Passion

Non-knitters beware. This is a knitting post.

Kayla, this post contains pictures and information on your wedding gift. If you want to see, you may (and feel free to comment or request or whatever), but I put it behind a cut so as not to spoil the surprise unnecessarily.

( Image heavy... )

It's been a good week. I haven't had much to do in lab, so I've been relaxing and getting settled in. I cleared off my bench space, scrubbed a year's worth of dirt off some shelves, washed out some drawers, and voila! My workspace now looks clean and shiny and new. The lab is only a few years old, and it's amazing how many years a little bit of Seventh Generation can take off. I chose some lab tape colors and labeled my pipetmen and a freezer box, so I've officially "moved in." Yesterday I started cloning some stuff for Erica. I'm taking off next week, so there's not a lot I can do before I go, but I've run some PCRs and a few gels and maybe I can get a couple genes into some vectors before vacation. At any rate, it feels good to be doing stuff and not just sitting around.

I've been working on my cousin's wedding gift, and have realized that I need to knit about eight square inches a day between now and July 6th. This is... absurd. Someone told me today that you technically have a year after the wedding before your gift is "late," so I might have to give her a small swatch and send the whole thing a month or so later. It really shouldn't take too much longer, but I think squeezing the entire thing in before July 6th is maybe a little unfeasible, given that I'll be driving across the country for three weeks beforehand. How much knitting can I really get done while I'm vacationing?
At any rate, I was afraid of the yarn for a little while, but I washed a few swatches and they look AWESOME. I think it's gonna be a good gift. Also, I bought three times as much yarn as I needed, so, um... gifts for other people might follow, depending on how much of which colors I'm left with at the end of this project.

Anyway.

Today I kissed someone I should probably definitely not have kissed. But it was totally one of those, "I know I shouldn't be doing this, but I sooo don't care" moments. Actually, he kissed me, so I dunno what I'm complaining about. I'm not culpable.

Also, my labmate took me to a new coffeeshop today (new to me) to buy me coffee for helping her move boxes, and while we were there she picked up a few pieces of chocolate they had in a bin by the register. "Have you had these?" she asked me, "They're really good." And then she handed me a piece of Scharffen Berger 70%, and I almost fell over. Scharffen Berger is made in Berkeley, and I toured the factory last spring when I interviewed at UCB. It's my favorite kind of chocolate IN THE WHOLE WORLD, and I bought a ton of it at Trader Joe's in Santa Cruz while I still lived there. I haven't been able to find it ANYWHERE on the east coast, so Mom sent me some for Easter. I was floored--this coffeeshop in downtown New Haven carries four different kinds. Including the nibby bars. *california-chocolate-gasm*

Today was SUCH a good day.

EDIT: Also, it is pouring rain. *HAPPY*
EDIT EDIT: Not just pouring rain... it's a full-on thunderstorm, with lightning and huge claps of thunder right overhead. I love summer so much I think I might burst.

*I got a package from my secret pal last week! It's amazing!

So, this is a combined picture with stuff from both packages she's sent--the book and the big blue wool are from this package, and the cotton, needle case, and virus notepad are from the first package. There were some other things, too, but they seem to have wandered off and/or been consumed....

The cotton is still unfated, but I think the wool is screaming out to be a scarf. It's gorgeous hand-dyed thick and thin yarn (and it's in what are probably my favorite shades of blue), so I want to find a pattern that will show it off (there's a card around here somewhere that may or may not have suggested one, but I think I left it in my car...?). Any suggestions?

*Here's a picture of the birthday presents Megan sent me!

Not a terribly good picture, but since I already posted pics of the knitted womb I won't worry about it. She also knit me a strand of DNA, which several people have threatened to steal from me, and made me some stitch markers and a bracelet (which I had to take off to photograph)! This package, much like my secret pal package, happened to come on a morning when I was extremely tired and frustrated with the world, and just totally made the rest of that week bearable.

