Underneath a Book

WiP Wednesday: Matchy-Matchy Mitts

2012-02-29T19:36:00.004-05:00

To go with the scarf I'm working on. One down, one to go.

Book Review: The Devil's Milk: A Social History of Rubber by John Tully

2012-02-28T23:47:00.025-05:00

I came across this book while visiting the UNCA library and walking past the new book section. We all know the drill: I am fascinated by concise histories of random, interesting things. Enter rubber.

Rubber, much like plastic, is ubiquitous, and most people go through life not realizing just how dependent their everyday lives are on it-- or the social, environmental, and human costs that have been (and continue to be) associated with its production.

Tully begins with an easy-to-understand description of rubber's physical and chemical properties, an brief overview of a few types of rubber production, and a quick but exhaustive list of things that the modern world wouldn't have if humans hadn't figured out how to harvest and process it. From there, he launches into a history of rubber that takes the reader from plantations in South America and Southeast Asia to the fledgling union movement in the American Midwest to World War II in Europe-- and beyond.

All told, this book is not only very interesting and enlightening, it is cogent, entertaining, and easy for a layperson to understand. Tully does an excellent job juggling narratives in multiple times and places, weaving them into a cohesive whole. A must-read for anyone who enjoys social histories, is interested in industrialization/globalization and their discontents, or simply wants to learn more about where rubber comes from. 5 out of 5 stars.

In which I fix my hair, for once.

2012-02-27T07:17:00.021-05:00

Another consequence of falling down the Pinterest rabbit hole: I've started fixing my hair again. I wore it like this yesterday:

The more I do stuff like this, the better I get at things like hiding bobby pins and fixing the back of my hair without a mirror.

I'm also at something of a crossroads where my hair is concerned. I haven't cut it since November, and the ends are starting to look a little rough. The longest layers are about three or four inches past my shoulders, and I can't decide if I want to keep the length or hack my hair back up to my shoulders, which is the way I've been wearing it for the last year or so. On one hand, I prefer the way long hair looks on me and I can do more awesome hair styles with it. On the other, it's a pain in the ass to maintain and I spend way more money on products to keep it healthy and looking nice. Short hair is way easier to deal with-- unless I need to wear it up, and then it becomes a gigantic pain in its own right.

Back in the day, I owned a few dolls whose hair would grow if you pulled one arm and could be cranked back into their heads by another. I have no idea what they were called, but I really wish my hair would do that.

FO Friday: Blue Hat

2012-02-24T09:55:00.000-05:00

Me February hat is completed! Yay!

Pattern: Improvised. I don't usually use patterns when I make hats.
Yarn: Mystery light blue worsted.
Needle: US #8
Finished Size: Head-shaped.

WiP Wednesday: Scarf for February

2012-02-22T07:58:00.011-05:00

A few rows away from being halfway done.

Hopefully, I'll have this finished quick-like.

It's going to match a hat I made a long time ago, and I should have enough left over to make some mittens, too.

Book Review: The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

2012-02-21T09:04:00.012-05:00

Now that school has started again, I am back to listening to audiobooks on the long trip between Asheville and Cullowhee. I found someone to carpool with on Mondays, but I'll be driving myself on Tuesdays. That's almost two and a half hours of driving a week, plus all the regular driving I do to my job, internship, and bars. I'll probably be able to knock out around two a month. Luckily, the Asheville library system has a pretty good collection of audiobooks, and once I've exhausted them, I can use the digital library to listen to them via my cell phone or tablet.

Technology is so neat. Speaking of which...

It's hard to describe The Adoration of Jenna Fox without spoiling most, if not all, of the major plot twists. Instead of a plot summary, I will ask a series of rhetorical questions:

What would you do if you woke up and weren't you anymore?
What does it mean to be alive?
What does it meant to be human?

and, as the cover asks,

How far would you go to save someone you love?

I really, really liked this book. It's a thought-provoking meditation upon the nature of humanity, technology, and the ethical dilemmas that surround them. Pearson does an excellent job humanizing her characters as she delineates why they have made the choices they made and how they led to the "present" Jenna Fox.

Highly recommended. 5 out of 5 stars.

My obsession with early flowers continues.

2012-02-16T10:45:00.031-05:00

When I lived elsewhere in the country, my friends would sometimes ask me what people from Appalachia are like. Reflecting upon my family members and their multitude of idiosyncrasies, I would often remark that my people are "superstitious to the point of paganism." As my dad once put it, "You don't talk about bad things because you don't want them to happen to you. You don't talk about good things, either, because then they might not happen." My paternal grandmother was as superstitious as they come, and a worrywart to boot, and it apparently rubbed off on him in force.

When I was filling out my application to Western and trying to get them to take me as an in-state student, I had to ask my dad when he'd last served jury duty-- and was quickly informed that when it happened, which would surely be soon, it would be all my fault. Someone's managed to duck his civil duty for years, it would seem.

I am not very superstitious myself; I've never seen any connection between my voicing my expectations (or not) or bad or good things coming to me accordingly. Still, though. I'll not state the obvious here, in hopes that I get what I want.

WiP Wednesday: Deux!

2012-02-15T22:42:00.001-05:00

ROBOT MITTENS.

Book Review: Goliath by Scott Westerfeld

2012-02-14T23:46:00.000-05:00

I finally got my hands on the third and final installment of the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I can't really describe it or its plot points in detail without spoiling the end of the first book and all of the second, so I'll hit the high points: Siberia, Japan, the United States, hot air balloons, Tesla, espionage, assassination plots, and cute critters. It wraps up the previous two books nicely, and all of the things I said about the series (good and bad) in the previous reviews hold true for this one.

Overall, it's a very entertaining and engaging read. 4 out of 5 stars.

FO Friday: The Ugliest Socks Ever

2012-02-10T16:03:00.011-05:00

That feeling you get when you realize there are GIANT STRIPES OF YOUR LEAST FAVORITE COLOR in your socks.

I really hate pink.

Anyway, the deets:

Pattern: Basic Sock Recipe by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Yarn: OnLine Supersocke Relax-Color in #1105
Needle: US #1 and US #2
Finished Size: Fitted to my extra-small feet, yo.

WiP Wednesday: March Hat

2012-02-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

Now with mathy goodness!

Book Review: Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks

2012-02-07T10:16:00.051-05:00

Feminism is for Everybody is the February selection over at the 2012 Classic Feminist Literature Challenge.

I am a big fan of bell hooks, and have read Feminism is for Everybody a number of times over the last several years. It's one of those books that gets assigned a lot in undergraduate women's studies classes, which is why I've read it three times (at least). It's easy to see why it's so popular: it is clear, succinct, and no-nonsense. It lacks the fuzzy-wuzzy woo woo aspect of what I refer to as Cosmopolitan Feminism as well as the dense, twenty-five-cent-word-laden academic prose you find in Intentionally Obtuse, Missing-the-Point Feminism-- both of which, I'll argue, is what makes feminism unattractive (if not unreachable) to poor women, women of color, and a lot of men.

There's a lot to like about Feminism is for Everybody:

bell hooks' definition of feminism: "A movement to end sexist oppression," is by far my favorite. I actually don't care for the dictionary definition of feminism, which merely requires people to theoretically support social, political, and economic equity with no expectation of action on their part. I'm not a fan of passive acceptance of an idea; I think that if you really believe in something, you should be out there doing something about it.
In a similar vein, I think it is important that bell hooks focuses on justice rather than equality on paper (which is, in my opinion, the downfall of liberal feminism and why I don't identify as one). It plays into the schism between ideology and action: just because we say or think things are equal, or have laws to that effect, doesn't mean they are. In many cases, equality on paper furthers oppression and discrimination (to wit: laws that treat pregnancy and childbirth as a medical disability. Little good has come of that).
Flowing from that argument is the concept of intersectionality: that social oppressions do not exist in a vacuum and therefore cannot be disentangled from one another. Sexism feeds into racism, which feeds back into sexism, which feeds into classism and so on and so forth. Therefore, in order to really end sexism, we also have to end racism, classism, and homophobia.
Lastly, bell hooks takes a number of feminists to task over the previous item, pointing out that the movement has historically only served the interests of women who are affluent and white, often to the detriment of lesbians, poor women, and women of color. The notion that individuals are accountable for the effect their choices and priorities have on others is a bitter pill for a lot of those who subscribe to liberal feminism (or the Yay sisterhood! Feminism is about choice! types) to swallow, but I still think it's important. Making a movement unaccountable to its followers and the behavior of its supporters above reproof doesn't lead to anything good.

I maintain everyone should read this. It's short, easy-to-read, and a great introduction to ~~why I hate men so damn much~~ am a feminist. 5 out of 5 stars.

FO Friday: Tonks Fingerless Gloves

2012-02-03T20:02:00.001-05:00

My January Mittens project is complete:

Pattern: Progressive Gloves by Pam Allen
Yarn: Opal Harry Potter sock yarn in the Tonks colorway
Needle: US #1
Finished Size: Sized to fit my elfin hands, yay!

They match a hat I made a few years ago. This is why I save leftover yarn, people!

Six more weeks of what, exactly?

2012-02-02T20:04:00.002-05:00

Daffodils on a rainy February morning.

WiP Wednesday: Two Socks

2012-02-01T09:05:00.000-05:00

I think it's really crazy how I can bang out a plain sock in ~two days, whereas it takes me weeks to do a patterned one. Either way, the patterned sock on the left is part of my February Socks, and the blue one on the right is left over from January. I should be able to finish both by the end of the month (I hope).

Book Review: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

2012-01-31T09:02:00.053-05:00

Jeffrey Eugenides is probably my all-time favorite writer. I first read The Virgin Suicides in high school, and it remains among the most beloved books on my shelf. It came into my life at just the right moment and continues to resonate with me years later. I imagine The Marriage Plot will occupy a similar place for me in the future; it was just what I needed to read at this point in my life.

The Marriage Plot departs from Eugenides' other works in a few ways. First off, it isn't set in 1970's-ish Detroit and Greek heritage and culture do not figure prominently in the narrative. It also has less of an epic scope to it than The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex; it's subject matter is comparatively banal. Nevertheless, I found myself enjoying every page-- probably because of the extent to which I related to it.

When I posted about having finished and liked The Marriage Plot on facebook, the younger sister of a very close friend of mine asked if she would like it. "That depends," I responded, "How do you feel about dysfunctional, over-educated humanities majors who are having difficulties reintegrating into normal life?" As a member of that category, I have a love/hate relationship with the characters, especially Madeleine. On the one hand, I, too, majored in English because I liked to read and experienced a certain amount of personal fallout and professional angst as a direct result of that (in hindsight) incredibly poor decision. On the other, Eugenides managed to embody just about every thing I don't like about myself in her, so I often found myself incredibly frustrated-- just like the time I read Madame Bovary.

At the same time, though, the writing was really, really good and I found myself caring quite a bit about the characters and their questionable decisions. It was also remarkably true to life; even though it was set around students who graduated from Brown in the 1980s, it rang true to my (and my friends') experiences as students who graduated from Vanderbilt twenty years later. Some of us got menial jobs, others of us traveled the world and found enlightenment (...or lots of drugs, whatever), others went off to engage in scientific progress, most of us were underemployed, and virtually all of us made incredibly bad choices in our love lives (I had a particularly unfortunate knack for getting involved with crazy people). Much like Eugenides' characters in The Marriage Plot, we muddled our way through and emerged on the other side of our twenties more or less intact.

Strongly recommended. 5 out of 5 stars.

A thing about which I am excited!

2012-01-30T09:53:00.001-05:00

I ordered some fabric online and I reallyreally like it.

It's "Downtown Dot" by Alexander Henry and I got it at Fabric Depot.

It's going to be a summer dress once I get my sewing skills back up to speed.

Start a revolution. Don't hate your body.

2012-01-28T19:14:00.000-05:00

This is wall graffiti from one of my favorite bars in downtown Asheville, The Vault (home of $3 glasses of wine on Wednesdays, yeaaaaaahhhh!).

I'm posting it because it's a sentiment I've been feeling more and more lately. I fell down the Pinterest rabbit hole two weekends ago, and while I really enjoy the service, I've found myself really depressed by the amount of thinspo people I am following are posting.

Thinspo (or thinspiration), for the uneducated in internets feminism and eating disorder awareness, consists of pictures of incredibly thin women that are nearly always accompanied by "motivational" commentary like "Gotta get in shape!" or "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels!" I find it all incredibly depressing.

First, I don't approve of body-shaming, and that includes when people hate on their own bodies. That so many people I know are that down on the way they look is pretty disheartening to me. I don't think my friends are ugly or disgusting, and it hurts me to see them say that about themselves.

Second, I hate that I live in a culture in which so much of a woman's social worth is predicated upon how she looks and how much she weighs. Even though it's a system that benefits me most of the time, I still hate it because I see the way it chews up and spits out so many people I care about. I have more friends with eating disorders than I can shake a stick at, many more who fall into the somewhat-milder-but-nevertheless-devastating category of suffering from disordered eating, and still more who think that their lives would be so much better if only they were thinner, or prettier, or whatever.

I hate the way it makes me feel, too. I have better self-esteem than the vast majority of other women I know, and I still feel beaten down about my appearance and my weight sometimes. Some days, it's like a constant barrage of "You're not good enough," and my inner feministy whatever isn't always strong enough to drown it out.

As such, I refuse to feed it. I'm not going to post thinspo or diet tips or punishing exercise regimes or anything else that could be construed as endorsing the totally fucked up attitude that American society has towards women's bodies. I can't stop other people from posting it, but I'm not going to look at it; I am unfollowing any boards that are tagged as being about that subject matter. Life is too short to spend obsessing about other peoples' bodies while hating my own.

