A Change of Course (or what I've been up to since Christmas)

So, as you may have noticed, there's been a dreadful lack of knitting content lately. Or any content lately. Now, I did finish the fargyle socks I was making for Jon and have yet to post about them, but that's a product of my inherent laziness and my inability to find my camera. And I'm working on a nice brown sweater with a really kickass nickline (it's all floppy and asymmetrical), but it's at that stage where you have to pay attention because you need to separate the stitches for the sleeves and join the body peices together and I just have been able to muster the attention for it. But I will. Because that neckline is the shit. You will see. What I mean to say is that I haven't given up knitting entirely, I've just cooled on it a bit.

And the reason for that is that all that time I used to use cranking out socks (or blogging about them once they were done) I now use to write fantasy fiction about elves. Usually gay elves. I don't really know why all my protagonists end up being male gay elves, but they do. And this is quite shocking to me (the writing part, not the gay elf part, that is perhaps not all that surprising).

See, I've always been a reader. I didn't really have a choice in the matter, I went straight from Red Fish, Blue Fish to Beowulf. I am so not kidding about that at all. My dad was a bit of a literature pusher, so I was the dorky kid reading The Mysterious Stranger and Canterbury Tales and Dune in, like, the fifth grade. Blessing and a curse. Anyway, to make a long story short, like most voracious readers I kind of secretly wanted to be a writer when I grew up. So, when I was seven or eight or so, I tried my hand at writing some short stories of my own. One, I remember, was set from the perspective of a robot. It was ver HAL 9000, or it would have been if I could get more than five pages of it out. Another one was about a group of anthropologists who unearth a robot (by the way, my robot fetish remains strong to this day). That one, too, went nowhere. I just couldn't ever seem to get anything to happen in them and there always seemed to be too many characters and not enough space for them. So I gave up, and for the next 15 years thought of myself as decidedly not a fiction writer. Just didn't have a knack for it. And that was that.

But then, Jon started the whole Jarthen thing and I pushed him, kind of hoping to live the glorious life of a fiction writer vicariously through him. I outlined with him, and made him do some worldbuilding, and edited the stuff he wrote. The worldbuilding I found I really enjoyed - check out the Jarthenpedia for proof. Over a hundred posts, all thoroughly categorized and linked up with each other. Jon was all "check it, you're creative!" And I was all "nah, I'm just a mega-dork making the Silmarillion to your Lord of the Rings and nobody really ever reads the Silmarillion except for those dudes who speak Elvish, do they?" And I thought that was that.

But then, I started writing Jarthen, too. And I sucked at it at first. Like, so so bad. All of my parts came out like a script -- a line about where the characters were and then endless, unadorned dialogue. But whatever, I kept churning it out and making Jon fill in the holes. But it was his story and the end result was his. No biggie. Still not a writer, really just a producer-of-dialogue-templates.

And things kept chugging along like that right up until last Thanksgiving when Jon and I decided that two of our relatively minor characters were going to hook up near the end of Book I (and I'd love to tell you who, but it hasn't been posted yet). And something inside me just sort of latched onto it - there was this moment that popped into my head when he said it, a scene so clearly drawn and totally visualized that it could have come straight out a movie and I couldn't shake it. Something about those two characters ending up together just made them so real all of a sudden, it revealed all these tensions and all these possibilities and all I wanted to do was write that scene right then.

I didn't though, because I couldn't bring myself to write anything out of order (I have since abandoned this). Instead, I used that week I had off for Christmas (remember? Back when I was a hermit?) and churned out 30-odd paged single spaced in order to get to it. Characters died without warning - Tlin was never supposed to die, he just did and I couldn't see to stop it - other characters made mush and still others got their little hearts broken all so I could get to this scene. And the scene was awesome. Well, it was alright, but I still love it and it was totally kickass to write it.

Anyway, something happened during my hermitage. It was like a switch flipped. Before that, writing had always been this incredibly slow, deliberate process guided by a ridiculously long outline. And after, it was this easy, effortless thing. Words just flew out of their own accord (not necessarily always good words, but words nonetheless). I finished my part of Book I within a month, and Jon did not. So, I sat around, frustrated and irritable, and started something else. Just a short story, I thought, about one of the gay dudes from that kickass scene that started all this off to begin with.

And then the strangest thing happened. The short story ended up being 213 pages long. It went from "oh, I think I'll just work on a little story" to "you know what, I think this really works better as a novella" to "fuck, this is a novel. What the hell?" Yeah, within ten days I'd churned out 113,491 words about those two gay elf dudes. After it was done, I wasn't really sure what to do with myself. Jon still wasn't even close to done with his half of Book I.

