I can’t believe I have to go back to school next week, already!  Between work and holidays, I’ve had far, far, far less time than I thought I would.  I haven’t even gotten my hair cut or had an oil change, two things I hope to do this Saturday.

It’s hard to say I regret all the time I’ve worked over the break since so many people are out of work right now.  But I dove into a work jag the week after finals that didn’t truly let up until after Christmas.  I feel like I needed a solid week without work to really accomplish some of the goals I set for this time off.   I wish I was better at using pockets of time and getting things done a little bit at a time.  It’s not my style, though.  I really just like to focus on one thing and get it finished.  Even with something I enjoy doing, like knitting, I need to just concentrate on one project at a time.  Sometimes I work on a few projects at once, but there is always one main project that generally stays at home, on the floor next to my seat on the couch.  If I work on something else, then it is usually a project with certain attributes such as “small enough to knit on train” or “can be worked on while reading” – you probably get the idea.

So, I finished a tank top for one of my nieces in Florida, with another yet to be finished for my other Florida niece.  I made two sweaters for my nephew, one for Christmas and one for his birthday.  I want to make two more sweaters for my nieces for their birthdays (one a very belated birthday gift and the other hopefully on time).  So much to do!!

I was thinking about skipping knitting group tonight in favor of cleaning and organizing my room.  And finishing laundry.  (By God, before I go back to school nearly all of my clothes will be clean at the same time for the first time in almost a year – since the beginning of school it’s been just-in-time laundry.)  Oh, and also figuring out which switch on the circuit breaker controls the one working electrical outlet in my room.  (It got flipped in a great circuit breaker “experiment” that occurred before Christmas, and without help I need to keep running up and down two flights of steps to get the right one, hopefully without cutting off power to other parts of the house.  Which is something that the previous experimenter did not do.)  However, it is the last Wednesday before starting school for my last quarter, so I think I should go for that alone.  Not only that, but obviously I’ve got some knitting to do!

I did place an order with Knit Picks yesterday.  Today they are increasing the prices on their older wool-based yarn lines.  I wanted to get some stuff which had been sitting in my wish list for a while before the prices increase.  I couldn’t get everything I wanted, though.  I haven’t hit the lottery yet!  I will need to place another order in about a month or so because some yarn I need for a special project is not currently in stock.  More on the special projects coming up in other posts if I can get to writing them.

And finally, what kind of post would this be if I didn’t mention some things I’ve been obsessed with lately:  how about Revenge (love it, and for a limited time all episodes are free to watch online if you link to the show page at ABC!!), Homeland (love it, wish we had Showtime all the time!!), and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).   I also finished The Count of Monte Cristo, a read inspired by the TV show Revenge.

Time to get down to business!

I have another hell-week of finals this next week and then I will be out of school for a WHOLE ENTIRE MONTH!!!

A whole month of just working!  Maybe I’ll be able to go to some knitting group!  See a movie!  The possibilities are endless!

One of the things I’d wanted to do was to travel to Florida to see my sister and my nieces.  Not gonna happen, since I have to work a few holidays as a condition of continued employment.  One of my classmates is going to London and Paris over the break, I am so jealous!

This program I’m in, this all-consuming program. . .it is exasperating, frustrating, amazing and wonderful all at the same time.  I wish I could write about it.  Aside from time issues, it’s just not anything I want to write about in any sort of way, for a variety of reasons.  I will say that even though for this year your life needs to be about this program, life still happens around us.  Some of it good, some of it bad.  My life has been a relative sea of calm compared to others.  Three other people in my class have gotten married during this program.  Two other people have gotten engaged, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I came back from this break to find that a few more will be engaged as well.  And the sad: just before Thanksgiving the father of one of my classmates passed away suddenly.  How do you deal with that?

And after this glorious month of freedom, we go back for our final quarter.  By the end of March, we’ll be finished!!!  So hard to believe!

I recently ordered some yarn at the Knit Picks Cyber Monday sale to knit some gifts for Chistmas and birthdays for the little ones in my life.  I am not knitting anything for the adults this year, it’s just going to be too nerve-wracking.  They will probably get jewelry or other stuff.  Here are two combinations of yarn that I’m using to make the Girl’s Skinny Tank for each of my nieces in Florida:

That’s Knit Picks’ Comfy Sportweight in Seafoam, Ivory, and Honeydew.  Honestly, I was expecting the Seafoam to be a lighter color.  The color combo is still good, just not quite what I was imagining.