WiP Wednesday: Fingerless Mitts

2012-01-25T08:37:00.000-05:00

I started these almost two years ago, but never got around to finishing them.

I have a hat to match, and I'm looking forward to wearing them all together-- if it ever gets cold. Seriously, this is one of the warmest winters I've experienced in this area.

Book Review: Fibble, The Fourth Circle of Heck by Dale Basye

2012-01-24T13:31:00.009-05:00

I've been following the Circles of Heck series since the first installment came out in 2008. I'm a sucker for both young adult novels and satire (plus Dante), so I've really enjoyed the series thus far.

Fibble begins where the previous installment, Blimpo, has left off. It continues to follow the exploits of Marlo and Milton Fauster, who have switched bodies and been sent to different parts of Heck. Fibble, the circle that is home to children who lie, is a demented circus run by (who else?) P.T. Barnum, with a special appearance made by Richard Nixon. Milton, in Marlo's body, must rescue Marlo, in his body, from Fibble and avert a giant celestial calamity.

Entertaining, as always! I really love the way Basye has adapted Dante. And I'm looking forward to the next book, Snivel, which is due out in May. 4 out of 5 stars.

FO Friday: Quincy Hat

2012-01-20T10:32:00.011-05:00

My first January project is complete!

Pattern: Quincy Hat
Yarn: Arucania Nature Wool Chunky #101
Needle: US #10.5
Finished Size: The pattern is one-size-fits-all, so I completed it more or less as written.

Apologies for my ridiculous facial expression. This has has an unusual construction that is pretty hard to photograph.

Here's what it looks like laid flat:

A different kind of WiP!

2012-01-19T19:22:00.001-05:00

Now that I am working at a grownup job (of sorts), I have come to the realization that I have very little by way of professional clothing. My wardrobe primarily consists of t-shirts, minis, yoga skirts, the odd pair of jeans, and a few sweaters and hoodies for when it's cold. Needless to say, I wound up spending my birthday and Xmas money on textbooks and new clothes. While I have enough to last me until the end of the semester, my wardrobe still needs some serious updating.

Enter my sewing machine, Sparky the Singer.

I've had Sparky since 2007, but have neglected him since I left Nashville in 2009. A lack of space combined with laziness and general life busyness have caused my sewing skills and machine to fall into disrepair. My stepmother was able to fix my machine (the tension was funny and it desperately needed to be oiled!), but my skills, which weren't all that great to begin with, still need a fair bit of work.

My end goal is to be able to sew a good portion of my work wardrobe. I'm probably going to stick to skirts and (sleeveless) dresses (which I will wear with the 18,000 cardigans I own). Sewing them is generally more cost-effective than buying them. That's not usually the case with shirts or pants, and, based on my limited experience, shirts and pants are a giant pain to put together. Sleeves are hard. So are crotch seams, hidden zippers, and pockets that lay flat.

I'm starting out small with a quilt. When it's finished, it will be about three feet by four feet. Thus far, I have managed to:

Cut out the pieces (more or less) without incident.
Sew the triangles into squares that are (more or less) even.
Sew the squares into long strips.

After that, I will need to:

Sew the strips into a completed top.
Cut the underside of the quilt out of the leftover green fabric.
Acquire the batting.
Layer the batting, top, and bottom together.
Do the actual quilting part.
Cut out and apply the binding.
Do whatever else I need to do to finish it off.

It'll probably take me until the end of next week at the least. I've never made a full quilt before. Most of my previous sewing endeavors were pajama pants, tote bags, and wrap skirts, none of which are overly complicated or involve a lot of finishing.

We'll see how it goes!

WiP Wednesday: Scarftastic

2012-01-18T08:52:00.001-05:00

I am making a clapoktus-- a mash-up of the incredibly popular clapotis and baktus patterns. I'm just over halfway finished with it. Hopefully, it'll be done by the end of this weekend, as I still need to finish my sock and glove projects for January.

Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2012-01-17T10:31:00.040-05:00

A few weeks ago, I posted the following request for book recommendations on facebook:

I have $25 to spend on frivolous (read: not school-related) books. I am looking for recommendations.

Parameters: no bodice-rippers, crimesploitation, "chick" lit (if the plot could be an episode of Sex and the City, I'm not interested), spaceships, unicorns, dragons (this includes tattoos), sentient beings that ~sparkle in the sunshine~, architecture, or railroads.

YA is okay if it's well-written. Same goes for speculative fiction (think Jasper Fforde). French language recommendations are always welcome. I also enjoy non-fiction of a sociological bent.

A lot of my friends are avid book readers, so I knew that they should come up with a few good ones. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was mentioned by several people, so I decided to check it out of the library on my next visit.

Overall, this book was very good. I'm a sucker for modern coming-of-age stories, especially those involving the hopelessly awkward, so Oscar Wao was a character/novel after my own heart. Set in New Jersey and the Dominican Republic, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao discusses the family's fuku, or curse, that had been set upon them by Trujillo, the brutal, American-backed dictator who terrorized the DR's inhabitants from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. The fuku follows the family from the DR to New Jersey, ultimately afflicting Oscar, the youngest son, who is fat, nerdy, and terminally virginal.

Told from the perspective of multiple family members and set in a variety of times and places, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao paints an elegant yet terrifying account of the long-lasting effects of brutal, repressive governments and the immigrant experience. Diaz did an excellent job highlighting the differing experiences of the characters, deftly revealing the role that intergenerational trauma plays in current relationships. I also learned several Spanish words that probably shouldn't be used in polite company.

My only complaint about the book is that the pacing was uneven, making a few parts in the middle something of a slog to get through. Otherwise, it's a great read. 4 out of 5 stars.

BAND: January Prompt & An Exciting Announcement!

2012-01-16T16:01:00.000-05:00

Learn more about BAND here.

Joy of Joy's Book Blog asks:

What book or books have you used or are you using to support a goal, resolution, or project?

I am hereby pleased to announce that I will be hosting August in the 2012 Year of Feminist Classics. We'll be reading The Bluest Eye, and I'm pretty excited about hosting the discussion. After all, I did write my undergraduate thesis on Toni Morrison.

Other than that (and the other books for the challenge along with the ones from last year I didn't get to), I don't have any specific books that I plan to read this year. There are some new releases I'm looking forward to (the sequel to Delirium, for example, and I think Jasper Fforde has a new book or two slated to come out this year as well), though. I'm trying to keep my standards low in case grad school eats my life again.

FO Friday: Juneberry Triangle the Second

2012-01-13T10:17:00.026-05:00

This is another project that I started in 2011. It took me ages to finish, though, as lace projects do not mesh well with knitting in class (the rule: if it has a chart, it's not a good class project) and I lost some of my blocking supplies in the move and hadn't gotten around to replacing them. It's also taken the better part of a week for this sucker to dry thanks to how cold and wet the air is in my dad's basement/ garage this time of year.

Pattern: Juneberry Triangle by Jared Flood
Yarn: Cascade 220
Needle: US #8

Finished Size: Not quite as ginormous as the first one that I made, but nevertheless Pretty Huge, as far as shawls go. 56" wide and 29" deep.

I modified this pattern by not completing all of the repeats in the second chart. I think I stopped 10 or 12 rows early and did a little fudging so that the next chart would line up right. If you look at the chart, it's fairly easy to replicate what I did.

One thing that I think is really amazing about knitting lace is the way that blocking totally transforms what you've made. This is what my shawl looked like before I blocked it:

It's lumpy, uneven, you can't see the stitches or the pattern, and it's kind of on the small side.

When you block something, you soak it in water until the yarn has been thoroughly saturated. Then, you stretch it to a more desirable proportion and pin it out so that it dries that way.

When it's done, you can see the stitches and design much better and it's a lot larger (note the relative size of the box of tea bags).

Big improvement, yes?

Things I'm Excited About

2012-01-12T09:02:00.004-05:00

I have joined the intelligentsia and subscribed to The New York Book Review. I also have subscriptions to The Nation, Atlantic, National Geographic, and Wine Enthusiast. Nook magazine subscriptions + my tablet = best thing ever.
I tried a beer this weekend that tasted like beef Ramen noodles. True story. (It was Abita Winter, if you're curious or like beer that tastes like extra salty, artificially meaty noodles.)
They are finally airing new episodes of the TV shows I like.
My internship. It's pretty amazing, and it really sucks that I can't blog about it here, because damn. THE STORIES.
My classes thus far: I like my electives. I don't have the required ones until Friday.
Not having to work until mid-February.
And still getting paid. Yay, funemployment!
Possibly visiting Canada at some point this year.
The fact that the school library allows grad students to check out books until the end of the semester.
My hair. It looks pretty awesome these days.

WiP Wednesday: Blue Socks, Take the Millionth

2012-01-11T18:01:00.000-05:00

This is the FOURTH FREAKING ITERATION of socks made from this yarn. No matter what I do, it pools or stripes, and it is driving me slowly insane.

I have given up on finding a pattern/stitch/gauge/whatever combination that fixes the issue. I will have slightly striped socks and I will like them, damnit.

Book Review: How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming by Mike Brown

2012-01-10T10:13:00.030-05:00

I am often asked why I read so many science books. The answer is simple: I ended my formal science education in high school, and books, news articles, and magazines are my only means of keeping my knowledge current. I read the Health, Science, and Medicine sections of the New York Times religiously, have a few science magazine apps on my tablet, and always peruse the "popular science" shelf in the New Books section at the library. I ran across How I Killed Pluto (and Why It Had It Coming) by Mike Brown that way.

Mike Brown is an astronomer whose life's goal was to find new planets. He devoted much of his career to scanning the outer reaches of the solar system, eventually stumbling across three planet-like objects that were even further away from the sun than Pluto (two were smaller, one was larger). Rather than hailing himself the discoverer of three planets, he concluded that none of them were truly planets and that Pluto wasn't one, either. How I Killed Pluto documents Brown's research, the development of his thoughts on the subject, and the inevitable drama within the scientific community and the media circus that followed it.

I really liked this book. Brown is an engaging writer who is skilled at distilling complex ideas (and procedures!) into language the reader can understand. Though I wasn't nearly as upset at Pluto's loss of status as some of my contemporaries, it's good to know that it happened for several very good reasons.

4 out of 5 stars.

Current Book Docket

2012-01-07T09:02:00.001-05:00

Goliath by Scott Westerfeld
The Adoration of Jenna Fox (audio) by Mary E. Pearson
Water for Elephants (audio) by Sara Gruen
Matched by Allie Condie
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolfe

FO Friday: Taffy Socks

2012-01-06T10:32:00.009-05:00

I'm not sure if I should consider these my first FO of 2012 or my last FO of 2011 since I started these in early December and they're not part of my New Year's Resolution to knit from my stash. Either way, I'm pleased that they're finally done. I took a day off of working on my sister's scarf to finish them.

Pattern: Sock Recipe by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Yarn: OnLine Supersocke Streamer Color in #1110
Needle: US #1 and #2

Finished Size: Fitted to my feet!

WiP Wednesday: Origami Hat

2012-01-04T19:49:00.000-05:00

I'm making a red Quincy hat for myself. I really love the pattern and its unique construction, but garter stitch takes foreverrrrrr, even in bulky weight yarn. I've finally made it to the crown decreases and would finish tonight, but will be attending a sleepover at a friend's house instead. I'm trying to be more social this year (on top of everything else).

Book Review: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

2012-01-03T10:02:00.007-05:00

You guys, I was visited by The Suck Fairy the last few weeks. I first read Joseph Heller's Catch-22 in middle school after a classmate had gone on and on about how good it was. At the time, I thought it was hilarious and enjoyed it immensely. I decided to pick it up again at the library last week for a bit of light reading. The fact that I remember Catch-22 as a light-hearted wartime frolic rather than an extremely pessimistic, black-humored gape into the void speaks quite well as to how incredibly naive and immature I was in middle school. The fact that I considered it among my favorite books speaks to how unaware of racism and sexism I was at that point, as well.

So, while I can see why it's considered a classic piece of social criticism and war commentary, I can't enjoy it anymore. Sadtimes.

(No plot summary because everyone has read this, seriously.)

3 out of 5 stars. :(

An assortment of plans for reading, knitting, and blogging this year.

2012-01-02T10:10:00.028-05:00

My main goal for the blog this year is to update it regularly even when I'm in school. I have decided to accomplish that by post-dating entries. Rather than posting content as I generate it, I'm going to spread it out more evenly. Take book reviews, for example. This year, they'll be posted on Tuesdays. Once I have read 52 books and posted a review for each Thursday of the year, I'll go back and start adding more in between. The same goes for knitting WiP and FO posts.

I'd like to update four times a week: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and one other randomly-selected day.

As far as books go, my ideal is to average one non-school-related book per week. Given that I'll have a little more free time this semester and I'm not planning on taking summer courses, this should be relatively easy to accomplish. I'm also planning on making good use of audiobooks, as I'll be driving down to Western twice a week again this semester. Hopefully, I'll be able to carpool again.

I mentioned my knitting plans in a previous post. In an effort to put a dent in my stash, I have assigned myself projects for each month: one hat, a scarf or a shawl, a pair of socks, and one glove/mitten/wristwarmer (or pair, depending on the size/intricacy of the project in question). I think it's manageable, particularly since I knit in class a lot because it helps me focus (that reminds me; I should probably e-mail my professors about that). I've never been formally diagnosed, but all available evidence strongly indicates that I have inattentive-type ADHD. I've never gotten tested because I don't need medication to manage it and have never required special accommodations in school other than professors allowing me to knit in class.

I'm fairly confident that all of these goals are manageable. Now, to stop writing and start reading/knitting/exercising!

New Year's Resolutions: 2012 Edition

2012-01-01T10:40:00.025-05:00

It's that time of the year again! Here's what I'm hoping to do next year.