So I started something else. There's a character that's just about to be introduced in the Jarthen blog, he's only in two scenes, but he was one of those characters that just came out so fully formed that I kind of became infatuated with him. So I decided to write something about him - a novella that detailed his culture (he was not, in fact, gay or an elf) and his perspective on some of the scenes in the book. Luckily, it remained a novella. But his novella spawned another novella, and that one spawned another novella. And the three of them together, according to Wikipedia which at this point I would trust with my life, make up a novita. And by the end of February, there was another 160 pages in the can.

Jon was still not done with Book I. I was shocked at this point with my apparent unfettered prodcutivity. The seven-year-old inside me kept scowling and pointing out that all 373 pages I'd managed to write must be utter shit since I couldn't get out 5 way back in the day. I told this to Jon, who in his infinite, unflappable wisdom just shrugged and said maybe I just wasn't a short story writer.

I spent March compiling Book I (or what we had of it) into a manuscript and tidying up the blogs. Until I was struck by a scene for Book 2. A set of scenes for Book 2. A delicious storyline for Book 2 featuring (prepare yourself) gay elves! So I wrote a bit of that. But how much can you really write of that before you take over the book and it's no longer collaborative? So I put it down and twiddled my thumbs for a while. I started playing Warhammer Online. I became really obsessed with TV blogs. But I was, like, fiending for the writing. I was all nervous and twitchy, I practically had the shakes. I really, really needed to start something new.

But what? I wanted to write something that was in the Jarthenverse but not actually related to Jarthen. Both the things I'd written so far had overlapped to some degree with Book I, so I couldn't really get started on editing them until we finished not just Book I but Books II and III, as well. And I kind of wanted to do something we could possibly serialize in the inevitable gap between the end of posting for Book I and the start of posting for Book II. So I thought "Aha! I will write an interrelated set of short stories taking place in the City of Mages, because it's a cool place and we haven't really done much with it. And maybe if I do it all Martian Chronicles style I'll trick myself into actually getting out a short story!"

I started jotting down these ideas for plots and characters and places. And then some of the characters got a little clearer and I drew pictures of them and wrote out these overly elaborate backstories and I had ten or so within two weeks. And another ten or so after another week along with a map of the City (I'm sure at some point some or all of this will make it onto the blog). And a few days after that I started writing out these little scenes, a few pages here and there. Sometimes one character, sometimes another. No real direction or anything.

I honestly thought they'd work as short stories until the characters started popping up in each others' scenes and the storylines turned out not to be all that distinct after all. Yeah, so now I have a 190 page novel about assasins and identity crises and more gay elves.

Finally, Jon finished the book! So I edited the bejesus out of it really fast and Jon edited the bejesus of it much much slower and I was left bored and twitchy again. And now I have a novella that is essentially a prequel for the 190 page novel and 3/4 of a novella based on characters from that novel a good deal later down the line and about 30 odd pages of scenes that will likely become a sequel to it that has something to do with pirates. In the desert. Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

So, that's why I haven't been knitting so much. And I still can't bring myself to think of myself as a writer - it just feels wrong and off and patently untrue, kind of like I'm wearing a blue shirt backwards and telling you it's a white one. But I have been writing like it's the end of days. And as you can tell from this, I write at some length¹.

Bottom line is, I'll be blogging again but probably more about gay elves and cat people and typologies of magic than about socks and yarn and needle sizes. And this is mostly because otherwise it's all I talk about with Jon anymore and I think he's about to shoot himself if he hears me talk about so-and-so's difficulty accepting his sexuality because he's having problems integrating the warring cultural identities that come with being half-human and half-elf. He's a nice boy and I think he deserves a break. And blogs don't have feelings.
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¹This post is about four pages long single spaced.

I will post again soon

But for now I'm trapped in the Kingdom of Rust.

It is possibly the best album ever. I'm in a Doves coma.

My apologies.

