So as I sit here eating baby carrots and drinking a coke kept cold in my office mini-fridge (yay for mini-fridges!), some random thoughts...

• My new shoes are totally awesome! Kevin and I went to Kohl's yesterday and I got these shoes. I've been wearing them since 9am, including 2+ hours of no sitting while teaching. My feet aren't happy, but they aren't too painful either. I think I may need to purchase a back-up pair and a brown pair.


• I also got these shoes to replace my favorite black flats which are getting a bit too beat up. Yes they are little girls' shoes, but regular flats are too big!


• In the future, would I rather teach in the building that's a 10+ minute walk and air conditioned, or the building that's a 4 minute walk (including elevator ride) and not air conditioned? My poor students are melting in their chairs!


• I'm unskilled with hammers.


• Would my students consider me uncool for blasting Steely Dan from my car while driving to school?


• I ordered some "Daily Dose of Fiber" stickers from Ravely last night. I wonder where I should stick them.


• Anyone else planning on watching the new 90210 tonight? Is it bad that my students laughed at me when I said I watched too much old 90210 this weekend? There was a marathon. How could I not watch Brenda Walsh in her prime?!

I burnt the microwave popcorn! It didn't seem like it was burning and I stopped it well before the popping stopped. When I opened it, it looked fine until I got about halfway in. There was this big horrible clump of blackness. So I saved what I could (this is my lunch after all), put the rest in my trashcan. Then I went to wash my hands and realized when I re-entered my office that it stunk!! So I tied up the trashbag and took it to the bathroom to throw away (only "public" trashcan I could find). Now I've got my door and window wide open, which probably means that I'm stinking up the hallway now too.


So yeah, I'm that person that you work with who burns the microwave popcorn and stinks up the whole place!

If you want to help the environment (oh, and fight childhood obesity at the same time), wouldn't it be a good idea to have your child walk to and ride the bus to school instead of driving them in your hulking SUV, which you then leave idling outside of my house with the other 20 SUVs that have decided to clog up my street on the first day of school while you walk your child to the school's door.


It is probably a false correlation, but the children I've seen getting off the bus are much thinner than the children I've seen getting out of SUVs.


And of course everyone wants the prime spot to double park, so now there is a cacophony of honking and parents shouting at each other. Good lessons for the children!


I think I need to start leaving for work earlier so I don't have to witness this spectacle everyday.


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Thanks for all the Steely Dan love! I've been listening to it in my office now too.

Wouldn't it be more economical for the school to install air conditioning in all the buildings than to have window units in rooms that have their door open and as such as also attempting to air condition the hallway and nearby rooms, which have their doors and windows open because it is too hot and stuffy to sit in them without doing such. And moreover, aren't the costs of air conditioning justified in the classrooms by the potential disaster of students passing out from heat stroke while learning or the professor herself passing out?! (Not that that happened, but I and my students were about near suffocation point by the heat and humidity in the classroom today... and they only had to be there for an hour, I was there for 2 in a row!)

Ravelry is a great resource that gave me both hopeful and disappointing news today. Bad news first?


Apparently the "rules" (I don't know that they are actually rules) of Stitch n Pitch changed this year such that only people who purchase tickets through a yarn shop get goody bags. Doesn't that suck?! So I've officially f'ed up Stitch n Pitch two years in a row. Last year by not purchasing with the group and this year by not purchasing with a yarn store. I think I may resolve to just not go next year.


Good news...


Apparently Canon cameras have a known with their CCDs and are willing to fix them free of charge for the models that have the bad part. (Read the info here.) My old Canon, which I replaced with a more expensive Kodak, was just hanging out with a bunch of electronics to be recycled. When I read the info on Canon's website, that's the exact problem that I had had. The one tech guy I had asked about it before I was ready to give up on the camera said it sounded like the CCD and not really a cheap fix. I called and talk to Canon this afternoon and they sent me a mailing label and information. I'm going to send it in tomorrow and see what happens. If there's no fix, there's no big loss because I've got a new camera and had already written the Canon off as dead. If it does get fixed, I have two digital cameras for playing with!


So I learn good and bad things on Ravelry.


I've been sloooooooooooooooooooowly working on a sock and I've started a scarf, so maybe I'll have something to share soon.