Continue to rock the grad school thing.
Learn more Spanish.
Not allow grad school to interfere with the timely updating of this blog.
Keep up the good work on the running/exercising front.
Read at least one book a week, and participate in a few challenges (more on that tomorrow).
Listen to more audiobooks, since it's looking like I'll continue to log a fair amount of time driving to Cullowhee and back.
KNIT EVERYTHING. Seriously. My stash needs an intervention, and I am Not Allowed to buy any more yarn until I put a sizable dent in it. To that end, I have organized most of it into monthly tote bags that have assigned knitting projects. Each month, I will (attempt to) knit a hat, a scarf or shawl, a pair of socks, and a mitten/glove/wristwarmer.
Make better choices where interpersonal relationships are concerned.

If last night is indicative of anything, 2012 is going to be awesome. I went to a party at LAB with my best friend from elementary school and her little sister. We talked, we drank, we danced, and at midnight, I crossed an item off of my bucket list: I kissed a stranger on New Year's Eve. Two, actually.

You know it was a fun night when your shoes are crusted in dried beer and champagne the following morning.

2011 Year In Review

2011-12-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

Overall, 2011 was a successful, but very challenging, year. I feel like I've accomplished a lot, but pretty much all of my successes have been hard-won and/or involved a fair amount of personal sacrifice or struggle on my part. It wasn't a coincidence that I left Matt right before school started, and the fallout from that made an already difficult semester that much more so. In a way, school completely eating my life helped me escape the suckitude of my day-to-day existence, but it also rendered me less able to do things that I enjoy (also, social work coursework can be pretty soul-sucking if you don't take care of yourself). Volunteering with foster kids has been every bit as awesome as I thought it would be, but it has also entailed a lot of hard decisions in situations where there aren't any right answers. Dealing with everything was pretty tough, and even though I am pleased with the outcomes of my choices thus far, only time will tell if the risks I've taken this past year will prove worthwhile.

Things I accomplished in 2012:

Getting into and attending graduate school, along with earning a 4.0 for my first semester.
Learning (some) Spanish.
Finally signing up for my volunteering gig with foster kids that I don't get to blog about.
Reading (and mostly reviewing) eighty books (even though I didn't finish any of my book challenges because grad school ate my life).
Learning a number of new recipes (which has sadly stopped since I moved back in with my dad, who does all the cooking).
Knitting (and crocheting) a bunch of cool stuff.
Getting back into running.

Overall, I managed to fulfill most of my New Year's Resolutions from last year. The only ones that fell completely by the wayside are the ones that were Matt-related (swimming and cooking), so I feel pretty good about the way they turned out. I'll post 2012's tomorrow; I haven't finished them yet.

The Other Books I Read This Year

2011-12-30T23:20:00.177-05:00

...That I didn't have time to post individual reviews for. Hold on, folks, this is gonna be a long one.

First up is Sharon Hays' Flat Broke with Children, which I read for a research paper on the 1996 PRWORA legislation, commonly known as "welfare reform" in the US (yes, all of my papers were on similarly cheerful subjects). Overall, I really enjoyed it-- as much as you can enjoy a book about poor single mothers getting screwed over by judgmental, affluent male politicians and their supporters. Hays combines reviews of scholarly literature and her own long-term observations of a cohort of TANF clients in a few cities in her illuminating account of the true motives of the legislation and the effects it has had on AFDC/TANF participants.

Now, whenever I recommend books on poverty in America, I always mention this one along with Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On not Getting By in America. Together, I think they paint a fairly accurate picture of why upward mobility in the US is so difficult.

5 out of 5 stars.

More reviews behind the jump: War is Boring by David Axe, The Card-Turner by Louis Sachar, Shine by Lauren Myracle, Bumped by Megan McCafferty, When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris, and The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson.

Next up is War is Boring, which chronicles David Axe's experiences as a war journalist in graphic novel form. Driven by the rush of almost getting killed, Axe uses a number of tricks and career changes to get sent into increasingly dangerous situations, ultimately becoming unable to live in normal society. I mostly liked reading it as the subject matter was interesting, but I felt like it could have been improved by going a little deeper. It lacked nuance and probably should have been longer.

3 out of 5 stars.

I also listened to The Card-Turner on audiobook, read by its author, Louis Sachar. I was a big fan of his books as a kid, especially the Wayside School series, so even now, I occasionally pick up his newer releases when I pass them in the library. I was surprised to find the book enjoyable despite the fact that pretty much all of the characters, including the main one, were totally unlikable and Sachar pulled a Lovely Bones towards the end (there's only so much mileage you can get out of a story of being forced by your gold-digging parents to play cards with an elderly, blind, pain-in-the-ass relative). I'm not sure if it was the story or the fact that I became increasingly curious about bridge as I read it.

I'd like to take this moment to say that there is no shame in hiring a voice actor to read your work when your own voice in unsuitable for the narration. Sachar's voice does not sound like a teenager's, and that's something that irked me the whole way through.

Overall, okay. 3 out of 5 stars.

Lauren Myracle's Shine is definitely worth reading. I'm always on the lookout for books that portray people from my region positively, as they're pretty few and far between. Shine is a one-girl whodunit that takes place in one of the tiny, isolated towns up in the hills. It's so little that the children have to ride a bus for an hour to get to the nearest small-town high school, and nearly everyone is poor and minimally educated. As is the case in many areas afflicted by rural poverty, meth is a huge problem.*

Cat, the narrator, is a fish out of water. She likes to read and is bent on finishing high school and moving away from Black Creek for good. Her life is turned upside down when her "light in the loafers" (read: gay) childhood friend, Patrick, is attacked, beaten, and left tied to a guardrail near the convenience store where he worked. As she attempts to unravel what happened to Patrick that night, she must confront the homophobia and fear of her fellow townspeople as well as the ignorance of those outside of her community. Myracle does an excellent job sympathetically portraying the realities of rural poverty while not whitewashing its darker aspects.

Impressive. 4 out of 5 stars.

*This is not really the case these days; according to my professors, meth use has declined and prescription drug abuse has shot back up thanks to new restrictions on the purchase of meth ingredients like Sudafed.

Continuing my ongoing fascination with YA dystopian novels is Bumped by Megan McCafferty, which I really wanted to like because the idea behind it had a lot of potential. In the world of Bumped, a virus that renders people infertile has swept across the face of humanity. No one knows when the virus' effects will show after they have contracted it (it usually strikes in the late teens or early twenties). The end result is that teenage girls-- or, rather, their fertility-- have become a hot commodity. They sign contracts with prospective parents who then pick out boys for them to "bump" with, then use the money they earn to pay for college.

This is the world Melody is born into; her entire life revolves around her contract and the boy her contracted family is picking out for her. Her identical twin sister (they were separated at birth), Harmony, is a member of a religious order that considers baby-selling sinful, and arrives on Melody's front door to convince her to see the error of her ways and bring her to Harmony's community. Identical-twin chaos and hijinx ensue.

Unfortunately, the story and characters frequently fell flat. Most of the characters were underdeveloped. Harmony is particularly two-dimensional; preachy and irritating in a stereotypical way. You can see the plot twists coming from a mile away, and the ending was all too predictable. I think this is mostly because the book wasn't long enough (I can't believe I'm saying this...), and McCafferty was trying to accomplish more than the length of the novel would allow. I also wasn't much of a fan of her notion that that situation was totally new and unique. People exploiting pregnant teenagers and paying top dollar for "perfect" adoptable infants has been going on since the 1940's, and the omission of that reality from the novel left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

Blah, disappointing, but I'll probably read the sequel. 3 out of 5 stars.

Another audiobook I "read" is When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. I've always had something of a love-hate relationship with him as his humor is pretty hit-or-miss for me, and I dislike the fact that he's a goddamn Yankee (someone who moves to the South and proceeds to do nothing but look down on the natives and complain about how much they hate it here, how backwards we all are, etc. There are more of them in Asheville than you can shake a stick at) who frequently hates on the south in general, and North Carolina specifically. Overall, When You are Engulfed in Flames is par for the course for Sedaris' work. If you like him (or WASP-y recollections on hitchhiking, being overeducated, trying to quit smoking, etc.), you'll enjoy it. If not, skip it.

Oh, and don't get the audiobook. Sedaris has one of the most grating voices I've ever heard. 3 out of 5 stars.

Last, but not least, is The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. I may be one of the three people in the free world who hadn't heard of him when this book was published (I still haven't read The Men Who Stare at Goats). It's one of those weird navel-gaze-y works of quasi-autobiographic research in which the author spends a lot of time discussing his life while he's researching as well as the subject of his research. If you like that sort of thing, you should read it; I found Ronson's take on the social construction of mental illness and the end effects that it has on people who find themselves in mental health services systems fascinating.

4 out of 5 stars.

WiP Wednesday: This year's scarf.

2011-12-28T10:43:00.003-05:00

I am almost halfway done.

xmas xmas.

2011-12-25T19:16:00.000-05:00

Now that I am home from work, I am looking forward to the evening ahead:

Part I: Working out on the elliptical while re-reading Harry Potter (so much for reading new stuff over break).

Part II: A roasted veggie pizza, Syrah, and Arrested Development on Netflix.

Part III: More Arrested Development and working on my sister's scarf.

I know some people find spending Christmas alone weird and sad, but for me, a second of solitude during the holidays is a rare treat. I have a huge family on both sides (that are in a fairly constant state of conflict over Quality Time where my sister and I are concerned), and my holidays therefore have historically been more chaotic and stressful than anything else. Not having to deal with all that has been nice, even if I did miss my two-year-old cousin's rendition of "Red Solo Cup" (my twenty-five-year-old cousin is not a good influence).

An update about running.

2011-12-24T10:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I went out to buy a new pair of running shoes. It was a necessary investment; my knees have been hurting post-run all week, a tried-and-true sign that the supports/shock absorbers in my shoes had given up the ghost.On the recommendation of a friend of mine, I headed to Foot RX in South Asheville to pick out a new pair. They had me run on a treadmill for about a minute so they could film my gait. After that, they went over the video in slow-motion and determined that I needed shoes with extra support because I run funny (their explanation was more complicated than that, though). I tried on several pairs and wound up picking out a pair of Asics.

I just got in from my inaugural run in them, and I am quite pleased with how well they're working out for me.

I am less pleased, however, with the fact that I should probably stop purchasing my exercise shoes from the children's department at Dick's Sporting Goods. A pity, because they cost about half as much as adult shoes. On the other hand, though, I'm not getting any younger and I'd rather spend extra money on good shoes now than have to deal with blowing out my knees and needing replacements at 40.

As the great philosopher Mick Jagger said, "What a drag it is getting older."

Overall, though, I'm happy with the running progress I have made. I started running again shortly after I announced my blog hiatus because my stress levels were starting to render me non-functional, and I figured my sanity was worth sacrificing thirty to sixty minutes a day to exercising. I wound up doing a modified version of the Couch to 5k program. Rather than only running three days a week, I did six (three days on, one day off, three days on, etc.), repeating each workout two times until I hit the "run 20 minutes" mark at the end of week five. Since then, I've been adding two minutes to my run every couple of days.

My original goal was to reach an hour's worth of running by last week; unfortunately, my schedule got delayed by two weeks thanks to finals (when I seriously didn't have the time to go running) and that godawful illness I had. I'm now back on track to finish by the New Year, and I'm pretty excited about that. I haven't been able to run five-plus miles in one go since I was in high school!

The only downside to this whole fitness endeavor is that I have (of course) lost weight. Okay, losing weight isn't really the downside. All things considered, I probably needed to. The downside is everybody and their mother thinking that my exercise schedule's existence entitles them to make unsolicited comments about my body and how much better I look now. I get that they're trying to be nice and supportive and whatever, but I still find that kind of thing really rude and disrespectful, particularly since I said I was exercising again because I like it. Assuming that my running routine is based around weight loss and talking about how great (read: skinnier) I look is presumptuous and kind of insulting (like, hey, it's good to know you thought I was a giant fatass last month). It's pretty frustrating, and I've added it to my list of "Near-Daily Reminders of Why Feminism is Still Necessary."

For the Rest of Us

2011-12-23T23:14:00.000-05:00

Happy Festivus, one and all. I have already accomplished a few feats of strength (I ran three miles, then went shopping two days before xmas), and I am now airing my grievances:

My yarn won't knit itself.
I have a giant zit in the middle of my freaking forehead that is preventing me from going out.
Finding pants that fit me is really difficult.
My hair straightener has burned the crap out of me many times over the course of this year.
The vast majority of people I know think I'm a giant weirdo.
I still haven't mastered applying makeup.
Especially lipstick.
I'm not photogenic.
I've lost three cats this year (two to the breakup from hell, one to cancer). Kind of over it.
The breakup from hell itself and all of its attendant/subsequent ridiculousness.
Driving to Cullowhee and back for grad school twice a week all semester...
...and having to do it again next semester despite the program's curriculum that stated that all of my classes would be in Asheville.
Gas is still $3+ a gallon.
Amy's work won't let her come see me again. :(
I was too busy with school to finish my reading challenges for 2011, and I'm not even going to bother signing up for any in 2012 because I know my life will be just as nuts then, too.

And probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting. 2011 was tough, yo.

I'll post a list of good things before the year is out, promise.

WiP Wednesday: Taffy Socks

2011-12-21T09:24:00.000-05:00

My addiction to self-striping sock yarns continues. May I never have cold feet again.

This project is next on my list of things to be completed once I finish my sister's scarf (which will probably be featured in next week's WiP Wednesday because I seriously doubt it'll be done before then).

