Significant Research

Jane Austen, Watercolour and pencil portrait by her sister Cassandra, 1810 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There's an invisible mummy in the background. Therefore, research!

I've been working very, very hard on course development. By watching Father Ted. Totally religious. Yes. Totally. Waaaaay connected to Egyptian religion and magic (in that there is religion and they are both set mostly on the same planet). It is absolutely, delightfully insane and hilarious, especially if you were raised Catholic. And it's on Netflix.

I've also found a beautiful Irish folk song that reminds me of my Nana and puts me in mind of how her parents and family must have felt when they emigrated. It's called A Stor Mo Chroi ("treasure of my heart")
This verse especially:

A Stór Mo Chroí, in the stranger's land
There is plenty of wealth and wailing.
Whilst gems adorn the great and the grand
There are faces with hunger pailing.
Though the road is toilsome, and hard to tread
And the lights of their cities will blind you.
Won't you turn a stór to Erin's shore
And the ones that you're leaving behind you.

I particularly like Amelia Hogan's rendition if you can find it.

And, um, re-reading Pride and Prejudice and a modern "sequel" (no, not the one with zombies). I was entirely uninterested in Jane Austen until a few years ago and now I'm all "oooooohhhhhh, get outta my way, I'm making Regency costumes..." It's at least around the same time the Rosetta Stone was found...
I've only managed Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility so far. Weirdly, I found it much easier to read and follow P&P on my Kindle than it had been in print. I'm guessing my print books had tiny characters in a weird font, maybe. Anyway, yet more reason to love my Kindle. Now if I can only learn to read and knit at the same time or convince myself to try audiobooks...

And in the process of writing this post, I have discovered a P&P sequel with an Egyptological twist - Pride and Pyramids (linkage below).

Related articles

• Pride and Pyramids Blog Tour with Authors Amanda Grange & Jacqueline Webb & Giveaway

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Rest in Peace, Anne McCaffrey

Image via Wikipedia

Anne McCaffrey Has Died - GalleyCat

The Dragonriders of Pern series is pretty much what, along with Star Trek and a few other bits of science fiction and fantasy, kept a very geeky, socially awkward, frequently bullied, and often bored teenaged Shoveling Ferret somewhat sane and alive and even happy through middle and early high school.

And I still have a huge geek crush on Robinton and sometimes wish Oreo was a fire lizard and would dearly love to visit Pern somewhere other than my imagination.

Thank you, Anne. You made a lot of people very happy, very thoughtful, and very entertained. 

Dammit, George RR Martin

Image via WikipediaI finished A Dance with Dragons two nights ago.  Mr. Martin needs to cut it the hell out with the cliff hanger endings, especially if he is going to take brazillions of years between installments.  This is not good for my patience.

Otherwise, um, we're fiddling with my thyroid dose again trying to find the sweet spot.  I'll have to get the lab work done after we've moved to see if we got it right or need to fiddle more.
I have had another round of Botox shots for migraine.  Took a bit longer to feel (or not feel?) the numbness and paralysis in my forehead.  Still getting migraines, but not quite so many.
I am in an ongoing odyssey of trying to get replacement CPAP supplies and possibly repair before we move.  I have been trying for a month actually, but referrals keep getting lost or not sent and it is seriously starting to piss me off.  I am sensitive enough to stress and extra activity even with the CPAP but sleeping without it (or without it operating properly) will make everything WAAAAYYYYY worse.  And increase the time for my recovery to baseline functionality.  So, weeks or months to recover from the move, etc., instead of days or weeks.

I am still tired and shaky and hurty and having sleep problems after overdoing the packing last week.  Grumble.  The whole moderation and pacing thing with CFS is a pain in the ass sometimes all the time.

Still packing.  I have a lot of yarn.  Way more than I thought.  Mostly single skeins of acrylic or acrylic blend intended for amigurumi.  So I should, like, make more amigurumi and stuff.  Derp.

I have set aside my emergency travel projects and stash and a pile of actual paper books in addition to my Kindle.  I may have done that even before setting aside the important papers that should be easily available.

Oreo has had a bath and is grumpily curled up on my lap in a blanket to keep warm.  He finds the packing deeply confusing and a bit frightening and so has been even more of my furry shadow than usual.

Loot

My birthday was on Wednesday. There was loot.

The Oreos are already gone.  I have to find something to attach the "Beware of Attack Ferret" sign to.  And I'm fiddling around trying to figure out a way to send only some of my news from Google Reader to my Kindle.  