*I lost my cell phone again last week, and realized how really dependent on it I am. I couldn't do ANYTHING. I was crippled. I'm not sure how to resolve that issue (it does kinda bug me to be so dependent on a piece of technology), but I'm gonna go get insurance on my phone sometime this week so that I can get it replaced in case it doesn't find its way back next time as quickly as it did this time.
Also, someone found the phone I lost on the Genetics retreat back in October, and will mail it to me this week. Weird.

*I went to New York on Saturday with a bunch of friends, and we spent a couple hours wandering around in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I LOVED it. I spent half an hour taking pictures of French Renaissance sculptures, and got wonderfully and horribly lost (alone, without my cell phone) in the Medieval and Oceania exhibits, which was totally cool. My favorite part of museums is wandering through them lost and alone (I dunno why, but for some reason I think I have a really hard time going to museums WITH people; I always want to spent way more or way less time on an exhibit than they do.). I'm considering taking another trip down to the city sometime in the next few weeks, by myself, to wander around the Met or another museum, by myself. Could be a fun day.
I have a lot of pictures of sculptures, but there's really no point in posting them. Google Andromeda and the Sea Monster (of which I am posting a small detail photo), or Rodin, or Raphael, and you'll see most of the things I really got excited about.


*I am recovering nicely from what could have turned into a fatal crush on a boy who is extremely emotionally closed off. I have also redone my Match profile, but am considering taking it down again, because ugh, meeting people is such a bother, and who has the time? And maybe I'll just spend the next six weeks knitting, and not worry about relationships. Sounds healthy.

*Susan accepted both Emily and me into her lab yesterday, so today we both made it official and joined. ... !!! This means I am now officially getting my Ph.D. in genetics, and I have a home and a PI and will shortly have a thesis project! Also, I decided not to bother with the whole fourth rotation thing, so after a record 11 hours in the Breaker lab, I quit (well, it wasn't quite "quitting," and everyone was very nice and I think it was a friendly parting; I think they understood what the deal was). So life is awesome!

*I need to get my wisdom teeth out this summer, and my mom volunteered to fly out and take care of me. I'm ecstatic--as she said, it's really more of an excuse for her to come visit and go shopping with me. All the other kids' mommies have come to visit THEM, and I was starting to feel a little left out. So I'm really excited and will probably finally have the motivation to call and make an appointment with the oral surgeon.

*I've been exhausted and overworked and just basically totally overwhelmed lately. I mean, all in a (mostly) good sense, as things are going really well, but still--overwhelmed is overwhelmed. Sorry to be neglecting everyone; I'm hoping that now that I've joined a lab and am NO LONGER A FIRST YEAR, my life and schedule will settle down and I can start carving out niches of time to be a good friend again, both on lj and in real life.

I've been thinking a lot lately. This is probably a bad thing, and is likely a product of me not being in lab and class all day long. Luckily my normal hectic life resumes tomorrow, and I become a prisoner of science once again....

Before I get into all the thinkingness, I just wanted to mention that I had a really good spring break, despite being bitterly lonely for most of it. I don't know when I became a social creature; the transformation seems to have snuck up on me. I used to be so antisocial and so afraid of other people. It seems weird that these days I'm so dependent on the company of others. But I did have a good break, and the solitude allowed me to some things I hadn't been able to do in all the hubbub of grad school academic and social life. I watched The Chronicles of Narnia, which made me cry. Such a good movie.... I finished knitting the Cascade 220 bag I've been working on forever, and have learned 1) that it really does matter how long the cable is on circular needles and 2) you really can't felt something in the bathroom sink unless you're a lot more patient than I am. I shall have to bribe a friend with a washing machine. I've also read about half of the second book of the Bridei Chronicles, which I bought about a week ago. I love Juliet Marillier. Her books are amazing. They seem to take hold somewhere inside my heart and then proceed to pull out all of my most secret inner longings about love and life and honor and strength. Her stories speak to me in a strange way that most other stories don't. Then again, I cry at commercials, so maybe I'm giving her too much credit. But this book is amazing, and it makes me wish I had the first one here in Connecticut so I could read it again, since I don't remember most of the minor characters, and Ms. Marillier has a nasty way of making her sequels about minor characters instead of about major ones.
Also, I saw 300 on IMAX the other day, and it had a weird way of actually making me feel violent. Actually violent. I got into the bloodthirstiness of the Spartan killing tactic, and I WANTED the Persians to die. And when the Queen (all right, I won't say anything for those of you who haven't seen it; I don't want to spoil it) does that awesome thing she does, I relished the violence of the moment. It felt good. This led me to realize that I am, in fact, withholding a great deal of anger. This, again, is probably a bad thing. I think I need an outlet for all of this anger, or something really bad is gonna happen.