First FO of 2009: Wheelie Socks for Dani

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They are very, very, late, but Dani has her socks! And she loves them, too, which is nice for everyone involved. She should though, since I let her go through my socks and pick a pattern she liked and go through my sock yarn and pick what she wanted them made out of. That mercifully took the guesswork out of it for me. Of course, this means that the sock queue needs updating:

1. Charade socks for Brian
2. River Rapid socks for Jennie
3. Vinnland socks for Van
4. Millicent socks for Sam
5. Rhiannon socks for Mandy
6. Spiral boots socks for Leila
   
7. Socks for Mom
8. Socks for Stepdad
9. Something sockish for Dani (possibly booties?)
   
10. Indestructible socks for Jon

So close to done! Actually, I'm closer than this would suggest - for reasons to be detailed at some later point I think Van's socks are on permanent hiatus, and I've actually started Jon's socks (which will hopefully be durable) already. I will conquer you yet, Sock Queue!!

Yarn - Hipknits sock yarn in pudding (100 grams, 100% wool). I bought this yarn way, way back when I first started the sock queue because I liked the contrast in the colorway, and planned to make socks for myself from them. I even started a sock, once, but I didn't like the way the pattern looked and ripped it. It's found a better home now.

Needles - Addi turbo size 1 circulars. So trusty.

Pattern - I used this pattern, which I adapted from the Wheelie steering wheel cover from Knitty. I love this pattern, and will probably mae myself another pair of these socks. They're stretchy without being all lose and floppy and still fun to knit because of the dropped stitiches. Here are the modifications:

• I did these toe-up with a short-row heel instead of top-down.
  
• I shifted the pattern on the top of the foot over by one stitch, so that the first and last stitiches were purls instead of doing it as a straight 2x2 rib.
• I worked a 2x2 rib (no increases or drops) on the back of the leg for the five rounds at the start of the leg section. It just looked nicer this way.

2008 in Review

(click for bigger and to link to this stuff)

I didn't knit as much as I did last year as the year before, which I chalk up to a vicious combination of warcraft, gift-knitting, and projects that just fizzled out. I'm going to take an extended hiatus from knitting for others (the lone exception being the pair of socks I'm half done with for Dani), and I think I'm getting some decent sweater-mojo going. I did stock up a lot of yarn I plan on going through this year though, which should be quite satisfying indeed.

FO: Orange Tweed Boatneck

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Got this one in just under the wire! It's been done for a week or so, but I needed to to some finishing and some serious blocking before I could blog about it. It's a very simple sweater - top-down raglan with garter stitch cuffs and a ribbed hem, and the rest in stockinette - but I really like the way it turned out. I'm realizing more and more that I like to wear fairly simply looking sweaters (though more interesting construction is always a plus), but I like to knit crazy-intricate stuff that I don't ever seem to actually wear. Cruel twist of fate, I guess.

Yarn - 6 skeins of Classic Elite Skye Tweed (100% wool, 110 yards) in MacAlister Orange. This yarn is beyond awesome! I got it on closeout from Webs a really long time ago, maybe a year or so back, to make a sweater vest and just sat on it. An then I decided I should make an actual sweater out of it and had just enough for elbow-length sleeves.

Needles - 24" size 5 Inox grey circulars I think. Hmmm....I should resize and sort my needles.

Pattern - Made it up as I went along, but as I said, it's got a really basic construction and no fancy stitchwork anywhere. The garter stitch cuffs on the neck and sleeves were knit flat, and the rest of it was worked in the round. The mother-of-pearl buttons were salvaged from a shirt that got caught in a nasty flood when I moved ot Michigan for grad school. I used these buttons for my very first sweater ever, too.

PS - if you have a more creative name for this sweater, let me know, because I clearly don't.

Christmas Hermit: Day 6

Today has been....odd.

• Last night, I kept myself up until 4:30am writing posts on the Jarthenpedia (and I am now completely caught up with that, so woot) and then couldn't sleep. So I started Part III of Book I, which I have been dying to do since Thanksgiving.

• I worked on Jarthen until about 8:30, when the benedryl I took kicked in and knocked me out until 3:30ish. I am not a person who takes naps and I have developed a rather high tolerance to benedryl over the years, so this was surprising to me.

• I have spent the last 7 hours in a writing cocoon. Turns out I have three different storylines to write over 4 chapters, so I picked storyline and wrote it chapter by chapter (calling Jon a lot while doing so with such important questions as "can it be the brothel's Madame?" and "do you think satyrs should have an accent?").

• I have not turned on the TV once today, played warcraft, or knit anything, and spent most of the day with few lights on. All of that is very odd, too.

• Now, I'm going to shower and start the next storyline. Go go sleep deprivation!
  

Christmas Hermit: Day 5

The Good:

• Heard that people received (and enjoyed) their gifts. Woot!