Grown-Up Accomplishments Thus Far

2011-12-20T10:04:00.001-05:00

I'm now two weeks into break, and I have thus far:

Obtained business cards.
Gotten a background check done for my internship.
Figured out how to operate a curling iron (at 27. I'm not good at that sort of thing).
Finished the second Juneberry (though I still need to block it).
Started my sister's scarf, which is knit at a tiny gauge and is consequently taking forever.
Ran 4-ish miles at a time.
Re-started Only Revolutions.
Worked on my Taffy socks.
Knitted a few hexapuffs.
Plodded away at cleaning out the e-mail inbox. I have about three year's worth of facebook notifications archived, sigh.

It's really too bad knitting is a zero-sum game. If I'm working on one thing, I can't work on something else, and my sister's scarf has turned out to be way more time-consuming than I originally anticipated.

Camp Out Hat

2011-12-19T10:35:00.028-05:00

I like to have matching knitted accessories. I don't usually make something without something else to go with it, so when I was picking out Kureyon for my Camp Out Mittens (designed by Tante Ehm), I decided to grab a second skein so I'd have a hat to go with it.

Here's how I did it:

CO 10 stitches, leaving a 4-inch tail.
K 116 rows in garter stitch (or as many as you need to make the band long enough to snugly fit around your head)
BO 9 stitches, turn work.

Pick up 99 stitches along side edge of garter stitch band.
Place marker and join to knit in the round.
Knit until you have about 5-10 yards left.

Decrease round #1: K2tog around (50 st)
Decrease round #2: K
Decrease round #3: K2tog around (25 st)
Decrease round #4: K
Decrease round #5: K2tog to last stitch, K1 (13 st.)

Fasten off.
Use tail from cast-on to sew garter band together.
Block, etc.

FO Friday: Campout Gear

2011-12-16T10:51:00.000-05:00

Pattern: Camp Out Fingerless Mitts by Tante Ehm
Yarn: Noro Kureyon in #242
Needle: US #8

Finished Size: Almost to my elbow!

I made a hat to go with the mittens. Pattern here!

WiP Wednesday: 14,552 Stitches Edition

2011-12-14T12:13:00.017-05:00

That, by the way, is the number of stitches I ripped out the other night when I frogged this scarf. I love the yarn (malabrigo sock in "eggplant") and the pattern ("Carlina" by Kitman Figueroa), but my gauge was off and it was looking to be about two feet wide post-blocking. That wouldn't have been a problem by itself except for the fact that I would have run out of yarn after about five and a half feet and I bought the yarn a really long time ago so I couldn't get another skein. Alas.

Sadly, it's probably going to be a few weeks before I can start over on this. I still have to knit my sister's scarf for her, and I have barely started it.

One day, I will learn to make gauge swatches.

Things I'd Like to Accomplish Over My Break:

2011-12-13T11:29:00.000-05:00

Goals! With varying degrees of reasonableness!

Knitting

This year's scarf for Lindsay
Finish grey crocheted hat.
Teal crocheted hat
Finish second robot mitten
Finish semele scarf
Finish second Juneberry
Get caught up on hexapuffs and hexaflats
Finish taffy socks
Make some blue socks
Finish French Market Bag
Black-n-purple Commuter Mitts

Reading

Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski.
Stuff from my nook. I have a gajillion unread books on there.
Suggestions? I'm open to just about everything except books about aliens, unicorns, sparkly vampires, and dragons.

Other Stuff

Work my way up to running five miles.
Double duty on the elliptical every day.
Get caught up on book reviews on here and do some re-vamping for the new year.
Write out some resolutions (gulp) and review my progress for this year (double gulp).
Finish cleaning out my gmail inbox and get my student e-mail routed to it.
Acquire business cards.

ARGH SICK.

2011-12-11T20:19:00.000-05:00

I like how I managed to get sick the very day after classes ended. And by "like," I mean "am really irked at."

Sure, it means that I didn't have to miss any finals or give any presentations under the influence of Sudafed, but damn it, I have Important Winter Break Things to get done! I only have a month off! It's also seriously thrown my running schedule out of whack.

The crazy thing is that it seems to be the same awful illness I got last year. It started with a sore throat, then I lost my voice, then I felt okay for a day, and now my sinuses are so clogged up that my eyes look bruised and my face hurts. I hope I get better faster this go-round; I was sick for almost two weeks last year and it really sucked.

In which I talk about my new phone.

2011-12-10T12:09:00.002-05:00

I got a new phone over Thanksgiving. I was due for a new one and the one I had kept doing this irritating scrolling thing that made it more or less unusable whenever it decided to act up. My mom offered to pay for part of it as this year's birthday present, so I decided to go big and acquire an HTC Rezound. Now that I've had it for a few weeks, here are my thoughts:

The battery life is very good for it being a 4G-enabled Android phone. It lasts around 10-12 ish hours with moderate use (texting, a few calls, some app use and internet surfing) if I leave the 4G on continuously. If I disable mobile internet when I'm not actively using it, it lasts over twenty-four hours.
It came with a pair of really awesome headphones, which was pretty cool as I needed some new ones.
It's super fast.
I'm getting really good reception with it despite living in an area that is abundant in dead spots (downside to living in the mountains).
The big screen is nice.
It has a front and rear-facing camera, and the photo quality is really great. The front camera also has a flash on it.

I still miss having phones that I don't have to charge every day.
It's almost too big and can be difficult to hold and manipulate, especially with a protective case on. Granted, I have pretty small hands.
Speaking of, the Verizon-authorized case makes it hard to hit the power button because it partially covers it.
The phone comes with a bunch of random, stupid apps that I will never use, but since they are factory installed, I can't seem to get rid of. Blockbuster? Hot Pursuit? Let's Golf 2? REALLY?
Apps randomly come on when you're not using them, which can really drain the battery. Making good use of the task manager (or downloading a third-party app killer) is a must.

Overall, though, I'd definitely recommend it.

FO Friday: Very Berry Socks

2011-12-09T09:52:00.000-05:00

Just in time for the first snow of the year, a new pair of socks!

Pattern: Basic Sock Recipe
Yarn: OnLine Supersocke 100 Emotion III - Color #1276
Needle: US #1 and #2

Finished Size: Fitted to my tiny feet!

Seriously, I knit socks in class almost every single week. This is why I have so many new pairs now-- and is pretty much the only knitting I got done this semester.

::confetti::

2011-12-08T09:31:00.002-05:00

I have officially survived my first semester of graduate school. I will now sum up what I have learned:

Always be ready to run, and don't wear shoes you can't run in.
If feminism is the radical notion that women are people, social work is the radical notion that all people have worth (even the bad ones).
I really hate APA formatting. MLA 4 LYFE!
Tab is Coke's pink-haired, overly-sweet little sister.
There is no such thing as a "worried whale."
Related to the above: paying attention in class is a good thing.
I am still the Evel Knieval of procrastination (this is probably not a good thing...), as are many of my classmates.
Utilitarianism can be used to justify basically everything, including telling kids to not drink Mountain Dew because it makes you stupid.
White kids use way more drugs and drink more than black kids do, but Native American kids abuse substances the most.
It is generally considered unwise to have your clients mow your lawn for you.
Do your documentation.
Living on a casino boat sucks.
Don't take your work home with you, and don't bring your home with you to work.
Drug tests are expensive and largely ineffective.
Kicking puppies is not an appropriate form of self-care.
And, uh, much, much more.

I'm looking forward to next semester. I finally get to take some electives and am embarking upon my very first internship! Sadly, I am unable to blog about said internship due to the usual confidentiality constraints. Perhaps one day I will write a book.

Anyway, I don't start school again until January 9th, and therefore have an abundance of time in which I can knit, read some frivolous stuff, watch some TV, clean my room, go running, and blog about the same. I've really missed you guys! Hope you haven't stopped reading!

Hiatus :(u

2011-11-21T19:01:00.002-05:00

The semester ends December 6th. I'll be back then.

Looking forward to it! I have lots to say.

FO Friday: Retro Stripe Socks

2011-10-21T07:54:00.008-04:00

Pattern: Basic Sock Recipe
Yarn: Online Supersocke Circle Color, color #1053
Needle: US #1 and #2

Finished Size: Fitted to my tiny feet!

I've gotten really fast at this whole sock-knitting thing. Go me!

WiP Wednesday: Two-Fer Edition

2011-10-19T08:22:00.000-04:00

Currently working on two pairs of socks, one self-striping, and one patterned. The self-striping one uses the same pattern I used on previous models, and the patterned one, "Angee," is from Cookie A's Sock Innovation.

I'm using OnLine Supersocke 100 Emotion III - Color (#1276) for the self-striping, and Arucania Ranco Solid (but it's really more kettle dyed) in 106 for the patterned ones. So far, so good!

Saturday Hexapuffs~

2011-10-15T11:17:00.009-04:00

I haven't had a lot of time to work on puffs lately. I've been cranking socks out like mad, though, so I've got plenty of ends to work with.

In a moment of sheer, unadulterated insanity, I decided to make two puff blankets: one puffy (using the puffs I showed y'all a few weeks ago) that will use handpainted and solid yarn, and one that isn't puffy that will use self-striping yarn. Hexaflats, as it were. This blanket will be lighter and a little less warm, ideal for cool-but-not-cold weather, which I see a lot more of living in the South.

Assuming I ever finish it.

WiP Wednesday: Now with even more socks!

2011-10-12T21:17:00.011-04:00

I'm really liking the retro striping.

Though I really miss blogging about books.

Much like in undergrad, I have so much reading to do for my classes (I am also doing a metric ton of research papers this semester, which means even more reading omg) that by the time I've finished it all, the last thing I want to do is pick up another book. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some reading done over winter break. I get a month off, which is pretty great.

Reflecting.

2011-10-11T09:52:00.008-04:00

When I haven't been at work, volunteering, in class, or snowed in under homework (so, the approximately ten minutes of free time I have before I fall asleep and when I wake up each day), I've been doing a lot of thinking about what my next move is going to be.

I graduate in May 2013. I will be twenty-eight years old (ye gods). I'm not sure whether or not I am going to stay in Asheville long-term.

I will have to stay in the state of North Carolina for a year or two in order to obtain professional licensure. Once you get an MSW, you have to complete a certain number of supervised hours before you can take the licensure exam, which you must pass in order to be fully accredited. It's generally considered a bad idea to get a degree in one state and then try to get initial licensure in another. While most states recognize reciprocity if you're already licensed, educational requirements that vary from state to state can make getting initial licensure in a state other than the one in which you got your degree very tricky, if not impossible outright. One of my friends has been in licensing limbo since he finished his master's in 2004 because of that. Not being licensed can really screw you over; without it, you're not eligible for student loan forgiveness and you get paid way less.

After that's dealt with, I can move somewhere else, if I wish. I know that's a long way off, but it's something I need to start considering now since it's going to affect a lot of the decisions I make post-graduation. For example, it's not worth the money for me to buy a house here if I wind up moving away after two years. I also have to consider how much of myself to invest in this city, and how long I'm going to avoid potential romantic entanglements (assuming I ever date again. Becoming a nun is looking pretty good right now). I don't want to get attached to the idea of being here forever if it's not going to work out.

One day, when I have some free time, I'll make a list of the pros and cons of staying where I am-- and moving to a bigger city. I'm 90% sure I'm not willing to move back to Tennessee, but there are plenty of other places I think I'd like to live.

FO Friday: Butterfly Socks

2011-10-07T10:29:00.000-04:00

Pattern: Basic Sock Recipe
Yarn: Online Supersocke 100 Butterfly-Color in 1152
Needle: US #1 and #2

Finished Size: Fitted to my tiny feet!

And yes, I do have clear chucks. That I bought for the express purpose of wearing with my hand-knitted socks. I tell you, knitting is a sickness.

WiP Wednesday: OH LOOK MORE SOCKS.

2011-10-05T09:51:00.006-04:00

I may have a problem.

Online Supersocke 100
Circle - Color
Color #1053
Same pattern as the last two pairs.

Another week, done.

2011-10-01T09:56:00.000-04:00

I'm amazed at how crazy busy I have been since school started back. This past week was especially eventful; I was so slammed, I didn't even have time to knit after Tuesday! Here's what I accomplished:

Going to class on Monday and Tuesday, which are all-day-long affairs involving a whole lot of driving.
Attending several group meetings for class projects.
Going to court for the current case in my volunteering gig which has eaten my life.
Running a bunch of errands all over town for said case. Wish I could talk about it more, but my org's confidentiality rules are pretty hardcore since I'm working with kids.
Writing a lengthy report and compiling documentation for said case. I really need to be more organized.
Doing a ton of reading. For class, sigh.
Working.
Working out! I'm thankful my dad has an elliptical machine since I'm pretty sure I lost my Y Family Membership in the breakup. Sadly, I have to do homework reading instead of fun reading on it. That's why I haven't finished a book in over a month.
Going out with my co-workers after work Wednesday and yesterday.
Pro-tip: Sake slushies are both a great and terrible idea. Sugar + booze + me + the following day = disaster no matter how much (or little!) I drink. But damn, they were tasty!
Pro-tip #2: If you're going to wear a dress that's cut up to your ass in a club that has blacklights, wear dark undies. Nobody wants to see just how far the dude you're dancing with is hiking it up.
Having really awesome hair. I don't know what's up with that, but everyone has been liking it lately.

So, yeah. I'm doing okay and things are going really well. Even though the workload is crushing me, I'm really enjoying school and am looking forward to finishing out this semester. From what the second-years have said, it's by far the hardest one, and once you make it through, it's smooth sailing.

FO Friday: Socks! Socks! Socks!

2011-09-24T13:53:00.000-04:00

Pattern: Basic Sock Recipe
Yarn: Trekking XXL, color 801
Needle: US #1 and #2
Finished Size: Fitted to my tiny feet!

WiP Wednesday: Socks, again!

2011-09-21T08:10:00.007-04:00

I am thisclose to being finished with my overly cheerful socks, and have accordingly started a new pair. I'm using the exact same pattern as before. The yarn is Online Supersocke 100 Butterfly-Color in 1152.

