The Adventures of a Knitter & Beginning Cyclist

Haiku

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 21:36:00 +0000

Two haikus I wrote today:

a leaf falls catches
itself on delicate wings
look! a butterfly

and

sitting alone I
vibrate full of thoughts and plans
my room is too cold

How is it that I never knew before reading Sorta Like a Rockstar that the goal of haikus are to capture a moment? These were two of my moments today--no judgment, no feeling even, just seeing the world as purely as possible.

Know Thyself

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 02:51:00 +0000

Goodness, it has been a while, hasn't it? Well, let's not focus on that. Let's instead look at a thing which entertains me greatly, to the point that I am ignoring dinner to write this blog post. (Bad human; no cookie.) ::pauses to take bite::

When I was in high school, I took one of those free Myers-Briggs quizzes online--with the disclaimer and everything, that it isn't the full profile and so on et cetera, but fairly comprehensive. I remember, weirdly and possibly not accurately, that it was 99 questions (that might have been the Sorting Hat one. No, I definitely wasn't obsessed with taking personality quizzes, why do you ask?), and I scored as INTJ. For reference, that's Introvert, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging. This evening (in class no less! The professor even told us we could!), I played the Insight Game, and got . . . well, I got several possible results, since the answers for some of my categories were pretty close, but the ones that ring true from inside my head are ESFJ/ISFJ. For those of you playing along at home, that's a difference of up to THREE letters. Out of FOUR. (BTW, E=extrovert, S=sensory, F=feeling.)

I don't perceive myself as having changed much, by the way, from high school to college to graduate work--I'm a little more willing to talk with people I don't know and sometimes spontaneously decide to go to social events (two reasons why that's surprising: spontaneity and events. I have always liked hanging out with people and talking, but still don't really like parties). So why the huge change in how I view my personality, if I haven't really changed that much?

Let's ~~go through the events of the evening~~ consider the traits one by one, and start with the one that I always thought defined me--the T/F thing. I can actually understand how I misread this on a couple levels. First, I really wanted to be rational and logical. A lot. It really bothered me in college when I discovered that I would choose my belief system over scientific rationalism--I was taking Botany and reading about cool stuff like primitive cells that got swallowed by other primitive cells to become the first multicelled organisms, and thought about it until I found the sticking point, where I was unwilling to take science's word for it. (For the record, it's the origin of life--I decline to believe that life can arise out of nothing. And electrons out of nothing are just as iffy.) Second, this is the section, for me, with the most hard calls. Several times I almost chose the T side and decided the F side fit slightly better, and an almost equal number of times I did the reverse--and in the end the two areas I'm closest in are E/I and T/F. Third, I misread another aspect of my personality and used it to identify with profiles that I don't quite match.

That other aspect of my personality would be the J, by the way. Its opposite is Perceiving, the characteristics of which are spontaneity, a hatred of routine, tendency to procrastinate and end up doing too much at the last minute. They hate making up their mind about anything (in fact, this is a major reason they procrastinate), and they tend to second-guess their decisions even after they are already committed. The only aspect in which this describes me is that I dislike making decisions (I rarely second-guess my decisions after making them though, and almost never seriously consider changing them), and I think that might be a girl thing rather than a personality thing. Or a girl-in-Western-society thing--feel free to discuss. I make snap decisions, I hate changing plans, I adore routine, and I find it much easier to schedule my time (even though that's sometimes hard) and do things in pieces than have to do entire projects at the LAST POSSIBLE SECOND OMG. So rigidity is a Thing in my life, and a bunch of T personality types have the word "rigid" in their descriptors, and you can totally see how I misapplied it, right? I never figured out, until this evening playing the Insight Game, that my rigidity comes less from an inflexible mind and more from an almost religious devotion to Schedule.

Third, Extrovert/Introvert. I am an extrovert in the most internal sense--being around people winds me up and energizes me rather than wearing me out. I am not a traditional extrovert otherwise; I'm not particularly outgoing, nor do I always need to be around a bunch of friends, nor for that matter do I make friends easily. But I find talking to be an easy and enjoyable activity, and I will never turn down a conversation even if I happen to be doing something else. The reason I identified so strongly as introvert in high school is a combination of that tendency to create a routine and never want to deviate from it for the rest of my life mentioned above, and being homeschooled in a family that is 3/4 introvert. Both of my parents and my sister all need time away from people to recover energy, so I learned not to bother people unless they showed signs of wanting to interact with me, and had that lesson drilled into me until I started college at 19. I learned it so well, in fact, that I don't remember when I first learned it.

Last of all, Sensory vs. Intuitive. I have no idea how I ever deluded myself into thinking I was intuitive. Yes, I'm an inventive, imaginative person--but all my imaginings stem from other people or my observations. I observe more intensely than I do anything else, with an insane eye for detail. There's nothing wrong with that, I know now--even for creative writers, it all falls flat without close attention to world-building and character detail, and my sweetie says I would have been an excellent actress with my ability to get inside people's heads and construct their stories from their actions. Maybe it's that I observe so well that I thought I just intuitively knew things--for example, in my teens I had a trait I called "emotional chameleon" (picking up what people around me are feeling and feeling the same way), which I trained out of myself as soon as I realized I had it. (It's very uncomfortable, being dependent on everyone around you being in a good mood.) Maybe it's just that the dividing line between intuitive and sensory is more arbitrary than most, and I in my practicality and care for details fall on the sensory side rather than intuitive in this emphasis, where the dividing line between the two would fall elsewhere in another, and I without moving would change sides.

Poetry on Mother's Day

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:09:00 +0000

I wrote Mom a note for Mother's Day explaining her present, and realized after a while that it sounded a lot like a poem. So I rewrote it a bit and reformatted it to look like a poem, and thought I would share. :-)

A Gift

This Mother’s Day
I will make anything
you ask for.
Chocolate cake or
Sweaters or
An acre of peach lace.
(If you want a project, I will have it done
By Christmas.)
I can’t buy you
Just anything
But I still have time
And today
This Mother’s Day
Your present from me
Is time.

