still no news.

I have myself convinced that if I don’t get a rejection slip by 1pm in the time zone that the school I’m waiting on, my chances of getting in go up, and continue to go up with every successive half business day, on the theory that as long as I’m in play, my chances go up: other people on the wait list ahead of me are more likely to have made alternate plans as time goes on, and so forth.

This is all speculation, of course, but if it makes me feel better, I’m taking it. I’m about as frayed as I ever get, though I think I’m almost faking it pretty well. Almost.

My first trial run with the nalgene french press when poorly, though I totally blame operator error, and I’ll give it another try.

llThe new spinning wheel is, simply put, amazing. I spun 3.75 ozs of singles this morning, still the BFL that I’ve been chipping away at for months, and I’m working on the second bobbin. My mom reminded me that we got 8 oz of spinning fiber (alpaca wool? alpaca wool, silk? brown? I think.) for christmas, and I might take my share of this when I’m done with the BFL. Which will probably be in the next week or two. After that, I want to make an order from R.H. Lindsey, to get some corriedale and merino and maybe some other this and that, though I’m intrigued, they have uncarded grey merino loose wool that might be fun. And if I got a flick carder, the processing might not be such a bother. And its grey, which I’m fond of. Anyway, it rocks.

Ok, I’ll be in touch, of course.

love, tycho

no grad school news.

lots of knitting and coding interviews, almost done with sweater.

sleeping well, and upbeat, possibly with reason (speculative), so it could all come crashing down.

having day out. academic stuff, errands. Tea.

More knitting. the sweater looks really good, but I think without hem/zipper it’s going to look like crap so I’m reminding myself to withold judgement for a while.

Ok, for real. Sigh.

Think good thoughts, I could hear at any point in the next little bit. really. I think delusion is the only way people live through these kinds things.

Onward and Upward!

still no news about grad school.

the longer I “stay in play,” the better, probably, though I am looking forward to this whole drama being over.

my dad said the other day, that “zebras don’t need to run faster than lions to stay alive, they just need to run faster than other zebras,”

which is both funny, and true. at any point, I could be the slow zebra, but the chances are that there are slower zebras out there, and the longer I’m in play, the better.

and it’s funny. funny is good.

my spinning wheel came today. but I went for a kind of brisk walk after being out and running around a lot today, and I’m just knackered. more news on this forthcoming.

also, I got a new nalgen bottle and a a french press type thing for making tea in it. I haven’t quite mastered the insertion/removal thing with grace but some day I will have it. I also got a couple more varieties of black tea, including one with vanilla and thus I suspect to have enough tea to get me through the beginning of 2009, unless I get into graduate school, in which case, the end of october, max.

I think what you’re witnessing is the live bloging of angst, and so I’m going to go and do something else entirely.

love, tycho

So this is the week. Hopefully. I’m getting palpitations just thinking about it. I’ll keep you posted if I get in.

It’s not what happens so much as it is that it’s happening. Not that I don’t have strong feelings/prefrences, I do, it’s just stressful.

I’ve decided that I will, g-d willing, and I get in, I’m going to start on a celebratory road trip in about a week, as it’s the only good stretch of time when I don’t have commitments that I need to be here for. In the next couple of months I have: May Day dancing, work commitments at the yarn store, morris dancing, teaching commitments, and then my summer job starts in late May. So it’s now or never.

Possible stops (and rough order) include:

• Champaign-Urbana, IL
• Nashville, TN
• Chapel Hill, NC
• Harrisburg, PN
• Philadelphia, PN
• Boston Area, MN
• Chicago, IL

And I just need to get back here by sunrise on May 1st. Well, enough time before sunrise to find/clean put on morris kit before sunrise. Which, might be as little as 60-90 minutes, and as much as several hours.

I also listed the places in a rough order, so that I don’t have more than 8-10 hours at any one point. Except for Boston to Chicago. Maybe back to Philadelphia/Harrisburg to take the edge off that. Also, you figure with a state as big as Ohio, I have to have some friend there, but alas. We’ll see. If you’re in one of those places or in between one of those places, keep in touch/watch this blog….

It’s fun to plan these things, it takes the edge off, if I don’t get in I’ll probably take a similar road trip at the end of the summer in between jobs/movements in my life. I’ll keep you posted, of course.

Brief rundown of other news:

• I taught a really cool knitting class this morning. It was more of a workshop, and since I’m local we’re spreading it out over three months, so people have an opportunity to get a big project done. I’m liking it. I’ll write more about this.
• I’m beginning stage one of a big academic project tonight, which is why my posting today is more reflexive and brief than usual. Aside from all the busy.
• I went to a chamber music concert that a friend played in. It was fun, I got a lot of knitting done. In fact, I had a slight knitting mishap yesterday and had to rip back about 3 inches of knitting, but I think I’ve finally regrouped. I’ll write more about this later.

Ok, I have to run.

Onward and Upward!

So, I apparently have turned into a lazy blogger. I’m not sure what to say about this. I have, probably four more days on the waitlist maybe 5 or 6 which means I’ve been on the list for 28+ days. My heart races just thinking about it.

Knitting is going well. I’m 4-5 inches into the yoke, so probably at least half done with this section, but each round has fewer and fewer stitches. I’m decreasing what amounts to 8 stitches every three rounds, and though all of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Seamless Yoke Style sweater “structures” work with colorwork designs, you have to monkey with the decrease rates because the vertical to horizontal gauge is different in stranded work (stitches are more narrow). Keep this in mind.