Anyway.

I've been thinking a lot about my life and what I want out of it. What I want to do with it, who I want to become, where I want to live, how I want to make my living. I listened to last week's This American Life last night, and they sang "California," and for some reason the song hit home in such a strong way that I actually stopped knitting so I could stare out my teeny tiny cell window. I felt like ice. I felt like I had this huge, momentous decision before me, and I knew the way I was supposed to choose, and I knew the way I would choose, and they were different. I'm supposed to go home to California and be something else, do something else, follow some other life path. But it's easier to take no action, to continue following a course already set out, and that's what I've chosen to do. Besides, what kind of other life would I lead? There seem to be so many options, and all of them are terrible, or at least depressingly difficult.

1) Stay here, follow current path, do postdoc in California, etc. Be geneticist.
2) Re-apply to grad schools this coming fall, transfer to UCSF, Berkeley, or Stanford. Be scientist.
3) Move to California (or, more realistically, Reno) and buy a flower shop. In Reno, I bet you anything I could talk my mom into helping me do this, because she tried to about three years ago, and would have succeeded if someone hadn't outbid her on the shop she was trying to buy.
4) Throw a ton of money at a really nice camera, and somehow fight my way into the realm of respectable photography. I could then either be a travel photographer (and writer, there's no way I could travel and not write), or photograph weird inner-city wildlife like deformed pigeons and tame rats. I have no idea where this idea came from, but my dark and twisty brain really likes it. Photography would be so much fun.
5) Re-apply to grad schools, except this time for marine biology. Like Woods Hole and Scripps. Be scientist. Study whales, like I planned in the second grade.
6) Stay here and work on PhD and write a novel. Publish novel, become horribly rich, drop out. Become writer.

Most of these options seem to be horribly flawed in at least one way. Several of them, I know, are completely inviolate (that's a word, right? too lazy to look it up).

In the end, I don't even know why I bother updating about this sort of thing. I know in my heart that, even if being here is utterly wrong for me, I'm too weak to take any action on that decision. I've made my choice in coming here, and am too terrified of being left alone and starving in the cold to leave my current career path. I have no money and so much debt as it is; how could I possibly end the only income I've ever had to throw myself at a dream that may turn out to fail horribly? Or that I may turn out to be bored with? Perhaps I underestimate myself, and I'd be bored to tears as a florist or photographer. I know that spring break is boring me to tears....

I can't help but wonder if all of this insanity and upheaval over HIM is because I'm really all insane and upheaved about ME. I think I'm projecting. I think my own life is a crazy mixed-up confusing mess right now, and I'm living something I'm not sure I believe in (haven't I always yelled at people who don't follow their dreams?), and I'm transferring all of that upsetness over to him so that I'll have something concrete to be frustrated at.

I'm angry. I want to throw things. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure I'm mad at myself. I shouldn't have made the decision to come here, and once I did I should have given myself over to it completely. And since I haven't, I should make up my damn mind about what I want to do, and then I should have the balls to follow through with it and DO something about my misery. I'm so mad at my own unwillingness to help myself. That's a quality I despise in other people, and it makes me livid to see it in myself. AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH.

Thursday night the rain turned into snow. It snowed all night and then all day yesterday and into the night again. I estimate we have at least 8 inches. It is absurd.

I slept most of yesterday. I think I caught up on all the sleep I missed over the last nine years. It was amazing. I got up at ten and went back to bed at eleven and didn't wake up again until FIVE. I love break. I LOVE BREAK.

