wishes you and yours the same thing, too

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

May you reflect on the peace, joy and comfort of the gift of the Christ Child as you enjoy your holiday celebration.

and this song of mine in three-quarter time

Time.

Time does strange things to one's memory. Always a witty individual, Mark Twain said, "The faintest ink is stronger than the best memory." How true that is in my life today.

For a variety of reasons, many Things from my Past have been resurfacing (or dredged up, depending on how you look at it), and over the past several weeks I have spent much of my time at home thinking about, praying about, writing about, and effectively "dealing with" these Things. This morning I was bumbling about the apartment, not terribly motivated to get up and going, since I only have three small things to do at work and then I'm headed back to pack for Christmas in Michigan and get some last-minute shopping done. As I was putting gel in my hair, I had the inspiration to find a particular CD to listen to while I ate my raisin bran, and thus began a fruitless search. I really wonder where that CD is...but in the meantime I ran across an old journal, which I had been thinking about finding because I know a particular entry exists in the journal about one of the Things, and I wondered what the date was.

Abandoning my search -- oh wait, I just realized that the CD is here in my desk at work...aah... -- abondoning my search for the CD (which now, in retrospect, was a very good idea!), I instead picked up the journal and perused that during breakfast. I was astounded at what I found. (And I was astounded by how faint some of the ink was!)

As I look back and reflect on the Things from my Past, I have a certain sense of how I was feeling when I made particular choices and participated in various activities. But when I looked back in my journal to see what I was actually thinking (or at least was recording as what I was thinking)...I discover that the sense I have is wholly false. The way I think I was...is not how I was! I was surprised to discover common themes of questioning, searching, remorse, and a deep longing in my heart -- the most surprising of all was that these themes are nearly identical to ones I could find in my journal today!

That is not at all what I had expected to find, and it drastically changes my view of myself way back when. How is it that I have come to forget who I was? Have I been making excuses for or trying to explain away my "old" self for all these years? Has it been too hard for me to admit I really was who I was? And why oh why didn't I go back and read those journal entries sooner? Sure, they were from 7 to 10 years ago, but I actually had quite a few wise things to say back then -- I could really have benefitted from my own experience and advice!

But, perhaps one cannot fully appreciate the wisdom of one's own thoughts and ideas until she has marched on, experienced more, and can now bring the wisdom into the new contexts of her life.

All that said, I encourage everyone to keep a journal. You might hate writing, you might think journaling is stupid, but I for one think that it not only has immediate benefits (one entry I read said something like "Writing has benefits over talking to someone because you can sit and organize your thoughts and not worry about saying them the right way or having someone else ask you probing questions about what you're trying to say - you can just get them out!"), like clearing your head, but also serves as a remarkable resource for you when your memory fails. That happens when you get older. Believe you me - it happens even if "old" is only 26!!!

may your new year dreams come true

As 2006 draws to a close, I look back over what all has occurred this year. Wow. A lot. My thesis project went from hopeless to hopeful...some of my friends went from bad to worse, others from good to great...I moved...I got 2 pets...I've met lots of new people...I've knitted various items...I went to Europe... It feels like the year has flown by so quickly, but when I think about all I've done, it seems really long.

But the biggest question...did I live up to any of my New Year's resolutions? Um...not really. I was fairly successful in many of the areas, but certainly not perfect. ...I really should have revisited that post a few times throughout the year - I had completely forgotten that I had made some of those goals!

So...well, I don't feel too guilty. The items I would normally have the hardest time feeling okay about not having achieved would be those related to my spiritual growth (e.g. reading Bible, setting aside time for God); however, I have learned a tremendous amount of stuff about God and how He relates to me and how I relate to Him and what being a part of the church means and how I am to respond to others based on how God feels about me and others... There are many ways I have grown spiritually that I never, ever would have imagined at the beginning of this year!

Well, what are this coming year's New Year dreams? I'm going to keep it short and simple: 1) graduate 2) love God and love others. (Although, based on my inability to achieve goals...perhaps I should make more goals just so at least I'll complete something! It would be pretty lousy if I both didn't graduate and didn't love God and others...) There are other dreams, too, but those are just dreams, not goals really, so they aren't worth sharing (and, based on my recent State of Brain*, I don't think they're really good for me to even be spending much time thinking about).

I will note, however, that I want to put some concentrated effort into these people:This is my small group Bible study - with a few people missing and with an additional creature (dog) and a leg** - with whom I meet every Wednesday. They're super. They're one of the groups I'm no longer leading. And there is much change in the air! We're a big group, and I've discovered that it takes a lot of time and effort to build and then maintain strong relationships with them all - and I'm pretty poor at doing that. So it's going to be a challenge, but one I'm excited to take to know them better so that when I move (hopefully by the end of 2007!) into the next phase of my life, I will have left an impact on theirs.