And in case you're wondering, she plumped for this sweater, in cardigan form. I heart Anne Hanson designs :-)

Three Things

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 20:12:00 +0000

Specifically, three things about the US that I didn't realize I missed till I got back. :-)

Item 1: street lights. Now I'm used to navigating OU's campus, which is not universally lit, so it wasn't unnerving to tromp around in Leipzig and Berlin with their noticeably lower density of lights. (Besides it's not like I was out after dark much--when the sky's light till your normal bedtime......) Still, looking out the window of the plane at Chicago was a reassuringly homecoming feeling.

Item 2: streets on a grid system. They appeal deeply to my sense of symmetry and tidiness, not to mention how much easier it is to orient oneself when wandering around. Plus they're very pretty seen from the air around sunset, so that all of the aforementioned streetlights are glimmering. It's a bit like a very neat constellation.

Item 3: urban sprawl. Go figure. I thought that something I would really miss about Germany would be all the green space within the cities--there are parks and gardens everywhere--and perhaps I will. One of the things that says "home" to me, though, is a sprawling city; even though I love the green space and parks, it feels Other, not like home.

As may be obvious, all three of these occurred to me as we were taking off from Chicago. These observations thus may or may not accurately represent my attachment to actual cities. They are nonetheless representative of a general trend--I was happy in Germany, even to the point of not really wanting to leave, but now that I'm back, I'm very happy to be home and keep seeing all kinds of stuff that was different. Not bad, not even things I disliked, just Other--just not home.

It's good to be back. :-)

A Strange Dream

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:55:00 +0000

I seem to remember my dreams better here.....

Wait, before I dive into my actual post, let me bring everyone up to date on news-ish stuff. As should not be a shock to anyone who actually knows me (or who follows me on Plurk, for that matter--I'm very clearly on European time), but which I have not yet posted on the blog because I'm a horrible blogger (as previously established on many occasions), I am in Germany at the moment--Leipzig, to be specific, in the break between Kurs A & Kurs B. Class starts again tomorrow, so I will have slightly more to do than I have for the past 4 days, which have been a giddy round of sleeping in and not leaving my room ;-)

So, the dream! I would suppose I have the same number of strange dreams here as elsewhere, but I seem to remember them better. There was one about Spindle, who adopted me and who was then held captive (slightly less than I was--nothing stops cats from going where they want) in our apartments in the back of...... apparently the women's clothing section of a posh department store. It was all deep pink and plush, and filled with clothes--like a very done-up boudoir, except everything was for sale. That was more than a week ago, though, and I don't remember anything very clearly from it except the adorable brindle cat who I named Spindle. (That was obviously the most important point anyway, right? Of course right!)

This morning's dream was once again on the theme of hostages and captives--apparently my brain likes that sort of thing. The first moment I remember clearly was handing my knitting to a Kern-monster-who-was-not-a-Kern-monster, in the way of dreams (oh. Another thing I've failed to keep the blog up to date on--the Kern-monster is a certain boy I met in January, with whom things look very promising)--anyway, handing over my knitting and book in the clear expectation of getting in the car (a rather old-fashioned convertible, by which I mean approximately Model T vintage) and driving off, only I was stopped firmly by the warden and told I couldn't leave. Or get my knitting back. Or for that matter my book. I of course considered this tremendously unfair, and told the warden so--apparently my dream wardens are a bit soft, because he didn't respond at all to this piece of cheek, but ignored me. I'm glad, really--it would be dreadful to get beaten up in my own dream. Insult to injury, sort of thing......

Then there was a middle stage of wandering around camp (not a very strict camp, apparently) and making friends with the other inmates--there was one sweet gentleman who I think was trying to make plans for an escape, and invited me along. Then the last part of the dream that I remember was strolling casually away from the camp, having no idea how I got outside but being equally certain I was completely at liberty. This amnesia worried me a bit and I tried prodding at the edges, without recognizing it as one of those fluid dream changes that your brain perpetrates when you're asleep--apparently my mind is very resistant to lucid dreaming, because that was as close as I can ever remember being to realizing I was dreaming while I was asleep. And really, it's not very close ::laughs::

The end result was that I woke up at 5:10, stayed awake for long enough to go over the details of the dream and think, "Well, that was strange," and slept again till my alarm at 6:30. Which I have, incidentally, because getting up early is a reality of life here in Germany--class starts at 9 and I usually leave my apartment five minutes before 8 in order to be properly early for class--and because I choose not to knock my body rhythms out of sync just because I happen to not have to get up for five days straight between sessions. And also because the sun shines straight in my window at 6:30 and I wouldn't sleep much past then anyway--it's easier for me to go to bed early here than to stay up late, with the result that a "late evening" for me is now 10pm. ::laughs::

A Slightly Atypical Blog Post

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 22:53:00 +0000

So. I've been a horrible horrible blogger and dreadfully neglectful and all that. I've just had nothing I wanted to say that couldn't be fit into 140 characters for a while.

And now, I would like to break my established pattern, and share with you, not deep thoughts on knitting or learning experiences or even amusing vignettes of my life at college or home, but rather a recipe. It's from this book, although since I don't have it here with me it's more inspiration than word for word.

It's called Pasta alla Crudiaola (I make no guarantees as to spelling; I know German, not Italian), and it is so. good.

