Photos

Here are some photos that I mentioned in the last post:



Happy Birthday to me!



Pomatomus socks and I visited Mt. Holyoke to drop off my sister.



This is my mom hugging her goodbye. Sarah doesn't look thrilled to be hugged. I think she inherited the family trait of not wanting to be hugged.



Check out the beautiful sky at the beach in Rhode Island.
This is also a perfect time to show some pictures in honor of Zack. Last year at this time he was in the hospital and just had surgery.



This is him about a month after we got him. Notice how less fuzzy he is? I always said he puffed out after we got him and when we originally saw him he didn't look like a Maine Coon cat at all.



Here he is in the hospital after the surgery. His leg is wrapped up so he doesn't take the IV out and we don't need to give him fluids every day.



We took this picture for our vet and the wonderful vet techs to show them all that he was still alive after the surgery and doing better. They still have this picture hanging in the back and when I brought him in for his yearly checkup one of the Vet Techs brought the picture out to show me. I should take them a new picture to show how fluffy he is.

Finally, I leave you all with a picture of my mom's cat Stella. Auntie Em pointed out she is the only animal not yet shown on this blog so I found this picture of her sitting on top of the trash can. She is a grumpy bundle of trouble. She doesn't like me or Zack much and hisses when we come near her. She hates to be petted by anyone by my mom or sister and complains all the time. My dad calls her the Queen of the House. She also can unzip bags and open cabinets and drawers. After we got her we had to put the childproof locks back on the cabinets. She will regularly stalk my dad's breakfast, hiding out under his newspaper and then causing it to explode upwards as she leaps out. Sarah and I wanted to call her Trouble when we first got her as a tiny kitten but my mom said that would give her a complex so we decided on a name we can yell loudly. She and the kitten (izzy) ignore each other most of the time but when Zack comes to visit Izzy and him run around the house and chase each other.

Update for those who have been complaining...

Sorry this blog has been so quiet for a while. I had a busy pre-vacation week where I prepped for being out of the office with no email contact for a week. (The folks at work were shocked by this idea. NO EMAIL. I didn't tell them that I could have sat on the floor of the front porch of the house in Rhode Island to check my email... but I didn't tell them or check it. I did look up the proper way to do Yarn Overs and found out I was doing them wrong half of the time and not realizing it.) I was away on vacation for a week. And then, it was my birthday. This year my birthday coincided with moving my sister back to college. So we spend the morning moving her in and then grabbed lunch at the campus center. After that we heading into town, and my parents dropped me off at WEBS. (They left pretty quickly. Even though I had warned them about how large WEBS is they were a little shocked and overwhelmed.)I got a bunch of yarn (mostly sock yarn) and New Pathways for Sock Knitters (Book 1) by Cat Bordhi there. (Pictures tomorrow or soon). We then drove back home (having said good bye to my sister) and had a yummy take in dinner from Vinny T's. Cake followed. I then started a sock from New Pathways at about 10 pm since I couldn't resist it any longer.

On vacation I did some knitting on my sweater and on the Mystery Stole but both of those after moving a little slowly and I worry that they won't have a lot of time over the next few months with all the rush of the patients coming in a work and me studying for the GREs and applying to grad school in the evenings.

More Pictures

I finally finished my Sockapalooza Socks for my pal. (I finished them Friday but they took all of Friday night and Saturday to dry after being washed.) They are now on their way to my pal.



Here is what I am working on now:

Eye Candy Friday

Welcome to my first Eye Candy Friday. I finally got around to taking pictures of the stuff my sockapalooza sock pal sent me. And my wonderful sock pal is .... ANA!


Here is just the yarn she sent.


And here are the socks, the knitting help books, Jelly Bellies, a Wisconsin Cow and a magazine from where she lives. Yes, she did send two pairs of socks.


Here are the Monkey's on. They were knit in Lorna's Laces Shepard Sock in River.


Here is the pretty side of them. I absolutely love them! I even love how one pools and the other's stripes. Am I weird in how I like pooling better then striping?