So it is only 7:50am, and I've only been awake for about 20 minutes, but already I've had the oddest experience. As I was putting in my contacts and getting ready to work out, the doorbell buzzed. I figured that it was the lady across the hall, who a few times has forgotten her keys, but it seemed a bit early for her to be buzzing. So I finished up with my contacts and went into the living room and heard talking in the hallway between the apartments that mentioned my car. So I opened the door despite being in my workout clothes and there was this perfect stereotype of a repo-man talking with the guy who lives across the hall.

My Brock Croc Socks are finally finished. Started these at the end of July and just finished this evening, while on hold YET AGAIN with Dell. (I HATE HATE HATE HATE Dell. The new motherboard of barely one month ago is a piece of crap and now the computer needs to be "sent away" to be repaired. So glad that in less than two months, I've wasted approximately 8 hours on the phone with Dell.)





*Deep breath... relaxing* But aren't the socks purdy?! And guess what? They weigh 4.5 grams together and I have 5.1 grams of yarn left over! I can make another pair of shortie socks!


And I forget to put these up... we went to the Brooklyn Aquarium back in August and watched this guy get clean for a loooooooooong time.

I got an invite to Kevin's cousin's baby shower. I guess that would be my cousin-in-law's shower. I don't think I can knit and mail off a baby blanket in time. Well, I could if I put my mind to it, but with the weather still turning back to hot and humid and school reaching the panic point (first two weeks are a breeze, then week three and four hit with stuff to be graded, study guides to create, exams to make up and grade, and a zillion meetings). Also, I don't have enough yarn for a blanket and I'd like to continue in my stash busting. (I have a gift card to Knitty City that I'm going to spend very, very soon when I finally finish my wishlist for what to spend it on, but certainly not baby blanket yarn... it is my gift!) So I decided on a baby sweater because it doesn't take much yarn or much time...





That's how much I finished since starting Friday evening. And I did a bunch of work this weekend, not just knit! I'm knitting the Jo Jo Basic Crew Sweater by Louisa Harding from Natural Knits for Babies and Moms. The "male" sweater is striped, but I'm doing a plain white front and back and gray sleeves to give it an athletic look. I thought it would be a good unisex look without a million ends to weave in. Hopefully, I'll have enough left over for some booties or a hat. The yarn is Patons Merino that has been hanging out in the stash for quite some time.


The reason for the title of the post is because I'm totally paranoid that the sweater is too small for a human baby. It looks doll sized to me. I'm knitting the "up to 3 months" size and gauge is pretty darn close. I keep asking Kevin if it looks baby sized to him, but we are both clueless. I think I might go to Target and purchase a baby t-shirt or something for the baby to wear under the sweater, which I can conveniently use to compare for size.




90210 Update: I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the premiere episode. I still have to watch the second episode and I know the third is coming up Tuesday. By the fact that I'm planning on watching at least 2 more episodes gives you an idea that I must have liked it, at least a little. Here are my random bulleted thoughts:

• I love Jessica Walter. I miss her and Arrested Development sooooo much. I hope they include her in the show more. She is so funny and talented.


• I am surprised at how Annie actually looks like she could be Debbie's kid. However, Debbie and Harry seem in no way old enough to have kids in high school.


• And what is with these kids being 15/16 years old? That makes them sophomores, right? With fake boobs and fake ids, having sex and drinking at the Pit?! None of them look 16 years old.


• That scene with the creepy teacher flirting with Naomi at the Pit while she was trying to buy alcoholic drinks was very weird. I think Nat needs to trump up the security at night!


• Is it just me or did Kelly and Brenda look old? Especially in the very first scene of them together? Shannon Doherty (who I love) had something really screwy about her face, as though she had some bad face lift recently. She didn't look that bad on Charmed, although I guess it has even been a while since she was on that.


• And Kelly has a kid?!?! A nearly 5 year old kid. I've seen some rumors about who the baby-daddy is and that that is going to be revealed this week, possibly.


• Can Andrea Zuckerman's kid and Erin Silverman be in high school together? I could be confusing my timeline, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but wasn't Erin born when Kelly and David were at the end of high school. Andrea had her kid in college. There should be at least 2 to 3 years difference. But if Erin is also in the sophomore range of the others, Andrea's kid would only be in 7th grade? Ok, I'm thinking about this waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much!


