I’m so going to write a post about how piss-poor the databases for scholarly articles are when I have time. They need to hire a web 2.0 developer, for real, because whatever their using (some arcane home grown perl system no doubt) blows. And there’s no reason that they couldn’t offer desktop clients, which for this kind of service makes a hell of a lot of sense. It’s an interesting development question, because their business model is so different from every other web service. Coming soon!

I have to go to class soon (and take a test! on speech production and language learning, but I’m feeling pretty good about it) and then work in the yarn store which is going swimmingly. Spinning group tonight, but I’m not going to have a wheel there. Interestingly I have a hard time working on my own projects when I’m there, and I come home and I’m not incredibly interested in knitting or doing much spinning. The end result is that I haven’t been working on my own projects very much, but I seem (somehow) to be getting lots of things done, so there’s nothing really to complain about.

Onward and Upward!

I did a networking email exchange this morning. Woot, being productive. I also asked a professor for a letter of recomendation. I realize that I was expecting one of my letters to come from a former former advisor that hadn’t had me in class in a long time, and wasn’t really connected to the work I was interested in doing these days. The new letter writer is much more connected with what I’ve done recently (they had me in two classes last semester) and I think we have a pretty good rapport.

I’ve also filled out the form and written the check to get transcripts for this application cycle.

I did some reading and some other stuff, but have generally feel pretty unproductive.

Oh wait, I did get some minor edits done on two chapters of the novel. This leaves three more chapters to do. I’m going to go over the ending to see if I can frame it a little more clearly, but I don’t think I’m going to change it much, between this and the next draft, because all the responses have been pretty spot-on, even if people say “wait a second.” So I’m going to give it time, and I think after it hits the second round of readers, it’ll be good enough to start sending out to editors/publishers.

One thing that I need to do, is to work on notes and what all of our 6th grade english teachers called “pre-writing.” I’m pretty good at being productive, as long as I’ve spent even the merest amounts of time thinking through things first. I just need to spend some time with the moleskine.

I’ve also been spinning a bunch. I’ve done about 4 of a total 6 oz of some tencel-merino in something approaching jumper weight. I swear to you, if I spun a pound of this, I’d have a sweater. Interestingly this is my entire fiber stash. Which is appropriate because I’m just using my mother’s wheel until sell some more spinning related things and can afford a wheel of my own again. I like spinning and think that I need to figure out how to work this into my routine.

In terms of knitting, I’ve done about 3-3.5 inches on my sweater, and I think I’m going to go back to sleeve knitting after I knit another 3-3.5 inches while I figure out how far I want to set in the shoulders. After a bunch of meandering about, I still have no clue what my next project is going to be.

Anyway. Cheers!

Another response from a potential advisor person. Not amazing like the last one, but good and encouraging.

I must admit that I had thought until I saw the email (along with the attached in press articles/chapters), that this professor/lab was a bit of a stretch for me. It’s also kind of perfect, which is a pleasant surprise.

More later.

680 verbal 490 quant

Note: For H.’s benefit: one of my passages today mentioned Paula Gunn Allen. No lie!

Also, as a note to myself, I have to pay 15 bucks to send the scores to a certain northeastern former research powerhouse.

last time I got:

580 verbal 460 quant 6.0 writing

(I think).

Scores range from 200 to 400; except for the writing which is on a scale of something to 6.0 (6.0 writing scores account for 5% of the sample.) The percentiles are skewed against folk like me on the quant, because (likely) more engineering students take the GRE than english majors. So the quant section is comparatively harder, and equivalent scale scores (so I think 500 verbal is a 50th Percentile, and 500 quant is a 30th percentile.) FYI.

This isn’t astoundingly wonderful, but it might not be incredibly bad either. It might be good enough, which in these things is all that matters. It’s probably not worth worrying about overly much.

I don’t think it’s worth it to take it again, given that I couldn’t take it again soon enough to really matter this time around, and I don’t think that getting a higher quant score would help anything in a theoretical 3rd cycle (which probably wouldn’t be next year, but rather 2-3 years hence.)

Sigh. I’m officially going to take the rest of the day off, there will be knitting, spinning, reading, perhaps writing, and some definite television watching.

… but it’s all intentional.

I’m taking the GRE today, so my week is intentionally getting off to a false start. I’m not, and haven’t been, writing a whole lot, and I’m trying to slip into the right mindset. My scores have had a practice-test range of about 150 points, all of them better than what I got a year ago. Here’s hoping for the best, I think I know what to do to make this work, but a little luck never hurt anyone. This afternoon, I’ll be ready for putting more things on my plate.