Here are the cute little ones. I wore them the day I got them since they feel like they are knit from that yarn that wicks your yicky foot sweat. Man, these are comfy. In fact I haven't taken them off today after taking these pictures.

Thanks again Ana.


Oh, and a final picture of Zack in cause you all missed him. This is him, ignoring me as I am taking pictures of my yarn.

An intimate look at my day

Today I read "The Devil Wears Prada" which is twelve zillion times better in print then in movie form (and it was great as a movie). It made me think about my days at work and attempting to get to work. My day is boring and long and it feels like I did nothing. Want to see? (In between the times I did actually work - it just seems like I didn't)

7 am - alarm goes off. Hit snooze.
7:30 - second alarm goes off. Turn it off, hit snooze on first alarm and realize I feel funny. Mentally do a run through of the day's events in the case that my funny feeling turns into a migraine. Decide to lay in bed until I (ultimately my head) can decide if it is a migraine.
9:30 - realize that I had been watching Regis and Kelly for 30 minutes without remembering anything of it. Turn off the tv, feed the cat, shower. SLOWLY have breakfast and get dressed. Take advil. Lay on bed until it begins to work. Brush teeth.
11 - leave apartment, cursing myself for being so late in leaving. Walk down hill to Post Office.
11:15 - reach post office. Show id, sign my name 500000 times and print my address and finally receive important letter. Sigh of relief that it wasn't what I was afraid it would be.
11:30 - caught bus to Harvard Sq. Change in Harvard Sq. to train.
12:20 - get off train at main hospital. Walk through main hospital and promptly out the other side. Board shuttle bus
12:30 - Shuttle bus leaves main hospital.
1 - finally make it to work a full 2 hours after leaving my apartment. I notice this fact and realize that if I had tried to do this in rush hour it would have taken me longer.
1:03 - walk into my office and notice NO ONE is there. I unlock my door to my office (do we call it private or lonely now that my never appearing office mate moved her stuff out officially), start up my computer, glance at my phone to see that I got NO messages and check my email (none since this morning when I checked it before work when I got an invite to a bar hop that I couldn't attend for HMG)
1:20 - grab lunch and eat it at my desk while studying from my GRE book.
1:40 - notice that David, our tech-savvy grad student is there and finally fixed the lab's email which had been broken for 2 weeks. (Things break when he goes to Japan)
2:00 - I hear Riccardo making packing noises in his office. I wander over to make sure he isn't moving out of his office and thus leaving me the only one in our lab in the second floor. He isn't, he is just unpacking a huge new computer making the total number of computers on his desk up to 4. He is eying the other desk in the room and discussing moving 2 to 3 computers over there. I back up slowly out of his office.
2:02 - back in Riccardo's office, asking if the rumor that our boss was coming in to the office was correct. I feel out of the rumor loop since normally the guys upstairs call me if my boss is in the building. Most of our lab and his students have a 6th sense of knowing when he enters the building and come out of the wood work to wait for him. If I need something signed, I also must queue up or find a sneaky way to bypass this line.
2:15 - Print out what I need boss to sign and verify with his secretary that he is coming in. She says that he will be in the building at 2:30. Not sure if this is correct since the vultures aren't circling yet.
2:30 - Boss's secretary comes down to talk with David. I take this as a sign that Boss isn't arriving now.
2:35 - Riccardo offers me two cd players. I accept one of them for my mother. This makes the total number of cd players given to me at work: 2.
3:35 - last attempt to get Boss's signature finds him in the building and a small but determined queue has formed. Attempt to make small talk with secretary leads to her talking about his electronic signature.
4:05 - Suppose to leave work 5 minutes ago but still waiting for Boss's signature.
4:14 - Get signature Sprint out of Boss's office, into elevator, out of elevator, through 3 security doors to office, out of office and down stairs and into shuttle just as it is leaving.
4:35 - Arrive at train station
4:55 - arrive at Davis Sq.
5:20 - Chiropractor appointment.
6:00 - Train to Harvard Sq. When I got off the train, I decide to buy my sock pal a gift. I stop by a favorite store of mine. Call my friend T for help deciding on what to get.
6:10 - ignored T's advice.
6:15 - Invited to dinner at T's house. Call mother to let her know how my day was. She reminds my my head will soon hurt thanks to the Chiropractor's appointment and I will be tired.
7:30 - halfway through dinner I basically fall asleep.
8:20 - arrive back at Harvard Sq, wait with T for bus.
8:35 - bus arrives, 15 minutes late. T rides bus with me home
9:00 - arrive home. T makes sure I get inside, then returns home. I discover the door to my room blew closed and the cat was locked out.
9:30 - watch CSI and read.
10 pm - start writing this.

