry) fascinatingly awful or what?


I'm half tempted to make one but am concerned my cat may require therapy and I am much too poor to take the cat to therapy.

On vacation

First thing I did: got into my jammies. I've spent the evening playing with Ravelry (I got my invite last weekend - my project list now has pics and does not look naked anymore) and working on my dad's gift (no sign of the gift for my mom that went awol).

So tired... Going home tomorrow.

So not ready for x-mas...

Part of my mom's x-mas gift has gone awol.

Ack.

So has one of the dpns from the set I was using to make my dad's gift.

Ack. Ack.

I am down to 9.5 term papers left to grade and 1 plagerism issue to address:

Student seemed to feel that unless a direct quote was being used, one does not need to reference ideas.

Almost half of the essay consists of direct quotes.

Ack. Ack. Ack.

Though I am relieved that I am the mere TA and deciding what to do is at the discretion of the prof.

Tales of flustered guinea pigs drowning in seas of grading

And that is exactly why I have not written lately.

The sad thing is that I have a very very nice new camera (Canon Powershot S5 - woohoo!) that I have yet to play much with: hence the lack of photos in this entry.

Flustered: With my research - our Moxus has deep psychological issues and does not feel like recording data consistantly. Trials have been cancelled/lost. My mom's also had some pretty flustering news this week: she will have to go another 6 weeks of non-weight bearing on her bad leg. Very upsetting - we had all seen how much she was improving during rehab and assumed that meant the healing was going well.

Guinea pig: I am officially a research subject. Had a VO2 max and underwater weighing done earlier this week. Will spend a day in a direct calorimeter in January at some point.

Drowning in grading: 60 stats essay exams... 30 long nutrition term papers... I probably have 30 more hours of marking before I get to go home for the holidays.

Oh, yeah, and then it's the holidays... Thankfully, it'll be low key. Got a few Christmas gifts to finish up. Trying to do a bit of baking (managed a batch of pinwheel cookies and a pan of Skor shortbread so far for a potluck and cookie exchange tonight).

Snow, shoes and the attack cat

On today's edition, we see that there has been lots of snow, I bought pretty new shoes (I am not a shoe person but I do rather love them) to wear to the Christmas formal, I got a flu shot and I finished my first glove which Casey immediately started to maul.

Conversation while waiting in waiting room for flu shot:

Receptionist: "Wow! Gloves! I've never seen anyone knit gloves before. I didn't think people could knit gloves."

I explain that it's kind of like doing mitts except that you do multiple thumbholes while thinking "Um, where exactly did you think gloves came from?"

Conversation in lab following flu shot (okay, so I am rather fond of the Batman band aid and wore short sleeves to show it off - our lab tends to vary in temperature: today was a short sleeve weather day in there).

Sophie: "There's something on your arm. Is there something wrong with you?"

I have yet to figure out if she was concerned about my arm or about my mental state.

Gloves woes

I have been making a pair of gloves (Nicholas's Gloves, a free pattern from Interweave knits online). I have restarted them 3 times. I'd gauge them, start the glove, realize the hand circumference is really ridiculously large, rip it out, change needles, restart.

I finally got a gauge that seemed to work and suddenly realized: once you start the cable pattern (I'd only do the ribbing before ripping it out), there is less give and the hand circumference decreases - considerably. D'oh! It fits me. I have small hands though, and I was making it for someone with larger hands. However, I refuse to rip it out again!

A little show and tell

For today's version of the photo blog, I give you the following:

My dad put up 2 levels of stair railings ready for my mom's first home visit last week. He and I spent much of Friday night/Saturday morning making the lower level living quarters look nice for my mom's arrival (figuring she would not see the rest of the house until a further weekend visit). You should have seen him blanch when after lunch she announced that the first level of stairs had gone so well, she wanted to do the second set so that we could all eat dinner in the kitchen.

Those are cranberry streusel muffins so see (they're from Bonnie Stern's Lighthearted Cooking cookbook so I am maintaining my belief that they are healthy). They came to a potluck brunch with me.

The Snowbeast (big white thing has a name) is continually growing: 14 inches long at the last measurement! And I completed my grey fuzzy hat. It's a gift but oh, so tempting to keep (see how good it looks on my head?).

Talkin' 'bout my generation

So there's this phenomenon I've noticed when talking to people my age (or maybe just the geeks I hang out with). Any situation or discussion topic seems to lead to "You know this is just like that episode of the Simpsons (some show offs will add the season here) when..."