And I suppose that's what life is all about - making sure you have something of you left after you're gone.

-----

*It seems that something, or Someone (more likely - the current hypothesis is "D") is sucking my brain cells out... Truly. I forgot to send in my rent check this month - and I have never, EVER forgotten to pay any bill ever! I just completely forgot. Then, Tuesday, I got home from work, curled up to do some reading and writing, and made sure I was ready to leave for hockey practice at 8. Except that when I got in the car at 8, I realized that...practice starts at 8. I was supposed to have left at 7...uh...yeah. Why was I thinking 8? I do not know. I thought that was the end, but the next morning I made up vaccines to give to my mice for my current immunization experiment. After doing careful calculations, I figured out how many doses I needed and found that I had JUST enough of all of my materials to make that many. I made them. Then I realized...I actually needed 10 less than I had made. Not a big, bad deal, but...what was I thinking? And finally, this morning, I got in the car, set off to work, and realized that I was driving in the opposite direction of work and was driving to the highway instead of the busway. Oh me. I conclude that all the brain cells normally devoted to useful and beneficial thoughts about items such as these have been diverted to the far corner of my brain that thinks girly thoughts about guys. Thus, "D" is the culprit.

**The leg. Yes. Like the one in A Christmas Story (see the Clip 1 on the "Sneak Peak" portion of the site if you've never had the pleasure of viewing the leg lamp). Except this one wasn't a lamp, it was just a leg. It was the unofficial winner of "Best/Worst Present" in this year's White Elephant gift exchange. It is actually a Victoria's Secret leg, retrieved from the dumpster behind one of their stores around here. Why? I'm not sure. But...lucky Scott got it! Scott was one of the first to leave the festivities after the gift exchange, and when the doorbell rang not too long after his departure, we knew what we'd find on the front porch: the leg. War has begun...he shall certainly be re-receiving the leg...

every song you hear seems to say, "merry christmas"

There are some songs that should not be sung operatically. I don't normally say that, because I rather enjoy opera, and I think the singers are amazing. Did you know that (real) opera singers don't use microphones! That's some major lung power there - I can always hear them fine, and I sit in the very back of the auditorium where the seats are cheap!

But - there are some songs that should not be sung that way. I realized this last night as I was driving out to the store (Goodwill) to find some white elephant gifts for tonight's annual Bible study group gift exchange. On the radio (classical station) was some great woman singing a Christmas carol that I can't for the life of me recall right now (it was so horrible, I had to just delete it from my memory!) - and, oh my!, was it wrong. Gone was the tenderness, gone was the sincerity. It sounded like the woman was trying to embellish and force out difficult notes for all she was worth, and...it was very bad.

It has occurred to me recently that I am totally out of touch with music. I enjoy music. I listen to music - it's just that the only music I listen to is classical music. Most of the composers are dead. There are few radio stations that play the music. It's just plain old not popular! I thus can't tell you much about the music most people listen to. I attempted to keep up a little bit for the four years when I worked with high schoolers, but even then I fell far from actually knowing much about what was hitting the airwaves. Today I know even less! I at least know that Justin Timberlake released a long-awaited album, but that was months ago. That's about it.

Perhaps it's time I familiarize myself with this culturally relevant topic. Not "culture" the way I usually think of it, but popular culture. ...But as I consider that, I realize that it's a gigantic monster of a beast. There is so much to know, so many styles, so much to wade through to get to the point, so much to remember... ...Ugh...what a monstrous undertaking this seems! ...Perhaps it's not time...

For now, the good ol' Christmas tunes (NOT sung by opera stars!) will do.

the christmas waltz

That's a good song. I have a hard time chosing a favorite Christmas tune. There are so many - ones that celebrate the birth of Christ, ones that celebrate the snow, ones that celebrate the gathering of loved ones...all these elements that are so precious to my Christmas in my mind's eye. Here are some thoughts about the Christmas season, with excerpts from a couple Christmas songs.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Outside, not so much - it was 62 degrees F yesterday! Certainly snow is not blanketing the earth... It's been hard for me to get in the Christmas spirit this year, in large part because of the lack of snow. However, little by little things are shaping up. I hung stockings several weeks ago and put up a little tree. This morning I finally dug out the nativity scene I had purchased in Salzburg over the summer (it was still in the suitcase...which means I haven't unpacked the suitcase I used in August...is that bad?). And last week was the departmental holiday party for work.

