Let's talk about…quirks

Since I’ve just finished eating a grapefruit and Brent talked earlier about some quirks of his, I thought I’d share as well.

It takes me 20 minutes to eat a grapefruit.

I eat grapefruit often. They are very delicious and I love to eat them plain. But when I say plain, I mean plain. I don’t eat anything but the pulp. I peel it like most people do oranges. Then I meticulously peel off any remaining rind. I’m left with the segments, but I don’t eat these at this point either. I separate each one and peel off the membrane, careful not to burst any of the pulp inside. Once I get that all off, I eat the pulp.

I also eat lemons and limes this way, though I don’t get these as often. Today I also learned that my guinea pig, Gingie, loves grapefruit too.

Brent may have started something here that he didn’t intend to. 😉

Stitching Goodies

I’ve again participated in yet another cross-stitch exchange, this one autumn-themed. Now that my package has been received and my partner has gotten hers, I can show off what we’ve done.

Dasha sent me a lovely needlebook that I’ve been using non-stop since it arrived. It’s great. The colours are amazing, the fabric inside is also very fitting, and the size is perfect for the project I’ve been using it with. She also sent an adorable Russian doll keychain, and a very pretty card for my collection.

goodies

See how awesome! I wanted to make myself a needlebook a while ago, but after making my brother a wallet I learned sewing defeats me. I’ve got this one to do once I get some more practise sewing with stuff that I won’t worry about wrecking in the process.

Here’s a closeup of the whole pattern:

whole pattern

And a detail shot of the front:

front detail

I keep taking it out to look at and pet it. Dasha said she keeps doing the same with what I gave her. I’m glad we’re both happy.

I made her the Miniature Autumn Sampler by Teresa Wentzler (I know, I know, I’m obsessed) but turned it into the cover of a book. It’s attached in such a way that she can swap the cover onto a new book if she needs to, or take it off the backing completely for use as something else. Part of the requirement for this exchange was that we had to try new finishing techniques and the stuff online was boring so I made something up. Now, I forgot to take pictures but Dasha took some and gave me permission to use them, so here we are.

Here’s what the finished product looks like:

autumn sampler book

The detail shot of the fruit for those interested:

fruit detail

I did really like doing this piece. It was certainly much easier than my other two projects. Even though it’s a TW it didn’t induce the frustration that usually happens when I work on the others. I liked it so much I might do it again down the road. The pattern is not that costly and I have all the materials, so it’s likely. Of course, now I also want to do some of the freebies that I saw on her site, since they’d be detailed but easy as well.

Flickr is back!

For those of you that didn’t know, I’ve been unable to log in to my Yahoo! account all summer. When our Rogers account was cancelled it never properly unlinked from their system, and when I try to go through the steps online to do it nothing happens. It’s still doing this. I’ve emailed, called, and IM’d Rogers and Yahoo! both, and all they do is shuffle me around. Rogers says they have no record of me anymore so it’s Yahoo!’s problem, Yahoo! says it’s Rogers’ problem for deleting all record of me. I don’t care anymore, because there has been some small measure of success finally.

The thing is, I have two Yahoo! accounts, and although the one I’m locked out of is my oldest one (and thus most well known) I don’t use it anymore except for my Flickr photos. This was a huge problem for me, because Flickr only lets you assign a custom url to an account once, and you can’t take it back for use with another account. So in order to keep my http://www.flickr.com/photos/heavenlyevil URL I’d have to get my Flickr associated with another Yahoo! ID.

This normally is very easy. You just sign in and fill out the form and confirm that you own both Yahoo! IDs and are thus allowed to make the switch. Which means I couldn’t do this, obviously, not being able to get into the first account at all.

I emailed the Flickr people and they looked into it for me. It took them some time to confirm my information and that I really was locked out of my account, but once that was established I got an email back saying that they’d separated my Flickr from any Yahoo! ID so I could go back and attach it as if it had always been separate. Huzzah!

This I did, so now I have my pretty pictures again and can add more finally, after not being able to for ages. It’s exciting, see, because there’s this new site, Ravelry, that I’ve been a member of for most of the summer and haven’t been able to make full use of since I couldn’t link my pictures.

Really, I’m excited because I have yet another avenue for showing off my yarn stash. Unfortunately, a bunch of the projects I’ve finished this summer have been gifted away and I don’t have pictures, but for the rest they will be up soon for those of you who are also on Ravelry. Exciting, yes?

ETA: Well, now that I’ve said something I get an email from Yahoo! saying they’ve fixed everything and I can get back in my account now. For the trouble I think I’m getting my stuff out of that account and deleting it. All I get is spam from it anymore anyhow.