Recipe-ish Start by cooking about 8oz of pasta to your preferred doneness. Pot, salted water, stove, bring to boil--right. I have every confidence in your abilities. Now, about the time you add the pasta to the water, heat some olive oil in a skillet and add a 14oz can of diced tomatoes. At the same time, throw a few spoonfuls of garlic (I think the original recipe calls for 6 cloves--you can really use a LOT) and some more olive oil into a bowl. At this point the tomatoes have been cooking for, what, one and a half two minutes. Add them to the bowl with the garlic. When the pasta is cooked to a suitable doneness, drain, rinse if you want but there's no obligation, and add it to the bowl too. (You need a pretty big bowl for this.) Then add some crushed red pepper flakes, stir it up, serve and devour.

This is an incredibly easy recipe, but you can easily make it as intensive as you want. You could peel and chop your own tomatoes, mince your own garlic (I use the jarred minced garlic), you could even make your own pasta if you wanted! It also lends itself well to gluten-free cooking--it works just as well with rice or quinoa pasta as with regular wheat pasta. You can easily double it (just use 16oz of pasta, a 28oz can of diced tomatoes, and more garlic), or add protein like ham or shrimp to the tomato mixture to make it a more filling meal (just cook your protein of choice in the oil before adding the tomatoes--make sure that shrimp or what have you is fully cooked or heated through or whatever your goal is *before* adding the tomatoes, though, because you don't cook the sauce for any time at all after that).

......This is making me hungry. ::wanders off to eat dinner::

::wanders back to click Publish::

Theological Musings + Knitting

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:06:00 +0000

I've been thinking about how I refer to my knitting, as compared to how non-knitters talk about it. The most common question that I get when it comes to my knitting is, "What are you making?" My answer is almost always, "It's a sock," though it might in rare cases be "It's a shawl," or "It's a shell." The point, though, is not that I mostly make socks, but rather that I think of my knitting as already being the finished product. Sure, I'm working on it right now, sure, it's in progress--but really? It's a sock. It's not going to be a sock when I finish, it already is one. (Perhaps that's why it hurts so much to rip things out--you already consider that you have the thing you're making, even though it isn't finished yet.)

This morning in history, instead of being asked, "What are you making," I was asked, "What is that going to be?" As usual, I answered, "A sock," but it got me thinking. I see my knitting as something which already exists--as the finished product which is not yet manifest (or visible--sorry, I'm thinking about the theological aspects, and manifest is a very theological word).

All that is interesting enough on its own (and knitters, feel free to chime in--do you think of your knitting as the product even from the beginning stages, or do you say "it's going to be"?), but of course, being me, with my background, this whole concept immediately struck a familiar chord. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, KJV). As Pastor describes it, faith is saying that I have it, even though it isn't in my hands; hope is saying, it's coming! It's coming! Someday it will be here! --I wonder if this is the result of long training, that I see even something very prosaic through eyes of faith--seeing what isn't there as if it already existed? Does walking by faith in your spiritual life change your outlook on material things? Am I boring my blog audience out of their skulls? ;-) Do comment--and feel free to tell me if you think the topic completely uninteresting.

Meditations about Professors

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:53:00 +0000

I haven't had a single professor that I didn't like. Curious, isn't it? I have had, in three semesters, only one professor that I didn't particularly gel with--I still like her, don't get me wrong, but given the choice I'll take classes from anyone else. I would probably be fine if all I had to do with her was hang out--fortunately, I'm to the point now that I can pick classes based on which professors I want to study with, as well as what I actually want to study.

I also seem to get far more than my share of cute professors--not that I'm complaining, mind you! I am all in favor of eye candy. ::insert lascivious emoticon here, if you feel that you must:: Even if the professors aren't cute themselves (or not my type--like my psych professor, Dr. Nicole), they have tremendously good taste in TAs. (One such cute TA even had the added attraction of a faint German accent--I think he was from Munich.) Perhaps it's a university-wide plot to keep susceptible students coming to class......

Honestly, though, at least one of these observations have to do with attitude, more than chance. I find professors to be both nice and interesting, because I go to class prepared for them to be, and I don't find them hard and unreasonable, because I go into *every* situation assuming the best. And I suppose that finding my professors and their TAs to be funny, cute, interesting, and so on is just a variation on looking for the best in every situation. But I think I like the university-wide plot idea better than that last one. ;-)

Horoscopes--Not everything they're cracked up to be

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:39:00 +0000

In light of my most recent blog post, I thought that this article was hysterically funny. So, my birthday is April 16th, which means that apparently I'm an Aries. The first sentence of the article is, "As an Aries, you are the one who gets things started." *snort* Also, apparently I get bored easily--excuse me while I rofl. I joke that if I wasn't easily entertained, I wouldn't knit, but it's true--who would spend hours pulling loops of string through other loops otherwise? Discuss.

About Thinness

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:47:00 +0000

I have a friend named Teresa, who is newly diagnosed diabetic. (She blogs at I'm Sweet Enough.) She posted links (on Plurk, of course--where I get all my links) to some stories about new weight-loss discoveries/attitudes about weight loss, and one such link (posted in her thread, but not by her) really got me thinking. This blog post by Kate Harding I found particularly thought-provoking, because I know whereof Kate speaks, though from the other direction.

See, I'm not fat, and never have been. I know that thinness isn't the be all and end all, because I, despite my average weight and trim waist, do not have an ideal life. In particular, I find it near impossible to start a conversation (though I have few problems joining a conversation that's going, nor am I cripplingly shy when addressed). Because of this, I have almost no friends in real life, and even fewer who are around my age, though this last doesn't really bother me, since I've always preferred the company of adults. I think before I speak to a painful degree, which is why I much prefer the online existence, where I can edit my image and words as endlessly as I choose without missing many opportunities to make friends. On a college campus, though, few people stand still long enough for someone to compose the perfect introduction speech (and no doubt script the first few exchanges of words as well--I find my interior life much more entertaining than any out there).

So yeah. The Fantasy of Being Thin struck a chord, and made me realize that either I need to accept that this is how I am, or push myself consciously beyond my comfort zone, till I can actually start a conversation. Most people are nice, after all, and small talk is an essential skill. And really, probably the solution is not either/or, but both--accept that starting conversations is not something I'm naturally comfortable with, but something that nevertheless I need to do. And I can't very well learn it any younger, can I?

