omgnorokureyonomg!

Check out my new baby.  While you’re at it, can you say impulse buy?

My syntax professor dropped a bomb today. A bomb of flowers and kittens and shiny things. Our second midterm? Cancelled. A replacement assignment? Cancelled.   I was so unbelievably excited, and I had just picked up my tips from work, so I popped on over to Soft Horizons for a celebration. I’m knitting my mother some thank-you socks, and they are just so hard to put down. I can’t wait to see what colour they’ll be next!

It’s my first time knitting with Noro, and I must say that I am hooked. It’s lovely. I also have learned to knit toe-up socks, and  I actually enjoy knitting socks now! I never understood people who were sock-knitters, but I really quite like it. Unfortunately I destroy socks, so I  don’t ever really want to make any for myself, but they do make lovely gifts.

I have to get back to the socks, they’re singing that siren song…

Apologies for the lack of daylight.

gonna catch me ridin’ dirty

My brother came on Monday and installed a wireless router so we wouldn’t have to  have cords all over the damned place (Comcast charges something like an extra 30 dollars a month for this service that my brother provided for free, with a router that he just randomly had laying around his room. Yay techie siblings). However, this morning I get up to finish my syntax paper and guess what’s not working? And guess where I need to get information from? Right. So I made tea, scarfed something similar to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then speed-walked like a middle-aged soccer mom to campus (my bike is currently out of commission AGAIN). I’ve got most of my analysis finished, but I honestly don’t know how to answer the last part. My response to this? Facebook and blogroll. Maybe somewhere in someone’s knitting or vegan food blog, someone will have analysed a language spoken by 70 people somewhere in Brazil and will just happen to post about their object relational systems.  Maybe?

I finished Matt’s slippers yesterday, and will get pictures of them up soon. I also started on a lovely diamond pattern scarf to keep myself entertained until my box’o'yarn arrives and I can dive into my knitting pool for the spring. I don’t usually care for knitting scarves, but I needed something one-skeiny, andI’ve already knit a hat with the same yarn (I am currently wearing said hat) and for some reason it just seems plain wrong to have two hats knit out of the same yarn.

I just spoke with someone from my syntax class who reassured me on my length – these assignments are usually 10 pages long and I’ve only got about 4 so far – and she also told me where to head for my final answer. The great thing about this class is that you can blatantly answer ‘I have no clue what this is’ as long as you explain in detail why you don’t know. In fact,the only 100% I ever got on an assignment was when I got the analysis dead wrong. Oh, linguistics, I love you.

Are you an indirect object or a secondary object?

Life has been pleasantly full of breathing time for a little bit. So I took that time and used it to do absolutely nothing. On the one hand this was bad. On the other hand…this was soooooo good.

I slept a lot, cleaned up the house so that it  looks decent and house-ish and not like someone just vomited their stuff in it and then passed out outside. I also picked up Kingdom Hearts which I haven’t played in AGES and worked on finishing that. Still cursing my way through the final boss battle though. Too out of practice, it would seem!

I tried to finish my sewing project but I gave up trying to hem a pair of  pants without an ironing board. It’s just not working for me! I don’t have any other appropriate place for ironing besides the round kitchen table, and I’m just going to have to wait until I have a few dollars to spare for a table-top one.

I knitted a tiny bit, but mostly I prepared myself for knitting! I have projects picked out and in my rav.queue, and a whole big box of juicy yarn coming to make those projects. I wanted to structure my knitting a bit, since it usually just culminates me in me floundering and trying to start seven projects at once – all without the proper gauge, etc…  I also decided not to do anything big – I really wanted to do Thermal, but I finally convinced myself to keep everything low-intensity. When summer comes, I can ramp it up! But I want to see if my lack of good FOs has more to do with poor planning skills or poor knitting skills before I get too adventerous. So here is what is on the bill for Spring Knitting ‘09!

River Tam

Simon Tam

Rose Red

Karaoke Cable Scarf

Ondine: Sleeves for a Mermaid

and Ziggy

I also need to find a good sock yarn so that I can make my mother some socks as a present for all of the work that she did cleaning my apartment. I think that maybe my present to her could be not screaming at her for deciding not to help me pay my double rent after I signed the contract but she doesn’t see it that way, so I’d better do something nice for her so I don’t end up in an even worse situation with her. Have I mentioned that I can’t wait to be living far away from the parents with my own stable, stable income? /rant.

I have to go finish my attempt at a vegan shepherd’s pie, but I will leave you with some eye candy:

The kitteh quilt that my brother and I made my mom for winter holiday.

Complete with “helpers”.

And of course, my only FOs for this time around since I cannot even find Shads’ birthday presents since I moved (oops?) to finish them off, MY SLIPPERS!

Matt’s slippers are just about finished, and they are a bit nicer looking, since I actually planned the colour-change in his. Yay cozy feet!

You spin me right round

I have internets! Yaaay!

This has been a really rough week. All of the consequences of a mid-term move are catching up with me in a really bad way. I knew I’d have to push myself really hard to get through the last two weeks. I did, and it was fine. But now it’s not ending, and I still find myself in a house that is utter chaos and dust (better now that I finally located a dustpan for sweepage. That’s right. I’ve been here for two weeks and haven’t yet been able to sweep. Gross). I just had a mini-freakout and I’m feeling very unpleasant. I get anxiety attacks something fierce, and it’s been awhile since they’ve come on but all it took was a bad day followed by Matt not being able to be there for me because he’s in a similar position and BAM everything is back.