First Week in London

School is back in session and I’ve made it through orientation and my first two classes without bring scared off. This is a good sign. I was told before coming here that the workload in this program is like “being pelted with popcorn” and that it’s all about time-management. They weren’t kidding. I’ve already been assigned five things to be done in the next two weeks. Three before this Thursday. I’ve still got three classes left to get to so there will probably be even more stuff added to the mix before Wednesday.

Nothing is particularly difficult. A few interviews and small papers to go with them, a couple of 6-page papers, and a one-page reading response. It’s just a lot of stuff to have all at once. For my Perspectives class because of the essay topics I’ve got I’ll have 70% of my final mark taken care of before the end of this month. I hope I can wrap my head around the writing style quickly so I don’t botch it.

I got my student card on Monday since nothing else was open yet and the line wasn’t too long. There were frosh everywhere being loud, annoying, or just confused. It made me glad I didn’t have to go through that kind of orientation again. Once was definitely enough for me.

Orientation on Tuesday went well. It’s funny that the first few days of grad school reminded me most of the first few days of elementary school. In the morning they explained how the program works and had all 120 of us introduce ourselves. A nice chunk of the profs also introduced themselves as well. In the afternoon we got a tour of the department, our library/resource centre, and the computer system. We also had our pictures taken for the intranet. I hate mine and it’s not even up yet. It’s hot and I’ve been living in a ponytail all week so I imagine it looks a lot like my WLU student ID photo. Oh well.

Some of the stuff didn’t take as long as expected, so in the breaks they gave us before lunch and at the end of the day I managed to get my bus pass and get my OSAP taken care of. I also managed to make time to mail my exchange project for the Autumn cross-stitch exchange I’m doing. On the way home I fell getting off the bus. It was spectacular. I’m still bruised from that one. At least I haven’t managed to repeat that experience.

Wednesday I bummed around the apartment putting things away and then sitting around a lot. It was too hot to really do anything and I don’t have a/c.

Thursday was the busiest by far. I had my reference class first, which we kicked off by looking at comics that poke fun at librarians and by playing with the Nancy Pearl librarian action figure (with “Amazing, push-button shushing action!”) and made a list of what we thought it was librarians actually did (before we knew anything about the profession, that is).

After that class I had a little over an hour for lunch, but I stupidly left all my cash at home and forgot to transfer money so I could take more out. This meant I had to spend most of that free time in line at the meal plan office so I could get my card set up and get me some lunch. I spent most of the time getting that done, then grabbed food quickly and finished eating just in time for my next class.

This class is a general overview of the profession. Before getting started we took the time to go around the room introducing ourselves (again!) and saying what we’d taken before and what our interests are and why we want to take this program. All that fun stuff. Very few (read: 2) people in my group want anything to do with public libraries, and no one else is interested in computer stuff at all, so I’m pretty much alone in that respect. There are a lot of people interested in academic libraries though, certainly more than I was expecting.

After the introductions we talked about myths regarding librarians and their jobs and whether or not they were true or could be true. Then we got into groups and made lists of what we thought most valuable about libraries. Next week we’re consolidating this list, I assume to compare it to the ones in the readings. I’ve already done those since they are the topic of my paper.

Friday I spent hunting out as many of the articles for my courses as I could find on the internet. So far none of the courses have textbooks we’re expected to buy. There are just lots of articles all over the place. Some are hard copies in the resource centre that I’ll have to go and photocopy, the rest are either in a database or just on a website. To make my life easier I’m saving the online ones to my HD now so I can just read them when I need them without having to do all the hunting out later.

Dean came over Friday night with more of my stuff. It’s slowly all ending up here. Two more trips I think to get it all here if the rest comes in small loads. We didn’t feel like making food and heating up the apartment even more than it already was, so we went to the mall for dinner and after got me a Guinea Pig. He’s very cute and very sweet but I’m still trying to come up for a name that suits him. I’m glad I can usually tell which ones are the excitable type, since I hate getting those crazy ones that never shut up.

We had fun adventuring around town yesterday getting groceries and a bridge the guinea pig can eat and a Wacom tablet for me. I originally ordered it Thursday from Best Buy online to pick up in store, they emailed me Friday saying it wasn’t in stock and to reorder. The problem was, it was on sale for $69.99 Thursday and Friday went back up to their regular price of $152.99. So I was very angry that they cancelled my order and didn’t give me a chance to get a raincheck or anything. I called both stores here to complain and see if I could get it from another store for the sale price (keep in mind most places sell it for $99) and they blew me off. So we went in person and for some reason they didn’t put up much of a fight in the store after giving me so much trouble on the phone. They checked my order, went to grab the old flyer to check the price, and put the transaction through. So now I have a nice new toy to play with and can get back into drawing. The bonus is I can have my stuff on the computer now and maybe get a real layout going for this site.

Now I’m off to school to read some more stuff for my paper. Happy Sunday everyone!

P.S. Happy Birthday Sarah!

Portugal tomorrow!

