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A thick, dark fog hangs over me, impenetrable. Suffocating but warm and oddly comforting in its supposed security. The silence is all encompassing and multi-dimensional. Unidentified figures brush against the outer limbs of my emotions- fleeting and inconsequential yet profound and mysterious. I grasp for identification and try to extract shapes and colors, names and character. They give me little to work with but I am left with the sensation that there is far, far more in this dense fog than my conscious imagination would allow me to guess. I go to the silence and revel in it.
And there- yes, there! Most unexpectedly- comes a noise. I do not know what it is, where it comes from and indeed there is nothing I could tell you about this sound; not even what it sounds like. But it is there- undeniably- it is there. It is a fan, stirring up the dense fog and confusing me because this thick blanket of silence has suddenly turned into a cheap facade. My hands remember their life and reach about in a desperate attempt to bring it back, bring it back! They land on a box, a small box, and reflexively poke around until the strange intrusion is silenced. I settle back into the fog.
The fog, however, is not as thick and not as warm as it once was.
I try to ignore it, I pretend that my surroundings are every bit as thick and comforting as the silence that proceeded it. For a time, I succeed. Lost again, I do not notice that theres another intrusion on my thick blanket…but there it is. Stubbornly I try to convince myself that it is not there..but there it is. I call up images of nicer places, warmer people and still..there it is. More concrete this time, more noticeable, more real. It entirely banishes the blanket of fog- or, at least, clears it enough for me to realize what this strange noise is.
My phone, crying for me to wake up and go to work because dammit, I’ve slept in late three times this week.
I hate mornings.
 At least my office has good free coffee
But I’m going to touch (tangentially) on the topic of god. Or, well, the lack of it.
I have been doing research at work that hasn’t required my full attention lately. I find stuff, copy, paste, etc. Since I tend to get sluggish and sleepy while listening to music during this, I have been going for lectures, radio shows, or podcasts. Admittedly not the best for background noise, since I do need to be reading at the same time, but I figure its better than forehead-keyboard contact.
I’ve noticed I really like science talks. TED science lectures are billions and billions times more interesting than the more political ones. They also tend to last longer, and I hate having to find something else that sounds interesting every three minutes. Because of this, I have found someone that I love listening to hours of. I can just listen for ages and it continues being interesting, insightful, and cool. He has a nice tone, he’s very happy, and shoot, I may well be in love with the man.
 Neil deGrasse Tyson Okay, so most people already know he’s the “lets popularize science” dude of the modern age, almost filling the role left by Carl Sagan, I’d say. He is most known as the cuddly looking host of NOVA Science Now, Time Magazine’s Sexist Astrophysicist, or the guy who defended de-planetizing Pluto on the Daily Show (with the line “Pluto had it coming”).
I’d never really listened to him much. Today I listened to him for around four hours in various interviews and he makes an excellent point about intelligent design. Now, I had reached the point where I thought I had heard pretty much all that I wanted to about intelligent design and all that was really important about it. Its not something I spend much time thinking about, since from my point of view its only important if we start talking about putting it in a science class. I had never really thought about it from the angle Tyson puts forth, which completely ignores the correctness or reasons for believing one way or another.
Tyson’s point is that the thought that “Well God did it” stifles curiosity into the complex and interesting problems and hold back scientific and ultimately economic progress. Assuming that the answer is known prevents the question from being asked, essentially.
The following is a paraphrase of what he said:
We cannot ignore the fact that many of science’s great minds at some point mused on the work of some creator. Newton is the classic example. Wickedly smart and arguably the smartest to have lived. He worked out the planets motions and the gravitational influence and oh, how much he gave us. Almost everything. And yet, he got to a point where he could not produce a stable mathematical model of the solar system. At this point, he attributes the stability of the universe to god. Other scientists built on his work and went further than where he placed his god and pushed the god of the unknown until they too decided to call it quits and say “Well, god did it. That’s done, solved, next problem.” And then Laplace finally did get a firm grip on celestial mechanics it led to the famous discussion between him and Napoleon-
Napoleon: M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.
Laplace: Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.(”I had no need of that hypothesis.”)
