Long time, no see!

::crawling up from underneath a mountain of research papers and PowerPoint presenttions::

Hi! Wow, it's bright up here. Even though it's overcast all the time and the sun is only up for about 4.5 hours per day, it's still much brighter than my dark corner of studyallthetime-ness. But it has to be done. The only way I accomplish anything is to just remove myself from the innernets altogether. Otherwise, I start "checking my mail" and the next thing I know, three hours have gone by. But I know what Britney bought at the convenience store yestrday, by golly. And isn't that what's truly important? I think I'll be back among the living sometime before Christmas. At least until I start studying for qualifying exams...

Anyway! I promise not to bore you with my exciting stories of learning about paramutation or oxygen-hemoglobin binding kinetics. No, really, I promise! You should really just praise me all day for this.

I poked my head out of the jumble because I'm winding things down so I can enjoy four uninterrupted days of not studying -- I'm going to Missouri to see Gator for Thanksgiving!!! I'm so excited!! I leave very early tomorrow morning for Chicago, where I'm meeting my friend Amanda, who is driving to Columbia. Roadtrip with fun friend and a long weekend with Gator! AWESOME!!

But before that happens, my cool New Friend Veronica (it's been, like, a year. You'd think I'd stop calling her "New". Apparently not.) is taking me to see Debbie Harry tonight! How fun is that? I'm so ready to rock out to Rapture. And now I'm in the Man From Mars! Tee hee.

So, okay, yes. I do get study breaks. And I've even spent some of them crocheting. Cwazy, I know! So I finally (only a couple of months late) finished "Sister" Annette's wedding potholders! I hope she likes them! (Of course, I hope Mick likes them, too!)




Bright and cheerful and cool. I like them, anyway. :)

And last, but CERTAINLY not least, I got the best surprise in the mail yesterday (all the way from England)! A pressie from blog buddy Judy! It's a little crocheted turkey "butt" refrigerator magnet and it came with the most lovely card. Ain't it the cutest? (And don't I look tired?)


Thank you, thank you, thank you! I love making friends on this here Interblag!

And now, excuse me while I go eat guitars... Hee!

_____

That was Halloween?

Hope you all had a safe and happy Halloween. I stayed home, read a book and talked to Gator on the phone. I didn't really want to do anything else, but it seemed so weird that I wasn't doing something else. It was nice, quiet, and I was asleep by 10:30. I like sleeping, so this was totally acceptable.

Hi! I'm old and boring! Wanna party?

I actually meant to share this with you guys yesterday. It's my new favorite Halloween song. (This implies that I had an old favorite Halloween song, which isn't the case, really. Though I suppose I never really get tired of the theme from The Munsters.) If you follow the link above and then click on the link that says "Re Your Brains", you can extend the Halloween spirit by one more day. I think it's funny as all get-out. Office Space meets Dawn of the Dead. Lurve!

Okay, I'm burrowing back into my hole now. I'm preparing a big seminar presentation and house/kid sitting for one of my professors this weekend. Give me strength.

_____

Wonder Twin powers, activate!

When Gator and I engaged, we found rings we loved in a catalog, but we couldn't afford them. We were poor college students, and the "three months salary" rule would have allotted about as much money for a ring as a thorough searching of the couch cushions. Gator's parents lived in Chicago at the time, and they knew of a Russian jeweler who could make any ring from a picture at a reasonable price. So they asked us for the page from the catalog. Right before our wedding they presented us with our wedding gift -- gold rings exactly like we wanted. Here's mine:


Gator's ring got too small (love how we blame the ring!!) so he didn't wear it and then eventually got lost. He bought a random clearance ring once, but it never fit right and was too delicate for his hand and was, though he disagrees with this point, freakin' ugly.

So years have gone by and Gator hasn't worn a wedding ring. It's no big deal -- I'm not one of those who freaks out over it and assumes he's out there outrageously cheating on me because he doesn't have a piece of metal wrapped around his finger. It's fine. Whatever.

But I do really miss having matching wedding bands. It just seems so right.

One day a couple of weeks ago I was happily partaking of my daily phone call to Gator. I was surprised when he announced, "Oh, my ring came today!"

"Ring? What ring?"