• Lastly, I hope they stop trying so hard. The porn director dad, celebrity name dropping, and the like was all way to in your face. Just write a decent script (oh, and maybe recast all of the parts, except Jessica Walters, with people who can ACT; could the girl who plays Naomi be more just picked because she was hot?!).


• And this is the last one for real this time... Annie and Dixon are a little to chummy. Brenda and Brandon always had a weird incestuous vibe at times, but I was really disturbed when Annie and Dixon were laying in bed together chatting. It is good for brothers and sisters to be close, but they are a bit too close.

Or really... procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate.


I've been in my office since before 9am. And aside from meeting with two students, I've basically been looking at the internet and wishing it would be more interesting... well, I'm sure there are lots of places I can go for interesting internet stuff, but I'm even too lazy to try!


Basically I have an exam and a lecture to write before Tuesday. Especially in regard to the exam, if I get it done sooner rather than later, I'll have more time for copying. Don't want to be photocopying the exam 5 minutes before class. I wrote three multiple choice questions. I need to get to 35. Blah!!


I did sneak some knitting in on my office scarf, which has not made it onto Ravelry yet. Basically I'm using remnants of the last baby blanket I made in Knitpicks Crayon (I think). I tied all the extra balls together randomly into one huge ball. I keep it at my office in a basket, so that I can take little knitting breaks when necessary (or after I finish my lunch, I can knit while I catch up on the previous days GH on Youtube.)


I'll try to be more interesting next post!

The baby sweater is finished. For such a little thing, there was certainly a lot of finishing and sewing. I took me three days to sew it all together. (Ok, part of that was that I kept getting bored with the seaming, so would only do a little at a time.)





I think it looks pretty good. Hopefully so will its future wearer.



In other crafty projects, I bought Kevin a desktop Onager for his b-day. Just tonight we got the last pieces glued and ready to go.





It still needs a few modifications, but it works really well. Watch out neighbors! We'll be flinging things at you!





In action...

(I should be working right now or at least eating lunch, so I'll keep this brief...)


Much better bloggers and much more fashion oriented bloggers than I have commented on the issue of leggings. I think the common phrase is "leggings are not pants." I haven't had too much issue with this because if people want to follow stupid fashion trends, hopefully they won't mind my laughing at them. Please feel free to laugh at me for that horrible big bangs phase in middle school.


When I was in 5th grade, I regularly wore leggings (or spandex pants as I knew them) to school. It wasn't until sometime in the middle of the school year that my teacher so kindly and gently (sarcasm here) informed my 5th grade self that if I didn't wear longer shirts, people would be able to see my pantyline. I didn't quite understand what that meant or why it was bad, but I understood from her tone that it was something very, very bad.


So I stopped wearing leggings and I don't wear them now. Sometimes I'll wear tights under skirts/dresses, sometimes it is those feetless ones. But if others want to wear leggings as pants, go right ahead. Or at least until the girl I saw walking on campus today.


Blue, shiny, and skin tight leggings with a sweatshirt that only came to her waist. Everything was on display and it was blue and shiny. This is not a good look. At least wear black and definitely don't wear shiny. And I don't want to be the teacher who tells you this in the wrong way, but do you really want people seeing your pantyline AND all of your other bits?

H. Langston Rutherford.





Sorry for the blurry shot. He was running really fast in the wheel and since he's brand new I didn't want to scare him too much with too many photos. Better pictures in a few days when he's settled in.

This WIP has been reinvented too many times, but I think this one will stick.





The yarn is very lovely Koigu which was a Christmas present last year from Mandy. It was started and ripped and restarted and sleeping as some socks. I even think at one point I had started them as gloves and went back to socks. This time the fingerless gloves seem to be sticking. I did toy with making them into full gloves, but then I wouldn't get to wear them as much!


Here are a couple more pictures of Mr. H. Langston Rutherford. He has been a very shy hamster, so I've had a hard time getting pictures.





This is his favorite sitting spot when he isn't in his major sleep time (seemingly all day and evening). He likes to sit himself in this tube and just doze and bathe and doze some more.