Tyson’s other, more lighthearted point is that the universe really isn’t intelligently designed-if designed at all. There’s apparently a chapter in one of his books entitled “All the ways the universe is trying to kill us.”
Ick, its time for me to sleep, I think. I have more written down on my handy notepad that I wanted to write about (sometimes I jot down blogging ideas at work since I don’t think it appropriate to blog from there). I’ll just have to make my journey into skeptic-blogging a series. Note: “Tyson” was main bullet one on my list of things to blog about. I had three more, all along the lines of science/space/atheism. This might take a while.
 I need a better photographer You know, theres a trade-off between work and school. I thought that since I wouldn’t have homework, I would enjoy evenings and use them better. I planned on making the bulk of a quilt, even.
Ha. My evenings are spent as slothily as possible. I do embroider, but not prolifically. I’ll occaisionally knit, though not meaning to really finish anything. Im not very crafty these days. Only, I am really missing my sewing machine. I do get occasional bursts of wanting to make my quilt, and would like to start putting things together. On that note: Awesome fabric sale. If I had money, I’d so pick up a few yards of random stuff. It’d make it’s way into the quilt and add to the hodgepodge of awesomeness that will be this quilt…eventually.
I have read some lately, though.
 Read it. Best book I've read in years. Also, I love Spock. Nimoy is Sexy.
Oh, the boy gets love, too. Love him, too.
…………..nomnomSpock.
Heya. I don’t really have anything to post about, but I did feel like posting. The end result will probably be a rather disjointed yet short post that contains nothing of importance.
Though I have been embroidering some lately. I have two squares that will hopefully land in the quilt of legend. You see, I’ve had this idea to make a simple quilt with a bunch of kitchy and cute embroidered squares and have it be giant with lots of filler colors so that my boy and I can have this giant quilt that I made to go into our new apartment in the fall.
So we have birdie:
 Should have ironed better. Oh well. And Armadillo:
 You know, my boyfriend has a fancy camera. I should make him take pictures for me since I obviously fail at photography. Next I need to continue making these squares. I have plans for zombie quilt square and Star Trek quilt square. I have yet to decide if Star Trek square will include Spock or just the name and symbol. Heck, I’ll probably end up doing both.
I’ve hit a snag with the cardigan. Well, not really. I want mindless knitting, and the decreasing and neck shaping that needs to happen right now is not by any means mindless. So less “I’m stuck” and more “well, I feel more like making pretty pictures with colorful thread.”
Oh, and yes, the armadillo I embroidered was purple. He did not want to be anything else. I asked three times, he was very adamant.
 My dad got me a bag of buttons! no clue how to use them... Anywho….At times I can spend ages looking at typefaces online. To be honest, I don’t know why. I don’t use them for anything except occasionally try to make my presentations look cooler. I’m not someone who scrapbooks, I don’t use them on this website at all, and I tend to like simpler fonts, ones that are not gimmicky. However, gimmicky fonts run amok on the internet, especially in the field of free downloads. They grow unclipped and become unruly, cluttering the landscape of typefaces on web pages and greeting cards. I like simple, but not so common as to be in the realm of Times or Arial. Helvetica bores me too, honestly. It has been inescapably bound to the image of American Apparel to me. I don’t get the big deal over it.
The Sci-FI free fonts are fun to look though. Its just kinda funny. Also, it makes me want to have applications for these things. I think I like seeing how creative people can get while obeying fairly stringent regulations- that they have to look like letters, be readable, and usable. Now, many free fonts don’t actually follow these (look at anything classified as a “dingbat” font) and those I typically skip right over, and yet there are still tons of good looking, usable fonts. Fonts that look like handwriting are interesting, though I’m not sure what I would use them for. Gothic fonts are cool and pretty. There are also very decorative fonts- letters painstakingly drawn and colored so they feel right at home in storybooks- but only as the first letter in a chapter. And then there are the non-fancy, plain as day fonts that have to sneak in beauty and creativity subtly. These fonts are what I like most. They are hard. Gentium is good for the serif fonts. Linja is trying too hard, but usable. In my search for the perfect font, I ask the questions- “if I wrote a book, what font would I use? What is attractive yet unobtrusive?” And I can never make up my mind. Oh well. Its a good way to spend a few hours.