That’s Knit Picks’ Comfy Sportweight in Honeydew, Ivory, and Flamingo.  Now for this grouping, the flamingo was not the color I thought I was going to get, and by that I mean the color is different.  I was expecting a more pink color, and the flamingo has a decidedly peach cast to it!  Here’s what Knit Picks has to say about the color:  “Flamingo is a delicate pink with blue undertones. This soft pink reminds us of the lightest colored feathers of the bird, Flamingo. Combine with Sea Foam, Honeydew and Ivory for a lighter color palette [thanks, I think I will, ha ha!] or with darker tones like Blackberry, Planetarium and Pomegranate as an accent in a darker color palette.”  I don’t read blue undertones at all.  I’ll have to bring the skein to knit night to have my color experts render their opinion.  By the way, I think the ball of Flamingo in the picture above is pretty true-to-life.

As with the other project, I am not unhappy with the color combo, it just isn’t what I really envisioned for the end result.  Also, I swear I did not read Knit Picks’ color description before I picked my colors for these projects!

So I did get an order through at the beginning of the Cyber Monday sale.  I was sitting in Pharm class when I placed my order.  The class ends at 9:20 and my order was placed by the end of class.  From what I’ve read, I was one of the lucky ones to get my order in so quickly!  The yarn above – it’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, friends.  More to come after my finals.  I’ll probably post on a semi-regular basis over the break, provided I have something to write about.

P.S.  Songs I’ve been obsessed with of late:  Don’t Move by Phantogram and Shake It Out by Florence + The Machine.

OK, I know you West Coast types are probably laughing your asses off at us East Coasters, but here goes. . .

I was sitting in class, on the 8th floor of an office building downtown after lunch.  Normally, at about 1:30 PM, the food coma from lunch sets in and I’m a little sleepy and sometimes I actually fall asleep in class.  Not today, though, because I was actually doing a bit of multitasking during class and that was keeping me awake.

(A picture out the window of our classroom, for perspective.  This picture was NOT taken today!):

So, when I felt the floor shaking at first, it was just a gentle thing, lasting more than just a few seconds.  I automatically listened for the sound of a cart rolling heavy equipment down the hall.  When I heard nothing of the sort, I started looking around, thinking, “Someone must be shaking the table here. . .”  Towards the end of the first rumble, when I began to realize that the shaking was going on a bit too long without any explanation other than I might be having a stroke, I turned to my classmate and asked, “Do you feel that?”

(My “desk” in class, top center area shows my mini computer. . .):

Now, the classmate I asked is originally from our area, but he had lived out in LA for about 5 years before moving back here just before our program started.  So he just answers, “Yeah, that kind of felt like an earthquake” and then that was it.  So at least I knew I wasn’t crazy. . .

Then the building really started shaking and swaying, I knew something wasn’t right because I felt my face start flushing and I just yelled, “Oh my God, is the whole building moving!?”  Right after I said that, the instructor snapped her laptop shut and said “OK, we’re getting out of here, get your valuables take the stairs down.”

I thought it might take forever to get down to the ground floor, but I actually got down pretty quickly despite the bad knee.  Once I was outside, people were just everywhere!!!

And it wasn’t long before the news helicopters and news crews showed up (I thought I had a better picture than this one, if you squint you can see the camera):

The best thing?  I saw double-decker tour bus driving through the streets as everyone was streaming out of the buildings.  I wonder if they thought it was a flash mob of business people!

Of course, I couldn’t get a call out once we were out of the building.  Someone from class finally got confirmation that it was an earthquake, 5.8 around D.C.

We got out of classes early – some good news, I suppose.  I’m still a little bit overexcited from the day, but at least the trains were still running so I could get home!

Well.

I have started a very intense education program (think 3 years of classes and clinical experience compressed into one year) and I will have next to no time to write over the next year.  I had hoped to sneak in a post here and there but I’m already just past the half-way point in my first quarter and I’ve had no time to post.  And I hear that the time commitment to the program only gets worse in the next two quarters.  Last week we had midterms and it felt like such a luxury to have so much free time!

Every so often people find their way to this blog through my posts about microbiology and I get questions about microbes.  If you are one of those people with questions, please understand that I will not be available over the next year to entertain any questions on the subject.

I might be able to post on a few of the breaks we have.  Just some brief updates on projects I might have worked on during the term.  I haven’t picked up knitting needles in more than a month, but I have made some jewelry.  I made my first project with wire last Friday as a treat for getting through midterms.  It was a necklace, and I want to make matching earrings.  Here’s my first wire-wrapped bead link!