And now. Bed time.

Pomatomus

In the last post, I asked people to vote between Monkey socks for my mother and Naive socks for me. However, there was a secret third option that I choose to invoke at this time. The next socks I will knit will be: Pomatomus. I decided that I should knit a pair of socks for myself, and while the Naive socks would be for me, deciphering the pattern may just drive me up the wall and not make it a fun, non-stressful potential vacation knit. Furthermore, I am going to the beach, so knitting socks that have the scales of a fish sound perfect. Plus, I bought yarn for this a while ago. (Now I just need to wind it up). I think I am going to do this sock in Magic Loop, which is also a first for me. However, while I am excited to start it, I am refusing to do so until I finish my sock pal's sock.

Yes, it was suppose to be mailed yesterday. However between the migraines, life and work I have a few inches left to go. I cranked out two pattern repeats yesterday so I am making solid progress. I am less worried today about being late thanks to Alison's blog post and emailing my sock pal who is excited to get it, whenever it arrives. I hope they fit her. They feel a little tight on me, or one does so who knows anymore. I seem to remember that her feet are just smaller then mine and I did the pattern in one size bigger then the width of her feet, plus it is a stretchy pattern. Oh, well, I hope it fits her.

Last night was a studying night for the GREs with my parents. Together we made up a list of words from practice questions that I didn't know. Here are the three that are still eluding me:

sybarite - a person devoted to luxury or pleasure
pernicious - causing insiduous harm or ruin
excoriate - to denounce or berate severely, to flay verbally.

The answers to the last blog post are: D and E. I forget which order they go in. My sister is obviously the winner so she stops complaining about not winning.

Today's question:
Anthropology's __________ rhetoric sometimes presents piecemeal cultural observation as a cohesive analysis of the entire cultural structure.
A. synodic
B. chthonic
C. synchronic
D. chimeric
E. synecdochic

Why do I have to know these words when the computer spell check doesn't know 4 out of the 5 of them?

As requested...

Another blog post with more mathy goodness. Yum, tastes like chicken.

The correct answer was c. 7. Poor Auntie Em who got it wrong the first time and my Dad provoked her into doing the math again to get the correct answer.

Word of the day:
panegyric - (noun) high praise


Math Question of the Day (as requested by my sister)

19. Suppose the average of two numbers is WX. If the first number is X, what is the other number?

A. WX-X
B. 2WX-W
C. W
D. WX-2X
E. 2WX-X

Non-math question of the day: (In case you didn't want 2 math days in a row)

Choose the word which is the most opposite in meaning to the given word:

35. PUNCTILIOUS:
A. Somber
B. Genial
C. Particular
D. Negligent
E. Antagonistic

Knitting:
Knitting brunch was tons of fun. I wish I could go to knitting night tonight but I have other plans. The sock is going slower then it should be so if there are magical knitting elves to assist me in finishing it, now would be the time.

Finally, a vote on what should be the next knitting sock project since I have been going back and forth between two projects. Should I knit Monkey for my mom or test knit Naive Socks (seen here on side of blog)? (Both patterns are at the top of my ravelry queue if you can view that)
I have yarn to do both and I plan on doing both but which should I start first?

Under a stack of books

I wish I could say that was a good thing. I love reading and the idea of being in a pile of books sounds wonderful. I tend to go a little nuts in a library and take out as many books as I can carry. However, I am now under a pile of books for studying the GREs. Ug.

Rebecca and Auntie Em, you both were correct, the answer was rayon.

Your reward was going to be a picture of the yarn I just received and my brand new hair cut but seeing how I am melting in this heat, I spent the night seperated from my yarn and my camera. Hopefully today I can get pictures.