Today Shannon and I braved the crazy snowness and went shopping. I bought The Blade of Fortriu by Juliet Marillier, which I've been dying to read for the last three years. I'm super excited. Also, it's set in Ireland and today is St. Patrick's Day, so that works out well.

I went to the post office today and picked up both my monthly wine and also the yarn I ordered from Little Knits. The full bag of Debbie Bliss alpaca is here, along with some Classic Elite Provence and Kiddy Print. I'm happy.

The wine is great, too. The white says it goes well with apples and goat cheese, so I walked down to the silly little corner store that's open 24 hours and bought some apples and goat cheese.
I am spending my first legal St. Patrick's Day drinking white wine and eating apples and goat cheese while I knit and watch the sixth season of Gilmore Girls. I'm on my third (or is it fourth?) episode. This is sad.
Last year I stole a Guinness--my first Guinness--from the refridgerator of 158 Pryce St and poured it into my Safe n Sober grad night cup from high school graduation. Then I walked three blocks to meet some biochem friends in a Jack in the Box. I don't remember what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually interesting. At least I drank Guinness. Tonight I'm drinking Chardonnay (and I guess I should say that at least it's an amazing Chardonnay) from France. Ardeche. Isn't that a beautiful word? Ardeche? It makes me want to buy a cat and name her Ardeche.

I might make this a weekly thing; sit at home alone on Saturday night and think about things I regret and freak out a little bit. I'm actually doing much better this Saturday night than I was last Saturday night. I think I've convinced myself about that whole "time not being right" thing in addition to the whole "right time will come" thing, so I'm dealing. It's good. I just... wonder... you know... Maybe I'm not as wonderful as I think I am. Maybe he won't accept my thousand million apologies in five years, and maybe I really will turn into a crazy cat lady who knits and bakes funny-tasting cookies for the neighborhood kids. It's strange being here at Yale; maybe I'm just used to being at the top of the heap, but it's sort of unsettling that the few paltry crushes I've managed to form here have not been returned. I've been single for a year. I'm sure that's good for me, I think it's humbling, but it's also sort of terrifying.

Anyway. Enough tipsy rambling for now. I'm gonna go try to make stitch markers for my secret pal.

Also, it's snowing again.

Oh man, what a week. I've been avoiding lab as much as possible. I finally decided that this lab stresses me out too much. I like the research and I like most of the other people in the lab, but for some reason the overall atmosphere and dynamic just really freaks me out. I'm terrified of lab. I don't hate it, I'm afraid of it. I just can't see myself being in that kind of an environment for the next five years, so I don't think it would be a good choice for me to join. But I do really like the PI, and I'm a little sad that it's not going to work out.

Classes have been awesome. Okay, well maybe not awesome. But I got my midterm back in Euks yesterday, and I did awesome. Awesomely. I don't remember what the average was (I wrote it down somewhere...), but it doesn't really matter. I got the second-highest grad student score (there are undergrads in our class, and apparently every year they do better than the grad students, which sort of freaks me out a bit), which was revealed to me in secret, and which secret I suppose I am violating by telling EVERYONE, but I'm super excited about it. I've been feeling stupid and slow and worthless lately, and I REALLY needed this.

Anyway, I then proceeded to be really stupid, and run around the conference room like an excited... (quick, give me an excitable creature. bird? chipmunk?) ...in my socks, which led to the inevitable. I slipped and fell (HARD) on my right hip, bruising it pretty badly. I mean, no big deal, I wouldn't have posted about it, even though I couldn't sleep on it last night--except for the fact that this morning, as I was walking to lab, I tried to cross the street and step up onto the sidewalk on the other side, and I caught my boot on the edge of the sidewalk, causing myself to hurtle onto the pavement at an astonishing speed, landing on the SAME SPOT on my right hip and putting a tiny, painful hole in my left palm. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I will be clumsy until the day I die.