Oh, and there is a font that I found today that has miniscule dots in it of negative space- barely noticeable when printed. Meet Eco-font. The theory is that it is then therefore more ecologically friendly as it uses less ink, which is often somewhat poisonous and always kinda wasteful. I’m not sure how much good a font that has holes in it can do, though. To me this font comes off as a way for people to convince themselves that they are “environmentally friendly” while not really changing anything. The paper this font gets printed on is probably much worse than the few droplets of ink that are used in conventional fonts versus the eco-font.
It intrigues me and as much as I think it’s kinda cute, it does not really do anything. If an office wants to cut down on office waste, it should print less. Ah, but in many settings, it is so needed. It would be nice for everyone to have an e-reader to read reports on but frankly, the technology for that has a few developments to go before use becomes inherently practical. Also- those come with a size restraint. I know my office uses big paper a lot. There are several applications where the big picture is need all at once- and as far as I know the amazon kindle does not come in “twin.” Eye strain, size constraints, and sheer comfort factors prevent a switch in many places to paperless. Perhaps paper that is extremely biodegradable and actually nice on the earth paired with ink that does the same? The cast-offs from the office go and fertilize the garden on the lawn? However- what if the document needed to last for some time? The easily degraded paper would have a short life span. Plastic, simulated paper would be pretty cool, if it could be made to hold its ink when it was needed, for however long it was needed, and then made blank again by a wash (without any harmful chemicals). It could be made in several standard sizes, and then could be used over and over and over again. When it is no longer needed, it is stored or melted into new products. And then there’s the perfect e-paper, which would be cool, but we’re still far from it.
Eh, I just feel bad about how much paper I use at my job.
Something else- I’ve been finding babies somewhat cute…well, one baby. My sister’s friend’s daughter is simply adorable. I want to knit things for her, though think it might be a tad…awkward, considering I’ve only spent a grand total of perhaps eight hours with the family. But I really want to knit things for the one year old. I mean- it wouldn’t take very long, and she’d look very cute. Very tempted.
Also, it appears this post is doing very icky things with font sizes, and for the life of me I cant figure out why. Sorry. Working on it.
 My little netbook..with Spock! Okay, so its been a while. I’m sorry. I’ve meant to update…theres just been so much going on. First there were finals, and that whole studying thing took over. I seem to be keeping to my pattern in terms of grade point average, I have not varied in gpa more than .05 points in my college career.
I went to Texas- which has gorgeous terrain, to be honest. A tad hot, Im sure, but very pretty. I should go again. I went kayaking and things with my dad, and had a lot of fun.
And then to the co-op. I work at LMI, a government consulting firm that specializes in defense strategy and logistics- though is branching out into other things. I really like it- the people are cool and the work is decent. I’m not number crunching like I thought I would be. I’ve been working on mostly qualitative things, and surprisingly the stuff Ive been doing is somewhat important. Its scary, but I like it.
And, since this is a craft blog, Here are crafts:
First, a while ago I finished the remake of the sweater I made before. It turned out really nicely. Its really the perfect sweater for a beginner- the yarn is cheap and comes in good colors. The pattern is stupidly easy and simple. And damnit, Ive worn it to work twice. Its a great sweater.
 I finished this ages ago, but here it is And I have not stopped knitting- I’m starting a cardigan. Its Decimal from the recent spring knitty, but since I didnt want to wait for yarn to be mailed to me from wherever if I ordered them, I looked up a joanns and hoped they’d have something suitable. They didnt, really, but I really wanted to be knitting somthing, so I went with Sugar and Cream. I still am not sure how it will turn out, and it would look better in a smaller yarn, but I’ll see what happens.
 Not that bad, really. And finally, its my birthday today. My boy was here, but he left this morning. Makes me very sad. I love him very much, by the way. He did, however, leave me things. First, it is my turn to have custody of Kitty Bumblebee Armadillo apparently.
Second, a Lenovo s10 netbook. Its adorable. Also, it hasn’t frozen on me yet and only takes a few seconds to start up. And its so cute.