As the shoppers rush home with
their treasures
Since it hasn't felt like Christmas, I was greatly surprised when I realized last week that there were only 11 days left until Christmas! I had purchased exactly zero presents! And I had sent precisely zero cards! ...Things were looking bad, and the schedule of life wasn't appearing to give me much free time to go out shopping. Instead of trying to figure out how I could possibly manage to combine shopping with some other activity I had in the schedule (hockey and shopping...? church and shopping...? having dinner and shopping...perhaps, although indigestion was a quite possible outcome.), I decided to leave work early on Friday and go out - I was sort of forced to do this, in actuality, because I needed to have many of the items on my list purchased by Sunday, and Saturday was filled with hockey games and work.

I must not have been the only person who thought Friday afternoon shopping was a great idea, because it was packed. For the most part lines were short, but I was glad I'm a big fan of finding a very far away parking spot and walking a long ways to get to stores, because that was what I had to do, and trying to find a "good" spot would have quickly drained all holiday cheer I may have mustered at the time.

The afternoon of shopping turned into a 6-hour ordeal, and I'm not a big fan of shopping to begin with, so by the time I got home, I really felt I knew the meaning of "shop 'til you drop."

the spoils. i even managed to only buy one thing for myself that was completely unnecessary...

But since I really had to get those presents ready for Sunday, I wrapped. In the end, I had a pile of gifts ready to be given to the family my Bible study group adopted through the Salvation Army.We did this last year and now again this year, and it is fast becoming one of my favorite Christmas traditions. It is so rewarding to meet the needs of others, and even the wants of others! Plus...shopping for other people is way easier than shopping for myself, particularly when it comes to clothing. Nothing ever fits me, and I usually stomp out of stores in a rage (not really) - but when items are for other people...I'll do my best, but in the end, it's not my problem.

I even managed to make it to a mall in my shopping excursion. Gasp! They had a delightful little place for children.I sort of wanted to ride on the train, myself.

Caroling, caroling, through the snow
As already stated, we haven't got any snow. And so I suppose it's appropriate that I also haven't gone caroling. I had gotten all excited that I was going to go caroling last Thursday, and that certainly added to my holiday cheer, but then that didn't end up happening. I had somehow messed up the dates of two activities the young adult ministry at my church were planning, and when I showed up Thursday night set to go caroling "in the hood", I was surprised to find that it was not indeed caroling night and it was indeed the night we were going to be helping with the high school students, but for some reason that got cancelled, so it was just a little chaotic instead. Ugh, that's what I get for not going the week before when apparently all of this was announced! Oh well. Sadly, I will miss caroling (which actually was scheduled to be this Thursday) because I will be out playing ice hockey. Well, at least there will be ice there!

out of control

Lots of stuff is changing in my life right now in a variety of areas. Change, in this case, is good, but it's not easy.

Some of the major changes are my "retirement" from a variety of leadership positions related to both school and church. I'm passing on the torch to others so that when I leave the city (oh, please be soon!) the groups I've been helping with will be in very capable hands. It's almost like giving up a baby to someone else - I've put in a lot of time, effort, though, and energy into the groups, and while I embrace the shift of leadership, I find it hard to completely let go.

In essence, I'm going "out of control".

There are good things and bad things to not leading. One of the very good things is not being criticized - criticism is a natural reaction to leaders, and I think it's important for a leader to seriously consider all criticism that he or she receives. That doesn't make criticism any happier to hear, though. Another benefit of not leading is that you are less responsible for dealing with conflicts that arise within the particular group you lead. Already I've seen a new conflict sprout in one of the groups I no longer lead, and I'm so glad I'm not the one who has to mediate the differences. Not leading also gives (in theory) one more time to focus on things in life other than the project being led. This was one major motivation for me to step down from leading one group in particular - I want to devote more concentrated effort to my thesis research in these hopefully last few months of PhD studenthood.

However, with the benefits come difficulties. It's hard to completely let go and allow someone else to go a different route with something one had led for a time. Inevitably new blood brings new ideas and new direction, and such is the way of innovation and progress. However, I find it easy for even the most secure and most detached people to feel a bit of resentment or hurt when a program or concept he or she created or nurtured gets revamped by a new leader. One quickly begins to question if all their previous followers hated the Old Way so much as to so willingly embrace the New Way. The old leader wonders if he or she could have done better and dreams about what might have been if this, that, or the other thing had been done just a tad differently when he or she was leading. And sometimes it gets more personal - ideas that had been offered by the old leader and shunned by the followers but are accepted under the new leadership cause the outgoing leader to wonder if anything he or she said ever spent more than a second between the ears of the followers. It's hard to let go of the power and watch traditions or concepts that had been dear and assumedly vital to the group become abandoned and forgotten. It's hard not to step in and demand, "You have to do this! Because...I said! Because, I know - I led this group for so long, don't you think my experience has taught me anything?"

