HissyStitch's Blog – July 2011 Archive (31)

It's my son's birthday today! He shares a birthday with Harry Potter, not only the date but the year, if I remember correctly. We drove up to Portland today to pick him up. Opened presents first. One thing on his list was an air filter, and you know your child is all grown up when he starts asking for appliances as gifts. But he also got a book, a game, and a tool, so a good balance. We went out to lunch, then went to see the Captain America movie, which was great. Also saw a…

For the knitting community, the biggest knitting event this year is the second Sock Summit. I feel fortunate to live just an hour away from the Oregon Convention Center where Sock Summit was held in 2009 and again this year. Most people in my knitting group went up for at least a day. Since I was teaching a summer class, I couldn't go on the opening day (Thursday). I knew I'd be tired on Friday and needed to put gas and oil in the car…

Today was an errand day of buying cat food, getting the oil topped off in the car, getting the car washed and vacuumed, and getting ready to go to the amazing knitterly event, Sock Summit tomorrow. While at the pet food store I saw a soft Kong cat toy on sale, and came home with a new toy for the kitties. They were curious about it at first, and now are carefully ignoring it. Some time around midnight, maybe this night, maybe a few nights hence, I expect at least one of the cats to be…

And here we come to the end of another 29-day round, but I plan to keep up the momentum for my personal 29-round challenge.

Today my summer students had their second exam, and alas, while they aced the first test, they far from aced this second one. The overall average is still good, but there will be some unhappy faces when I hand these back on Monday. When the average is on the mark or higher, I figure I pitched the exam just right even if some people did poorly. However,…

Tonight was knitting night. I don't often go to the evening meet-ups when I'm teaching during the week, but I do like to go whenever I can. When I bought my usual cup of tea I left my usual tip, but an additional dollar. Many of the kids who work there are at-risk youth, experiencing their first job and getting what will be a good reference for other jobs. I like to encourage them.

Camp NaNoWriMo, that is. It's the first incarnation of a breezier summer version of the famous "write a novel in 30 days" event that takes place in November. I'm closing in on the finish, and while my progress on my novel has been hampered by teaching a summer class and spinning daily for the Tour de Fleece, I'm closing in on the finish.

I checked out their merchandise and decided I HAD to get one of the…

On busy days when there's little time to think of a gift, my go-to gift is to leave a little change in one of the vending machines in the building. Today it was two quarters that I found lurking in my desk drawer. Four bits, not enough for a treat itself, but maybe enough for someone who didn't bring enough, not realizing that the prices went up recently.

I have a package that came today -- some lovely Polwarth wool from FatCat Knits that I bought with the prize I won in Tour de…

We gathered to spin at a friend's house, and she had a salad potluck. I took several things -- butterhead lettuce, micro greens, croutons, and a container of potato salad -- so there was plenty of good vegetable material to eat.

I went to the farmer's market today to drop a dollar in the hat of one of the musicians, get some cheese from the local organic dairy, some in-season veggies, and some berries, and to get some locally-roasted Cape Foulweather coffee. Then I went to the organic foods market to get some organic, made-in-my-state Dagoba chocolate. The coffee and chocolate are part…

I was emailing my former major professor about quite another thing, when he asked me if I could give some advice to his granddaughter. She wants to be a writer and has some things written up that she wants to publish. He gave me her phone number, but as I'm not good with cold-calling someone I don't know, I sent back a written response that he could give to her.

I didn't sugar-coat it. Getting published by a legitimate publisher is hard, especially in the genre she wanted to try.…

One simple, free gift that I had kind of forgotten about is The Greater Good Network. The site has tabs for several causes including hunger, animal rescue, breast cancer, literacy, and more. On each page is a button that you can click, which causes sponsors to give a small amount to that cause. Visitors can click once a day on each page for each cause.…

A few weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to be an Associate Editor of a research journal in my field. This is bit of an honor as well as a responsibility, but I have experience as a managing editor of a different journal from my grad student days, so I was looking forward to it. The main role is to read the reviews for a manuscript and make a decision on whether the article should be accepted for publication or not (with varying degrees between, like "revise and resubmit for a full…

I've been doing a lot of giving to others, and today I needed a "me" gift. It was the first day of the summer class I'm teaching, and already we're off to a rip-roaring start. It's a 10 week course crammed into 4 weeks, so I have to be a mega-planner to make sure I've got the day's materials prepared the day before. Two hours in the lecture hall four days a week, followed two hours in lab two of those days.

So today I spent a gift certificate that I won and some more cash to get more…

We're home from Spokane. The best part of the trip, as always, was driving through the Columbia River Gorge. There's a beauty and majesty to the entire gorge, from…

Most of today was taken up with putting food by -- picked my own pie cherry tree and froze the cherries, canned most of the cherries from yesterday. I had to buy jar lids before I started, and I did a cat food run on the same trip, so on my errands I spotted a little collection box by the cash register, and emptied the change out of my wallet into the box. 

My shoulders are telling me that yes, indeed, I picked two buckets of cherries yesterday and two more quarts from my own tree…

There's a bucket of sweet cherries on the kitchen counter, which I'll probably spend the better part of tomorrow canning up for the winter. All they cost me was some time. There's a gleaner's group in town which arranges for pickers to go out and harvest food, half of which goes to the food bank and half goes home with the pickers. The pickers get food for just an hour or two of labor, the food bank gets a whole lot of fresh produce, and the farmers can write the poundage off on their taxes…