Spinning

Image via Wikipedia

It's a spindle, just not one for making yarn

I picked up my birthday spindle the other day, having abandoned it sometime around May or June because it seemed just too damn hot and humid to spin.  And then I sort of forgot about it.  Plus, I'm not very good at it.
So, I decided time to try again.  I already have Respect the Spindle: Spin Infinite Yarns with One Amazing Tool, but it wasn't quite enough for me.
Then I discovered that Interweave Press is having a sale on the companion video which is available as either a DVD or an mp4 for download.  Sweet!

I just finished watching it and am very pleased.  I especially like her point that you shouldn't regard your first few attempts as "waste" - you have to learn and there is no way you're going to be perfect immediately.

It's ridiculously cold here today, so I'm not sure I'll be spinning tonight, but hopefully I'll pick it back up in the next few days to practice at least a little bit.  

I also had the chance to look through a copy of Fearless Knitting Workbook: The Step-by-Step Guide to Knitting Confidence on Thursday after my endocrinology check-up and am definitely going to buy it, probably from KnitPicks as they're having a sale on books and I can get some inexpensive wool yarn to work with as well.

I'm also deeply tempted by the ball winder from KnitPicks as well as The Essential Guide to Color Knitting Techniques, but that particular book is available at the public library, so I'm dithering. 

And, as I mentioned, it's ridiculously cold here.  I haven't been able to feel my toes properly all day.  Brrrrrrr.  Even with a blanket, my heating pad, and Oreo I'm cold.  I only did dishes earlier because the hot water feels good through the gloves and I managed to keep my fingerless gloves on under the rubber ones. 

I'm going up in Synthroid dose, starting today.  Would be nice if that helps with fatigue but, to be honest, I'm not expecting much.  I have been warned to avoid soy products as they can apparently mess with thyroid function.  Shouldn't be too much trouble as I can do dairy so I won't have to find an alternate.  If grumpy thyroid is causing my arthritis flare, though, this should help.

My glasses are awesome.  I've had waaaaaay less neck pain and as a result fewer migraines.  I sort of wish I hadn't spent so much getting them from the optometrist, but whatever.  They are awesome.  I'm contemplating ordering some non-Rx sunglasses and maybe an extra pair of reading glasses from here. 

Less neck pain has highlighted how much my right shoulder hurts all the damn time though, so I need to nag my rheumy about that in February.  And I've started getting more honest with myself about other pain too - like pokes in the ribs (including poking myself in the ribs) or even hugs sometimes *hurt!*  even wearing a bra a lot of the time.  This is not ideal.

Busting out the heavy equipment

Image via Wikipedia
This evening at work I've been looking for resources to redesign my blog template which has led to some browsing of old Egyptology books, including Methods and Aims in Archaeology by William Matthew Flinders Petrie.  I'm mostly looking for images, but this block of text caught my eye.

While I have, on occasion, been tempted to use a saw while excavating, the antiquities weren't my intended targets.
I have a feeling I might need to go through this whole book and post some of the highlights in the future.

ETA:  Holy shit, I never noticed before that Petrie is holding a Predynastic beaker in that portrait.  Durrrr.

Review of Little Bodice Ripper on the Prairie

I finished it late last night.  Blah.
There wasn't a great deal of information that isn't already available (obviously that probably wasn't the case in the late 1970s).  Pretty much re-summarizes the events of the books while adding in a few tidbits of outside information from contemporary newspapers or diaries.  Still not as interesting as one might hope.
Zochert seems to take for granted how Laura must have felt in certain circumstances, which I found annoying.  And my lord did he hammer home the "holy crap their lives were harsh!" in the first years after Laura and Almanzo were married.  But not by actual description or relation of events, just by saying "OMG it was soooo hard" over and over again.
There is very little at all about Rose.  Next to nothing about life after the books in general, really. 

Definitely no bodice ripping.

Little Bodice Ripper on the Prairie?

I have a deep and abiding fondness for the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Read them as a child and adored them, then picked them up again a couple years ago as comfort reading and discovered they were still wonderful. As an archaeologist and historian and general nerd, I was also interested in more information about Laura and her family. So, there's this book - Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Donald Zochert.  I scored it from Paperback Swap.  The cover is tripping me out.

The front cover isn't so bad.  They were clearly trying to capitalize on the Little House on the Prairie TV show without getting too far into potential lawsuit territory, which explains the Michael Landon looking dude on the left there.