Not leading is teaching me a lot. It's causing me to trust more and to think harder about how to lovingly convey what I'm thinking when I disagree. In the terms of the Green Lady from C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, it's "making me older."

it's the little things that count

One microliter.

Do you know how much that is? It's 1/1000 of a milliliter. Can't picture a milliliter? A milliliter of water is the "size" of a centimeter cubed. That is not very big. Now, divide that into 1000 parts. That's a microliter.

That's not much at all. Shouldn't matter a single bit, right?

...Wrong.

It is the failure of me to add that one microliter that has made my arrival at the lab at 2:30a.m. a complete and utter waste of time and has deprived me of precious sleep. As part of The Big Experiment being carried out this week (starting yesterday, hopefully culminating tomorrow), I spent 16 hours at the lab, grabbed some LuLu's, let the very bored (made a lovely mess by throwing her litter pan around) and upset (much snorting at the Hand that Feeds) rabbit (at least she's not outright ill) out for about a half hour, and went to bed for a mere three hours. Now I'm back, and as I was working on Step One of the 2:30a.m. part of The Big Experiment, I realized...I had forgotten to add one microliter of monensin to the samples I was working with. Which renders the entire experiment completely and utterly useless.

Smart. I am quite sure I can accurately blame this on the fatigue that comes from 15.5 hours of being at the lab and lack of sleep the night before. But it doesn't make it any more enjoyable. Plus, now I'm stuck at the lab, because I need to be back here at 5:30a.m. anyhow to start working on today's regularly scheduled part of The Big Experiment, so it's not worth driving home, trying to sleep for one hour, and driving back. (Plus, I might lose my parking space. ...AND it's totally freezing outside.)

I'm going to go find a corner in which to curl up...

Doesn't it make you want to pursue a PhD in microbiology?

update in brief

...The blog has not been a priority in Somebody's life of late... That would be me. Apologies to all who are longing for a peek into my life.

What can I say? My brain has been stuffed with Other Items, mostly people (and a rabbit) and work. An odd combination, considering that I am usually all about only one or the other - life seems to shift between being 100% for work, overcommitting myself to it 24/7, or 100% for other people, putting less thought into my work and more thought into being with others. I've been trying to learn (and apply) a balance between the two. It's tough! Both require a lot of time and effort if they are to be done properly and with quality. And, obviously, other things thus get pushed aside.

Including knitting! Can you believe it? I have not knit for over a week! I have not even wanted to!! I had finished the knitting construction of Joelle's stocking sometime during the Thanksgiving weekend, and then the sock with the un-closed toe sat and sat and sat in the Knitting Bag for about 10 days. Finally I decided to sew it up on Sunday and hang it. Of course, now I'm not truly satisfied with it - I should have used a different size needle on the stranded knitting part - but I'm too lazy to un-do it and reknit, at least for this year.

I also have concluded that I am going to give up on the Aran sweater I've been making zero progress on for the past year. I love the yarn, I love the cables and double seed stitch, but when I think about it, I actually really do not love the pattern. It is a "traditional" Aran design - a "square" body with unshaped arm holes, and the sleeves stick straight out to form a T. And, goodness knows why and when this occurred in my unfashionable mind, I just don't want that sort of dumpy sweater! I want something more fitted. Something like I know I saw in a Vogue Knitting from I believe last year - it's somewhere in my Pile of Knitting Magazines. ...And that means I'm going to rip out some 16 inches worth of ribbing, cables, and textured knitting, which pains me to think about, considering I also painstakingly tubular-cast on the bottom edge of both the front and back sides of this particular project - a first for me, and something which took an entire evening to do properly!

...When I will get to that is anyone's guess!

the twilight zone

It has been an extremely busy past week. I had to take blood samples from an incredibly number of mice and administer vaccines to all of them last week before I left for Michigan for Thanksgiving. A lot of work and time, but also nerve-wracking, because I always have the fear that the immunization won't got quite right and two months worth of toil will be a complete loss from day 0. Once the mice were all set, I scrambled back to the apartment to rapidly throw various items into a laundry basket, grab Joelle's medicine, stuff her (very unwillingly) into her carrier, dismantle her cage, and put it all into my car so I could finally get on the road for the long drive home across the Ohio Turnpike.