A Revelation

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 02:22:00 +0000

I spend a lot of my time doing what I call "self entertainment," in which I basically laugh at everything I encounter. It's a process that is vital to my mental health in many ways, because, let's be honest, I'm in college, encountering stresses that I never have had to cope with before, including a roomie who is my polar opposite in nearly every way. I'm not sleeping enough/restfully enough, mostly because of aforesaid roomie (who BTW is not the one I started out with--she was fabulous), and my sense of humor is the only thing that stops me from coming unglued on a daily basis.

Tonight, I had a vivid glimpse of what I could have been. This same bent, which I use to radiate amusement and reinforce contentment, can be used with malice aforethought. I could have become a bitter cat instead, old before my time, spiteful, mocking, nasty, vengeful, but God has changed me.

I know that a lot of people don't have much use for religion. Honestly, I don't have much use for religion (and what most Americans mean by "religion" is what you get when you attend church without knowing God). Religion can really mess people up, but God changes lives. I'm proof of that. I am not in the process of becoming my Grandma Becky, even though I'm just like Dad who is just like her.

Post Scriptum: Y'know, this is not a post I ever anticipated putting on this blog. I did not ever intend for the blog to be about my spiritual life (partly because it is a very hard thing to write about without becoming sanctimonious), but nevertheless my life revolves around my church, the Bible, and God. So since this has become an existential blog anyway, y'all can just cope with the occasional post that involves God. I'll try not to be pompous about it, but I'm officially no longer self-editing to not mention the biggest part of my life. It is, after all, my blog. ;-)

When you sing in choir

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:59:00 +0000

There's a lot of breathing in choir. That may seem like an obvious statement, so I'll move on quickly. It turns out, that if you get sick during a mid-semester break, after you have been consistently exercising your diaphragm (through almost 3 hours a week of singing), that the muscles you then strain while coughing are muscles that you use for darn well everything. Standing up straight, for example, and biking. And walking, and balancing in heels. And a different facet of breathing.

The little random stabs of agony have almost gone away, and I can stand up straight again, and walk again at my normal clip, and I have managed not to acquire an ibuprofen habit while getting to this point. I have to laugh though--choir, in addition to its multifarious advantages (like getting to sing for almost 3 hours a week :-D), has given me new and more interesting ways to hurt myself.

Once my intercostals, or whatever muscles I managed to strain, are fully healed again, you can bet that part of my regimen will be strengthening them so I don't go through this again. Ow.

And now for something completely different

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:44:00 +0000

Backrub chains are one of the best perks of choir (though getting to watch conductors during performances is pretty awesome too). The director--Dr. Z, Dr. L, or sometimes Graduate Assistant Extraordinaire Ian G. (to be hereafter called Ian, cause that's one heck of a title ::laughs::)--says, "Okay, massage this way," and the choir as a body turns to the left and rubs shoulders, and then the director says "Switch," and the choir turns to the right and rubs shoulders that way. You see, for singers, your instrument is your body--all the effort has to be mental, because if it creeps into your neck, shoulders, back, legs, it's going to affect the sound. It's wonderful, by the way--two of my favorite activities, singing and relaxing, rolled into one.

Yesterday, instead of having a backrub chain in the warm-up, we had one in the middle of the practice for Elijah, which means that Ian and Dr. L were lending their voices to the tenor line, since we have all of 5 avowed tenors. *ahem* All right, the point of all this lead-up is that Ian gives very good backrubs (he wears overshirts which make it very difficult to rub properly, incidentally, but on his other side was Dr. L, who undoubtedly did a much better job than I did)--I practically floated back to my seat because I was so relaxed, and I can drop my shoulders fully without agony now (apparently some aspect of college life has installed a permanent knot in my right shoulder which, until yesterday, meant that it was painful to drop my shoulders, and in fact I couldn't entirely). See, this is why he's Graduate Assistant Extraordinaire.

Self-Justifying--A Model

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:06:00 +0000

So, just to be perfectly clear, this post is not picking on my roommate. I'm not mad at her, nor upset by her behavior--sure I wish she would change, but mostly for the sake of the people who will live with her (I can testify from personal experience that it is not easy). If she never changes, I can still cope--in large part, admittedly, because I only have to deal with her until the end of the semester. :-D

I freely admit to mocking her though--just a little bit.

Some time ago--I think it was a Friday--we had a little altercation, which might be named To Lock or Not to Lock by someone who was a little too fond of literary allusions. Ahem. In summary, it boils down to roomie coming in after I've locked the door so I can change into pjs, complaining about how inconvenient it is that I lock the door before she comes in (despite that she, on occasion, never comes in at all), me pointing out mildly that I was going to change, her objecting that "no one is going to just walk in without knocking," and me NOT saying, "like you were just about to?" That was strategy, as my next move was to bring up that she doesn't lock the door, like ever, and I'm not comfortable with that, and her answer to that was, oh so surprisingly, that no one is going to come in. She then called me passive-aggressive for not bringing it up until then, and I countered by admitting that it was p-a, a bit, but trying to imply, or in general say more gently than blurting it out, that I was not and am not comfortable talking to her (because she does not freaking respond. At all. Really creepy to someone from a highly verbal family), and she responded with the incredibly profound cliche, "it's a two-way street."

Now, what I find fascinating about this whole thing is that we were both responding according to our conditioning--at least I was. It's an absolute in my house that no one is perfect. So I gave ground at the accusation of being passive-aggressive, expecting a similar response from her, because that's how discussions (i.e., not yet fights) work in my house--but instead, I smacked into a brick wall. Roomie, on the other hand, sort of approached things with an "I'm never wrong" attitude, and managed to very quickly self-justify out of any fault on her side. I don't know what background gave her that attitude, but the odds are rather better than even that that is how her family of origin acts during discussions.