Book Review: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

2011-09-19T08:13:00.010-04:00

Since I'm still doing a lot of driving these days between attending two schools, working, and volunteering, I've gotten back into audiobooks. It's nice to feel like I'm reading again, even though it takes me a lot longer to get through books that way. Currently, I am listening to David Sedaris' When You are Engulfed in Flames, but I finished Steinbeck's Cannery Row last week.

Believe it or not, this is the first Steinbeck novel I've ever read. I know reading Of Mice and Men or The Grapes of Wrath is a high school rite of passage for many, but for whatever reason, my tenth grade English teacher decided that the Honors section would read The Great Gatsby instead. Since I didn't take a lot of American literature courses in college, I never had the opportunity to read Steinbeck in a formal setting. I stumbled across Cannery Row in the audiobooks section a few weeks ago, and decided to give it a try when I saw that the recording was only around six hours long.

Overall, I really liked it. The voice acting was very good (this is a critical thing: I have abandoned several audiobooks over that) and fun to listen to. The story wasn't half-bad, either. While I'm not generally a fan of Depression-era literature, Cannery Row was funny, interesting, and gritty, all without being plagued by the preachiness common to literature of that time. Steinbeck deftly creates a world and populates it with all kinds of unique characters, each of whom has his own clear voice. I'll probably read more of his work in the future.

5 out of 5 stars.

Saturday Hexapuffs

2011-09-17T18:01:00.022-04:00

In an effort to blog a little more, I'm going to devote Saturdays to an ongoing knitting project of mine: the beekeeper's quilt. It's a good project for me, as most of the things I knit are made out of sock yarn, and I never seem to use 100% of the skein. This is especially true when I make socks. I have very small feet, after all. Since I've been knitting for five years now, I've accumulated a pretty impressive quantity of sock yarn leftovers. I'm looking forward to using them all up and getting them out of the stash box(es).

I bought the pattern back in August, but between starting grad school, learning Spanish, and the breakup from hell, I haven't had a lot of time to work on it. So far, I have completed eight hexapuffs, but, as you can see, I have enough yarn for many more.

Book Review: A Mercy by Toni Morrison

2011-09-15T09:10:00.010-04:00

Toni Morrison is one of my all-time favorite authors, so much so that I wrote my undergraduate thesis on her novels. A Mercy is her most recent work, and while I enjoyed it immensely and highly recommend it, I'm not sure what to say about it. Even though I finished it over a week ago, I'm still processing it. This is unusual for me, but for the time being, I'll roll with it.

5 out of 5 stars.

So close.

2011-09-13T22:41:00.001-04:00

I am thisclose to being 100% caught up on school and homework and everything else I need to be working on.

I have tomorrow off, and that should give me enough time to get everything that's due this week squared away, and make a decent start on all the stuff that's due next week, too. After that, I'll have a set routine. Sundays are reading days, Monday and Tuesday are class days, and the rest of the days are work days (but my working hours are way less insane-- yay no more eleven hour shifts!).

I can't wait until next semester, when my classes will be in Asheville. Two hour's commute + 6-8 hours of classes = EXHAUSTED ALL THE TIME.

Crazy week, fun weekend?

2011-09-10T07:26:00.000-04:00

This week, I survived the following:

Getting up at 7 am every morning to go to Spanish class
Except for Monday, when I did the tourist thing with my mom and stepdad
One day of grad school classes
A Spanish Quiz
My first Spanish test
A 14-page paper in which I analyzed readings about racism and wrote about a Madea movie my cousin made me watch last weekend
My final week (and shift) of waiting tables-- EVER!
Banging out a cited introduction to what will likely become a giant-ass public policy paper
Starting a new scarf
Beginning the reading for the next 14-page paper that is due on Wednesday
Giving considerable thought to the 5-page paper that is due on Tuesday
Purchasing a dress (and lipstick!) to wear to my cousin's wedding today

I'm hoping that once I switch back to my old job and get caught up on my schoolwork, I'll be in a better place to write more here.

Weekend Wrap-Up and Self-Care

2011-09-05T21:23:00.072-04:00

One of the things that they've really been hammering into our heads at school is the importance of self-care. We're only two weeks in, and already all of the professors have at least mentioned it, with one devoting an entire lecture to the subject. The idea is simple: you can't help other people effectively if you're not taking care of yourself. Letting yourself become too involved with your cases, taking your work home with you, and not utilizing some form of an appropriate support system (be it talking to co-workers or supervisors or going to therapy) has the potential to wreck both your personal and your professional life. According to the professor, inadequate self-care and insulation between one's private life and one's job is a major cause of the burnout that plagues social work and related professions, so learning appropriate coping mechanisms early on is really important.

I believe it. In the short amount of time I've worked with foster kids (since February), I've witnessed a number of truly screwed up situations firsthand, and I'm only in court once every couple of months, if that. Afterwards, I sometimes find myself wondering about what's going to happen to the people I see while I'm waiting for my hearing. It's easy to see where the work can really get under the skin of social workers at DSS, who have to see that stuff day after day after day. I've also known a couple of individuals who qualify as cautionary tales-- they got sucked into the "Well, I'm doing better than my clients, so I'm okay" trap, and the personal and professional repercussions they've experienced as a result have been pretty unfortunate, and not anything I'd care to experience for myself.

This, of course, is all easier said than done. When you're a giant perfectionist who has work to do, it's hard to do frivolous things without feeling guilty and/or internally panicking about all the crap you should be working on. For example, I spent Friday and Saturday nights hanging out with my cousins and Sunday and Monday with my mom and my stepdad. Very little homework happened, and while I have a solid block of time today in which to work on it (the person who is driving the carpool needs to get to school early) and I'm off all day tomorrow, I still had a hard time not thinking about all the reading and research and outlining I needed to do, not to mention a half dozen e-mails I probably should have written and sent last week.

I think this will get a bit easier once I finish working out my notice (four more days!) at my current job and go back to my previous job, which makes far fewer demands on my time, energy, and mental health. I also won't be working on Sundays anymore, so I'll be able to do much of my homework then and still have some relaxation time to myself. Next semester, when I start my first internship, will undoubtedly be trickier.

Oh, gadgetry.

2011-09-02T08:12:00.061-04:00

So, I finally broke down and got a tablet last weekend. I'd been meaning to get one for a while, but kept putting it off because I didn't know which one to get. I was also having a difficult time justifying it because I already own a netbook, an e-reader, and a smartphone.

That, however, changed when I started school and discovered that all of my professors were putting a large quantity of the course reading materials online via Blackboard. While they were .pdf files that could theoretically be uploaded onto my nook, they didn't render right when I attempted it. Copies of copies of scanned in books do not look right in e-ink, even if you use a e-reader-friendly file format like .pdf. I wasn't really a fan of simply printing the readings, either. The printer here at the house is an inkjet, so the black bars on the borders of the pages (from the scanning process) would use ink, not to mention all the paper I'd go through. Using kinko's or the school's printers would be expensive (especially over the course of four semesters) and, in my opinion, wasteful. So, I decided to buy a tablet.

I wound up getting an ASUS eee pad transformer. I decided to skip the optional base (since I already have a netbook) and just got the tablet and a protective cover for it. So far, I'm really liking it. I downloaded adobe reader so I could load up my course readings, and used the MyLibrary app to organize them. Reading them is a breeze since you can use the pinch and pull feature to quickly resize text, and the ability to flip pages with your fingers rather than pushing buttons is pretty awesome. My only quibble is that it can take a few seconds for the screen to render and sharpen, but it's not enough of an issue to warrant me not using it. For future semesters, I intend on buying as many books as I can in e-reader formatting and using the kindle or nook apps to read them.

As far as regular, non-academic use goes, I like the eee pad's functionality. Since it runs on the Android OS, which I already use on my smartphone, I had an easy time getting it set up. Since the app market is synced with my google account, all I had to do was press a few buttons and enter my google login information to get all of my apps on the eee pad, including preferences. While the eee pad apps are generally identical to the phone apps, it is nice to be able to read my twitter feed (and other text-heavy apps) without killing my eyes. Also a plus: the full-sized web browser. No more crappy mobile sites!

I'm still getting used to the weird, pop-up keyboard thing, though.

WiP Wednesday: Second Sock

2011-08-31T11:10:00.008-04:00

Amidst all the craziness and homework in my life, I've found a little time to knit and have started the companion to my whimsical sock of brightness. I'm almost done with the leg.

Book Review: At Home [audio] by Bill Bryson

2011-08-29T11:08:00.031-04:00

I've been meaning to post a review of this book for the last, uh, two weeks, because I finished it a while ago. I'd heard excerpts from it on NPR a few times back when it was first released, and decided to check it out of the library so I'd have something to listen to while I was washing walls at Matt's house (this may or may not have something to do with why I took so long to review it). It was fairly long, over sixteen hours, so I wouldn't recommend getting the audiobook unless you spend a lot of time commuting or are one of those people who likes to sit around and listen to audiobooks.

That said, At Home was very enjoyable. Bill Bryson has a very nice reading voice, and the chapters were split up into smaller, more manageable tracks on the CDs. The content, of course, was good, too. After purchasing a former parsonage and doing some cursory research on its original proprietor, Bryson decided to do a historical survey of the evolution of different parts of the house. He not only examined the was in which the names, purposes, and placement of rooms came about, but discussed the important moments in history that led to them. He also goes on at length about interior design and the ongoing evolution of furniture, wallpaper, and paint. None of these are subjects I usually find interesting, but Bryson brings them to life with in an informative and humorous way.

Excellent, and I look forward to reading/listening to more of Bryson's work. 5 out of 5 stars.

Apologies.

2011-08-28T23:08:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry for the unannounced hiatus. I figured absence would be better than forced whimsy or emosplosions, so I took some time out for starting grad school, continuing my efforts to learn Spanish, getting my stuff unpacked, quitting my job so I could go back to the former one, and, you know, completely undoing the last year and a half of my life. The last two weeks have been really rough, and I appreciate those of you who are out there reading for bearing with me. I really appreciate those of you who fielded all of the breakup and grad school-induced emosplosions. You're the best, and I owe you all some cookies.

Things have mostly settled down, at least for the time being. I've gotten everything unpacked, my schoolwork is organized, and I have less than two weeks left before I [Seriously Mean It This Time] Never Wait Tables Again. If it weren't for the never-ending pile of homework, I'd have oodles of free time!

Alas. I have a lot of homework. It's not that much more than my workload at Vanderbilt, all things considered, but it's still a little overwhelming. The reading is slightly less in quantity (but it makes up for it with serious density), and I have far fewer mini-papers to write. That, unfortunately, is linked to an exponential rise in my stress levels, because that means that more of my grade is riding on fewer assignments, and there is little to no room for error. The expectation that much of my learning (and work...) be self-directed is also a bit daunting given how long I've been out of school. I keep envisioning my brain as this cobwebby, rusted-out jalopy, all, "Didn't I used to be smart?"

Anyway. I'm going to keep updating, but I don't know if I'll be able to go back to daily content for a while (read: until I graduate, and maybe even later than that. Possibly when I retire). It's for the best; my pleasure reading has plummeted since I got my assignments, I don't have much time for knitting, either, and while I might find social work theory interesting, I doubt it's appealing to many of you. So, I guess we'll see. Story of my life, these days.

Whimsical Sock!

2011-08-19T08:52:00.003-04:00

Remember when I said I'm trying (and failing) to come up with some nice, whimsical content for this blog? I think this is about as close as I'm going to get for a while:

I've officially hit the halfway mark on my socks!

I'll probably cast on for the second pair tomorrow. I have to work a double today (after going to my nine o'clock Spanish class), and I know I'll be exhausted after that. I can't wait until September, which is when I'll be switching over to only working three days a week.

Orientation, part 2.

2011-08-18T08:04:00.026-04:00

I spent today at orientation for my graduate program. It didn't start until ten, but since it was happening in Cullowhee and I live in Asheville, I still had to wake up early. the drive down wasn't terrible, just long and sort of tedious. Luckily, there are several people in my class (we all have to take the same courses the first semester) who also live in Asheville, so we're in the process of arranging a carpool.

Grad school orientation isn't all that different from undergrad. You get your manual, your schedule, and the usual admonishments about checking your campus mail more often. The only difference is that since the program is so small (I think there are twentysomething of us who are full-timers), we did all of the introducing of ourselves, professors included, that day, instead of in class. They also didn't give us a lecture about safe sex and chlamydia not being a kind of flower.

After the program-specific orientation was over, we headed over to the student center for the main orientation for the whole graduate school. It was fairly informative, and since there were so many people there, I felt that I could knit on my sock without appearing rude. It didn't go for as long as I expected, so I took advantage of the extra time and went to get a student ID made. Once that was over, I decided to head home. The third session was for teaching assistants (I decided to not do that, as I live far away and make more money waiting tables), and the campus tour wouldn't be starting until after that. Since all of my classes are going to be in the same building the program orientation was in, I elected to skip it.

All in all, a productive day. I also finished that sock. One down, one to go!

this space intentionally left blank.

2011-08-17T18:16:00.000-04:00

I tried to formulate a lighthearted, whimsical post about my first day at school today, but apart from my Spanish teacher liking my Hello Kitty notebook, nothing lighthearted or whimsical happened. Traffic on campus was godawful, I had to park forever away from my building, nobody sat next to me, and, oh yeah, I did all of that with frog eyes (the result of spending most of yesterday/last night in tears). What a great first impression: looking like a disheveled basket case.

I know I have every right to look like a disheveled basket case. I lost my home, my boyfriend, and my pets in one hour-long conversation and then spent the rest of the day hauling all of my stuff back to my dad's house. My inner Type A perfectionist doesn't listen, though, and relentlessly castigated me for not only crying in front of Matt and his friends (repeatedly), but for not having the energy to find my makeup and a cute outfit for the first day of class or to wow the teacher by participating.