And for those who come here for my sparkling wit, everything in the program is going well.  So far my lowest grade on a test has been a 90.  In a few weeks we have to check out of our labs and clinicals and since that is a performance evaluation that is a bit unnerving.

Speaking of clinical, I need to get a move on and get ready for my session today.  I sort of pulled a short straw and got assigned to the only clinical that is an afternoon/evening clinical.  I kind of like it because I get to sleep in every other Wednesday morning, after Tuesday which is our long day (classes start at 8:00 AM and the day is pretty much booked solid through about  7:00 PM).  But I get home at about 10:00 PM tonight and we need to be back in class at 8:00 AM tomorrow.  At least Thursday is a “short” day – class ends at 12:20 PM but usually we have (optional but highly-recommended-to-the-point-of-being-mandatory) review sessions in the afternoon.  So overall, I’m glad to have the afternoon/evening clinical.

I thought that I would be able to at least keep up with the Tuesday Ten posts in the new year, but, not so much.

Here’s this Tuesday’s late list:

1. Electric Feel – MGMT
2. Around My Head – Cage The Elephant
3. Young Blood – The Naked And The Famous
4. Song Beneath The Song – Maria Taylor
5. No One – Alicia Keys
6. Pavane, Op. 50 – London Philharmonic Orchestra & Bernard Herrmann
7. Cannonball – The Breeders
8. Breathe (feat. Colbie Caillat) – Taylor Swift
9. Clocks – Coldplay
10. I Know What I Am – Band Of Skulls

I checked in with iTunes today for their free single of the week.  I saw that it is a single released by The Naked And The Famous and I got excited because I like “Young Blood.”  Well. . .the free single of the week is “Young Blood” which I bought last summer.  I bought it after hearing it in the pilot episode of Covert Affairs on USA Network.  I can definitely recommend the song considering it’s being offered for the bargain price of $0.00.

In other news:  my poor car.  What was I thinking when I rescheduled an appointment for today, March 15th?  This repair was supposed to have been made last Tuesday, but it didn’t happen because one of their mechanics called out sick and they fell way behind.  So they asked if I could reschedule.  Today was the first day I had available to take the car back in for repair.  As long as I dropped off my car early, they would definitely finish it around noon or early afternoon.

Well, I received a call around 10:30 this morning (I dropped the car off at 8:30), and the mechanic asked if we’d discussed a price before, which we had.  I suppose he wanted to ask because it is a rather expensive repair.  And it’s my lucky day, because the price he quoted to me this morning was about $100 less than the price I was quoted previously, but I didn’t tell him that.  He reaffirmed that the car would be ready in the early afternoon.

Early afternoon comes and goes without a call from the shop.  I really didn’t care so much because the later they called, the more likely it was that I would get a ride over to the shop to pick up my car, instead of walking.  I finally got a call around 5:00, half-an-hour before the shop closes.  As the mechanic was putting my engine back together, he broke some sort of plastic valve and was waiting for the part to arrive to finish the repair.  It did not arrive in enough time to fix before the shop closed, so my car will be in the shop overnight and I should get it back in the morning.

Grrrrr.

I really do like going to this repair shop, they are generally quick, honest, and have reasonable prices.  I’ll still patronize the shop despite the history of this recent repair.  I understand that stuff happens, sometimes.  I’m just glad I don’t have to work tomorrow, since we get written up if we call out sick more than twice a year if you work full-time (more than one time if you work part-time or per diem).  Right now I work full-time, but I drop to per diem once I go back to school at the end of the month.  I don’t have any call outs now, but I’d hate to put one on my record for something like this, just as I’m about to drop to per diem status.

My poor, poor car.  I hope I get it back early tomorrow.  I was indifferent about not having it today, but I do have to do a few errands tomorrow and I need it back!

In honor of the Academy Awards this evening, I made blingy earrings today.  (You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.)

Actually, because of the quantities of the materials I bought, I made 3 pairs of earrings, and I’m wearing a pair right now with my PJs!  There is nothing that has not been made instantly more glamorous by my wearing of these earrings today!  (Snicker)

I made the earrings with light smoke colored bicone crystals.  I used gold head pins and joined them together to make the drop earrings.  I got this idea from the Beading Daily e-mail sent out on February 25th, which actually had the instructions for making the earrings.  I’ve never worked with wire before, so this was my first attempt at working with beads and wire.

Outside and in areas with a lot of light, the gold works with the smoke-colored beads.  In areas with less light, the two don’t seem to go together as well.

I like them, though!  And it took me forever to make these – with the first pair I was struggling mightily, and with the first earring of the second pair I struggled as well.  Then I started to figure it out and the second earring of the second set came together easily.  By the third pair, I felt like a pro!