Oh, and Spock. I saw the Star Trek movie and thought it was great fun. It also gave me the inclination that perhaps I was meant to be a Trek fan. So I’ve started watching The original series on cbs.com. I just started the second season, and to be honest, this show is amazing. Bad sets, cheesy acting, and themes that sometimes go far beyond what a silly 70’s show should go. The plots are so incredibly creative and have only a passing relationship with plausibility that they can explore themes that are impossible in a normal setting. Also, Spock is amazing. I love Spock. And I prefer Nimoy to Quinto, which I did not expect- I like Quinto, and he’s sexy. Theres just something about Nimoy. I like his Spock better.
I live in Pittsburgh, about 4 and a half miles from where three officers were shot earlier in the week. The memorial was held on Thursday right here on the campus of University of Pittsburgh. It was something, seeing the campus so filled and yet so quiet. Thousands of policemen, all in uniform, all in a line, all silent. Students, paused on their way to class, just watching. Silent.
The violent death is nothing new. We have wars, we have fights, thousands upon thousands of people meet their end in ways that are horrible. When policemen on a domestic call die this way, it still has the power to rise above in a world fairly desensitized to violence. Men doing their jobs, their ultimate goal to serve and protect, to help people, to make the community safer were killed by a looney. We can be pretty hard on policemen, often they are seen as power-drunk or overly authoritarian. And often the critique is just. But for the most part, it’s good to remember that they’re in it for the good cause.
Thousands of policemen came to my campus Thursday. I even saw a car from my hometown of Flint, MI. Toronto, Oregon, all over. They converted half of Forbes Av. and Fifth Ave into a giant parking lot. They swamped the streets and took over campus. All silently.
 These entering police cars extended farther than I could see  This is the very tail end of the line of police. I forgot I had my camera for the first several minutes I watched.  A different angle on the neverending line of cars.
 A new Sweater I’m sorry. My camera has been lost for the better part of a week, and I really just didn’t feel like posting a bland, picture-less post. This is not to say I have not been doing anything. As the picture above implies, I’ve been knitting another sweater following in the steps of the last sweater I made, making a few changes now that I know better. Here are the changes:
· Smaller overall- the last one relaxed a tad much. Not un-wearable, but more ease than I would like in it.
· Different number of stitches for the back section and the front section. The idea for this is that the back in the last sweater drooped down my back a bit, so the nice neckline in the front actually repeated itself on the back. I’m hoping for a back that sits up higher than the front.
· New needles. Okay, not really a design change, but I really like my addi Turbos.
· Longer sleeve section. The last sleeves were a tad shorter than ideal.
· Possible crochet border on sleeves. I haven’t decided on this. The rationale is to keep the stitches at the bottom of the sleeve from separating and making it look ratty in the armpit.
And it’s coming along swimmingly. And I love the new needles. Love them, love them, love them. I rarely let myself splurge on things I don’t think make much of a difference. My needles are traditionally the cheapest I can find. I only rarely treat myself to LYS yarn (I like skeins for a 3$ on my budget), though if I knit something for someone else I will usually go for it, with the excuse that I’ll find something to do with the remnants (also, I usually only find sock yarn at LYS). But I went for these needles. And I couldn’t be happier. The 15$ stings a bit but oh lordy, are they nice.
I also made another washcloth from the Humping bunnies pattern, this one for the other sister. I need to now make one for myself, but I am getting tired of doing the same thing over and over.
Aside from not having a camera for the better part of last week, I also haven’t really been to my own room much in that time. I spend a lot of time at my boyfriend’s apartment. There are more people there and wireless internet. My room has no wireless, which means people don’t visit much and I go out a lot. But it means my room gets a little wild. I run in, drop stuff I don’t need and pick up things I do, run out. That’s about it. The mess is getting extreme, I can’t see my bedspread anymore, and I think it’s turning my room into a rather organic, wild environment. It’s influencing the stuffed animals. I find them dancing around candles and having orgies. Then again, it is spring.