"Oh, I ordered a new wedding ring."

"Another wedding ring?"

"Yeah, it's really cool. It's titanium!"

"Really? What does it look like?"

"You can see it, I got it off Amazon. Just search 'titanium ring'..."


Anyone who followed the above link now realizes: The ring is $21.95. $22!!! Plus shipping. Whatever.

Do you know what this meant to me?? It meant that, considering that the smallest size available is the size of my left ring finger, we could once again have matching wedding bands! So I suggested the idea.

"But what about your claddagh ring?"

"Well, I'm not going to throw it away or anything. It will have a place of honor in my jewelry box, and I'm sure I'll wear it sometimes."

Somewhere along the line he started to believe that I really wanted matching rings and that I really liked the ring he'd picked out. And for $22, they can get lost or get all banged up or get too small, and we'll just get another one.

So he ordered me a matching wedding band and it came about four days later.


I've worn it ever since. I love it.

We're Wonder Twins again. My hubby rocks. :)

_____

Weekend of sloth

Wow, I didn't do much of anything productive this weekend. No grading, no studying, no reading. I meant to, I even made plans, set things out, and got all settled to work. But I was tired. So I took a nap first. Then I was hungry. So I cooked and ate. But that made a mess. So I cleaned. Then I was tired again.

It was tragic.

It was also very restful and I think I needed that kind of recharging. But I should have just said, "I'm not doing anything this weekend and I refuse to feel guilty about it." Instead, I did nothing this weekend but spent the whole time feeling like I should be doing something, and, so... the Guilt.

I'm pretty much over it, though. :)

I did make a little progress on the Star Potholder:


Now you can see a little better what it's going to look like when it's done. It's mate will be the opposite color way. I think they will be spiffy. I've missed making thread potholders. They're really quite fun.

Now I'm off for another rousing week of making up for my weekend sloth. Weee!!

_____

Oh look, a Saturday Sky, knitting, and everything!

It's a gray, hazy, autumn day in Beer Town. I rather like it, actually.


I had two horrible exams this week, a lab meeting presentation, and tons of research both in the lab and for future papers and presentations. In short, busy. I think maybe I've caught up on some sleep and no longer feel like an overwhelmed mess. The second test this week went well, I think, but the first one did not. In fact, I may have failed it. Straight up. Not that, "oh, that test went so badly and I'm sure I failed" and then it turns out I got a high B kind of thing. More like, "I left about half the answers blank because I didn't even have a bullshit answer for them and then I ran out of time" kind of thing. Pretty brutal. I could go on and on about why this happened, but I'm not going to because a) I don't want to think about it anymore, b) it won't help anything, and c) you don't really care. At least I wouldn't if I were you. So, onward and upward to handwork content instead!

Gator's best friend's baby came last month (welcome baby Owen!!), which meant that I had to get off my lazy butt and finally put the zipper in the zodiac and get it sent off. I had thought I would embroider a design on the body, but I finally decided against it altogether and went with simplicity. Plus, the buttons are pretty cute and add just a sweet touch of interest. I think it's perfectly fine just as it is.


The baby socks I made this summer were also intended for baby Owen, and I think together they make a nice little baby gift:


I've also started a new project -- a wedding gift for best friend Missa's sister, whom I call "sister" too. The wedding was actually last week, but I get a year to present them with a gift, right? So I figure I'm okay. I'm making them a set of the Round Star Flower Potholder, like the one I made for Gator last year (yes, I made my husband a potholder, and he loves it. What of it?) but in blue and yellow. I got a good start on it during a mini S n' B at Veronica's on Thursday night.


I have a lot of work to do this weekend, but I'm going to take a little time to crochet, too. I just feel better when I get some handwork time in. Otherwise I'm not sure what the weekend will bring, but I'll let you know if it's anything cool!

Have an awesome weekend. :)

_____

Local color

There is a man, homeless I think, that walks through the Marquette campus nearly every day. I don't know anything about him; I wouldn't even know him if he walked right up to me. But he has a very identifying quality -- he whistles. It's never a recognizable song, just tuneless intervals. Now, many people whistle, but Mr. Whistle (as we call him) is different. He whistles loudly. Think you know what I mean? Try this: I live on the fourteenth floor of my building. When I am in my apartment, with all the windows closed, A/C or heater running, listening to the news on the radio, I can hear him. From three blocks down the street. That is some loud whistling.