This is a really bad picture, but I think you can all figure out why I’m including it here:

Look at the sparkle!!

Next up:  repairing one of my Mom’s broken necklaces.  Yay fun.  I should be making more jewelry in the next week or so. . .

In the meantime, enjoy the Oscars!!

Of jewelry!

It is a necklace and bracelet set:

As a beach-lover, I was thinking of the beach when I started to pick my beads.  Somehow, I ended up with these teal-colored glass beads with an iridescent gleam:

I needed to find other beads to go with the teal glass beads, so I sought advice from the women in the shop.  One suggested the brass fittings to match the iridescent flashes from the blue beads.  Then the teacher of the class brought me the “cinnamon bun” beads, which are the round, clear glass beads with speckles of brass in them.  I told the teacher I was set with the beads, and she said “O.K., let’s go!” – a bit skeptically, I have to say!

I started to lay out my design on the bead board.  As I was laying it out, the instructor said (with surprise), “Wow, that looks really nice!  I’d wear that with jeans!”

I finished my bracelet and necklace with brass clasps.  I don’t know if people name their designs or not.  I’ll call this one “Good With Jeans.”

I am hoping for an early spring.  Because right now, I am so fed up with the snow I can’t stop being angry all the time.

I strained my back shoveling the driveway during the last snow storm in January.  Here are the snow walls on each side of our driveway:

My back still hurts.  Working doesn’t help, I’m sure.  Actually, the morning after this dig out I had to go to work at 7 AM.  I thought I was going to be early, but fate and nature had other plans:

I took 1 hour to clear that ice off of my windshield.  Even with the heat on full blast in my car, even after I threw all the kosher salt I had onto the windshield.

I am so sick of it. . .

I also had to work each of the last three days; 28 hours in a 52-hour period.  I stayed overnight at the hospital 2 nights in a row.

I am really ready for all this to be over.  I think I really need to move back south, anywhere that doesn’t see snow more than once or twice a year at most, not at all is even better.  I get nearly full-blown panic attacks whenever I have to drive in snowy or icy weather.  It’s really disrupting my life!

Naturally, a lot of news stories from the last two weeks have focused on guns and gun laws in this country.  Did you know that the United States is the most heavily armed country in the world?

It surprised me a little bit, though it shouldn’t have.  My ex-stepfather owned 4 guns – 3 of them legally.  One day, he took one of the guns and made all of us touch it.  Can I just tell you that my heart started racing at the sight of that thing!  I’ve always had this visceral reaction to guns, even ones like the Civil War pistol one of my friends had on display in their home.

So, I’m always a bit perplexed at the fervor with which the NRA pursues every piece of legislation to limit gun control.  How can people just love guns that much?  The motivation cannot be just a blind dedication to Second Amendment rights because today, there is no practical reason that amendment has the same weight it might have had when it was originally conceived.  That’s not to say that I think there should be no Second Amendment, quite the contrary.  I think that having that amendment as part of our bill of rights is essential piece of the very definition of our government, it’s just that in my opinion it is the rhetoric of the amendment that is important.

If the point of having the Second Amendment is basically so we can defend ourselves against a tyrannical government, I really don’t see how guns alone would get the job done.  Not when the military, led by their Commander-In-Chief who is none other than the President of the United States, has all of the most advanced weaponry at their disposal.  Surely all weapons have their own tactical advantages and when used in concert with a well-designed plan of attack relatively low-tech weapons can be effective.  In that case it is strategy that is the real weapon and the guns would just  be tools to aid the strategy.  Even if one could be effective in a battle, if one is trying to overthrow the government one will need to win the war and I don’t see how that could be possible against our military.

My  point is that gun-rights lobbyists are using the Second Amendment as a sham – because who is going to argue with constitutionality, right?  The right to bear arms is a guaranteed right, in the Bill of Rights, it is inviolate!!!  I just believe that having some common sense limitations is practical and necessary.  Who exactly does the NRA think they’re trying to fool by claiming that putting limitations on extended magazines and semi-automatic weapons puts a crimp in the lifestyle of hunters and other sportsmen?  Or that these types of weapons are necessary to overthrow the government.  Puh-leeeze.  Nothing makes a bigger statement about a person’s intent than the purchase of semi-automatic weaponry and extended magazines.  You are either some punk who fancies yourself to be a bad-ass and your are literally outfitting yourself with an arsenal you might never use for anything except target practice, or you are some fundamentalist nut-job who wants to kill a lot of people fast in order to make some sort of statement.  You aren’t going to hunt deer, and you are not going to overthrow the government (even though you might think you will, thus you are crazy and shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns or ammo).