So today was a little... uncheery. I was also forced to skip class by my uncooperative feminine organs, which I have decided should be removed as quickly as possible. This is ridiculous. I had surgery for this. I'm so mad at my body. How DARE it make me miss the RNA seminar (I only get one a week!)? How DARE it make me want to vomit with pain? How dare it influence my daily life in any way, shape, or form? I don't think I've ever been livid with my body before, but I really and truly just want to go in and yank things out myself.
I also just realized that I also missed the weekly MCDB seminar, which means I missed stealing the free cookies. Damnit. My feminine organs are so out of here.

In better news, think about my midterm score again! (Okay, maybe that only cheers up me.)
Also, I finished knitting my shawl (*cheering!*). I didn't have to buy any more yarn, and it's big and beautiful and I'm in love with it and the salmon color is actually really starting to grow on me. It goes with just a few things I have, so I'll really only be able to wear it a few places, but I think I might appropriate it as a "lab shawl." You know, the kind you have on your chair at your computer so when you sit down (and thus stop moving) and get cold, you have something to throw over your shoulders. I mean, a scarf isn't enough, and a coat is too much. So this shawl might be just the thing.
Also, I bought more yarn. I should be flogged.
Also also, I think this is one reason I've gotten so addicted to knitting. Knitters are hilarious.

I'm going to bed now.

The midterm was... intense. It actually turned out to be more of a grad school midterm, like I'd hoped. It involved thinking and problem-solving and interpreting data, and it was hard. But I'm weird, and I actually thought it was kinda fun. I'm not saying I think I did terribly well, but I did think it was fun.
Whatever. That's why I'm a grad student, isn't it?

I'm still exhausted. I'm sooo ready for spring break. One more week of lab, and then I'm going to sleep for a week. Or take that road trip I'd thought about for Thanksgiving. I kind of want to escape, alone, and drive off in a random direction. Maybe I'd go to Boston, and sleep in my car (I'd take my sleeping bag and lay down the back seat and sleep in the trunk; it gets pretty flat) and window-shop during the day and knit in coffeeshops in the evening, and not talk to anyone I know and just... decompress. I'm so compressed. Just two or three days (I dunno about three days, I might get bored) would be perfect.

Anyway. I went looking at yarn online, because I'm not poor enough already, and I have a new love. http://jadesapphire.com/ Behold the tinyness of this yarn, and the softness, and what is probably the extreme expensiveness. I couldn't find a price for it. I have no idea what I'd make with it, but I'm horribly in love with the silk/cashmere in the Planet Earth color. I don't know why, I just am. We just connected, that skein and I. I want it.

My grad student from my first rotation dragged me to yoga tonight. I'd never been to an actual yoga class. I did it with my mom a couple times in high school, and I sort of hated it for no reason. It was this weird thing my mom picked up when I was a pre-teen, and I thought she was nuts. Now I realize that if I had been her, I would have snatched up yoga too. The class was actually kind of fun, once I got over the feeling that everyone was staring at me. My hips popped a couple of times, and I shook while holding most of the poses, and I couldn't do the airplane on my right foot because of my broken toe, but all in all I think I actually did pretty well. I might be able to be talked into going again. Might.

Anyway, I'm gonna go open a bottle of wine and stream last night's episode of Lost, and then maybe laze around for a while reading Real Simple.
Oh, I also seem to have obtained a Rolling Stone subscription. Did any of you purchase one for me? I've gotten two issues now....
Or maybe I subscribed without remembering? ...That sort of sounds like something I might do....

_______________________________________
Edit: I'm a bad person. I found a yarn sale site. http://www.littleknits.com/index.php
I bought yarn.
And now I want to buy more yarn. Good thing I already sent in the order. My willpower is strong enough to only let me complete one....
http://www.littleknits.com/products.php?cat=344
Damn I want this yarn. Color wouldn't matter. But I like the first two.
Again, not that I have any idea what I'd make with it. Especially since tiny needles and endless pattern repetitions scare me.