Needless to say, I'm beat. I'd declare it vodka o'clock and retire to my knitting, but grad school orientation is tomorrow and showing up hungover on top of everything else probably isn't a good idea. Back to unpacking, I guess.

Books are heavy.

2011-08-16T14:19:00.000-04:00

Just like this entry.

I tend to be a little hesitant about including details about my personal life on here. I tend to be pretty reserved where that subject is concerned on a good day, and talking about my relationships publicly has burned me pretty nicely in the past. This, however, needs to be said:

Matt and I broke up this morning, and I've spent my day thus far hauling all of my things back to my dad's house.

Hence the entry title.

Hence also why you won't be seeing him or the house (which belongs to him) or the cats (ditto) on here anytime in the near future, if ever again.

I'm not planning on going into the how or the why. I don't think that's ever a good idea, and I don't harbor any ill will towards Matt (...that the golf ball his back windshield took less than an hour after the "we're over" talk happened didn't satisfy), so I'll avoid dragging him through the mud on here. If you know me well enough to be my facebook friend or know my cell number, feel free to contact me via those mediums (or my e-mail) if you want to talk about it.

I just wanted you guys to know what's up, and to tell you that I'm doing okay. I have somewhere to live, things are amicable, and I'll be fine. Eventually.

A real day off?! No, not entirely.

2011-08-15T13:40:00.000-04:00

Once again, it's Monday and I'm not at work. I still, however, have a bunch of work to do. So far, I've accomplished going to the bank and the library, along with some wall q-tipping and sock photography.

My main goal for today is to 100% finish the wall that will comprise my main workspace in the office. I've cleaned out the grooves, but still need to wash the flat panels and then watco the whole thing. I also need to finish sanding my desk, and then prime and paint it. My Spanish class starts Wednesday, I have grad school orientation on Thursday, and then grad school begins on Monday, so I really need for that room to stop being a giant disaster zone like the rest of the house.

We'll see.

At least I got to have some fun yesterday, though! Amy came up to Asheville and we went to Biltmore and saw the house and did a wine tasting. After that, we went downtown and had dinner at Curate, which was really good (thanks for recommending it, Dad!). The food was excellent, and the tableside-made white sangria bordered on being a religious experience. I fully intend on going again sometime soon.

Sockity Sock!

2011-08-14T09:19:00.000-04:00

So, the Overly Cheerful Socks continue. I have finished the gusset and am on the home stretch: the foot, then the toe. I have pretty little feet, so this part of socks always goes fairly quickly. I'm really liking the way they're coming out, even if they are a little OMGBRIGHT.

I've finally come up with a use for my sock scraps: the beekeper's quilt. It'll be a long time coming since I don't knit super fast (and also don't have a whole lot of free time to devote to knitting), but I think it'll look pretty excellent at the end. I'm planning on using self-striping sock yarn for one, and my semisolids/variegateds for a second.

I have a good source for the self-striping yarns, LittleKnits, a retailer that sells discontinued lines and colors at a steep discount. I may also hit up some Ravelry destashes. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to having a new blanket and expanding my collection of knitted socks. They're wonderful for when it's cold out.

YAAAAY!

2011-08-13T21:47:00.006-04:00

We are finally moved into the new house. There are still a few things left at the old place (mainly in the kitchen), but all of the furniture is here now. Along with clothes, books, electronics, and everything else.

Most importantly, we finally have internet.

Book Review: Fool by Christopher Moore

2011-08-12T11:06:00.044-04:00

Before I headed out to Bristol to visit my little sister on Monday, I stopped at the downtown library to pick out an audiobook for the trip. I figured I may as well get into the swing of listening to books rather than reading them, as I'll be spending quite a bit of time on the road this semester. Western is just over an hour away from where I live, so that's four hours a week right there, not to mention all the time I spend driving to and from work, the gym, and AB Tech. Audiobooks seemed like a good way to pass the time.

As I browsed the books on CD section at the library, I stumbled across several volumes by Christopher Moore. While I'd heard of Moore before (a lot of my friends really like his books), I'd never gotten around to reading any myself. I figured then was as good a time as any, and selected Fool, a take on King Lear written from the perspective of Pocket, Lear's favorite court jester. I tend to be something of a sucker for this sort of thing, and I was very well-rewarded.

There are many reasons to love Fool. First and foremost, it's absolutely hilarious. Since it's told from the perspective of a Fool, bawdy jokes, sarcasm, and black comedy abound; it reads quite a bit like the dirtier stories in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Moore does an excellent job translating medieval humor for modern audiences, and the result is nothing short of hysterical. Beyond that, Fool provides an interesting and insightful take on the morality of both the play and the title character of King Lear, along with a certain amount of social commentary that some modern readers might find a tad disconcerting. For what could be advertised as a lighthearted romp, it's really quite heavy in places. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it immensely.

Also, the voice acting was awesome.

A few caveats, though: this, like much of Moore's work, Fool is not a book for those who are easily offended. If cursing, drinking, sex, violence, and unfavorable comparisons of Christianity to paganism because Christian holidays don't involve orgies would send you into a froth of pear-clutching self-righteousness, you should probably avoid this one. I also wouldn't recommend Fool to anyone who hasn't already read King Lear. While it would probably still be fairly amusing, the plot would likely be a little hard to follow.

All in all, I loved it. 5 out of 5 stars.

BAND: August Prompt

2011-08-11T23:05:00.063-04:00

I'm participating in BAND: Blogger's Alliance of Non-Fiction Devotees, and it's time for the August prompt.

Over at Amy Reads, Amy asks:

Last month Kim of Sophisticated Dorkiness hosted the first discussion, asking What’s your favorite type of nonfiction? I had a lot of fun reading the answers that everyone submitted and they helped lead me to my topic for this month. One of my favorite things about reading is how one book leads to another which leads to another and so on. For a lot of us, nonfiction wasn’t something we always read and it was a specific topic or book that drew us in. And then once we started, we just couldn’t stop.

So this month I’d like to know:
How did you get into reading nonfiction? Do you remember your first nonfiction book or subject? If so, do you still read those subjects?

While I read a fair amount of non-fiction as a kid (probably considerably more than average), I didn't get into non-fiction as a genre until I was in college. When I was in elementary school, I was the kid who liked to read reference books (dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias) for fun. Whenever I ran across a topic I was especially interested in, I'd visit the school or public library and check out books on the subject. My family didn't have a lot of money growing up, so the library was an invaluable resource for me. I didn't read non-fiction for pleasure, though. I only read about subjects I was interested in, and then, it was more for the acquisition of knowledge than anything else.

That changed when I started college and took classes that used shorter works of non-fiction instead of textbooks. The first semester of my freshman year really changed the way I looked at non-fiction, particularly my introduction to writing course. Rather than offering a generic "how to write papers" class, Scripps had several topics within the Writing 100 label to choose from. Since I was among the last to register, I was assigned to the section whose focus was on genocides, to be taught by a professor whose (Jewish) family fled the Nazi regime. Cheerful! I wound up really enjoying the class, despite the incredibly depressing subject matter, because the books we were assigned were so good. We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, and A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power are still high on my list of non-fiction works I recommend to others.

I wasn't quite hooked yet, though. That happened after taking a number of women's studies and sociology courses over the ensuing four years. They, too, primarily relied upon shorter works of non-fiction rather than full-length textbooks, and I found myself seeking out additional works by the likes of Susan Faludi, bell hooks, Barbara Ehrenreich, and many, many others. I found myself branching out to related fields by exploring the whole of the 300s section in the library, and using Amazon.com's recommendation algorithm to find new subjects to read about. I felt the same way that many do when they discover fiction: a whole world had opened up for me, only it was the real world instead of the world of make-believe.

These days, despite having majored in literature, I find myself reading more non-fiction than fiction, at about a two to one ratio. I think I may still have fiction fatigue from undergrad!

In Which I Go to Community College and Knit a Sock.

2011-08-10T11:41:00.113-04:00

Yesterday was a very-eventful-in-a-bad-way day. It all started when I had to get up at 7:30 so that I could go to a two-hour orientation at AB-Tech. I should have known better. No good ever comes of me getting up that early in the morning; I spend the entire day in a state of absent-minded, sleep-deprived discombobulation which can quickly turn ugly when combined with the specialness of others. Yesterday was no exception, even though I brought every bit of it on myself.

My first mistake was taking French instead of Spanish when I was twelve. I decided that French was the way to go because, I kid you not, it was prettier and more romantic than Spanish, and I liked French literature and wanted to read it in the original language. Seriously. "Pretty and romantic" were my criteria for selecting a foreign language to study. I know twelve-year-olds are stupid like that, but yeesh. I still get kind of embarrassed for myself when I think about it, and thank my lucky stars that Twilight wasn't around back then (as it was, I has a similarly embarrassing obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in those days). I like to think of that as the beginning of a series of incredibly poor educational choices that ultimately led to me spending my early to mid twenties waiting tables for a living. Had I devoted the seven years I spent on French to Spanish, yesterday wouldn't have happened.

A little more backstory: when I decided to go into social work, I asked my stepmother (who works for the state) what she thought I should do in addition to the regular coursework in order to ensure that I would find gainful employment upon graduation. She immediately told me that it was very difficult to get a job with any of the providers of social services without having both a master's degree and some degree of fluency in Spanish. People with coursework in medical and professional Spanish were especially desirable. Realizing I'd have to enroll in Spanish classes, I (once again) cursed my twelve-year-old self. I decided to enroll at AB Tech, as driving to Cullowhee from Asheville five days a week (when I only have to be there on Mondays and Tuesdays) was totally unappealing. "It can't be that bad," I told myself, "Matt went there."

Famous last words.

Upon "applying" (which isn't so much asking them to take you as giving them your information so that they can put you in the system), the website informed me that all new students had to attend a two-hour orientation, after which they could pick up their parking passes, obtain a student ID, and, most importantly, register for classes. I, in my infinite wisdom, decided that the 8:30 AM slot was the time for me, so that I could get some housework done afterwards before starting my closing shift at 4:00 PM.

That would be mistake number two.

Dragging myself out of bed that morning was a struggle. Over the last year-ish that I've spent living with Matt, I've become something of a night owl. I have a hard time falling asleep before midnight, and on Monday, I decided that staying up until 2 AM working on a sock was a really good idea. Given that I am one of those people who requires at least eight, but preferably nine, hours of sleep to function, I wasn't in a particularly organized mental state. I managed to throw some clothes on, grab my sock-in-progress, and tumble out the door and arrive (mostly) on time.

I suspected that the orientation would consist of five minutes' worth of useful information and one hour and fifty-five minutes of useless dreck, so I broke out the knitting needles immediately. I wasn't wrong; we spent the vast majority of the session discussing useful things like finding information on the website, why it's important to leave time for sleep, and how to use e-mail. The only thing between me and boredom-induced seppuku via cheap ballpoint pen was my knitting, and I was thankful for it. I finished nearly all of the leg (some fifty rows) while there. I also got a few useful pieces of information: where to go to register for classes, pick up my parking permit, buy my books, and obtain my student ID. As soon as the orientation session ended, I headed over to the student center, hoping to kill all four birds with one stone.

Thinking I could navigate all of the necessary educational bureaucracy in one trip? That would be mistake number three.

I managed to get my book, student ID, and parking permit without incident (though I did have to walk to the parking lot to get my car's license plate number), and was flying high as I set down to wait for an appointment with the registration counselor. My number was called within ten minutes, and I sat down in the cubicle and gave the counselor an abbreviated version of my spiel above: graduate student, want to learn campus, AB Tech is more convenient to my house than Western, etc.

The counselor pulled up my information, and told me that I couldn't register without a "reading credit," and that I needed to have proof that I'd taken some kind of reading or writing class while in college, or else standardized test scores. I pulled up my acceptance letter to Western's graduate school (which you can't get into without having obtained a bachelor's, which you can't earn without being at least kind of literate), but that was no good. I pulled up my scores on the GRE, but those weren't any good, either (despite the fact that the GRE verbal is harder than the SAT's).

Assuming that my bachelor's degree and enrollment in graduate school, along with my perfect/near perfect GRE scores in writing and English, provided evidence that I am, in fact, literate enough to take beginning Spanish was, evidently, mistake number four.

By that point, it was a little after noon. I decided to run to the new house, dig through my boxes of old school crap, and find a copy of my final transcript from Vanderbilt. It was a pain in the ass, no doubt, but there was no way in hell I was going to waste at least two hours of my life taking a placement test to demonstrate that I can read when I have a bachelor's degree in English. While I was there, I would throw my work uniform, filthy after a grueling weekend of non-stop double shifts, into the washer. I was halfway through loading up the washer when I realized that the laundry detergent was nowhere to be seen.

It was there that I encountered my fifth mistake: believing that it's common sense to bring the laundry detergent with you when you move the washer and dryer from one house to another. According to Matt and his entourage, the very idea was just silly.

Off I went to a nearby grocery store to purchase a fresh box of detergent. I added it to the washer, and then I threw my giant pile of dirty stuff back in. I then found my old transcript, put it in my bag, and headed back out to AB Tech.

This time, unfortunately, I found myself waiting in the lobby for over an hour. I finished the leg on my sock and pretty much all of the heel flap while I was waiting. Finally, my number came up again and I found myself in the office of a different counselor. I explained my (apparently unique) situation and produced my transcript. The counselor scanned it briefly, then said, "I don't see any introduction to writing classes."

Mistake number six: hoping that a BA in English from one of the best universities in the country would constitute sufficient proof of literacy to bureaucrats at the local community college.

"I tested out of it. You can see where I took advanced writing, though," I responded.