The plan was to meet my brother, Jonathan, in Ann Arbor, where one of his friends from college resides. It breaks up the trip for both of us, is completely not out of the way, and gives me someone to keep me awake for the final 2.5 hours of the trip across the very flat and sometimes boring Michigan expressways. I made the decision to take a little bit of a different way to the meeting point - I generally drive the Turnpike to Maumee and connect to US 23 to drive towards Ann Arbor, but this time I decided to follow MapQuest's suggestion and get off an exit earlier, hit 75 for a short period, drive across Toledo on 475, and connect to 23 north of Maumee. Good in theory, and actually it was going great until I approached exit 16.

I have no idea what is at exit 16 or how far away it is from 23, but as I approached, traffic came to a near stand-still. I thought I had hit some rush-hour traffic, although it was pretty late for that. Instead, it turned out to be a police car blocking the road and directing all cars to the right with red burning flares. I obliviously followed the flares and the traffic and suddenly found that I (and everyone else) was on the exit ramp of exit 16! I figured that there would be a DETOUR sign telling me what to do next, or that I could at least jump back on the highway, but there was no sign, and there was another police car and flares blocking the on-ramp.

So I started following some cars, but they all turned off the main road, and I was pretty sure that wasn't the way to go. So I stopped and asked at a hotel for some directions, but the person at the desk had no idea how to get anywhere. So then I thought I'd trust my intuition and head the way I thought I should go. Fortunately, I didn't trust my intuition very long (it was wrong, anyhow), and I stopped at a restaurant to ask for their suggestions. Everyone there told me how to get back onto 475, and it took me a while to get them to realize that I COULDN'T and that was the whole problem. So, finally a person who actually knew how to drive around the area was located from the throes of the kitchen, and I had my directions. I turned around and went back from where I had come. I noticed that cars were driving in both east and west directions across the overpass that was 475. I wondered...and indeed, I now COULD get onto the on-ramp! So I did. And I got to Ann Arbor in no time.

I had to ask myself many times whether I had just imagined all of that. It took me no more than 10 minutes to get the directions once I was dumped off the highway! I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation (a crash or accident being cleaned up, for example, and I just caught the tail end of it before the roadway was reopened), but I felt like I had entered and exited the Twilight Zone.

Maybe it was just not a very lucky day for me, because as I approached Ann Arbor I checked my voice mail on my cell phone and was able to listed to two of the three messages before the battery went caput. Having no car charging capability, I was stuck and guessed that the third message was Jon telling me where precisely to meet him in Ann Arbor. I arrived at our desination and saw his car and went to the restaurant we had discussed as a meeting place, but he wasn't there (and there was no outlet in the bathroom for me to plug in my phone!). I figured my best bet was to just go to the house I thought looked like the one where Jon's friend, with whom we were leaving his car, lived.

I picked wrong.

Twice.

And nobody knew Jon's friend, even though he lived right next door to them (well, okay, so his parents lived there, but...still).

Fortunately, just as I was starting to despair and contemplating going back to the first wrong house to ask if I could plug in my phone to check the messages, Jon showed up, and we squashed his luggage into my car and were off after showing the man at the nearby convenience store what my car looked like under the hood because he thought he was getting ripped off by the repair shop his friend's same-model-as-mine car was being serviced by. We confirmed that the part the shop said he needed did not appear necessary for the proper fixing of the car.

...Ah, life. It is so deliciously confusing and amusing and random.

bad things come in threes (or more)

Blogger won't publish the posts I painstakingly write these days. Hopefully this one makes it...

Bad things that have occurred in the past 12 hours:

• I found out my sister suffered a minor concussion this past weekend and is having continuous headaches as a result.
• A friend from high school was killed in a car accident
• Joelle, who had surgery for another abscess on Friday, stopped eating this morning and is acting very strangely

I don't feel much like celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow.

it's my birthday...!

It really is.

What am I doing to celebrate? That is a good question. Thus far I have: awoke, eaten breakfast, drank coffee, given medicine to Joelle, cleaned Joelle's cage, fed Sheamus, made a sandwich, brushed my teeth, put on clothing, and gone to work. I plan to: learn a new technique in another lab, attend a seminar related to my work, go to a fellow student's dissertation defense, finish a presentation for next week, give Joelle more medicine, feed Sheamus again, and make curried apple couscous. I suppose the couscous is the "celebrate" part. Perhaps I shall also pull out my Nadia yarn hat to savor the soft alpaca/wool blend.

