Part 3

Oh man! I'm sorry I haven't posted in a week. Shame on me. I'm on the brink of finals and all fun things kind of disappeared into the periphery last week. The upside to being really good at time management is never having to pull all-nighters at the last minute. The downside is that right before finals, I'm trying to do classwork, research, and prepping for the exams and papers all at once...which make it more of a crunch time that finals itself, thus defeating the purpose of planning ahead.

Be patient with me for the next two weeks, as I am officially in Finals Madness, and please retroactively forgive me for going all MIA on you last week. Now on with the post.

Things about me (51-75)
51. I am very attached to my pillow. I carry it everywhere and find it hard to sleep on other pillows. I even took it with me when I studied abroad.

52. I find it endlessly amusing that people either think my sister and I look totally different (we have very different skin tones and coloration) and not related or virtually identical (but our bone structure is pretty similar). It’s quite polarizing.

What do you think?

53. My favorite movie of all time is Wages of Fear. It’s fantastic, with an ending that was once described by a Ed Chigliak on Northern Exposure as the definition of closure.

54. My friends and I sometimes play the if-you-were-a-fictional-character-who-would-you-be game. Jon is clearly the Dude from The Big Lebowski, and general consensus is that I am either Lily Tomlin’s character, Vivian, from I Heart Huckabees or Frylock from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Which is totally awesome.

55. I talk during movies. At the theater, at home, it doesn’t matter.

56. I am the biggest car singer ever. I belt and do those stupid I’m-sitting-but-I’m-actually-dancing movements that make you look like a total spaz.

57. If I had a spare couple hundred dollars, I would totally by myself SPSS, my preferred statistical analysis package, in order to do data analysis from home. ‘Cause there’s nothing better than running MANOVAs in your pj’s.

58. I had the following phrase engraved on the back of my iPod nano: “And tschuss balls to you, sir.”

59. I almost never wear jewelry or make-up.

60. I look way younger than I actually am. I regularly get carded going to R-rated movies, and I get stopped when I’m walking to my office once or twice a week by someone asking if I’m lost and looking for one of the intro psych experiments.

61. Sometimes when I’m bored or stressed out, I chase my cats around the apartment. I find their looks of annoyance endlessly uplifting for some reason.

62. Despite my klutziness, I’m really good at yoga poses that involve standing on one leg. I am terrible at downward-facing dog, though.

63. During high school, I drove a silver Chrysler Lebaron convertible with a broken speedometer that overheated so often that I kept a gallon of water in the trunk at all times.

64. Quite appropriately, I drove this car to go see Cake in concert.

65. My second major in college was Law and Society, but I never considered going into law.

66. I spent a summer couch-hopping in Boston. The only job I managed to get was a shelf-straightening position in the Harvard library system. I literally spent eight hours a day pulling books forward and then pushing them back so that they were all flush against the edge of the shelf. I didn’t even have to check see if they were in order.

67. I was obsessed with dinosaurs when I was little. I had a set of blow-up dinosaurs that I loved and I apparently spent the better part of a year refusing to change out a dress that had pterodactyls printed on it.

68. I spent a large part of my childhood watching Labyrinth and tend to quote sections of it at random.

69. I have phone issues. I’m not shy, but for some reason I can’t really bring myself to call people. I’m afraid that said phone call would be terribly obtrusive and awkward as a result.

70. I really love things like subatomic particles and dark matter. I’ve never taken physics, so I don’t really understand any of it, but I’m still captivated by quarks and charms and the like.

71. My father was a staunch atheist that refused to lie to his children about Santa Claus. So, I was that kid in kindergarten who spilled the beans about his nonexistence.

72. I have played Myst and all of its sequels twice through. I stayed on campus one spring break and my roommates came back to find our quad covered in scraps of paper with badly drawn maps and symbols on them.

73. Because I grew up in Texas, I will never get used to real seasons. When the temperature drops, my first reaction is that it’s just a fluke, and I tend to get confused about it still being cold three months later. By the time spring rolls around, I feel betrayed by the weather and I don’t trust that the warmth will hold until about July.

Damn you, Jack Frost!

74. I hate tying shoelaces. It’s too fussy an inefficient, and besides, Velcro has made laces obsolete.

75. My father worked for our local newspaper when I was a kid. Once, he took me with him when he was writing a story about a local sighting of the Virgin Mary’s face on the side of an old refrigerator.

Knitterly happenings and acquisitions
Guess what?! I have a finished object to show you! Aren't you excited?

(click for bigger)

My friends Van and Jen came in to visit from Chicago this weekend, which gave me a much needed break from Finals Madness. While they were here, Van and I got to talking and both decided that we needed a pair of yoga socks. After some searching, I found that I had a bunch of Malabrigo left from this, and set to work. Van did some swatching before he started his to get some practice on the binding off/casting on bit than makes the heel opening, and his swatch turned out to be a perfect fit for Fatty. He was actually completely unperturbed by us putting the yoga sock on him, and only looks like he's struggling in this picture.
Yarn - the leftover Malabrigo in bobby blue. Probably about 3/4 of a skein.
Needles - 32" addi turbo size 5s for most of it, with the ribbing on the openings worked on 29" size 3 Inox grays.
Pattern - my own, cobbled together from the free pattern I found on this website and the picture of this not-free pattern. Despite the cankle look in the first picture, I wanted the tops to be a little slouchy and the instep to be fitted, so I worked some random increases and decreases on the top half. I also did the heel openings as an afterthought heel with waste yarn.

Best moment of the day


While they were here, Jen and Van made delicious guacamole! There is always good food when we get together, which is awesome, since the quickest way to my heart is through my tastebuds. The avocado and garlicky goodness was devoured in the blink of an eye.

Well, technically, it was the best moment of the weekend, but who's counting?