"Well, I guess that'll do. I'll go make a copy," she said, and headed out the door. Once she got back, she signed me up for the class I needed, and I went back home...

...to discover mistake number seven of the day: I'd accidentally thrown the white towels I'd used to clean the walls of my office in with my black work uniform. End result? Said uniform was coated in a thick layer of white fuzz. I'd have to wash it again, which meant being late to work-- and despite that second washing, I still had to borrow the lint roller.

The only upside to that day was that I got quite a bit of sock done. It's a basic sock pattern using self-striping yarn. I've never used Trekking XXL (color 801) before, but I quite like it. I can tell by the way that it's knitting up that the socks will wear like iron and the colors won't fade. They're pretty damn bright, though, what many of my knitting friends would refer to as "clown barf." I like 'em, though. They're cheerful.

Book Review: Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke

2011-08-09T10:15:00.074-04:00

I stumbled across Dream of Ding Village in the new fiction section in the library a few weeks ago. I'm not very familiar with Asian literature, mostly because I don't speak any Asian languages and I prefer to avoid reading books in translation. The premise was so interesting, though, that I checked it out anyway. I'm very glad I did. Not only was Dream of Ding Village beautifully written, it was an eye-opening look into the casualties of runaway development in modern China.

Ding Village, a small town in Henan, China (Lianke's home), becomes a bloodselling boomtown in the 1990's only to be decimated by AIDS some ten years later. Narrated by the murdered son of the town's leading bloodhead (or blood collector), Ding Hui, Dream of Ding Village tells the heartbreaking story of the town and its occupants, detailing a multitude of abuses perpetrated upon the citizens by their fellow villagers and the Chinese government and how they coped with the outbreak. Bloodheads, including (especially?) Ding Hui, were known for reusing supplies and needles, filling up the bags to the bursting point and undercompensating the peasants, and tricking people into donating more blood more frequently than they should have, not to mention lying about the true risks of blood-selling and the spread of AIDS, which is known to the villagers as "the fever." People were told that it was their civic duty to sell their blood; not only were they helping people who needed it, they were enriching their families, village, and province.

Henan was and remains one of the poorest parts of China, so the people there were especially vulnerable to heavy-handed tactics and misinformation campaigns about AIDS and how it is spread. For years, the party line of the Chinese government was that HIV/AIDS were diseases of decadent, Western society and limited to "perverts." They denied the presence of HIV in the Chinese population for years, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, which resulted in the disease spreading like wildfire through rural populations, who were unaware that needle sharing and heterosexual sex could spread the disease. Beyond that, medications available in the developed world that can slow (if not stop) the transition from HIV to AIDS simply weren't available to impoverished Chinese villagers, so when they got infected, they were left to sicken and die. In droves.

According to a few interviews of Lianke I've read online, Dream of Ding Village is a sanitized version of what actually happened; Lianke had self-censored a great deal in order to prevent it from being banned by the Chinese government (it didn't work). He had apparently left out some of the worst abuses he had come across in his research (a fact that I find frankly horrifying) and limited discussions of the Chinese government's involvement, portraying the tragedy as the work of unscrupulous local government operatives and private bloodheads. The international angle wasn't discussed, either. There's been talk of Lianke and the anthropologist he conducted his research with publishing a non-fiction work or a documentary. I hope that happens; the victims of the Chinese blood merchants deserve to have their stories told.

Overall, an excellent read. 5 out of 5 stars.

A Fun-ish Monday!

2011-08-08T22:01:00.031-04:00

Today, I drove up to Bristol to get some stuff out of my storage unit and visit my little sister. She wanted to show off her new classroom, which she'd spent the past few weeks decorating. I was pleased to see one of my old bookshelves, which she'd repainted into a much nicer color (it was pink and white, now it's teal and white) and a couple of dolls that our great-grandmother brought us from Mexico years and years ago that I thought had been lost. After she showed me around and introduced me to some of her coworkers ("You two look just alike!" ...sigh), we had lunch at the pizza place downtown and caught up. I had a really great time seeing her.

After that came the less fun part: hauling my crap out of my storage unit. The goal was to remove enough stuff to where I could get the rest of it in one trip in somebody's truck (I have a few options on that point, one of the upsides of living in the South). It was pretty painful. Not only was it as hot as eight freaking hells outside, I hadn't been to the unit in well over a year, so everything was covered in spiderwebs and dirt. Yuck. I also hadn't done a very efficient job packing when I left Nashville, so everything was pretty disorganized. It took me over an hour to get everything sorted, including removing some stuff from boxes and throwing a bunch of stuff into a nearby dumpster.

All said and done, I managed to cram a box of kitchen stuff (dishes and the like), a few trashbags of bathroom/shower stuff, some clothes, a nightstand, four chairs, and a microwave into my car. I never fail to be amazed at how much stuff can fit into such a tiny space. I had to leave my bed, mattress, box springs, table, and both dressers behind, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it all in a second trip (if not, I'll leave the mattresses, which need to be replaced anyway). I'll try to do that by the end of the month, as my free time will be dramatically curtailed thanks to the start of school.

The Joys of Audiobooks

2011-08-07T22:04:00.005-04:00

I am currently listening to:

At Home with Bill Bryson (an appropriate selection for the never-ending scrubbing of walls) at the house.
Fool by Christopher Moore (hilarious, but you'll need to have read King Lear at some point to get it) in the car.
The Cardturner by Louis Sachar (checked it out on a whim; I read a lot of his books when I was a kid) for when I finish Fool.

Book Review: Working in the Shadows by Gabriel Thompson

2011-08-06T10:28:00.021-04:00

I guess it's worth mentioning from the front end of this review that I don't have a lot of patience for people who kvetch about those who immigrate illegally to the United States. There are a number of reasons for this, but they mostly boil down to my practiced disdain for hypocritical racists (lest we all forget that white colonists and, later, the US government, stole the land from people who are pretty ethnically close, if not identical, to those trying to move here now) and my experiences working and interacting with many undocumented workers.

I've worked in restaurants off and on since I was sixteen years old, and many of those years were spent in places whose kitchen staff was either largely or entirely composed of people from Central and South America of questionable immigration status. My experience with these people flies in the face of the conventionally held notion that all undocumented immigrants are lazy, inveterate criminals who want to milk the American government for all the services they possibly can, preferably while having eight children apiece, selling drugs, stealing jobs from hard-working American citizens, and, of course, forcing us all to suffer the indignities of a bilingual culture by expecting us to learn Spanish. I spent three summers working in such a restaurant in Knoxville, and then another four years working in similar places in Nashville, and I have yet to encounter an individual as described above.

The vast majority of immigrants I encountered, legal and otherwise, were simply hard workers from impoverished backgrounds who were desperately trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. They were some of the most dedicated people I've ever met, and their work ethics put mine (and just about every other white person I know's) to shame. Most of them worked two full-time jobs. Some added a third part-time job, if they could squeeze it into their overloaded schedule. None of them, that I was aware of, were involved in illegal activities. If anything, they were scrupulously law-abiding because they knew that any run-ins with the law could lead to deportation at best, lengthy and expensive criminal trials at the worst. That same paranoid fear also kept them from seeking public services; they were often afraid they'd get turned into the INS if they tried to use them. Beyond that, they were pretty keen to learn English, and would often talk to the waitstaff as practice, asking questions about words and what they meant.

My experiences, of course, are limited. Undocumented workers do all kinds of unpleasant work, and restaurant jobs are, sadly, the cushiest ones available to them (if you've ever worked in food service, you know how truly crappy that is). I've never been in a position to interact with those who have had to work harder jobs in manufacturing, food processing, agriculture, or construction. As a result, I was pretty intrigued when I saw Working in the Shadows on the shelf at the library. Finally, an account of what happens to undocumented immigrants who wind up working the really awful jobs.

Thompson takes on a series of jobs over the course of two years. He picks lettuce in Arizona, works a chicken factory in Alabama, and heads home to New York City to test the waters in the underground economy. All along the way, he interviews his coworkers about their lives and experiences in their lines of work, and their responses are both predictable and somewhat surprising. Thompson does an excellent job portraying the realities of the immigrant experience as well as contextualizing in the broader landscape of American employment (he has a great deal to say about white workers in low-income work, too). All in all, Working in the Shadows is very well-written, exhaustively researched, and highly informative. I definitely recommend it.

4 out of 5 stars.

Hey, look! Organization!

2011-08-05T10:10:00.028-04:00

Since it's looking like the bulk of the blogging about fixing up the new house duties are going to fall to me, I've created a page (Home Improvement) where I'll be indexing my entries about it in a semi-organized, categorized manner. Speaking of new entries, I should have several up next week. I've been working hard and taking tons of pictures, as have Matt and his friends. For now, I'll tide you over with a picture of my finished bookcase:

I have cleaned both the walls and the shelves thoroughly, first with Murphy's Wood Oil Soap, then with some WATCO rejuvenating oil. I used almost an entire 750 count box of generic q-tips from Target to get the insides of the grooves clean.

The good news is that it's really quite clean, and knowing that it's no longer completely grimy is very satisfying. The bad news, unfortunately, is that the WATCO didn't do much, if anything, to even out all the sun fading and nothing to remove the Mystery Stains (more on those later, once I get the pictures off my digital camera).

If I want the walls to look even, I'm going to have to sand them down and refinish them entirely. I'd kind of wanted to do that anyway, since I'd like them to be a lighter color. They're beautiful during the day thanks to the gigantic picture window on the outside-facing wall, but it's very dark and cave-like in there at night. I'd also like to offset the dark bricks in the fireplace. That's a project for next summer, though. I don't have time to finish it before school starts, and I don't want that room to be a construction zone when I'll need to be working.

All together, I'm currently about 20% finished with the walls in that room. They're taking way longer than I thought they would. I originally thought they'd only take an hour or two, and that has morphed into eight discs from Bill Bryson's At Home and counting. I am very thankful that the Asheville library system has a good number of books on tape-- looks like I'll be needing them for sure.

I miss knitting. :(

2011-08-04T21:24:00.012-04:00

I guess the title says it all, huh? I haven't knit more than two dozen stitches in the last week and a half, simply because every moment of what little free time I have at this point has been devoured by the new house. I think things will settle down once the following have happened:

We actually move into said new house (no, that still hasn't happened yet).
The new house has internet (no, that still hasn't happened yet, either), so I can have netflix again.
I finish my office (desk, walls, desk chair, and unpack) and get my shiny new computer.
I finish the guest bedroom.
I paint the hallway.
School starts back and I will be able to justify not devoting my free time to fixing up the new house.

In the meanwhile...I miss knitting. :(

Book Review: Where She Went by Gayle Forman

2011-08-03T22:37:00.013-04:00

I wasn't a huge fan of If I Stay (you can read my review here), but I guess I cared enough about the characters to see how their story ended. I had to wait a few weeks since there were a few people ahead of me in the library's holds queue, but it wound up being worth the wait. Most of the things I complained about with If I Stay weren't present in Where She Went. I think that's mostly because Where She Went is 1) told from Adam's perspective (so the Mia whininess is kept to a minimum) 2) three years after the accident (so they're not teenagers anymore, so there's that, too). Meanwhile, the things that made If I Stay great continued to shine, namely, Forman's ability to balance past and present narratives in a cohesive manner and her delicate crafting of characters and their relationships.

The ending was still sort of cheesy, but you can't win 'em all. 4 out of 5 stars.

It mostly went okay.

2011-08-02T11:36:00.022-04:00

Yesterday, that is. I managed to accomplish everything except acquiring wood restorer (Home Depot didn't have it, so I'll be picking it up at Lowe's today) and using it along with fixing up the new desk. Matt's Everything With This House is Harder Than It Needs to Be curse has struck me, too, it seems. I got up extra super-duper early in the morning to get everything done, only to be foiled by the following:

the aforementioned lack of wood restorer at Home Depot
a brownout that struck my area right as I was getting the sander ready to plug in that didn't end until less than an hour before I was scheduled to have dinner with my dad and stepmother
Horrendously filthy...well, everything, but especially the walls in the room that will become my office.

That office. Oh god, you guys, it's so bad. Matt, my dad, and my stepmother overruled me on the painting the walls white front, so I've decided to clean and restore them. I thought that I'd only need an hour or two and half a bottle of Murphy's to get them nice and shiny, but I was so very, very wrong. They're pretty horrifying. You can't tell from looking at it, but the upper third of the room is coated in a very thick, very tenacious layer of yellow-tinged black grime (that slowly goes away as you work your way down the wall).

That can only mean one thing: cigarettes (and, given the quantity of ick I'm pulling out of the walls, a lot of them) were smoked in that room. It must have been a smoking lounge at some point in the past. I know the immediately previous occupants hadn't smoked in the house recently, as I am insane allergic to smoke and wouldn't be able to be in there and still breathe properly. So, consider this my version of an anti-smoking PSA: if cigarette smoke and the chemicals it contains can cling to walls for decades, meditate upon the damage you're doing to yourself and the people/things around you by lighting up.

Needless to say, it's probably good that I won't be painting those walls. I intend on washing them until the rag runs clean, as it were (e.g., until I can run a soapy rag over them without some hideous grime coming up), before I use the restorer, but that doesn't mean I'll have gotten all the nicotine out. It's very clingy, and damn near impossible to 100% get rid of. Luckily for my sanity, that wood has a slightly yellowish cast to it, even at the bottom, which is relatively unaffected (smoke rises, so the worst staining is within eighteen inches of the ceiling), so it's undetectable. Painting those walls a light color is officially off the table, though: nicotine bleeds through even the highest quality primers and paints. It's miserable to deal with-- ask anyone who's bought or rented a place that was previously occupied by a smoker.