I never got into the have-a-birthday-party thing. It's not that I don't like the attention - I do. :-D It's just...too much work/I'm not motivated. And I'm quite content to quietly enjoy my time, even if it's just by myself.

Today is seeming like another great day outside. Not a beautiful day, by any means. It's supposed to get colder as the day goes on and rain. I love this cool, crisp weather!

i *heart* autumn

No knitting today because I left my camera with the pictures of my knitting at home, and it's really much more interesting to read about knitting when there are pictures.

Instead, a bit of musing on life and such...

Last night I was a wreck. I finally called the vet to find out what the situation was with Joelle since I hadn't heard anything since Thursday. Vet says that Joelle is acting great - eating, drinking, pooping, peeing, getting annoyed when people get into her personal space. Vet also says that when she opened up the re-abscess on Thursday, she was surprised to find not more pus but caseous tissue, which is what is often found in tumors. Oh ugh. So she sent a biopsy to be looked at to see if the Jose has cancer. Ugh, ugh. In the meantime, Vet will continue to wait for the bacterial culture to come back and will treat the abscess as planned.

So last night, with all this information (and absolutely no indication about when my bun will be able to come home to me) I started crying whenever I looked at the bunny candy and thinking about how I'd feed that to Joelle before I put her down if/when it came to that. After an hour or so of this, I decided to buck up and make the apartment clean and comfortable for Joelle when/if she came back. I cleaned all around her cage, cleaned the kitchen (not that she ever goes in the kitchen - she's not a big fan of the slippery linoleum), and then was vacuuming. And then the vacuum stopped vacuuming. And I don't know why.

Ugh.

I said, "FORGET IT!" and put away the vacuum and layed out layers and layers of comfortable towels in Joelle's now-very-clean cage and then went to bed.

And then, this morning, I woke up (wait - no, I woke up, snoozed and snoozed and snoozed and then finally rolled out of bed) and went about the morning routine of shower and breakfast and coffee, and I went outside to bring away the trash and realized...it's a beautiful day. It really, truly is. It's that crispy autumnish weather, where it's okay to be outside in a long-sleeved shirt, but it feels even better to come inside to a warm drink. The morning was untouched, untroubled, unbroken. So calming, so nice. No worries for the day as of yet. Joelle was still alive and was in (I think) good hands, and God hears my prayers, and there's light at the end of the tunnel. But beyond all that, it is a beautiful day. (So much so that I really want to leave work and go for a long, long walk in the woods, particularly since the after-five part of my day today isn't filled with very many happy activities.)

When I got to work I did some googling to see what I could find out about caseous tissue in rabbit abscesses, and it really seems like this is an absolutely normal phenomenon, which makes me a tad more concerned about Vet doing the vetting for Joelle, but I'm fairly certain that the biopsy will not be cancerous and that Vet is doing pretty much what I would desire any vet to do in this case (meaning the care of the patient, not the freaking out and jumping to outrageous conclusions about chronic Pasturella and cancer), and I think things will turn out okay.

Thus, my concluding thought is simply that I love autumn. It's a shame to be bogged down by other worries when there's so much to enjoy in a lovely day like today.

it's a great day to be a spartan

Michigan State University: 38 University of Pittsburgh: 23

I may get paid by Pitt, but I bleed

green!

nothing to do with my travels

Okay...I just gotta pause and say: EVERYONE is having babies!! Well, not everyone, but so many people from multiple parts of my life. Behold:

• If you walk down the hall, you'll find two women in another lab - both expecting.
If you go to my classes, you won't find the two women from my graduate program who are soon to have their first children, because they're already on maternity leave (or have reached writing-thesis-time).
• If you peruse the blogs of knitting people, you'll find three women who are getting ready to add to their families! It's very weird; every time I stop on by to check out a blog I haven't read in a while, I see...she's pregnant, too!

It's an epidemic!! Good thing I don't know all these people better, otherwise I'd have a ton of knitting to do! ...On second thought, perhaps I'll make a few baby things for them anyhow... On third thought, I already have a ton of knitting to do without the babies!!

what's in the box

This weekend was insane. First, I went camping. Sort of. I drove down to Ohiopyle on Friday night with a group of people, and then I set up a tent and ate a s'more and went to sleep. Then I woke up and drove back to Pittsburgh. I got a box, I went to Ren's wedding, I ate amazing food (that she made!) at her reception, and I stopped by the apartment briefly. Then I drove back to Ohiopyle and ate another s'more and went to sleep. Then I woke up, ate breakfast, took down a tent, and drove back to Pittsburgh.