Then there's the back cover:

Yeah.  I have many questions.
I'm assuming that's Laura over there on the left.
What isn't clear is why she has her blouse unbuttoned halfway to her navel.  Or why she has short, Brady Bunch hair.
On the right, I'm guessing Almanzo Wilder.  I was unaware until now that his family  had Neanderthal ancestry of sufficient recentness to give him a really distinctive brow-ridge.   Or that he apparently highlighted his hair.

Seriously - WTF?

The author, Zochert, writes in a weird, simplistic kind of folksy way that is sort of like Laura's.  I can't decide if this is annoying yet.

I definitely have not hit any bodice ripping yet.

Post-birthday awesomeness

First, thanks for all the wonderful birthday wishes, everyone.

Secondly, being 30 is pretty awesome so far.  I have my new sewing machine, which is awesome!  I set her up the other day and went through the manual and tested all the stitches on some scraps.  I even made my very first buttonhole.
I picked up reference book Sew Everything Workshop which has already come in handy for some basic tips and have started working on some curtain panels I've been meaning to make for 6 months.

We had a pajama party last night and an ice-cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery.  Mmmmmm, ice-cream cake.  We also tried teaching people to play Wii - that was hilarious in its own way.  Also, boxing is *exhausting.*  Lots of fun.  Also, I got chocolate and tea and a lovely gift card.  Sweet!

The past few days, especially when I've felt crappy otherwise, I've been shopping online.  I placed most of my orders today:
Some sock yarn (some for Tom and some for me), a chart keeper, some more stitch markers, needle protectors, and the book Respect the Spindle: Spin Infinite Yarns with One Amazing Tool  from Knit Picks (all their books are on sale for 40%, so it was actually less expensive than Amazon).
After much hemming and hawing and research and dithering, I decided to get a Schacht Hi-Lo 1.1 oz spindle and 8 oz of undyed wool roving from Paradise Fibers, half in Blue Faced Leicester and half Norwegian.  Both seem to be recommended for beginning drop spinners.  The Hi-Lo can be used as a high or low whorl which is also cool and is nice and light which seems to be a highly recommended feature as it allows spinning of finer gauges.  Interestingly, as I was looking into historic spinning techniques, it seems that the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians preferred high whorls spindles while the Anatolians and Greeks tended to use low whirl and Levantine peoples, being in the middle, perhaps used either as it suited them.
Both types of roving are amenable to Kool-Aid dyeing, so I should be able to have some fun once I get the basic hang of things and play with color as well.  I am already drooling over other types of wool, other fibers, and various colors.
I also ordered  two skeins of  Super Kydd from Elann, one in red for a gift and one in green to make something for me.  The red is to make Wisp from Knitty as a first lace project and as a gift (yes, I know, using mohair may not be the best idea, but I'm planning to do some practice swatches/wash clothes with cotton before I jump in.  The dark green is to try Ice Queen, also from Knitty, for myself.

I think I should have plenty to do for the foreseeable future.  Now if I can get going on my motivational problems, I'll really be doing well.  :P

Golden Dragonet

Golden Dragonet
Originally uploaded by Angry Angel

This Pern inspired dragonet (or fire-lizard) by Angry Angel is amazing. The detail with the eyes is great and now has me wondering if all the nifty new tech for making interactive and/or light-up soft-form toys and objects would make it possible to get eyes to whirl and change color like they do in the books.

Angry Angel notes that she wanted a fire-lizard as a child. Theoretically, I'm a grown up and I still want one. Seriously. If I ever get stupidly rich, I do believe I will endow a research project to create them. Of course, when the abominations unto the Lord that inadvertently are created and released and proceed to wreak havoc on the world at large, I'll be a villain. But it will totally be worth it. :P
Ahem.
I hope the recipient appreciates her, because she's absolutely wonderful.

Sleep

I had a migraine last night and I slept all day and therefore have not gotten anywhere on figuring out the referral to the fancy-pants neurology guy.  I have figured out that he literally wrote the book on neurology - as in a Textbook of Clinical Neurology .  So, that's good, right?

My stomach has gotten over being mad at me.  Yay!
I got a letter from my favorite aunt and uncle today - also good.
And I'm sleepy again and am therefore crawling back into bed with my book.

Oh, and I found skull jammies on sale today, but I can't decide whether to get them or not.  Decisions, decisions.

At some point, there will be craft content on here again, too.  Heh.  I'm trying to keep up with my "post at least one thing every day" goal, though, and some days...well.  Yeah.