• finished blocking my sweaterand finished knitting a sock for Dani. Expect pictures after I come out of my fortress of solitude.
  

• organized my research stuff, which sorely needed it.

• found myself transfixed by the living train wreck that is a The Real Housewives of Atlanta marathon.
  

• New posts are up on Jarthen and the Jarthenpedia!

The Bad:

• I am almost out of soup: the squash soup is gone and I've already eaten 2 out of the 3 jars of tomato soup mom gave me for Christmas

• I didn't brave the outdoors and feed my advisor's cat, though I probably should have.

• I bought The Women off payperview last night. It was definitely too lame to stay up late watching or spend money on, and I'm not entirely sure why I did either.
  

Christmas Hermit: Day 4

Not that much to report on:

• Watched Zodiac and Priscilla Queen of the Desert last night. Both were excellent - especially 70s-out Mark Ruffalo running around in bow ties.

• finished the last of the now-famous squash soup

• woke up around noon today and have been watching House and make a budget for me and Jon's finances until now. Realized going through our records that I eat a lot of tacos and Jon tends to buy a lot of stuff under $10. Exciting way to spend boxing day.
  

Christmas Hermit: Day 3 (the big day, as it were)

I woke up late again, around 2 pm. Probably not a habit I should get into, but hell, it's Christmas! why not?

• blocked a sweater I haven't yet blogged about. Expect pictures soon.

• now halfway through 77, seriously considering leveling more tonight.

• been watching the 3rd season of Dexter all day on demand. Jimmy Smits is sleezier looking than usual with a tiny mustache. And Vince Masuka is the shit.

• have not been paying much attention to the cats, but they also seem less whiny and attention starved than when other people are here. Will ponder this paradox later.

• ate delicious soup but no noodle bowls. Only one bowl remaining of the butternut squash soup.

Now for presents!

• thank you Dani for Mamma Mia and The Happening, both excellent additions to my now very organized DVD collection

• thank you Sanders/Mesler/Cantu clan for the following:
• • the three jars of amazing tomato bisque from La Madeline, my very favorite soup ever
  
  
  • this awesome monkey hat for Jon
  
  • and the best gift ever....ROBO-DUCK!
  
  

Christmas Hermit: Day 2

I woke up very late today - about 2:30pm, which means I got about twelve hours of sleep. Sleep is so awesome.

• In the last 24 hours, I have watched The English Patient (which I love, and I had totally forgotten Naveen Andrews played Kip. I was all, what the hell is Sayid doing in this movie?), The Road to El Dorado (which I also love. Re-watching it, I also realized that the I totally ripped off the dynamic between Tulio and Miguel and used it as the starting point for Nel and Lem. And if you don't know who they are, go read yourself some Jarthen.), and The Lions, The Witch and The Wardrobe (the one with Tilds Swinton. Honestly, I don't know why I'm watching this, I really hate everything about it except Tilda Swinton, and Narnia-related things tend to just piss me off. I mean, have you read The Last Battle? And what's up with the Calormens totally being Muslim and constantly called 'evil' and 'dirty'? Ok, I'll just stop there.)

• I leveled my priest to 77 today and got the cold-weather flying skill. Think I might need a day off of levelng, as it's starting to feel more obligatory than enjoyable.

• I took a shower and messed around with my hair. I wondered what the fauxhawk would look like without the natural texture in my hair, so I flat ironed it. Turns out I look like a Dragonball-Z character.

• Worked on some Jarthenpedia posts about the Border Wars, which I may finish tonight.

• Ate some squash soup and noodle bowls. The soup running low, which saddens me.

• Completely and totally reorganized my DVDs. And they needed it badly, because Jon has this habit of just shoving discs in random cases. So mostly, I just put the DVDs in their right cases and then put them back in a different system (which fallows below).

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Christmas Hermit: Day 1

It's that time again! Really, it was a half-day today because Jon left this afternoon, but whatever. Because this whole hermit-thing seems mysterious and concerning to come folks, I've decided to demystify it by noting what I do while everyone's gone. It'll be a boring few posts, so I'd suggest only reading it if you feel strangely compelled or are actually interested (though the latter case may be more odd than me actually spending the holidays alone). Today:

• Jon drove me to my advisor's house and I fed his cat. I also removed a dead mouse from his basement. I should go again before people come back here, but there was (no exaggeration) a foot of snow on his landing, and conditions were such that I left a ridiculous amount of food for the cat , Clara, in case I couldn't bring myself to go back out there again.