Don't ask.

But, do ask about the box. I got a box!! Check it out.Can you guess what's inside? Seriously, take a guess.

...

...

...

If you guessed an Angora rabbit from the Beaver County Humane Society, you're right!!Okay, so she doesn't look much like an Angora right now. Except for those crazy ears, she's missing the long hair that Angoras are known for. That's because she got all shaved to get rid of mats (and fleas) when she got to the Humane Society. So I'm thinking she's going to look very different in a few months.

Now, how did this all start? Did I just pick up one day and say, "Hey, I'd like to get a rabbit?" Well, it doesn't seem like I would do that, and I certainly do not think that people should do that, but in essence: I did. I had been thinking about it on and off for several months, but never very seriously. More like, "Hm, at my new apartment, I actually could have a cat or a rabbit of my own. Hm." And then last week someone mentioned me perhaps taking their cat that they were allergic to. And then, after seeing pictures of people spinning Angora wool as I was browsing the web for information on fiber festivals in the fall, I happened upon a listing for an Angora at the Humane Society, which is located about an hour away from where I live in Pittsburgh.

Begin ridiculousness... (Again -- I would not recommend anyone ever do this! It's not very responsible.) That was Thursday. I got home as fast as I could, jumped in the car and drove to the Humane Society to check out the bunny and fill out an application for adoption and check if I could wait until I get back from Europe to adopt it. Of course I couldn't. But I liked the bunny. So they told me it would get spayed on Friday and I would have to come get it on Saturday. When I was supposed to be camping/at a wedding. Ugh. And so of course I made the rash decision to go for it.

And that also meant I needed the zillion bunny things that any good house rabbit needs, the main item being a cage. And cages that have sufficient room and flooring are expensive. BUT then I found out about "NIC Condos" - these build-it-yourself cages that are made from inexpensive materials. So...Friday I went out and bought all most of the stuff I needed except for the floor because when I was at Lowe's to get the floor their saw was broken, so I would have had to take home a gigantic piece of plywood and an even giganticer piece of panelboard. I then raced to the campground to set up the tent in the dark.

I awoke at 6 on Saturday and jumped in the car and drove back to my apartment to assemble the cage. Then I stopped by a different Lowe's that did have a working saw to get flooring materials. Then I drove to get the bunny. Then I drove back. Then I put the bunny in the cage without the floor on the vinyl in the kitchen while I finished making the floor. The bunny thought this a great opportunity to urinate everywhere except in the lovely litter box. And then she flipped over her food and her water dishes.

I cleaned everything up, moved the cage to the new floor, and found heavier dishes for the food and water. Then I cleaned myself up and went to the wedding and the reception. Then I stopped by the apartment to change into camping clothes (and clean up after the bunny, since she was still not using the litter box...I was beginning to doubt that she was actually litter trained as had been reported)...and I went back to the campsite...and had to walk the half mile from the parking lot to the site in the pitch dark since I had not remembered to grab my flashlight at 6a.m.

Ah. Well, that is how to not acquire a bunny!

At any rate, this new addition to my household is great. She doesn't like being brushed or handled very much, so she and I will be working on that. That food-and-wather dumping thing continued even with the heavier bowls, so I decided to get a water bottle and a pretty cool clamp-to-the-cage bowl so she can't make such a mess. And she finally settled down and uses the litter box like a good bunny. She doesn't chew on the electrical cords, but she does seem to have a fondness for one corner of the couch slipcover. Again...some work will be done.

So...here's Joelle!!And here she is in her cage, displaying how she uses the litter box and has convenient access to her non-tippable food and is in view of the non-tippable water...And tomorrow I will answer the question: what's in the bag?

homebody

I'm still in the process of unpacking my belongings and finding places to put new belongings that I am acquiring that weren't claimed by any of the four of us who lived in the old house, and actually that hasn't left me much time to be at my new home. However, last night I finally said goodbye to the old landlord, loaded up my car one last time with the rest of the stuff from the house, and set to work attempting to enjoy my new place. I felt so domestic, because I...

baked bread in my bread machine!

and it tastes good!

...and I vacuumed with the new vacuum I had to buy because of a Long, Bad, Aggravating Story!

it's little, it's green, and it weighs less than 12 pounds

...and I - well, I didn't actually knit last night, but I have been knitting my sock on the bus!

it feels a little funny

This is the Retro Rib Sock from Interweave Knits, and it is sure taking me a long time, but I like it. It even fits, so far. The bad update about this sock is I just had to join a new skein of yarn. Note that the sock is not finished yet. Also note that I only bought two skeins of the yarn when I purchased it last summer from the yarn store that closed. Uh oh...! I really had told myself I should make a toe-up sock so I wouldn't run out of yarn, but I really like this pattern and already had to change a lot of the figures because the Wildfoote yarn is a lot thinner than the yarn the pattern calls for. Not the best idea.