My mother and I went shopping this morning. I found a book bag at REI (my old one is getting ratty, and broken) and I ordered it online as soon as I got home. We also went to “The Container Store” and I got a couple of little glass (and plastic) airtight jars to hold loose tea, and I’m quite like them, so I’ll have to go back to get a couple more at some point. We also got--and this was the reason for the trip--bathroom/shower accessories, of which we were in great need of.

I’m working through my tea bag stash in an effort to move to loose leaf tea more full time. I have two experimental varieties of tea bags (and one known quantity) left hanging around that will probably take a while to get through, but I want to have less stuff in stock before I go forth and buy more lose tea…

And speaking of tea buying, I want to get one of those strainer/french press things that you can get to use in a nalgene for when I’m on the road in the future…

Anyway, back to the knitting, I must get this done soon, because I want to move on to the next thing, and I’m so close!

Stay well!

So I’ve been working on, well g-d only knows what today, but apparently it didn’t involve blogging. I have gotten things done, and I’m probably half to 3/4s of the way done with my document for my class on sunday, and making progress on my sweater.

These are good things.

I haven’t talked much about it here, but I suspect that most of you are aware that I twitter. That is that I post things to my twitter page throughout my day. Links, thoughts, notifications of new blog entries (ok, that’s automatic, but still). It’s a great deal of fun, once you get into it, and I heartily recommend it!

Anyway, one of the things that I’ve been doing of late, is when a lyric of a song strikes my ear/fancy, I’ll post a snippet of it on twitter. Usually I don’t go for the most recongizeable lyric, like I’ve posted bits of “The Times they are A-Changing” that aren’t “come gather around children” or “the times they are a-changing,” and other such.

And it’s sort of cool when people twitter back the name of the song or the next lyric, or something, it’s sort of like a sing along.

Recently I’ve been twittering parts of the 69 Love Songs collection by “The Magnetic Fields,” which I think is full of great little lyrics like “Papa was a rodeo, mama was a rock and roll band,” and “Like the Moon needs poetry, you need me” and “Not for all the tea in China  Not if I could sing like a bird  Not for all North Carolina.” And it’s so delightful that an obviously quirky band like The Magnetic Fields is so well known that people can generate the next lines and what not from memory.

I’ve put the iPod back onto random, so who knows what’s going to stick in the next few days but I’d like to continue to do this kind of thing, and it would be great to have little sing-a-longs with you too.

“Hey look at that!” he cried out, far too excited for the cereal aisle, if you asked me.

But no one ever did. “What.”

“They have cranberry chocolate cereal! And it has flax in it!” Again, too excited.

“Ew? That’s gross.”

“No we’re getting it, we have to!” There were already too many exclamation points in this conversation, but it wasn’t quite over. “It even has flax seed!”

“Still gross.”

“Still getting it.” He said, and placed it firmly in the cart.

“Whatever, I’m getting Cheerios,” I say. I put the palatable cereal in the cart, and pray that after thinking of the alternative for all of 3 minutes, that I’ll have an appetite for them by the next morning.

The next morning, we each have our own cereal.

The following morning, we both have Cheerios. No one is surprised.

Three days latter. There is most of a box of Cranberry Chocolate Cereal (with Flax Seed!) in the pantry. There is one bowl’s worth of Cheerios left.

I think we can all see where this is going.

And I don’t need to explain why I had graham crackers for breakfast.

So I promised another tea review, and given that I’ve had about half of the box so far, I think it’s fair that I start.

After I posted my last review, a few people--mostly relatives--made a great deal of fun of me for such a geeky focus on a cup of tea. And having said that, I took the opportunity to look a little more thoroughly at the tea blogging community.

Wow, there was a fully developed niche that I have no exposure to. I’ve been on this “internet thing” for so long that I still think of fully deployed niche blogs as being sort of “new,” which I think explains some of my awed response.

In any case, I’m not that much of a tea dweeb, most of the teas that I’m reviewing come in bag form, and I’m not experimenting to find the proper brewing nirvana for each tea variety, I’m just drinking the tea as I normally would and seeing how it goes.

The tea this time is Pickwick English Tea Blend. It’s a dutch tea, or at least the packaging is all dutch. The tea-bags are pretty big it seems, and there is no individual wrapping, though the bags all have strings and grip-tab things. This packaging is sort of annoying, it’s sort of “half way there,” and makes it difficult to use effectively.

The tea is pretty strong, I think this is a function of the bags being bigger: I get a really strong 16-18oz cup of tea from one bag, which is a function of bag size, I think. It almost always needs milk, but it’s not a harsh tea, despite it’s strength.

In term of flavor, it’s interesting deep, rich, which is delightful of course, but there’s a hint of something wooden or smokey--a little bitter behind the flavor, which is a good move. I think tea needs something back there to make it unique and to differentiate it from other teas.

If I weren’t looking to switch to loose leaf teas, for most of my day-to-day tea drinking, I’d probably get this one again in a heart beat. Since the packaging sucks, and I’m looking to use the loose stuff, maybe not so much. But if you really like strong dark tea, without any flavor crap this is really great stuff.