Of course I am against having guns in the home anyway.  I’m sure in many homes having a gun is uneventful, but in the instances where tragedies have occurred I imagine that the people involved would second-guess their choices.  A little while before the Arizona shooting, we had an adolescent gunshot wound victim come into the emergency room where I work via ambulance.  Our hospital is not a trauma center, and the ambulance only had an extra ten-minute drive to get to a trauma center to treat the victim.  The ambulance came to our hospital because the victim’s best chance of possible survival was to get to the nearest hospital and get some intervention, fast.

Unfortunately, we were not able to do that, the wound was fatal and the patient could not be saved.  In this case, the victim was accidentally shot in their home by their older adolescent sibling.  So, to recap, this family lost one of their children and the surviving child will live with the guilt that they (yes, accidentally!!) shot and killed their younger sibling with a gun that was in the household.  According to what I heard, the reason for having the gun in the household was to protect against neighbors who were thought to be weird.  Seriously.

Just to add to my long list of contradictions, I would actually like to shoot a gun one day.  To see if I could do it, and for scientific reasons.  There is actually a lot of physics involved with shooting a gun and hitting a target and I would be curious to know how it all works as an experiment.  But you know what – I don’t think that I need to buy a gun to do that.

I have some more random thoughts (and I’d like to point out that there is some swearing at the end of the post for you sensitive types)  but I’ll post the list first because I’m finding it quite amusing. . .

1. Truth – Vaughn Penn
2. Telling Lies – Great Northern
3. Wish You Were  Here – Incubus
4. The Only Way (Is The Wrong Way) – Filter
5. Bonfire – Third Eye Blind
6. The Ballad Of You And I – Melee
7. Take Back The City – Snow Patrol
8. Little Shadow (Acoustic Version) – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
9. Mercy – Duffy
10. Daylight – Matt & Kim

Oh, iTunes DJ you are ever the comedian.  Truth and Telling Lies!  Very clever!  The Ballad Of You And I [sic] is the song played in the background of NBC’s ads for this season’s Biggest Loser.  Take Back The City – I think we need to start taking back the country for ourselves these days.

I saw Duffy on Ellen recently.  Poor thing, she’s a great singer, but not a great performer.  She was moving around like a puppet, counting her steps like the stars do on the first week of Dancing with the Stars.  With stars like Beyonce going the extra mile to put on these huge shows I’m sure the regular ol’ singers feel the pressure to be an “entertainer.”  It exemplifies what I try to explain to people about American Idol and all those other talent shows; they are looking for entertainers and that’s why some of your favorites get the boot early – they aren’t the whole package.  Take Susan Boyle for example.  She has a great voice, but it’s not strong enough to withstand the demands of a tour.  “Entertainers” are the whole package and it doesn’t matter if they’re sick or run-down, they still deliver.  Duffy, you don’t have to be all that.  Just sing and do what comes naturally while you’re up there on stage.

I really think I might be moving back to Florida at some point in the next few years.  Seriously.  The SAD just gets worse each year.  On Saturday, despite the enormous amount of work I have to do, I slept all day.  I got a decent night’s sleep that night, then went to work the next morning, feeling not at all refreshed or like I’d slept for about 11 of the last 16 hours, but tired as if I could just fall asleep at any moment.  Admittedly, I’ve self-diagnosed my problem but I never had consistent winter-time depression in the 11 years I lived in Florida.  Living here, I’ve been fine during the summer months, but the winter. . .

I try to console myself by saying, hey, December 21st is the shortest, darkest day of the year.  Somehow it doesn’t feel that way.

I feel good today though, because I unclogged my shower drain successfully this morning and I actually got some laundry done.  WOO HOO!

I can’t believe I forgot this one in my last listing of random thoughts.  The Republicans have lost their “right” to use 9/11 and the events of that day as a reason, a retort, a battle cry, a tool to manipulate public opinion, or any other manner which I cannot enumerate right now.

No.

Ah! NO!

MMMMmmmm. . .NO!

Zip it!

Why?  Because YOU HAD TO BE FUCKING SHAMED BY JON STEWART INTO VOTING FOR A BILL TO COVER THE HEALTH CARE COSTS OF 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS, THAT’S WHY!!!!

Sigh. . .for now, I’ve got to go get ready for work tomorrow morning.  Thanks to this miserable winter, I’m going to have to drive down there tonight and sleep over because the worst of the snow we’re getting is forecast for the time of my pre-dawn morning commute.