I weighed my current options and decided to just buy another skein. It would have been great if I could have matched dye-lots, but when I learned that Paradise Fibersactually had a skein of my Little Lilac and would send it to me for a small sum of money, I did it. Why? Because Wildfoote is made by Brown Sheep, and I once had to wait several months to get my Brown Sheep yarn. I do not want to wait a few months to get this yarn. Although...in all honesty, it may take me a few months to get to where I need that third skein... Nah, I bet I'll get pretty far on it if I take it with me to Europe. See all the thought that goes into these little decisions?

And...so that's what I've been doing at home! Of other interest, yesterday I also decided to burn some candles, because I never do and it's stupid that I have so many that just sit around. I learned why you shouldn't put a candle on a shelf, because I made a really beautiful dark brown singe spot on the shelf -- just below where Sheamus's tank is!!! Oops. You'd think I'd be a little smarter than that. Wonders never cease.

lonesome in blog land

It's strange but true: the authors of nearly every blog I read on a regular basis are on vacation at the same time! Okay, so it's only three people, but still. Normally, every day I pop on by at Alison's blue blog, Ruth's Woolyheaded blog, and my brother's blog. And for the past week, they've all been away from their normal internet connections as they travel far and wide throughout the world. It's so weird...! However shall I survive?

want vs. need

Someone I know, who is not a native English speaker, has caused me to note the very distinct difference between "want" and "need" and the fact that they are so often confused. This particular person, let's call it "he", has never used the word "want" in any conversation that I can recall. Instead, every place where I think he would say "want," he says "need."

I have an extra candy bar - do you need it? Those two need to get married. Do you need to tour Europe? Do you need to go to the concert?

It's amazing how this simple misuse of the word has caused me much confusion. How, for example, shoud you respond if someone asks you if you need to go have ice cream? I can think of very few, if any, situations in which ice cream would ever be a necessity...there are, however, many times that I would say I NEED ice cream. But the reality of the situation is, it's not required for my survival (by any stretch of the imagination).

The use of "need" instead of "want" is rather amusing, but it causes me to pause and consider how much I think I need and how much I actually just want.

alone and lonely

Lonely: It's a mood I get in whenever I finish visiting my family. Generally I get back to Pittsburgh, hide in my bedroom, and try to pull myself together, then maybe pop down to the living room to watch a movie with the roommates or go visit with the cats who don't care if I can't exactly explain my there are tears in my eyes. It takes a couple days to get back to normal, which is why I've finally realized that I shouldn't plan on returning to work the day after a Hometown visit - I'm there physically, but I'm 400 miles away mentally. I don't know if it's precisely lonliness, it's just...missing my family and the familiarity and the security and the love.

Combine that now with my new apartment. I was so excited to be getting a place of my own, so happy to be returning to my new place with its furniture and lots of great books to be put away... And I walk in it and put away a few things...and all I can think is, "I wish someone else was here." It hit me that Mom, who had shared the first several nights of my occupancy at the apartment, would not be coming to spend the night. It's just me...and Sheamus, and a lot of help he is - all he ever wants to do is eat (although, I must admit that when I walked in the door today he did not immediately do the "I'm starving!" dance he normally does when I come home from work -- he kind of acted like he missed me). There was also a catch-22 reaction when I listened to the new Harry and the Potters CD, after having very speedily read book 6 between Monday and Wednesday, and I started crying over the last two tracks.

I've quite forgotten what it's like to live alone. There are a lot of good things - nobody is complaining that there are things laying all over the place or making fun of me because I have so many bags and so much yarn that I am completely at a loss for where I am going to put them all. But there are lots of not very fun things, too, like not having someone there to talk to...and being kind of afraid that someone will break in...and hoping to not lose my keys because nobody else can let me in if I can't find them...feeling alone...

It's just a mood. I know that, and it will pass.

Welcome...home?

sights of pittsburgh

Things you might see if you spend a day with me in Pittsburgh...

The unique facade on an apartment building...Al Kaline up to bat at the 1974 All Star game - shown on the big screen at PNC Park during a rain delay...An appropriately licensed Saturn Ion in the parking lot of my workplace...Wild turkeys snooping around the gardens of Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park, just two miles from my current home...You just never know what you'll need a camera for!