Today's word came up in my studying twice so it must be important:
Sycophant - (noun) Servile flatterer; bootlicker, yes man

Today's question:
(taken from Barron's GRE 2008, page 30)
19. Let the lenghts of the sides of the triangle be represented by x+3, 2x-3 and 3x-5. If the perimeter of the triangle is 25, what is the lenght of the shortest side?
A. 5
B. 6
c. 7
D. 8
E. 10


Knitting news: Not a lot of progress on the sock yesterday since I had a migraine most of the day. Today I won't be going directly to knitting with Auntie Em since I have the eye doctor and then I am buying some books for my vacation (we all spend a lot of the time reading) and buying a new pillow to hopefully help my neck. Then maybe some knitting time and a trip to our yarn store to get our Saturday fill. I hope to see some people at the brunch tomorrow!

Damn! No logic

Blast! I forgot that they removed the logic section of the GRE for the even worse writing section. Oh well, I am actually ok with logic, so of course, why would they test me on it. (I have the old study book at work and the new one at home.)

The answers for those of you who tried it were: d, e, c.

Word of the day:
banal - (verb) trite, without freshness or originality.

Question of the Day: (from page 336, same source as yesterday)

11. linen:flax::
A. chintz: silk
B. madras: linen
C. rayon: plastic
D. coal: nylon
E. chamois: leather

I thought this was fitting in a knitting blog. Does anyone know the answer? Post it in the comments section.

Knitting:
I went to SnB last night and was quite productive. I finished the ball of yarn I was working on and I think once I am done with this pattern repeat it is almost time for the heel. Is it wrong to do a different type of short row heel on this sock then I did on it's twin?

Something New

Hello readers. Today we are starting something new that is going to get my butt in action. We are going to have a word of the day. We are also going to have a GRE question of the blog post (when I feel like it) so that the studying will take place. (Sorry to those of you who are not forced to take the GREs but I will reward you with pictures of yarn...)

Today's word of the day is:
macerate - to soften by seeping in liquid.

I could say: Yarn is macerated in water before dyeing but I don't think that is correct. I think that this would be more correct: Bread is macerated in an egg and milk mixture before cooking to make French toast. What do you think? Can we use this word in every day usage?

Now today's question or questions of the day (Today's is more then one since they all go together) Since it is my blog, I choose the questions and I choose one that reminded me of my childhood. (This question is taken from "GRE General Test" publisted by Research and Education Association in 2001, page168-169)

"Questions 4-6 refer to the following statements:

A five member committee is chosen from doctors - Phillips, Quinn, Stevens, and Tutle - and lawyers - Evers, Farmnington, Green and Hall.
At least 3 doctors must be on the committee. Phillips refuses to work with Tutle. Quinn refuses to work with Evers. Farmington refuses to work with Green. Tutle refuses to work with Farmington."

4. If Quinn is chosen, who else is on the committee?
A. Farmington
B. Green
C. Phillips
D. Stevens
E. Tutle

5. If Green is rejected, which other member could not be on the committee?
A. Phillips
B. Quinn
C. Stevens
D. Farmington
E. Tutle

6. If Quinn and Stevens are chosen, which is necessarily true?
I. Phillips is choosen.
II. Tutle is chosen.
III. Either Farmington or Green is choose.

A. I only.
B. II only
C. III only
D. II and III only.
E. None of the above


Do you think you know the answers? Leave them in the comments. I will post the correct answers either tonight or tomorrow.

Knitting news (if you stuck with me through the GRE stuff):
I have been going into the knitting community. The Ravelry/SnB Lazy Red Liners meets on Mondays and is a bunch of fun and last Wednesday I went to the SnB in Brookline as well. Maybe I will go tonight if I am not exhausted.
I have been rushing to finish my sockapalooza socks, while my wonderful sockapalooza socks have already arrived in a HUGE box. I promise to take pictures of all the stuff she sent soon so everyone else can drool over it with my family. I am wearing one of the pair's of socks today and they are the most comfortable socks I have ever worn, even in this heat.