So, there's this thing called Secret Pal (http://secretpal10.blogspot.com/), where you sign up and they match you with someone and you send that person a couple of gift boxes over three months, while someone ELSE is sending YOU gifts over three months. It's all anonymous, and I think so far it's usually just knitters (I haven't seen any non-knitting Secret Pal thingies). I first heard of it last year and thought, "Gee, that would be fun, if I was a knitter." Well, now that I am....

I'm supposed to fill out this questionnaire thingy about my interests, so if you're not a knitter most of this is probably boring.

( Secret Pal Questionnaire )

I've had a lot to update about lately, but it seems like all my thoughts should be friendslocked these days, so I've been typing up entries and saving them on my computer instead of posting. Not sure what to say here.

Swinging back into loneliness. I've got so many friends, so many amazing awesome friends, but I dunno. I watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy the other day and the theme was sort of, "If I disappeared, would anyone miss me?" and I know that people would miss me; a lot of people would miss me. But not... not in the way that the show meant. It keeps coming back to him. I had a dream about him before I watched the Grey's episode, just a calm dream about his chin stubble and the way it used to scratch my face, kind of in a sweet way. Then I had another dream last night that we went for Round 3 and it worked out. Third time's a charm? Ann says he's doing well, with his girlfriend too, and still double-majoring and taking an extra quarter, and thinking about going to grad school in the future. In some ways I'm so, so happy for him, so glad that he's doing well. And in some ways I wish I was the one supporting him, being there for him, looking after him. It's not such a sharp, hard pain anymore. Now it's just sort of a constant dull ache. Maybe he was the one, the ache says, and maybe it's irrevocably messed up now. Sometimes I just want him back SO BADLY!

I've been knitting a bit, and finally finished the scarf for Shannon. I want to make a few things for myself now; a shawl of some sort (but I only have three skeins), and a blue and white Yale scarf. Still deciding how I'd want to do the Yale scarf. I kind of want it to say Yale on it, but on the other hand I have this pattern for a DNA scarf and I could just combine the two things and make a Yale DNA scarf. In that case, though, would it be too nerdy to make the cables in a different color so the helix stands out? Like, a blue helix on a white background? Would I be ashamed of my nerddom and incapable of wearing that scarf? Maybe I should learn Fair Isle so I can just knit YALE into the scarf and forget about the DNA bits.

You know, I always sort of thought that if I ever got a tattoo, it would be of a DNA strand that wrapped all the way around my body. I know exactly how it would wrap, too, and exactly what it would look like and what colors it would be.

I'm gonna go read some papers. Or maybe surf the internet looking for a shawl pattern.

I had strange dreams last night. I dreamt that I was some sort of (male) hero, running through a town under siege, just ahead of the frontlines. They were looking for me; I'd done some heroic thing that was punishable by death. I hid in a bathroom with a young woman, and when "they" finally found me and beat down the door, I grabbed her hand and together we ran through an empty hotel (mostly the lobby and dining rooms) until we burst outside into the middle of a crowded street/dinner party. I dropped her hand there and took a different turn... and suddenly I was female again, and I ran smack into Jamie. He grabbed my hand and we raced toward some sort of dorm together, where we tried to pack up and leave as quickly as possible. We only got a few suitcases packed before "they" showed up. I thanked him for giving me a third chance, and he said there should never have been any doubt that I'd get one. And then I woke up.

Not sure how I feel about that dream. The running was awfully stressful, and while the end was hopeful... it's exactly that sort of thing that I'm trying not to think about anymore.

So, off to lab, to run a gel of my minipreps to see if there's product in there, because when I digested them yesterday and then ran a gel I had no DNA. I guess I should set up new minipreps, too, just in case the gel shows nothing again. Damnit. I'll have to miniprep them this evening after ethics, because this is recruitment weekend and I can't go to lab tomorrow. Grrr.

In other news, the scarf I'm knitting for Shannon is getting really long now. I might have to buy some more yarn to get it up to a respectable length of 5 or 6', because I'm at the end of the second skein (I only bought three) and it's only 32" when I stretch it. It's only 23" unstretched. Grrr.

Anyway.