I am very tired today. Something about swimming 1.4 miles at a pretty fast clip when I haven’t done anything remotely like exercise in about three weeks, due to my wisdom teeth not having the decency to heal at a good pace. I’ve been on painkillers way too long and it’s a tad odd now that I’m back at almost full health.
Anyway, I have started to knit the sweater I made a few weeks ago again, with a few changes to what I did last time, taking into account that the yarn I used stretches out a bit (not much) and I wanted a tighter fitting sweater. I’m also paying more attention to what I am doing this time, and I am writing it out as I go along.
So far:
Gauge: A bit less than 4 st/inch, length of stitch does not matter, I’ll measure this more accurately next time I have a ruler. This also is complicated by there being a gauge while you knit and a gauge after the sweater hangs for a while and sags a bit, which varies by the yarn.
CO 104 st.
Round 1: begin working in round, k 16, place marker, k 16, place marker, k 40, k 16
Round 2: k all st
Round 3: *k to marker, move marker, m1, k to next marker, m1, move marker, repeat from *, k to end of round.
Round 4: k all st
Repeat rounds 3 and 4 until the piece is about 2.5 inch, or about 6.3 cm. Or until you like it. End after a repetition of round 4.
Next round (let’s call it 5 for simplicity): *k to st before marker, m1, k1, move marker, m1, k to next marker, m1, move marker, k1, m1, repeat from * then k to end of round.
Round 6: k all st.
Repeat these last two rounds until piece measures…6, 7 inches? I haven’t gotten to this part yet, but it is until the length of the back section (the one that started as 32 stitches, the knitting starts in the middle of it) plus the front section (the one that started as 40 st) is the circumference of the area right underneath the armpits. Or bigger, really, as you don;t want the sweater to cut tightly there.
Thats what I have of the pattern so far, I need to make things more exact and also figure out other sizes. If anyone knows how to resize things well (i.e., what is a small, what is a large?) I’d love help on this. I think I’ll ask Ravelry about this, too.
What I’m excited about with this go at the sweater is that I indulged and bought myself a good pair of needles. The needles that the baby blanket came on were just a dream to work with, and I’d never before considerd that there really was a large difference in quality between needle types. I have a feeling my new Addi Turbos are going to usher in a whole new era of knitting for me. I should have never used such expensive needles, and I would still be blissfully ignorant. Needles are expensive.
 Love Bunnies I made this recently, and it will be going to one of my sisters as an easter present. I guess that means I should be making something for my other sister as well, but its hard to think of something else so…great. I found this chart on ravelry and really just had to make something with it. If you’re a Ravelry user, you can find it as “Happy Easter” by Marij Stolp.
I’m not sure why, but I really like this washcloth. I know I should send it out soon, but its been making me really happy. Kitty Bumblebee Armadillio uses it as a blanket, I’ve been using it to help hold ice on my cheek or as a damp rag to cool myself off with (I havent been feeling well since I had my wisdom teeth out a week ago, more about this later), it’s proven itself to be decently useful. And the bunnies make me happy. They’re so calm, so uninhibited just going at it like they are. And it makes me giggle.
And yes, my wisdom teeth were taken out a week ago. It still hurts. There’s a part of my jaw that has some sort of bump on it and most of the pain seems to be coming from there. I don’t know if it’s just what’s left of the swelling, since it feels quite hard, or if it’s something I should actually be worried about. All I know is that I’m still on pain medication becuase I can’t do much without it and I don’t particularly feel like overdosing on acetaminophen and opiates. I am going to call my dentist tomorrow and ask him. If he thinks there is a problem, that means I will have to find a dentist in Pittsburgh, and boy does that not sound fun. Then again, having my jaw bone rot away doesn’t seem particularly appealing either. I just haven’t been able to eat much or do much for a while now. It’s just really hard to go to school with medical issues.
Though, speaking of school, I recently broke down and bought the student version of Minitab (a full five dollar purchase), a statistical software package. I am having way too much fun with it. I’ve now downloaded tons of spreadsheets of data from the World Health Orginization and made models from them, seeing what correlates with what. I am having way too much fun with this.
Also, I finished my leg of the baby blanket for the Oddball charity group. Pictures soon.
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