• I ate some delicious butternut soup, generously made for me by Jon last night from a recipe of Van's.

• I completely reorganized my yarn stash, which was quite satisfying.

• I moved my desktop computer to the coffee table, the better to watch TV and play warcraft from. I kind of like it here.

• I watched the first season of Entourage on demand. I like it more than I expected.
  

Stay tuned for more boring stuff tomorrow.

FO: Rhiannon Knee Socks for Mandy

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These have been done for awhile too, although not since August, like Sam's. More like late-September/early October. These socks will be showing up for Mandy at Christmas, which I feel a little bad about since everyone else has had their socks for awhile now. But it is a more appropriate time to get knee socks....so I guess it all works out. And now for the really satisfying part of finishing them:

1. Charade socks for Brian
2. River Rapid socks for Jennie
3. Vinnland socks for Van
4. Millicent socks for Sam
5. Rhiannon socks for Mandy
6. Spiral boots socks for Leila
   
7. Socks for Mom
8. Socks for Stepdad
9. Something sockish for Dani (possibly booties?)
   
10. Indestructible socks for Jon

On to the knitting specs!

Yarn - maybe 3 1/2 skeins of possibly Lang Jawoll Cotton (49% new wool, 35% cotton, and 16% nylon)? I'm really not sure about the yarn. It's a great thing black and green tweed with a strang of gold running through it, and I know I picked something with a decent amount of cotton in it so that Mandy's legs would bake in the socks. I'm pretty sure that it's Lang Jawoll because it came with reinforcement thread (which I totally didn't use), and I think that brand does that. Note to self - take better notes.

Needles - addi turbo 1's, same as Sam's

Pattern - Rhiannon by Cookie A. Again, I didn't actually read the pattern, just references the charts (noticing a pattern with this?). Here are the mods...well the one's I'm aware of and remember making:

• worked it toe up with a short row heel. Woo! Toe up 4-eva!
  
• according to Mandy's measurements, I bet the calf shaping got tweaked a bit. I ended up increasing every other row about 2 inches past the ankle
• I didn't knit foldover cuffs, just ribbed ones
• I threaded elastic thread around the top edge of the cuffs to prevent them from falling down, like Leila and Sam's reportedly have been doing (Note to Leila and Sam: check out the inside of Mandy's socks to see how you should fix yours, if you so desire).

FO: Millicent Knee Socks for Sam

So.....this is really old news. I finished these and gave these to Sam (along with the socks I made for my Mom, stepdad, and sister) when I was visiting Texas way way back in August. Sorry about the hold up. Wait! You know what this means:

1. Charade socks for Brian
2. River Rapid socks for Jennie
3. Vinnland socks for Van
4. Millicent socks for Sam
5. Rhiannon socks for Mandy
6. Spiral boots socks for Leila
   
7. Socks for Mom
8. Socks for Stepdad
9. Something sockish for Dani (possibly booties?)
   
10. Indestructible socks for Jon

Woot.

Yarn - Knitpicks Risata (42% Cotton, 39% Superwash Merino Wool, 13% Polyamide, 6% Elite Elastic) in Navy. I thought knitting with this yarn would be weird and awkward - that it would be to springy to get in the groove with - but it turned out to be kind of nice to knit with. And good sock yarn, though, in hindsight maybe not the best choice for these socks (the elastic makes it slightly nubbly, which makes stitch definition on the laces cuffs less than awesome). It wasn't quite stretchy enough, either, probably due to the high cotton content, and the cuffs sag like all hell¹.

Needles - Hmmm....it's been awhile now, but I think I made this using size 1 (which is really more of a 1.5 compared to my other needles) addi turbo circulars.

Pattern - Millicent from Cookie A. I really didn't read the pattern at all (even though I bought it), just knit it toe-up using the pictures. I just looked really closely to figure out the toe, then it was golden. I increased 2 at the center of the back of the leg every 5 rows to make the calf shaping starting an inch or so into the leg. I did read the charts for the lace cuff.

¹Sam, I'm including some elastic thread in the pickage of christmas stuff for you and Leila to fix the cuff problems with. Just a heads up.

My new haircut: El Cockatiel

Yep, I cut it all off again. I've been cutting my own hair for years (because when your hair is thick and curly and you can't afford to/are too lazy to find anyplace better than Supercuts, you learn to cut your own or die trying), and it's basically one of those things I do when I'm bored or frustrated.