So I’m packing my suitcase now and making sure that I have everything. I’m not sure what time we leave tomorrow, but we’re going to the Mandarin in the morning since we leave early enough that there was no point going to work (Dean) or volunteering (me). We’ll be gone until August 13th and will most likely not have internet, though if I get to use a computer I’ll let you all know how we’re doing.

See you all next month!

Ouchies

I’ve mostly made it through another bout of ear infections. My left ear is stubborn and not willing to give it up just yet, but I’ve got drops that should take care of it before we leave for Portugal. My foot is still hurting from when I fell down the stairs before Convocation, so I’ve got to make an appointment to get that looked at. I’ve got one doctor at school that has checked both of these things in the last month, but he’s been wrong diagnosing things many times before so I don’t trust him. I’m going to make sure I get the appointment with someone else and get a second opinion, since it’s been over a month with the foot and the first guy just keeps saying to let it be and it will heal.

What You're Doing

Or, what I’ve been doing.

Things haven’t been too busy but I’ve been enjoying the chance to read again and not spend so much time on the computer. I realize once school starts up in September I’m probably going to be chained to my laptop again.

I’m trying to learn to actually use Photoshop, rather than putting up with my usual tactic of fumbling around until I get something presentable. I’m also teaching myself to type using Dvorak to help with my repetitive strain. I’ve pretty much got it down but find it hard to stick to because I’m so slow at it compared to Qwerty. Oh well. If I put stickers or something on my keyboard, or rearrange the keys, I’m sure I’d be faster at it since when I forget where a letter is I can just look instead of having to stop and think about it.

Look! A cute ducky!

cute ducky

That was taken before Convocation, when me and Dean were wandering the park looking for good places to take pictures of the gown for my grandma. I’m sure she’s glad she made me promise that I’d go to this one [since I skipped out on my highschool graduation] because not many people in my family make it through to university, let alone graduate. Now that I’ve had a couple weeks to get over it, I’m kinda glad I went too. Not for the usual reasons, but so I’ll have an idea of what to expect when I graduate from Western. At least that’s one convocation that I’ll be glad to go to!

Still, I really like the pretty purple frame for my degree. It’s much better than Dean’s with his boring brown thing. Mine’s so bright and cheerful. I think it better represents the spirit of the school. Not just because it’s the school colours. The whole experience at school was so much fun. The other frame is so austere looking. It kinda creeps me out. I keep saying mine is better than Dean’s. Eventually it turns into us joking that I chose the one I did because I’m an artsy-fartsy philosophy major and he’s an important and valued business student. Ha! I still say we win because there are more people getting BAs at Laurier than BBAs. So there!

See? Mine’s so nice:

degree

While waiting for the spinning wheel to get back I didn’t feel like knitting much, so I started working on Peacock Tapestry again and I’ve now finished another page. For as much as I still love this piece after all these years, I must admit I’m going to be very excited when I’m finally finished the leaves on those trees. So much green! Even the pears don’t provide much distraction from the overwhelming green of it all.

This is the section of the trees that I just finished. You can see where the page ends.

peacock tapestry detail

This is what I have so far:

peacock tapestry whole

Since Kitty actually stayed off it this time, I’ve got something else. Kitty raspberries!

kitty razz

In other cross-stitch news I received my needleroll from Hania this month:

needleroll

It’s so beautiful! I love it so much. Especially because it’s something I never would have thought to make for myself, and yet it’s so pretty.

I also made her one. Mine’s something of a colour-overload, but in a good way I think. The original pattern was so monotone that I couldn’t stand it and went in the complete opposite direction.

topiary needleroll

As if there isn’t enough random stuff in this post, have some cute piggies!

piggies

Here It Goes Again

Okay, so I lied about the wheel being fixed before. When I tried to use it the wheel was wobbly and not spinning properly. The instructions sent with the repair kit said to tighten the bolt holding the wheel to the base until the wheel runs true. I tried that. Instead of the bolt tightening it broke and made my wheel not just sort-of useless, but completely useless.

Needless to say, rather than making things worse I contacted the manufacturer and sent it back for them to fix properly. I could have just asked for a new bolt but this way means it gets fixed right the first time.

I checked my UPS tracking, it arrived back at the factory yesterday so sometime soon I should have my wheel back and working as it should be. When that happens, I’ll definitely be posting pictures of what I spin. I’ll also be dyeing and spinning some of my own stuff, since I ordered a bunch of assorted fibre last month that is just sitting in the box in the corner waiting to be loved.

I’ve made some really good progress in Peacock Tapestry and almost completely finished the section I was on. I can’t really work by the page because it’s an evil evil pattern and is too complicated to cooperate.

I’m participating in a needleroll exchange and I finished and mailed that on Monday. I have pictures and they are awesome but I can’t post them until my receiver gets it. No spoiling the surprise!