So, fast-forward to a night the next week. I was changing clothes, but hadn't locked the door, because I'll let no one say that I'm not reasonable on issues that do not darn well matter. She walked in, while I was in an in-between stage (just pants, thank heaven), and I said, in a voice which my family would recognize as protest but not outrage, "You could knock!" I then listened, with far more patience than I would have had if I actually had been upset, to her righteous indignation about not expecting to knock to walk into her own bedroom. I thought, after the fact, that her word choice there was interesting--I would never say, "my bedroom" when referring to my dorm room, because it isn't "my bedroom," it's my home away from home. My home on campus stops at the door which she so often does not lock--but for her, this same space is chiefly a place to sleep.

She objects to me locking the door, because it's inconvenient for her, and never considers that any other perspective could be possible. She objects to my reasoning, because "no one would do that"--herself excepted. She rejects my concerns about unlocked doors because "it's passive-aggressive not to have brought them up earlier." She could be a model for the wonderful new how-to show, "How to be right in any argument, no matter how reasonable or well thought out the other side is." It's really fascinating to discover how someone's mind works--and I mean that not at all sarcastically! I probably have a better idea of my dear roomie's motivations than she does right now--it's largely academic, since even given her motivations I have no clue how to deal with her, but I do feel better knowing that I am not her real problem.

German Practice to Life Truth

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:00:00 +0000

Whatever is the world coming to? Two posts in one week?--It's only because I have a score which I need to number my measures for (oh, I forgot to tell the blog since I haven't posted since the end of last semester--I'm in choir, taking it for 1 hour of credit; half the room is charming, musical women and the other half is charming, musical ~~eyecandy~~ I mean men), so this is basically an avoidance method. Not to mention, I had a thought which wouldn't fit into 140 characters. Amazing, ne?

So, Tuesdays and Thursdays are my fun days, with choir starting at 11:30 and running till almost 1, and then 4th semester German at 3pm. Herr S is a lot of fun, and since we have two oral exams (in which the point will be not to be grammatically correct but accurate in pronunciation and able to get the point across to a native speaker), he makes a point of making us get up and talk--always about hard questions that you can easily say a lot about. One of today's topics was, "What are your personal faults--what do you have trouble with in your relationships?"

After a little bit, I came up with, "Ich will immer, dass ich im Zentrum sein [probably should be bleiben, but I was talking]. Weil ich sehr ruhig bin, ist es nicht deutlich [again, probably not correct usage, but I didn't have a dictionary--that's sort of the point of these], aber ist's so." The rough translation of that is, "I always want to be the center of attention. It's not obvious, because I'm very quiet, but it's nevertheless so!"

So this evening I was thinking about this--things which you say tend to stick in your mind, for good or bad--and I thought, "I managed to basically sum up every human fault, or at least the root of every human fault, in two sentences and in a foreign language, no less." Joe (I feel safe putting his first name on here, since it's very common--there are even two Joes in our classroom) came up with, "I'm very stubborn, and I always want my way and never to give in"--more or less the same thing. You might have to substitute a word or two--I'm thinking chiefly of "center of attention" here--but basically it expresses the same outlook. "I am the center, the most important thing, don't mess with me, don't try to substitute your clearly inferior way/person into the space where my way/person so obviously belongs......"

Almost any conflict between humans--I don't mean rationally expressed differences of opinions, but real fights about ways things should be done--can be put into these terms, I think, of each thinking himself the most important person.

Profoundly misguided, when you consider the self-evident truth that the sun would stop shining without my existence...... ;-)

Hypothetically

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:31:00 +0000

Once upon a time, there was a very bad blogger, who went for, oh, about 2 and a half months without blogging at all. (This is particularly heinous because in this blog break fell Christmas, and our blogger made out like a bandit, yet didn't show any pictures of the loot.)

Now this blogger was a college student, and she cordially disliked her roommate. It was nothing personal; they just had nothing in common. The blogger was a very quiet person, keeping regular hours for bedtime and mostly sticking to her room. She also, and this is important to the story, needed quiet while sleeping--not absolute quiet, but for the room to be mostly dark and mostly quiet. ("What happens on the other side of the door can stay there, and I'll ignore it, but don't let it come in," was her general philosophy.) But the blogger's roomie, whom we shall call X in the time-honored fashion, was a social butterfly, often not coming back till the wee hours were getting quite large, especially on the weekend, and then turning on her light (admittedly necessary, as her chair tended to migrate into the middle of the walkway), go through her bedtime routine fairly quietly, and then, then, my friends, she would turn on the TV.

For you see, this X could not sleep without noise from the TV. Our blogger vainly suggested music, podcasts, perhaps even episodes on Hulu--something which could come through earbuds!--but to no avail. As humans often are, X was persuaded that only the way to which she was accustomed could possibly work. (This opened our blogger's eyes to that particular bad habit in her own life, and she thereafter tried to take advice that went against her inclination but that she knew was good for her.) At the time of this story, our blogger's college had just reconvened after Christmas break, and there had been an extra-long weekend because of a nasty storm which piled snow atop ice.

The scene was the wee-to-largeish hours of Monday morning. The blogger is quite certain of this, as she finished a particularly gripping book around 11:30, and thus wasn't in bed until midnight. She vaguely heard X come in, put on her "black-out shade eyelids," turned herself away from the light, and restarted her podcasts, so she wouldn't be drawn into the stories issuing glibly from the TV. The TV was louder than usual, the hour was later, the blogger's sleep more fragile as she had recently been on break--for any or all of these reasons, the blogger spent nearly 2 hours half-awake, until the sleep timer mercifully shut the TV off--eight or so minutes after which, her trusty Clip ran out of battery. Our blogger reflected later that the timing could not have been more perfect.