I've been resisting. I watch the occasional Simpsons' rerun but am hardly a Simpsons efficionado. However, I caught myself comparing my parents' situation to what would happen to Homer if Marge were incapacitated for a month - hey, wait! That's just like the episode where Marge got arrested for shop-lifting!

I must be showing my age (and my geekiness).

Ile Bizard hike

You say tomato, I say bwahh

I have been described as a mother with a 19 year old frosh son (my dad). I have spent much of the afternoon discovering moldy tomato surprises throughout the house (somehow, feeling very much like a frosh mom...).

My dad did a great job clearing tomatoes out of the garden pre-frost. However, they have just sort of sat whereever he set them down (table tops, counters, on top of his papers...) several weeks ago.

I think I'm off tomatoes...

Worn out...

So, here I am: semi-moved back home.

Casey thinks it's pretty cool (though seems concerned that I may leave her with my dad for another 2 weeks and head back to New Orleans).

My mom's improved a lot since she started rehab a week ago. We had a dramatic morning over whether or no she could come home on a weekend pass (man, you should have seen the dirty look the nurse who told her the team decided that she should stay gave the doctor who came in 10 minutes later to tell her that she could go): final verdict being we still have no railings and she has not done stairs yet. She could camp out in the den downstairs (complete with renting a commode) but that somehow did not appeal (I can't blame her). I spent some time photographing the layout of the bathroom for her occupational therapist today. I"m here until Wednesday so hopefully can get the house adaptation we need to do into gear.

Luckily (cough cough), I can stay away for so long because I have lots of portable lab work. Note to self: my new least favorite expression from my supervisors: "Now here's a really cool idea for you." ie: it's a cool idea but now you get to work for it - I now know more that I ever thought I would about interleukin-6 and fuel selection during exercise... unfortunately, I have a growing list of more reading to do (there seems to be an exponential relationship going on here: for every article I read, I find 10 more I need to read - argh....

Somehow, the big almost-white thing that shall soon be named is slowly getting bigger...

Learning culture shock!

That's right. Culture shock. I realized that I was experiencing a great deal of it this week (and feel all the better to have identified it).

My background learning culture: clinical procedures (including invasive ones and ones involving expensive equipment) are learned as follows: see one (if you're lucky: this is occasionally replaced by telephone instructions by a sleep-deprived senior), do one, teach one.

The other grad students in my lab's learning culture: clinical/experimental procedures (especially ones that are invasive or use expensive equipment): observe several times, repeat several times having others check your every move, get someone to re-explain/re-affirm all of it as frequently as possible.

I see a difference. Do you see a difference?

Now that I have started my trials, I have been receiving e-mails from lab mates remnding me how procedures are done or inviting me to come in to their trials to observe procedures and re-confirm with what I am doing. Coming from my background, I was rather insulted: had I been doing things wrong? did they have a problem with me? was this some passive aggressive attack upon my abilities? I even sent a rather snitty reply to one of these invites before my revelation occurred:

In the normal world, see one, do one, teach one is not necessarily how things are done. Many people have a more thorough approach which could very well be very beneficial to one's learning and one's skill-building. I was not in fact being singled out for any malicious purpose. Hmmm... Maybe I just need to chill...

Knitting, lots of it!

Occasionally, my blog likes to pretend to be a real knitting blog. I figured I should humor it and, seeing as I got some knitting done this weekend, post some yarn related material.


I finished my second pair of fingerless gloves! I was knitting them in a medical waiting room last week when a lady came up to me, concerned that I might not realize that there was a big hole in the middle of my knitting. I reassured her that it was a thumb hole and pulled out my first glove to demonstrate.



I bought more yarn this week (I needed a wedding gift) and cast on not one, but 2 projects (I was stuck in the lab running trials and the internet was down: what else is a girl to do?). The first is going to be a big project. I am looking for a name for it (remember Cookie Monster for Elena and Jon?). I was going to go with White Fang, but it seems too delicate to be White Fang... Maybe something elven from Lord of the Rings? I am currently taking name suggestions.




I started the fall foliage hat from knitty.com's fall '07 issue. I keep doubting my gauge and have been trying to try it on for size. However, I keep putting myself in danger of dropping stitches and I have a notoriously large head (thick skull and lots of hair). So as long as it isn't for me, whether or not the hat fits me is not a good judgement of size. Must find myself a head model...


Check out the pretty handspun stuff Amanda gave me! Spun by Amanda using Alpaca - she made herself a gorgeous pair of fair isle gloves and gave me her leftovers to make myself a pair (I should have gotten a picture of Amanda's gloves to give her credit where credit is due).

Local Inukshuks

These were taken a couple of weeks ago...