Dizzy

Nice low-key day again today.  I went and bought some new reading material.   I'm shopping for spindles and spindle kits.  And while I'm at it,  I'm collecting titles of resources on the history of textile production, archaeology and textiles, and in particular textiles in the ancient Near East (and Egypt, for those who have decided that Egypt wasn't part of the Near East).  I'm hoping for a library excursion some time next week.
Partly this is out of curiosity - textiles were not really something I paid much attention to prior to getting interested in knitting and crocheting -  and partly with a vague idea of developing a continuing education course about textiles and the ancient Near East, possibly with a bit of hands-on fun with drop spindles and wool and/or linen.
Actually, I should amend the above - textile production was something I worked on for my BA paper long, long ago, but I didn't delve much into it.  I should probably dig that thing out again and have a look at it though...

I should be doing stuff

Still recuperating from a very busy week and so spent most of the day reading in bed again.  I don't know if it's the weather or tiredness or what but my pain levels are back up too, especially in my hands, which makes working on the Xmas stuff not really happen so much.  And my right hand has been going numb just from holding a paperback book, so I think I'll give it a bit more rest.

Anyway, we did go and get our Xmas tree last night from Home Depot.  I rode around on one of the courtesy scooter thingies because spasms plus pain plus tired plus giant-ass store does not make for a good mix.  This one was nice enough but very slow.  Very reminiscent of the Seinfeld episode when George winds up in the low-speed chase on the scooters.
Our tree is very nice - a Douglas fir this year - and it smells wonderful.  And we found wintergreen plants for sale and scored one.  I was very excited - there's a part in Farmer Boy  about collecting wintergreen berries and leaves to eat and use for flavorings, so extra nerd coolness.  They should do well in our window - the need indirect light which is perfect.

I could have sworn I posted yesterday...

...but apparently I did not.  Yesterday's achievements were:
- Fighting with Oreo over the husband pillow on the couch.
- Peeing.  A lot.  Yay, Diamox.  Also, it makes me light-headed and a wee-bit spacey and sleepy and gives me a slight headache, but so far I can deal.  Although that whole almost falling asleep on the couch and then jerking awake because I have to pee has been tons of fun.
- Drinking.  A lot.  (Of water, sadly, I haven't had much alcohol besides heavily watered wine in the past 20 months or so.)  Gotta make up for all that peeing.
- Making it to therapy, courtesy of a ride from a friend since I just didn't feel up to catching the bus.
- Acquisition of used books.
- Eating out.
- Giggling.

Also, while my right ring-finger continues to do its constant little dance, I haven't had much in the way of pelvic/trunk spasms (Elvis-pelvis) since Monday.  Not sure if it's the new med, since I didn't start taking it until Tuesday, but if it is, that's pretty awesome.  I have noticed that when I stretch or extend my back I don't get the quiver or shimmy I usually have almost all the time, so that's also pretty cool.

Tomorrow I have the rest of my pulmonary exam.  I know it involves a 6-minute walk, but I'm not sure what else.  I'm hoping no lung-volume test, because I'm not sure I can deal with being sealed in the little chamber.
Anyway, let's hope I don't barf.  That is so last week.

Ho Hum

Another day of tiredness and day two of rather dramatic muscle spasms in my trunk.  I'm starting to get sore, which is especially annoying.
So, I'm still taking it easy.  Did a bit of crocheting while we watched another episode from the first season of Lost (yes, I know, we're several years behind the times), but my hands started to hurt again, so I've left off.
I've been re-reading The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott for the first time since 2007 and enjoying it immensely. I haven't even been excessively bothered by some not-so-pleasant memories I was worried would be stirred up in association (fingers-crossed that remains the case).  I'm about to start on book two now, we'll see if I get bored and have to switch gears for a while.

Meh

I slept through most of yesterday.  Today I'm still really tired, my throat is sore, and I hurt.  Liberal use of ginger-honey-lemon tea and ibuprofen has done nothing.   This blows.  My hands are bothering me enough that I'm hesitant to knit or crochet, plus my brain is foggy enough that I'm not sure I want to start anything.  Humph.

Also, I'm giving serious consideration to getting a Snuggie.  I'm also considering an electric blanket for use on the couch.

On top of that, I'm having trouble settling down to read anything, which is equally annoying.  Double humph.

On that note, I think I'll be taking myself and a selection of books off to the bed.

Banned Book Week

I thought I'd pick up a meme from blogger Samurai Knitter - pick from a list of banned books and discuss in honor of Banned Book Week.