When morning broke, more than it had already, our blogger turned off her alarm and promptly fell asleep again. When she was jolted out of sleep by X's phone alarm, her words were--and I believe this is accurate, though the blogger would be unwilling to testify its truth in a court of law-- "Crap crap crap!"

She climbed hurriedly out of bed, thanking heaven she had laid out her clothes the night before, and whisked through the shower in 12 minutes flat, leaving her precisely on schedule despite the unexpected half-hour sleep-in.

Our blogger thinks, despite everything in her which tells her that the relationship was thoroughly dysfunctional, that she is grateful to have had the experience of someone who is utterly careless of anyone's comfort but their own.

"It gave me confidence that I can recognize dysfunctional relationships, steer clear of them while they aren't large commitments, and that I can cope with one if forced into it," says the blogger. "I have concrete experience now of how selfish people can be, and reason that I should not get emotionally involved with anyone with these characteristics--and reason to never let myself get there, to change while the habit is small. Furthermore, I got all of this experience without the messiness of romantic attachment or being married!"

She has a point, don't you think? How much easier to get learning experiences from a roommate, whom you aren't committed to, than even a boyfriend!

Mail Call!

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:30:00 +0000

This post will be sans pictures, because I do not have the patience right now to take 13 pictures and have 2 turn out, upload them to the computer, decide which ones to use (despite the majority crappiness), upload them to Blogger, wait 20 minutes for that to finish, then rearrange them, composing all the while, so that pix and text flow nicely together. Not gonna happen today, kay? Later.

To set the scene: It's bleeding cold today. Not cold as in only getting to 45, not cold as in staying in the thirties all day--cold as in the high is below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Just lovely. The fountain in front of one of the dorms has frozen--there are icicles. On the fountain. Anyway--cold. I suffered through walking to Logic this morning, riding three-fourths of a mile to history, and dealing with pedestrians on my way to and from German, and I finally came home after English. It was 3:30 by now, and I was starved, so I decided (after setting my bras to soak, because there's only so long anyone can go without doing some semblance of laundry) to get pizza from the Cate.

I came downstairs and around the corner, and decided on the spur of the moment to check the mail. After all, I was expecting two packages, and the campus post office is on the way from my dorm to the Cate eating area. Sure enough, there was a pick-up slip in my box! When I got to the post office, I pulled out my ID and pink slip at the same time, and the guy behind the counter said,

"Hey, I think there might be two packages for you! Lemme check while you sign and date the slip." Sure enough, he came back with two packages and another slip. "The slip for this one got put in [other dorm] by mistake. If you'll sign and date this one too....."

I happily carried my packages over to Cate, ordered my pizza, and sat down gloat--er, open the mail. First, I opened the box, which contained a scrumptious skein of Yarn Love, Juliet base, colorway Robin Hood, a whole passel of Mint Truffle Kisses, and a sweet little Happy Holidays card. After I oohed and ahhed over that for a suitable length of time, I opened the envelope, which was, to say the least, crammed full. Its contents were a handful of Kisses with meltaway centers and two cowls, both Poinsettia by Anne Hanson--one, green Cascade 220, the other, cream Alpaca with a Twist.

The first package was a prize from YarnTails AKA Brandy, for winning a blog contest--the yarn is gorgeous, Brandy, and I can't wait to eat the mint Kisses!--and the second was from my partner in the Plurk cowl swap, zbaerenlovesme AKA Robin. Robin was concerned after knitting the first, green, cowl, that it might be too long, and possibly scratchy, and so she very sweetly knit me another! I love them both, Robin--the alpaca is so soft, and the wool, while a little on the tall side, is perfect for days like today, when even I, the die-hard non-scarf-wearer, wish I had something to cover my face. As it so happens, the green cowl is just long enough to come up to my nose and stay put reasonably firmly. It's amazing how much warmer I was wearing it home--either the bit of wool around my neck really made a huge difference, or the cowl magically made the wind drop. Either way, I'm totally crediting the cowl! ;-)

Ah, college.....

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:48:00 +0000

College is seriously interfering with the blogging time, but it does supply plenty of material! Today, I'm going to post a version of Little Red Riding Hood, which was an in-class exercise during English today. It's completely unedited, and I didn't finish the story (though I got to the climactic moment), so be warned.

Riff on the LRRH fairy tale
by Constance

This morning I decided to bring Grandma some of her favorite cookies, and Mama as always warned me to stay on the path and not to talk to strangers.

"You never know when a friendly person may turn out to be some sort of predator," she warned me, like she had a million times.

"Yes, Mama, I'll be very careful," I answered like I had the other million times.

Well, my definition and her definition of careful don't precisely coincide. I mean, it's not like I go looking for strangers to pour out my life story to, but Mama raised me to be polite. So people just spontaneously come up to me and ask me things (I don't know why), and I answer them. It's the polite thing to do.

On this particular walk to Grandma's, I was walking sedately along the path and singing to myself, and suddenly a wolf, who looked just like my dog, only bigger, popped his head out of the bushes.

"Where are you going, little girl wearing red?" he asked sweetly.

"I'm going to my grandma's house, sir," I replied. It always pays to be polite to people with large, sharp teeth. "It's just down the road--quite a small cottage, but most comfortable! She made my cloak; don't you like it?" I twirled, to show it off. "I love my cloak, with its pretty red hood, and I never take it off!"

"And what are you taking her, little girl?"

"I'm taking her some of her favorite cookies! Mama only baked them this morning."

"It sounds delightful, little girl! Enjoy your visit to your grandma's, and I hope I will see you soon!"

"Goodbye, sir! It was very nice talking to you!" I called after him, and then continued my walk.

When I arrived at Grandma's house, imagine my surprise to see a very hairy, very toothy grandma cuddled into bed.

"My, Grandma, what big eyes you have," I said doubtfully.

"All the better to see you with," Grandma said raspily.