I’ve been spinning again (on my mother’s wheel; I’m still trying to sell the two of mine that I have remaining so that I can get a wheel of my own.) And I’m really pleased with the product. It’s about sport weight or so. It’s going pretty quick now that I have the hang of it, and the yarn is going to be pretty swell to knit with. It should be enough to knit socks with, but I’m not sure that I will, I think not having plans about your hand-spun (so long as you spin enough to at least theoretically make something with it,) is one of the key’s to success.

Knitting also continues apace. My sock projects, which are supposed to be fun little things that don’t require much thought and always work out, aren’t working out the way I’d want them to. And I figured out a key part of the sweater design which I’d been avoiding heretofore. I’d say I have about 15 inches left to go before the shoulder saddle starts, but a bit less than 5 until the armhole starts, and I’m thinking that I’m about half way there, length wise.

It’s something. I’ll post here this afternoon when I have an idea about my scores, and things seem to settle down.

Here’s a mostly accurate conversation I had with a friend the other day. Once the secret is out, I’ll tell you more about the actors, and it might make sense, but for now, lets just go with it.

Jon’s someone I’ve known since high school, and though, as you might have guessed, we’ve bounced around the country a fair bit, and changed a lot, we’re still right there.

jon: I promised him I’d keep this between us for right now tycho: whatever, I’m practically you jon: true that: a much more together version of me… and cuter tycho: psh… I mean, __________ is cuter than you, but whatever jon: hahahaha. at least you’re honest tycho: I think dating cuter people is ok, I’m ok with that jon: yeah, I’m fine with ______ being cuter than me too.

conversation proceeds

tycho develops a nickname for ______, a mutual friend: I’m so calling him that henceforth jon: CENSORED tycho: whatever, whatever jon: I promised! tycho: I think you need to say to ______ something like “so, I have this brother that knows me too well, but he’s trustworthy,” because we’re basically family, duder. jon: I know

pause

jon: my mom told me that she’s always wanted a jewish son, when I told her that you and I were brothers, basically… tycho: oh dear…. funny though.

Like most conversations this one doesn’t have some larger purpose, and sort of meanders around. But that’s the joy of conversations, right? I’ve also done some artistic touching up to make it flow a little better with the missing parts, but otherwise it’s pretty spot on.

I’ll post some more coherent thoughts a little later.

I twittered something about how Ellen DeGeneres filmed her show despite the fact that the WGA is on strike, after only canceling one taping. I ended this twitter with the phrase “bad queer.”

A little background:

My second semester in college I took a class on race and sexuality that some of you might remember quite well. Anyway, it was an english/women’s studies class and we met in a class room in the geology building. This lead to far too many jokes about rock throwing, but at some point the prof talked about a class that she took it grad school called “bad queers” that was a night class that met in some distant corner of campus on the top floor of a building that was otherwise unused. It was funny, or at least funnier than what we were studying at the time.

The idea of a class about “bad queers” was interesting, so it was an ongoing joke between some of us, in part because we never got a good explanation of what the class would actually be about, or more importantly what could you spend an entire semester talking about on the subject.

I always took the opinion that it was to be a class about false (queer) consciousness, but I’m not sure that was everyone’s opinion, nor do I know that that’s accurate. I think roommate H.¹ took the side that the class was more narrowly about the element of the queer community that makes the conservative argument that queer people are just the same as straight people save homosexuality, this argues against diversity, and for greater social strictures, and that was appropriately enough, to our minds “bad.”

Anyway, I bring this up, only because I was writing a paper this weekend about sexuality and aging for my adulthood and aging class that I’m taking now (more on that in another post, possibly) and I found myself putting a small rant about a certain fairly well known “bad queer” (in the second, narrower sense.) And while I’m not sure that it’s completely crucial to my argument, and thus is now a footnote, it sort of felt good.

But I suppose more importantly, it’s a fun exercise, if not entirely productive. Thoughts on bad queers, anyone?

Things continue apace. That’s such a cool word. Apace. Hmm.

Anyway, I’m still working on the latvian table cloth sweater, I’ve got enough done thus-far to realize that I’m going to be able to omit 2 full pattern repeats and still have a 30 inch sweater/jacket. Isn’t knitting amazing. I haven’t yet figured out how exactly I’m going to master the shoulder/neck saddle things, but there is time yet. It measures 14 inches at the moment. I’ll take pictures at some point, I hope.

GRE stuff continues as well, and I’m only mildly freaked out about this, which is probably the right way to be.

I’m working in the yarn store today but not again till Tuesday. I didn’t work yesterday, but I was at the store for several hours hanging out and knitting with a friend and I also taught a lesson to a great new knitter who knitted perfectly, save for two twisted stitches that might have been my fault anyway. Amazing!

I’ll be in touch, particularly after I have time to breathe again.