I've always thought banning books had exactly the opposite effect the pearl-clutching ninnies had in mind - what is more likely to get a kid to read a novel than finding out that Mrs. Smith from down the street thinks it's smut?  Lord knows I read Lolita on my own in high school precisely because it was supposedly so "bad."
It seems a lot of the books on the list had complaints registered primarily because people were missing the point.  In particular, complaints about the use of racial epithets.  Because, as we all know, reading such a word will immediately and permanently damage the reader either by causing them lasting emotional damage or by turning them into a bigot.  And if we pretend that people never used such terms in the past and don't use them now it will totally make everything okay.
It seems like To Kill a Mockingbird gets the most flack.  I have to assume that most of the people complaining have not actually read the novel and thus have no idea what the context of usage is.  Otherwise, I think I need to pause and weep for humanity.

The complaint about 1984 has to be my personal favorite though:

Challenged in the Jackson County, FL (1981) because Orwell's novel is "pro-communist and contained explicit sexual matter." Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.

Do you hear that whistling sound?  That would be the point flying just over the top of your very pointed head.

For more information about Banned Books Week (or more reading that will allow you to both mock people and feel deeply uncertain about your fellow man) see the ALA site here.

Long Weekend

So a good friend of ours from college, Joe, came to visit us this weekend - thus my failure to blog regularly.
It was very good to see him again and while I may be spending this week recovering from the visit because I still can't bring myself to slow down when I should, we had a blast.

He got in late Thursday, so we wound up having a late bite to eat at the White Palace which was not nearly as scary as I thought it had the potential to be.

The next day we walked around Hyde Park and showed him the museum and that night had a party for which I had made marinara sauce especially for Joe.  It was pretty fun!

Saturday, Joe decided he wanted to try Kuma's Corner.  Despite the 45 minute wait for a table (because the place was super popular), it was AWESOME.  They have ridiculously huge, delicious burgers and the best fried calamari I think I've ever had.  Fabulous.  We would never have discovered this place without Joe, so extra awesome.  Though I don't really drink anymore, they also have an enormous selection of beers and what appeared to be interesting possibilities for cocktails along with whisky on tap.  They also had tasty, tasty root beer.  The people watching is pretty entertaining too - hipsters, frat boys, bikers, average people, all mixed in.
After that we decided to check out the Cook County Fair at the Garfield Park Conservatory.  The "fair" was more of a way to let urban kids see farm animals and play (not that we expected much more) but the conservatory was spectacular and definitely on our list for return visits in the dead of winter.  Very fun.
After that we drove down the Mag Mile to let Joe see the touristy part of the Loop.  I haven't been down there in a few months and there are now pedi-cabs.  I didn't see anyone actually using one, but the idea is amusing.
Then we decided a trip to a used bookstore was in order and went to check out Myopic Books, which had been recommended by some other friends.  Very cool.  I scored some more sci-fi/fantasy to read.  I will be making a return trip to off-load a bunch of my no longer wanted paperbacks.

So, all in all, a very good visit.  We kicked Joe's ass out today at the airport and he's made it home.  I think Oreo misses him - they seemed to get along very well.  :)  Yay, visiting!

Yet another slow day

I don't know if I wore myself out last week, if this is yet another permutation of whatever the hell is wrong with me, or if it's simply a bad flair of whatever is wrong with me and my thyroid meds haven't kicked in yet or what. Whatever it is, this has been a rough week. I had a migraine spanning Sunday to Tuesday with no more than a few hours pain-free between times. The remainder of the week I've been exhausted - part migraine hang-over, part something else. My pain levels have been up too, though I wasn't too terribly twitchy until today. And my hands are still swollen. Joy.

I've also started getting short of breath really easily again - no idea what that's about. Allergies, perhaps. Seriously, on occasion, just getting dressed has me panting. Anyway, definitely something to bring up the next time I see a medical-type person.

Tom kindly went to the library for me last night to get me some new reading material - First Man in Rome and I, Claudius. Yay! Now if I could just perfect knitting or crocheting while reading...

We've been making our way steadily through the new Doctor Who via Netflix and the Roku. Last night was the first episode of Series 2 - The Christmas Invasion. I giggled through the last part of it quite a lot - I totally want to save the world in my jim-jams. :P

I also played Wii Sports last night for the first time in well over a year. I was thinking maybe a bit of light exercise might make me feel better. While it was fun and I may try to start doing it more regularly, my arm is killing me today. And my age was calculated at 70. Thanks, Wii - I needed that. I would look into Wii Fit, but me + ataxia + balance board = trip to emergency room. Suck.

Product: NASA Apollo 11 Manual

Product: NASA Apollo 11 Manual

Tom shared this with me via Oh!Gizmo

Of course, now I want it.