So, I have another to-do list for the day:

1. Sand, prime, and paint the new desk.

2. Take last night's laundry to new place and unpack it.

3. Come home and do more laundry, and take it over later today or tomorrow.

4. Go to Target. Acquire econo-size package of q-tips (sticking my fingers in the grooves of those walls when I was cleaning them yesterday was a BAD idea. It hurts to type, and my arms/shoulders are still kind of aching) and a big pack of Magic Clean Erasers (walls in the bedrooms are seriously scuffed).

5. Go to Lowe's. Buy wood restorer.

6. Go to unfinished wood stores, acquire chair for desk. Then prime and paint it.

7. Finish washing the walls in front bedroom.

8. Finish washing the walls in my office (this round, anyway).

I sort of doubt I'll be able to get everything done, but I'm working towards completing some immediate goals for the house:

1. Get my office in a usable condition before school starts on the twenty-second.

2. Get the front bedroom set up-- I'm hauling my bedroom set in from Bristol, so all I need to do is go to ikea to pick up the duvet set I want for it and then buy paint for the walls and some curtains (which my stepmother has very graciously volunteered to help me with). One good floor-scrubbing later, and that room will be 100% good to go.

3. Paint the hallway. The previous owners had started working on it, but didn't finish. At my request, they left the paint they hadn't used and didn't take down the painter's tape on the doorways. I'm not really wild about the colors, but since I have no idea whatsoever as to what I'm going to to with that space, I may as well have it look decent in the meanwhile.

MUST NEEDS DO THINGS

2011-08-01T08:12:00.000-04:00

Once again, it's my day off, which means I have about fifty thousand things that need doing:

THE ACQUISITION OF SHINY NEW SHOES THAT WILL NOT KILL MY FEET! (Can you tell I'm excited? After a closing shift on Thursday and doubles Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, my feet are threatening to file for divorce.)
Going to the bank to deposit all of my tips from the weekend.
Heading to the post office to mail a box of yarn to a friend.
Returning a few books to the library (if I can find them. Matt and/or one of his friends moved them to the new house, and I haven't the foggiest as to where they put them).
Stopping by Home Depot to pick up the following: wood soap, wood restorer, sandpaper, primer, and white paint.
Ending up at the new house, where I need to: finish unpacking my stuff in the bedroom, wash the walls in my office, possibly put the wood restorer on said walls, sand the new desk to remove the current paint, and then prime it and hopefully re-paint it a nice, brighter white.
Once I get home to the old house, I'll need to do a giant pile of laundry and pack up the rest of my stuff that's still in the bedroom/bathroom here. Apparently, we're finally actually moving tomorrow! Yay!

That's unfortunate.

2011-07-31T10:15:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the lack of regular updates here lately. The quest for internet at the new house has taken (yet another) turn for the mildly annoying. Here's the timeline:

Thursday, July 21st: Matt closed on the new house and contacted Charter to switch his account to it. They said they'd be out on Monday (July 25th). I was somewhat annoyed by this, as I felt Matt should have contacted them sooner so we could 100% move that weekend (since he needs the internet to do his job, he can't just go without for a few days).

Monday, July 25th: Charter doesn't show, and informs Matt that they'll be arriving on Thursday, July 28th.

Thursday, July 28th: Charter finally makes their appearance, only to leave fifteen minutes later because the house isn't wired for cable, and they'd have to physically transport the cable wire from the street behind us via the power lines-- which are apparently too overgrown for them to mess with. They advise us to call the power company to clear them. Matt called the power company, and they agreed to come by and assess the situation, but were noncommittal as to whether they'd clear it at all and, if so, how long it would take.

Friday, July 29th: Charter shuts off the internet at the old/current house, claiming that it had been connected at the new one. This is clearly not the case (see above). Matt called their customer service line and demanded that they turn it back on, but since it was late in the evening, they said it was impossible and to call back the following day.

Saturday, July 30th: Matt calls Charter back, and they again claim that they are unable to reconnect the internet (even though they said they could the previous day). He then told them to cancel his account, and called AT&T as soon as he got off the phone. They'll be arriving at the new house to install DSL on Tuesday.

Whether or not we'll be able to move then remains to be seen. We're supposed to go to Charlotte with Matt's parents to visit some of their relatives (and go to Ikea!) that day, and it's unclear as to how long that'll take. Either way, unless I hang out on the driveway, where it is quite sunny and very hot, I won't have consistent internet access until Tuesday.

Moral(s) of the story:

1. Charter sucks.
2. So do cable monopolies and states/municipalities that allow them, as that enables the shit-tastic and incompetent service we received.
3. When moving, it is a good idea to ask the previous occupants if the house is wired for services you'd like to receive and make arrangements for getting them prior to the last minute.

Book Review: The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney

2011-07-30T14:49:00.000-04:00

I'd heard good things about The Mockingbirds, and decided to check it out when I randomly came across it at the library. I'm very glad I did; it made for excellent reading.

The story opens to find Alex in an unfamiliar bedroom in the dormitories of her boarding school, Themis. As the room spins around her while she's collecting her clothing, her eyes light upon two ripped-open, empty condom wrappers. From that moment on, her world is upended. In the ensuing weeks, she pieces together what happened that night through conversations with friends who witnessed some of it and flashbacks that appear out of nowhere. She comes to realize that she's been raped by a popular water polo player. Rather than go to the school or the police (out of a fear that it would disrupt her life even more), Alex enlists the aid of the Mockingbirds, a secret society that administers justice to wronged students.

Overall, I was very impressed by this book. Date rape is a tough subject for a writer to address in the first place, but especially within the context of a Young Adult novel. Whitney handles the subject very well; Alex's experiences are not only realistic, she's a very sympathetic character. Whitney also does an excellent job addressing false notions about date rape (mainly, that sleeping with unconscious people is okay and/or that silence equals consent) while promoting the idea of affirmative consent. All of the characters are very well-rendered and believable, and the writing is excellent.

I wish this had been around when I was in high school. As it is, I think it should be included in curricula everywhere. 5 out of 5 stars.

In Which I Get Lucky

2011-07-28T15:23:00.033-04:00

Behold: my new desk. I found it at Goodwill a few days ago, and decided to buy it yesterday. I'm pretty excited about it; I'd originally budgeted a pretty substantial amount of money for a new desk, and this one only cost $20. It'll need some work, though (story of my life, these days). It was painted without having been primed, so I'm going to have to sand it down to the original wood so that I can re-paint it. There are also some dings and rough edges that need to be smoothed out. I also need a chair, so I'll be hitting the unfinished furniture stores for one soon.

I'm undecided as to what color I'll wind up painting it, though. I'm in the process of talking Matt into allowing me to paint the wood paneling on the walls white. He's balking at the idea (for no apparent reason), whereas I think it's kind of necessary: the paneling is stained, unevenly faded, and, in combination with the dark brick of the fireplace, makes the room look small and dark. I'd need to sand and refinish it anyway to make it look good, and I'd rather just paint it. If I'm successful, the desk will probably wind up being light blue. If not, I guess I'll paint it white again.

The pictures on top are prints I bought at Woolworth Walk to put on the walls. One of the artists there, Sarah Faulkner, works with colors that align very nicely with those I'm planning on using in the room (white, gray, light blue, and red). There are a few other artists whose work I also admired, so I foresee a few more trips over there in the future.

Book Review: Bad Girls Don't Die by Katie Alender

2011-07-27T10:49:00.000-04:00

I wanted to like this book. I really, really did. It had a fairly interesting premise, after all: two teenaged sisters are stalked by a ghostly former inhabitant of their house (I'm a sucker for stories about haunted houses. My favorite book is House of Leaves, after all). While it was mostly well-written, it fell flat in a number of places. Cliches and hackneyed plot devices (and characters!) abounded, and character development was minimal and often nonsensical. In addition to that, Alender is juggling so many (unnecessary) sub-plots that the narrative often felt disjointed and underdeveloped. In other words, it was a pretty great idea that was very poorly-executed. In order for this book to have worked, it would have needed at least another hundred or two pages of exposition.

Needless to say, it was pretty obvious that the author primarily writes for television series: this book has all the hallmarks of teen-oriented movies on the Lifetime channel. It's a shame, because the book had a lot of potential.

Blah. 2 out of 5 stars.

Behold: Organization!

2011-07-26T20:40:00.032-04:00

Or something like it. The room that will become my office has two walls of built-in bookshelves. One is floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the other is 40% cabinet on the bottom, and then the bookshelves on top extend up to the ceiling.

I was originally planning on using the cabinet space for fabric storage and putting the yarn in glass jars and vases to be scattered around the shelves. I'd seen other knitters go that route, and it had a pretty neat effect. I ultimately decided against it, though, as the types of colors I use don't stand out against the medium brown, wooden walls (which I may or may not be painting, but that's neither here nor there at the moment). There's also the issue of stash: I'm trying to get rid of it, and using yarn as a decoration instead of, you know, knitting with it, isn't really conducive to that.

Instead, I measured the inside of the cabinet, went to Target, and picked up some storage bins that would fit. PSA: if any of you are thinking about doing some organizing, now is a good time to hit the stores for supplies. School's about to start, and I've found the kits they sell for college dormitories to be remarkably versatile. I returned home with my Sterilites, and got to sorting.

As it turns out, I have less yarn than I originally thought; only three tub's worth instead of four. The two tubs on the left have yarn I haven't used yet. The top tub contains lightweight yarn (lace, fingering, and sport weights), while the bottom tub holds heavier weights (dk, worsted, aran, and bulky). The tub on the top right holds yarn that has been knitted, either works in progress or half-completed projects that need to be frogged, or unraveled, and knitted into something else. The tub on the bottom right holds my sewing machine, notions, and patterns. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough space in the cabinet for my fabric, so my fabric tub went into the closet where I keep my winter jackets and knitted accessories. I'll post a photo of that some other time. I'm hoping that once I get my yarn stash down to a reasonable size, I'll be able to transfer the fabric to that space.

Book Review: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

2011-07-25T20:38:00.005-04:00

I have something of a love/hate relationship with film noir. Love the gritty aesthetic, fast pace, and plot twists, hate the sexism. Naturally, this relationship extends to the detective novels, many of which were published by Dashiell Hammett, that said films are based on. Last week, I decided to give The Maltese Falcon a try, as I'd heard so many good things about it. My reaction? Typical. I found it mostly enjoyable, especially since it was such a fast read, but just couldn't get past all the sexism. Meh. 2 out of 5 stars.

I'm glad someone's enjoying the moving process...

2011-07-24T23:03:00.000-04:00

The new happening place to be at the old house: a giant rubbermaid full of blankets.

All said and done, we've made a good amount of progress on the moving front. Or, I have. All of my stuff except for a few loads of laundry, the clothes I need for work, a book, a knitting project, and my bathroom stuff is there. I've also moved everything but my sewing machine, television, and a few sets of clothes out of my dad's house. The impressive part is that pretty much all of it is unpacked and ready to go. All that's left is clearing out this house and emptying my storage unit.

Matt, on the other hand, will probably be fishing things out of boxes for weeks, if not months. The same likely applies to his friends.

An Assortment of Moving Observations

2011-07-23T23:25:00.001-04:00

When I said the new house's air conditioning system was inadequate, I may have made the understatement of the year. At 10 PM last night, it was still at 77 F.
The house is largely populated by giant, indigenous dust bunnies. They're everywhere!
The previous occupants also left us a half-eaten carton of peach ice cream. I'm not sure if I want it, though...
The downside of floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves: I can't reach the top three shelves.
Another downside of having enough space for all of my books: Matt read my high school yearbooks. EMBARRASSING.
At 9:27 AM on Moving Day, everyone but me (who was five minutes away from leaving for work) was asleep. If it affected me, I'd have remarked upon their poor choice of sleeping in and putting off moving until the hottest part of the day, but since I was going to be in the air-conditioning then (I had to work a double), I smirked as I contemplated them hauling furniture up two flights of stairs into the new place.
I returned home at 10:30 PM on Moving Day, and all the furniture was still here. That explained a lot, but I still wish I could be smug.
If you are what you eat, I expect my transformation into a giant pizza to happen any moment now .
Schrodinger's Move: We can't 100% move until Charter shows up with internet (Matt works in IT, and has to have internet available at the house), and there's no telling when that will happen. You don't know if the van is a cable van until it drives by...
Wow, I have a lot of yarn.
And fabric.
I need a new desk.
My feet hurt.

Book Review: Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin

2011-07-22T12:37:00.044-04:00

I stumbled across Searching for Whitopia while browsing the 300s section of the library a few weeks ago (yes, I seriously do this, and will continue to until the library's database starts using Amazon.com's recommendation algorithm). I thought it would be a really interesting companion to Loewen's Sundown Towns, which I read a few months ago and reviewed here. While Loewen focused on the history and development of sundown towns and their evolution into monoethnic enclaves, Benjamin decided to live in these enclaves (along with visiting several others) and write about his experiences and treatments. Benjamin, you see, is black, and a big part of his project involved gauging the reactions of the denizens of these towns to his presence in their lives.

While living in Whitopias, Benjamin experiences a number of rituals associated with all-white, small town living, including numerous games of golf along with the attendance of occasional xenophobic city council meetings (in which locals decry the presence of Mexicans anywhere north of the border) and a memorable visit to the local white supremacist compound (seriously). Interspersing his narrative of his experiences in Whitopias with research he's conducted on them, Benjamin deftly explores the dimensions of modern racism intrinsic to housing and educational segregation. Ultimately, he makes a compelling argument that all-white towns and exurbs are not a good idea, agreeing with Loewen on a number of points (which I discussed in the other review). Unlike Loewen, though, who tends to be a tad over simplistic, Benjamin successfully captures the nuances of modern race relations-- apparently, white supremacists are nice. Who knew?

An excellent, thought-provoking read. 5 out of 5 stars.