I’m feeling really guilty about making this move – I decided that I had to do it because I wasn’t capable of the bike rides, but now I’ve moved and my store won’t transfer me and I’m stuck with even longer bike rides to work. And from work. In the dark, after 8 hours of standing on my feet. I’m tired and my stomach is in knots every time I contemplate these rides and I just don’t know what to do. I certainly can’t get a new job, not with the way the economy is going. I am also constantly worried about being let go from work.

I took last night off to relax and knit and watch My Fair Lady, but all it did was push me further behind and just tighten that knot in my stomach.

It seems like everything I try to do to make things better for us just takes us a step backwards and I’m starting to second guess every tiny thing that I do, and that just makes my anxiety grow and grow and grow. That being said, I have to go do some work on my homework. This will be the third attempt at the assignment, and hopefully this time I’m doing it right.  I want y’all to beat me with large sticks if I ever decide again that I should take three upper division linguistics classes all at once. I mean it. Large sticks with pointy bits.  I say this now, but I promise that as soon as I’ve finished my last final I will start to think “Oh, but this next term won’t be so bad and I’ll be able to handle this and this and this”. The response to that thinking is a swift hit of a  stick and an emphatic “NO! BAD ANI! NO! DROP THAT CLASS RIGHT NOW!  BAD GIRL ANI! BAD!” Okay? Okay.

I need some fine wine, and you, you need to be nicer

Another mini-update, since I promised I would.

I am swamped in school stuff and general life stuff. I still don’t have internet, but am using the time so generously given me by Starbucks Coffee Co., who decided that I didn’t need to come in until 2, instead of 1. However, I was informed of this at 12:30….and it takes me 45 bloody minutes to bike here and I leave early enough to get changed and un-sweaty before starting my shift. So I’ve been hanging out here, seething and wishing I’d brought my flash drive which has all of my Phonetics homework on it. I have everything that I need for my Syntax assignment, but analysis of alignment in Nepali is really something that needs quiet and allows me to curse out loud and throw things whenever I need. Starbucks does not provide those comforts.

Last term I complained a lot that I would have a massive onslaught of WORKEXAMSPAPEROMGOMGOMGDEATH and then a week with not even a course reading to do. But this term I am finding that preferable to the steady stream of nonsense that won’t end. I have a syntax analysis assignment due every week (think of a comlicated calculus assignment…after which you have to write 8 pages discussing it), phonetics busywork due every other week, and sociolinguistics book reports due every other week. Plus midterms and papers sprinkled throughout.This week:

Monday: Syntax Assignment

Tuesday: Sociolinguistics Midterm

Wednesday: Phonetics Assignment

followed by:

Monday: Syntax Assignment, Phonetics Midterm

Tuesday: Sociolinguistics Paper + article summary.

And that research assistant position that I took on voluntarily. When am I going to find the time to write up my own phonology for a language that I don’t speak without actually having taken a phonology course?

WTF? Am I made of discourse analysis? I guess that’s why Spike called this the UltraMegaDeathTrack towards a BA in linguistics. Stupid UltraMegaDeath.

In other news, I pulled out my sewing machine last night and had a go at the pants I started making the summer.

Good news: I’ve lost almost 3 inches around my hips.

Bad news: I’ve lost almost 3 inches around my hips.

So I ripped it all out and re-sewed and then did it wrong and ripped and re-sewed, etc… And after an hour and a half I ended  up proud of being precisely where I had started off, except in the right size. Oh, you crafts.

I have done no knitting because my wrist is still quite painful, but I am designing slipper socks in my mind.

I should probably have another go at some Nepali alignment, and then it’s coffee-serving delight.

no one in the whole world can ever compare

No pictures yet, as my camera is still hanging out in the old apartment. That, and I don’t have internets in my house yet, because Comcast is evil. They won’t switch us over until the eleventh! So I am pondering breaking that contract and getting internet through ATT wireless – Starbucks employees get a discount now, so it would be a LOT cheaper. I don’t know if its any good though….

We’re moved (mostly) into the new house, but as I mentioned before, I have had midterm exams, reading, and papers due in a steady stream. I finally got my room mostly set up last night, and it’s lovely. I can’t seem to get ahold of a garbage company, so that’s kind of…y’know…awkward.

I haven’t been knitting (or posting) because of a minor accident in which I fell down a flight of stairs – spraining my wrist, breaking two (three? it’s hard to tell) toes and removing almost all of my toenails. Plus a minor concussion. Oops. When I do start up again, I will be setting my Fetching aside and starting immediately on some slippers. We have hardwood floors only, and very little heating. So much cold in the feetses!

I am also currently working on getting an application in for a fall term in Denmark, and I am very excited about it. I am severely worried about money though, so here’s hoping I get a scholarship. If I can’t get assistance, I doubt that Matt would be pleased to be left alone to scrape up rent for a couple of months.

I am also resolving to start blogging properly, instead of putting out bits and pieces of random, rambling and somewhat incoherent paragraphs that aren’t all that connected. Fail for today.