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.

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'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!!!!!!!!!!

_____

Movin' right along

So, I didn't study very much over the long weekend, and I certainly didn't clean my apartment. What I did was sit on the roof during the day and enjoy all the sunshine I possibly could, and watch X-files DVDs in the evenings. Both activities were perfect for doing handwork.

Knitting ballbands frees my eyes up for more important uses, like looking at David Duchovny. I finished number four.


Days in the sun were perfect for completing the squares necessary for the next strip of the Crazy Quilt Coverlet:


Talking on the phone to Gator, my Sis, and Missa were perfect opportunities to complete the strip...


...and attach the strip to the rest of the afghan. That's the new one there on the right.


There's only one more strip, then the border. Thank Goodness. The border in the pattern is quite narrow and I've been thinking of beefing it up a bit. We'll see when we get there. I'll probably make it up as I go along.

Speaking of making things up as I go along, I got a wild hair. I had laid out my completed ballband cloths and realized that, really, they're just big ol' afghan squares. I'm completely addicted to making them, so perhaps I should make a stash-busting Ballband Afghan. I'm going to use the same color for the background of all the squares and mix up the 'ridges'. I'm still mulling around the joining technique, but I think I know exactly what I want to do -- if I can just get it to work (those sides are messy). I'm not ready to post any pics, but when they come, you will eventually get sick to death of them. Also, this may kill my ballband addiction. We'll see.

Teaching on my own for the first time this morning. Gots me some butterflies. I'm sure it will be fine. Wish me luck, though, anyway, K?

_____

Happy Labor Day!

I hope everyone has time for a little fun and rest today, even if it's not an official holiday where you live. Fun and rest are always a good idea, especially on a Monday!

I have labored (in the sun, on the roof, by the pool) this weekend and I'll have a little to show on that tomorrow. For now, I'll get back in the flaking groove:


This is another snowflake done according to Judy's pattern. I love this design. The first time I made it, I used #20 thread and the flake is pretty small. I wanted a larger one, so I whipped out the #10 thread and went to town. Hmmm. They're both pretty good, but I think I really like the small one best after all.


Have a great day!!

_____

Aaaaahhhh!

My Ravelry invitation came today! And I'm at the lab, so I can't immediately play! And I have to study this weekend! The temptation! Is! Killing! Me!

No matter what I have to do this weekend, I will totally take some time out to bop around and set up a few things. I'm Sus there, too ("asparagus", however, was already taken as a username. WTF??), so look me up if you'd like to be "friends". :)

_____

Bargain therapy

The semester is off to a rip-roarin' start, but I don't have much to report. I went to Walgreens on Tuesday to get some bandages (my heel is still popping open and is going to be a bi7ch to heal up) and got caught in the throes of a back-to-campus sale! Retail therapy will surely help me wee wound, no?

Buy one, get one half price -- and regular price was only 9.99 to start with! They could be crap, or they could be just fine:


1.5 qt. crock pot and 3 cup rice cooker ($14.98 for both) in their new habitat.

My labmate, Lihui, said she had purchased one of these rice cookers several years ago and used it every day for two years. If I can get anything close to that much use from it, I'll be thrilled.

I just made rice in it for the first time this morning and everything seems just peachy! Yay, bargains!

That's all, back to work!

_____

Reasons

Why I'm not in the mood to blog:

• Classes and my TA assignment have started. I did get the assignment to TA Cell Biology, which is only going to involve leading discussion (recitation) sections, not teaching the entire class (they don't do that here), so it's not quite as bad as some of you may have thought, but it's still about 10 hours a week that I can't research, plus it breaks up my days in annoying ways so some research is even more difficult.
  
• My course meeting times (the courses I'm taking, as opposed to the one I'm TAing) have been changed so that one meets at 7:45 am and the other runs until 5:15 pm. Long-ass days.
  
• Sunday, when coming home from the grocery store on the bus, my grocery cart-thingy rolled into my heel while I was taking a step and sliced open the back of my heel. It bled A LOT, right there on the bus, and the only thing I had to staunch the flow was my receipt from the grocery store. It was gross, uncomfortable (all those people sneering at my for having the incredibly poor manners to BLEED all over the bus -- and I mean there was A LOT of blood -- and of course none of them were at all interested in helping me), and a challenge to get home from the bus stop with my groceries while BLEEDING PROFUSELY, so much so that it was spattering out of my sandal with every step. It took forever to stop bleeding and it now pops open regularly due to heel flexion when I walk. I'm sure it needed a couple of stitches, but it's not going to get them, so I deal. But I don't feel much like doing anything -- even knitting or crocheting.
  
• Four big readings assigned yesterday, due tomorrow for intense discussion. Argh.
  
• General grumpiness.

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Don't worry, I know what I'm doing

Classes start next week which, while I'm not really enthused about because it will take so much time from my research, is not really too stress-inducing. But I also start a teaching assistanceship, which I am a little freaked out about. I've never TA'd before and, in order to do it right, I'm sure it will take a lot of time. The thing is, no one in the department wants anyone to spend a lot of time on their assistanceship because the priority is research. Now, apart from the educational priorities in higher education debate this could start, I am, of course, more concerned about how this affects, well, me.

See, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Those who know me well are now howling with laughter at the understatement. And if I can't always be 100% competent, I like to at least appear 100% competent virtually 100% of the time. Now, we don't have official TA assignments yet -- we should get them today (and don't even get me started on why they wait so long to let us know what we'll be teaching -- classes start Monday, for Goodness' sake), but I'm fairly certain that I will be TAing Cell Biology. This is all well and good -- it's an upper division class, populated by fewer students than the survey courses and only biology majors, so they should be more dedicated, but there's a reason that this strikes some fear into my heart. I took cell biology as an undergrad in 1989. Oh, I know the basics, plus anything that I use regularly in my research or that applies to classes I've taken more recently, but there are a lot of details I've forgotten. The professor of the class thinks that this means that TAing this class will be particularly good for me, as I need a refresher on this material and this is an excellent opportunity for that. She's absolutely right. However, my stress level has ratcheted up several notches at the prospect.

So much so that last night I had a nightmare about it. Granted, in true dream fashion, it was ridiculous, but it was definitely a manifestation of my current apprehension. In the dream, I met my class in the proper room, only to find that the proper room was an ice cream parlor and that I was to teach them how ice cream was made and sold at said parlor, except I had no idea how ice cream was made and sold at said parlor because I had just gotten the TA assignment previous to entering the room. So, while under the guise of waiting a bit for latecomers to arrive, I tried to surreptitiously quiz the employees about the material and considered just delegating the actual instruction to the employees. While I debated whether this plan was smart or just lazy and whether I would look more incompetent if I tried to bullshit my way something I knew nothing about, or if I handed off instruction to a high-school age part-time worker, one of the students announced that my friends had arrived. (Never mind how they knew they were my friends -- this is a dream, kids. Wherein I'm TAing Ice Cream Parlor 101.) Sure enough, my friends, Meredith, Liz, and Laura were walking down the hall. I excused myself and went to greet them. As I explained my predicament to them, they all just looked at me like I'd lost my mind and told me that, no matter what, I had to go back and teach the class. I was disappointed that they hadn't seemed more compassionate to my plight when it hit me: They are all teachers. And that if I didn't somehow pull this out of my ass and find a way to be successful, I was not only going to look like an incompetent loser in front of my students, but I would also seem that way to my friends.

And then I woke up.

Not that I have issues, or anything.

Nope, not at all.

I've got it completely under control.

I know exactly what I'm doing.

_____