"My, Grandma, what big teeth you have," I added, even more doubtfully.

"All the better to eat you with!"

******************
That of course is not the end of the story, but it's as far as I got with it. Just in case you are anxious about the end, both Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood survive, being rescued by the lumberjack, and I'm not sure about the wolf. He did eat Grandma, after all.......

After writing the story (that represents about 20 minutes of class period), JM had us read our stories aloud and discuss how each used rhetorical devices to produce remarkably different stories from the same few plot points. After I read mine, the instant response from my classmates was that I should be a professional storyteller, because I actually read the story like it was people talking and interacting, not in a monotone. ::laughs::

How nice of you to say

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:50:00 +0000

This evening, I had the dubious honor of being cussed at for being a law-abiding citizen--the first time a truly nasty action was directed as me as a road cyclist.

"Why don't you stay on the bleepin' sidewalk?!" shouted a young man from a passing car.

For the same reasons you don't, sir. I am a wheeled vehicle whose slowest safe speed is considerably faster than most pedestrians can walk, and the more often I am in the midst of slow-moving crowds (and I spend most of my time on a college campus, the definition of slow-moving crowds), the greater chance I have of wrecking and injuring myself and/or other people. Plus there is the minor detail that sidewalks do not go everywhere I need to go.

I'm a law-abiding citizen, keep to the right and clearly signal when I move left or intend to turn. I stop at the same stop signs as every car, and I am easy to pass because I keep as far right as possible without endangering my tires with the road debris swept to the curb (unless I am turning left, in which case I have signaled). But people still find it necessary to yell at me, beep their horns while going round me, and, in one instance I can only describe as idiotic, pull up in the right lane even though they are turning left, because I am already in the left lane like THE LAW-ABIDING CITIZEN THAT I AM.

People have no idea what it is like to be carless. For me, I either walk or ride my bike. There is no third option--I don't even have a driver's license. There's theoretically a bus system in Norman, but I doubt there's a stop near Boyd & Berry (where my local church is) at 6:30 and 9 Wednesday night. Or at 10 o'clock and 12:15 Sunday morning. So I follow the law while taking city streets, which is whenever I can, because I hate driving through crowds of people--and to the clueless young man in the white car, I say sincerely,

"WTH?"

Teaser and a Learning Experience

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:20:00 +0000

These three pairs of socks (yes, they are all pairs, even if they aren't pictured as pairs) have something in common, and I bet you can't guess what it is...... And yes, that's all I'm gonna say.

Learning experiences. Don't you love them? Aren't they just your favorite things to encounter when you're going about your business?--No, really, no one does--they're messy and painful and frequently the lesson isn't obvious. I appear to get more than my share of them, though--like yesterday when I got the point firmly sent home that I should not bike down the east edge of Adams Hall/Price Business College. It was quite literally messy and painful, too......

::flashback:: I am riding as safely as I can, from German to English Comp. I'm in a bit of a hurry, because this is my only ten-minute break between classes, and during it I have to ride across three-quarters of campus. (That is not as bad as it sounds--the trek takes 8 minutes on a bad day on my bike, and five on a good day, plus we had let out a little early.) On the east side of Adams Hall, there is an ornamental garden which is very geometric, with completely square corners (and thus the walkways around them are also abrupt angles), and there are always many people walking in the area. Earlier in the semester, I had run smack into a person (who sadly was not looking where he was going--it was not my fault, I could not possibly swerve or I would hit someone else) on one of the narrow paths through a portion of the garden, so I was warily keeping to the wider main paths. Friday, though, even on the main paths there were not many people, yet somehow a pair was standing just at the corner of the path I needed to turn on...... oh well, swing wide to miss them--crash! Head-on collision with one of those anvils disguised as a mountain bike.

We were neither much the worse for it and instantly start off again, wincing at the bruises. But I got only half a pedal-turn before I realized (damnation!) my chain had popped off! Well, I must fix it--good thing I'm a little early.--Yes, yes, I'm fine, but my chain popped off, I answer a kind inquiry as I bend to begin fixing it.

I was still 5 minutes early to English Comp, so I had time to smear my fingers liberally with alcohol sanitizing goop and wipe it off with a tissue, taking most of the grease with it, and I have an impressive bruise on my inner thigh (the size of my heel!) and a smashed finger that bled a little under the nail, but the more lasting result of my collision is the resolve to never ride down the east side of Adams Hall again, but only the west. It will not cost me much time--it may not even cost me any--and I will have a much smaller chance of more crashes and bruises.

Uni geht sehr gut

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:47:00 +0000

...... and in English, that's "uni/university/college is going very well." Since I basically have a day off from homework (one essay to read and one review sheet to complete, and that's all that has to be done tomorrow), I figured that I would tell you a bit about my college experience! Since, ahem, I've been at college a full month Sunday, and a month in class as of the 24th......

I got a compliment from my German professor yesterday--we were doing an exercise in class, and after my answer she asked as always, "Is it right?" ::silence:: "Of course it's right; she has almost not missed anything in this class yet." --blush-- That is naturally exaggeration, but it is true that I always get more than 80% on my homework (she doesn't normally grade homework, it's a satisfactory/unsatisfactory deal--quizzes, tests, & papers are all that is graded), and that after getting a 92% on the third quiz I thought, "I must work harder on this"...... I tested into third-semester German, and could possibly have been even the semester above, but it is well.

Apart from German (which is my major; a life-goal of mine is to be multi-lingual, to really master at least one language besides my native English), I'm in Botany, Ancient Near East History, English Comp and Intro to Logic. Botany I'm perpetually ahead in the readings for; my professor likes his students to read the material after lecture, so we can focus on what he focused on in class, but he got slightly off-sync from his syllabus, so that he's covering some portion of the topic for last class still in this class. Like today he should have moved on to the anatomy of roots and leaves, but instead we are still on DNA & Mitosis (Tuesday's subject, officially), because we spent part of last Thursday still talking about Cytology, and that was because the Tuesday before we spent the beginning of class on Morphology. And so on and so on. So I am ahead in my reading--I read last night the portion that goes with what we discussed this period. Botany for Non-majors is definitely a fun class--I do not have particular trouble keeping up with the prof, either, though he does talk quite fast.