I had been thinking about a sort of fauxhawky-crestish thing like this (but, you know curly) on and off since I first saw season 3 of the L Word:

this, by the way is the only likable thing the character Jenny has ever done on that show. Also? It took me forever to find a picture of it on the interwebs

I just decided to go with it one day a few weeks ago after I had been laid up with a migraine and was officially done teaching. I was afraid that if I had cut my hair dramatically different twice in one semester it would scream FLAKE to my students. And it would have if I had stopped halfway through:

it's like Simply Red, but brunette...and with Jon's foot

Right? Anyway, this is the finished product:

by the way, that's my office in the background. Exciting, huh?

I have to say, I really love it. It's very much the result of knowing the peculiarities of my hair like the back of my hand, though. I cut the back and sides just short enough that they wouldn't curl, and kept the crown about and inch longer than that so the natural texture of my hair would do it's thing. I sleep on my side in such a way that cause my hair to stick up like that already, so I really just have to slick down the sides and back and stick some styling wax in the hawk part to keep it as is and I'm done.

By the way, this is the origin for my personal nickname for the 'do.

Elvis's pompadour

+

the crest from a cockatiel

=

my new hairdo

Other interesting tidbits that transpired during FGFO

1) I got a new iPod because Jon's ass made a slow, steady progressive attack on it that resulted in a more and more busted screen that recently became unusable. I am seriously considering not letting him touch the new one (which has DO NOT SMASH ME! engraved on it) as it seems more delicate than the last.

2) I wore the most ridiculous outfit ever to escort Dani to the car to get diet cherry cokes from it to feed her horrible addiction. See?



Yeah, bet you're glad that's burned into your retinas. Best part? I totally almost got hit by a car. Could've died....in that outfit. what a way to go that would've been.

3) My friend Cathleen and I carved small melons well after Halloween. Belated Melon O'Lanterns, Huzzah!

We had pumpkins but didn't get around to carving them. Now squirrels are harvesting the seeds from them and becoming strangely domesticated outside our front door.

4) I saw Joan Baez in concert (with Dani again - she's a fixture of these fun things, huh?)!! It was so awesome - she totally made digs at Bob Dylan and played a lot of songs I was really hoping for. And Dani and I were possibly the youngest people in the audience by a margin of about 25 years.

Next I shall discuss my new hairdo in depth. So stay tuned for that (if you're interested, I mean).

Jon is so weird.

Exhibit A: Magical static-y hair.



Exhibit B: Comatose warcraftin'.



Exhibit C: He swoons when exercising his core.



Exhibit D: He hangs out bare-assed on the toilet...for no reason.


Exhibit E: All of this was posted with his full knowledge and (enthusiastic) consent. True story.

Never a dull moment, right?

A brief glimpse into the future...

Now that all the FGFO madness is done, I've got some catching up to do. Notably:

• A new haircut. Yes, another one.
• Awesome knee socks.
• More awesome knee socks!
• 3/4 of a sweater I haven't ever posted about.

Exciting times.

FGFO part 4

Here we wrap up this year's fierce competition - but stay tuned, because I'm planning on posting something at the conclusion of this crazy odyssey (like all good reality TV shows have)!

FGFO part 3

Witness the athleticism and grace with which the competitors shovel watermelon into their faces. Truly a sight to behold.



Stay tuned for the inspiring conclusion, which will be posted soon!

FGFO halftime show: My birthday!

I turned 24 last week! That means I'm in my mid-twenties, and I have been warned by several people independently that it's all downhill from here and to prepare myself, as best as one can, for the dreaded quarter-life crisis which is surely lurking around every corner. So far so good, though.

I took my birthday totally off from school. Moved office hours, refused to come in for meetings, the whole shebang. I slept in (which was great) and then popped in Excalibur¹ and chopped my hair off. See?


I think it was time. The long hair was a hassle, what with it swallowing pocket change and clogging shower drains.

All in all, very successful, but more because people are awesome than that I gave myself a haircut. Aside from the lovely posts Jon wrote for me here and Dani wrote here, along with some mushful emails from Jennie and Tamar, Jen and Van came to visit! The best part? They made the foor of the gods - cashew cookies. Seriously, I beg them to make them every time I visit them.

Last but not least, my friend Cathleen surprised me with this:


There's a running joke in our research lab that I have a sketchy van that I use to lure unwitting naive data into which I then have my way with. This thing is going proudly on my desk forevermore.
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¹I just got this back from Tamar last month. For some reason over a year ago, a CD of her dad's musical stylings would up in the DVD case and vice versa. Basically, she highjacked it from me.