Rock on with your bad self, Mr. Whistle.

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The new reality

This semester is not going to leave much time for blogging. It won't last forever, but it's going to pretty much be this sporadic all fall. Not that I'm that exciting to begin with.

Baseball season is going away and I'm sad. Of course I'm sad that my Brewers didn't make the playoffs after such a promising start, but Gator is a Cubs fan, so one of us was going to be happy no matter what. As long as the Cardinals bit it.

My last game of the season was a blast, as always. I've totally gotten the "going to the baseball game" bug. It's just so very fun. This time, V invited me along to her workplace picnic at Miller park.


At the tailgate, there were celebrity sightings! Exciting!

I was accosted by a Klements Racing Sausage (My favorite! Bratwurst!):


Bernie Brewer was starting to drag after many pictures wth fans. I admit that I perked him up a bit by patting him on the behind. That's why he's looking a little shocked in this pic:


I've loved every second of my time at Miller Park this summer. I can't wait until next year.

_____

'Tis me risin' from th' dead

Arrrr! It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Shiver me timbers!

As much as I would like to post entirely in Piratese, it just doesn't come across in print very well. Arrrr!

Oh, yeah, Hi! Been awhile, eh? After my company left, I got a wicked cold and the workload this semester is crazy. I haven't blogged, I haven't done any handwork -- I do homework and sleep. Mostly, that's totally it.

But that's no fun to blog about! Luckily, I have a whole passel of pictures from when my Best Friend Missa came to visit me weekend-before-last. Yay!

She flew up from Missouri to see me, obviously, but also to see our favorite band, Rush, when they played here on Sept. 6. The concert was a total blast and we had a ball. Afterwards, as we walked to the bus stop, a couple of college-age guys on bikes stopped us. One had a bouquet of roses in his hand. He offered them to us and we were trying to politely refuse ("candy" from strangers and all that -- it was around midnight in the middle of the city, after all), when he explained that he was just having a really hard time riding his bike while carrying these flowers -- and wouldn't we like some beautiful flowers? So we finally accepted. Unless they contained this cold virus Missa and I both seem to have picked up, no harm came from taking flowers from a stranger. They were pretty beat-up at the time, but I trimmed them and put them in water when we got home and, by morning, they had perked up to be very lovely indeed. Missa beautifully posed with them:



Saturday morning we drove down to the Lakefront and Missa posed,


I posed,


We met some birds,


and Missa tried to get to know one of them better (it flew away seconds after this photo was taken).


We took in a few more sights, then met up with New Friend Veronica for the Miller Brewery Tour. It was fun, free, and included beer. Perfection? Dang close. Missa and I got up close and personal with a large fake beer bottle. Why not?


Missa, me, and V posed together at the back of the High Life Cruiser, a big, very retro Miller bus thing-y that we decided was just pretty cool. Although, I think that great old "Girl in the moon" logo may be the best thing about Miller. They should use it more, methinks.


Missa didn't get to stay nearly long enough, if you ask me. But it was great to see her, hand out with her, and to have my first official out-of-town visitor come to my humble abode in Beer Town! Yay! It was fun playing hostess and I tried to instill my insane crazy love for this city into Missa. I think I did a pretty good job. I can't wait until she can come back!

::cough::

Seriously, do you think those guys made us sick with infected roses??

::cough::

Yeah, okay, maybe not.

I have company!

Today's Saturday Sky is courtesy of Best Friend Missa, who visited my roof earlier this morning and shot this pic. It's going to be a gorgeous day today in Beer Town -- perfect for visiting friends from Missouri!!! Missa flew in on Thursday and will be staying until tomorrow morning. We've been having all kinds of fun and have a great day planned for today.

So I'm off, but I'll tell you all about our fun weekend later, I promise!

Dad's new job

Dear Gator,

When the Biology Department has functions, they provide water for us packaged in these bottles. They're cute and round and kind of funny:


They are also apparently marketed by your father:


That's right, baby -- they're ORBTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!

_____