Ancient Near East History, besides being an absurdly long name for a class, with too many capitals, is also fun--it is interesting to compare his teaching style with my Botany professor's. They both use Powerpoint extensively, but that is more or less the end of the similarity. He also talks very quickly, but he's harder to take notes from because he's much less outline driven, plus a great deal of what he says is commentary on pictures of artifacts and the like that he sprinkles through. I tend to write down whatever strikes me as important, and try not to copy down his slides word for word. For one thing, he posts his Powerpoints on an OU website, and for another, if I can remember it in my own words, it's more likely to stick.

English Comp is, well, an English class. It's rather like (so far, at least) a course I took in high school called Critical Reading--there are four sections to this particular English Comp, the first of which is Scholarly Discourse. So we are reading and discussing and writing papers on scholarly essays, all of which have controversial subjects like literacy, equality in education, and so on. It's a bit of a hard class for me, since I am more or less 180 degrees from most of these writers--some of them, I actually feel that the more I think about the essays, the farther I get from the point, because the stance makes no sense to me. But we have an excellent teacher/discussion moderator (it's a discussion class, so he spends little time lecturing), so that makes it more bearable. We have I think only one or two, perhaps three, more weeks before we turn in the Scholarly papers and move on. Despite being harder on me than my other classes, it is also enjoyable, for the most part.

What left--ah, yes, Intro to Logic. I have a schedule chock-full of fun classes this semester, evidently, because this is another! A lot of students take Logic as a way to get out of College Algebra; I have no such mean motive, but am sincerely interested in the mechanics of logic, and always have been. :-D My professor deliberately set it up so that those who get it quickly can skip class Friday, and then he can concentrate on those who are having trouble. Me, I still have to go to class Friday, but need only do something very minimal. The goal is to get 40 points every week, which sort of acts as attendance & participation; I have 35. This is one class that actually stretches me, especially in symbolization of sentences and their manipulation (which is where we are now)--I think very logically and in a fairly straight line when I'm actually arguing something (though when just talking, I can do random with the best of them......), but manipulation of symbols is perhaps not my strongest point.

The hardest part of college is probably getting up in the morning, every morning, even though I go to bed earlier now than I did at home!

Three Rules

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:28:00 +0000

I have decided that I have three basic rules for looking and feeling my best.

1. I always look cute, no matter what I'm wearing or what I feel like. It's amazing--once you decide this, it's true. Always. If you don't find fault with your appearance, almost no one else will, either.

2. Dangly earrings improve every outfit and mood. Because c'mon. Self-evident! Actually, this goes for anything dangly or shiny--a necklace, earrings, bracelets, rings--wearing the pretties gives a lift to any day.

3. I am always right. Even when I'm wrong, I'm right anyway, in some way. This I think is a basic rule of womanhood.

Obviously, these are sex-specific rules (get your mind out of the gutter. "Gender" is a grammatical term that I don't like and use only for grammar--too clunky), but I am not qualified to speak for the other half of the population. So guys? You'll just have to find your own rules.

Matchy-ness!

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:26:00 +0000

My roommate and I have the same bedspread. Proof:

My decorating style is rather minimalist......

.......while hers is more heavy on the stuffed animals (they're really soft. Really really. Stuffed animals for grown-ups.).

Here is evidence that we really have the same lime green/aqua blue reversible comforter (reversed from each other because c'mon. Who wouldn't?):

And here, because I love my yellow sheets, is a more accurate picture of the buttery-golden goodness.--I might have a tiny yellow fixation right now.......

Rhetorical Question

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:24:00 +0000

How much of a novice does one have to be, to deflate one's tires with a new pump, instead of inflating them?

As far as I know, no permanent damage has been done, though it did take me all the way across campus to realize that that was why it was handling funny..... Next weekend when I'm back in Tulsa (oh, yeah, school's been in for a week, so I'm in Norman; it's fun--maybe I'll dedicate a post to that tomorrow), we'll take it to Tom's for a tune-up, since I need headlight/rear reflectors since it's my transportation now instead of recreational/exercise vehicle.

Cheers! I'll be a better blogger sometime next century, kay? Too busy with school right now.

A Little Bit Jasmin

noreply@blogger.com (CinnabarsKnitter) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:23:00 +0000

A post about customer service will always make me think of Jasmin, one half of The Knitmore Girls. And this is sadly a post about customer service--not of stellar service, either from a specialized small business or large company, but of really excellent cake, presented just a little awry.

It's been my sister's birthday celebration this week, and to cap it off, we got a cake from our favorite local bakery. As always, they delivered a fantastically pretty cake--no misshapenness, no misspellings, a gorgeous delivery of Mom's requested color palette. There is never any CakeWrecks fodder from here.

It's the details that are bothering Mom--the details like not having the cake stuck to the plastic doily with frosting, which meant that the cake slid, and smooshed gently against the back of the box. And the detail of the box being not quite tall enough, and gently flattening some of the roses. It's a beautiful cake, like every other we've gotten there, but the details are not quite right. True that being smooshed doesn't make it less delicious, but--

This is what makes or breaks a small business. Being excellent in the details will provide you with fantastically faithful customers; being fantastic overall, but getting the details wrong, will send some customers someplace a little less expensive--perhaps to get cakes that aren't quite as delicious, beautiful, or perfectly executed, but where the employees prop the lid up if the box isn't quite tall enough.

Edited to add: They outdid themselves despite it all--scrumptious chocolate cake, and possibly the best buttercream I have EVER tasted. Yum.