Passion

 Ooookay... time for another Catching Up post.

I saw a GI specialist at the beginning of September. He explained my blood test results to me and declared he was absolutely certain I don't have Celiac and should have no trouble at all eating gluten.  He prescribed fiber to help solve my issues.  Yeah. Fiber. That's it.

I started taking fiber and stopped avoiding gluten. After about two weeks I started a food diary.  I kept track of what I was eating and how I felt. Pretty much the only trend I could see is that I felt like crap all the time. So I stopped taking fiber (and I started forgetting to write in the diary) and I actually feel better again. I'm so confused. I don't know what is up with my body. I don't know how to make it better.  Jim is still convinced it's linked to stress.  It could be. I don't know.  If it is, I don't know how to solve that.

Work has gotten busier. Managing the lab has been going really well, and I feel pretty on top of things now, but I've gotten the "you're not doing any science" and the "you seem to spend a lot of time not doing anything" talks... so now I'm doing lots of science, and have very very little downtime. Which is good, and awesome, and I want that - but it's wearing me out.  I feel like I'm moving into the "old" category. I'm not 19 anymore. My body just doesn't seem to have those great reserves of energy it used to have.  Especially considering I feel like crap most of the time.

Knitting has been going well. I made a pair of fingerless mittens, so I can knit or use my phone at the bus stop in the mornings. It's gotten awfully cold over the last week or two.

They sparkle! They're alpaca!  They only took me two days to make!

My knitting goals for October are to finish Emily's freakin' hat, seam up the hat I made for my Dad in January, finish something for Mom, and try not to buy very much at Rhinebeck.

Rhinebeck is in two weeks. For those of you who don't know, it's a huge sheep and wool festival in New  York state, held every year in October, and I've never been. I have been meaning to go since 2007, and finally committed to attending this year's after being severely sad about missing last year's.  So I'll be driving to Connecticut and meeting up with some Yale friends, then driving up to New York for the festival.  There will be a TON of people there from my Harry Potter knitting group, so it'll be awesome to see and hang out with them. I anticipate this will be the best five days of 2010.

Of course, I've been saving (little tiny amounts of) money for several months now so I'd be able to spend without worrying and buy lots of fun things without guilt.  And then Jim's job fell through for a full week (if there isn't work to be done, he doesn't get called in), and thus he didn't make any money that week, and suddenly we're in financial trouble and all that money I saved up is needed to cover our bills.  I'm still going on the trip, but I don't think I'll be able to buy very much at all.  The main point of the trip is to see friends and hang out, but the secondary point was to cut loose a little at the festival and get some nice stuff, and I'm kind of upset that now I won't really be able to get anything.  And I will be stressing about money the whole trip instead of relaxing.
Sigh. I hate this stupid economy. I hate being poor.

...I was actually trying to write an upbeat post. I swear.  I blame the gray clouds and the rain.

Oh wait!  Did you see the yarn shelf Jim built for me?







I'm still working on getting everything into it and organized the way I want.  Actually, that sounds like the perfect thing for me to go finish doing right now. :-)

 Look! An entry!

I got a new job.  It is an awesome new job.  I will no longer be formatting, copying and pasting, and writing diplomatically phrased emails to idiots.

I will be a lab manager for a research lab at the University of Michigan. I'll be in charge of some undergrads who will be in charge of some transgenic mouse colonies. I'll be keeping the lab running smoothly and safely. I'll be doing my own research project. :-)  I start at the end of June.

Lately I've been made kind of painfully aware of how not anonymous the internet is, so I'm trying to be as diplomatic about this announcement as possible. There are things about my current job I do like, and I will miss my coworkers. (Most of them.)

But really, I am absolutely thrilled about this new job. It is an AMAZING opportunity, and I cannot wait to get back into science and research. I MISS doing research. I miss being on the cutting edge. Just being around the cutting edge. SEEING the cutting edge.  I miss the university environment and the culture of academic thought. I miss being challenged every day.  I miss being able to get up and walk around as part of my job, and not being stuck sitting at a computer all day every day (I've gained weight since I moved to Michigan. Not a ton, but 10 pounds feels like a ton on my frame).

This does push back plans to move to California. /cry

Yesterday I went to Jim's parents' house to go swimming. The weather was beautiful for the first time in over a week (damn you, you stupid rain. stupid midwest cold rainy summer of annoyingness!), and I desperately needed the exercise.  Of course, they ended up inviting me to stay for dinner, so I got to hang out with his parents and his brother and sister. It was a fun evening. I threw a frisbee for their three dogs for about an hour (one of the golden retrievers will take flying leaps into the pool, over and over and over again. It's hilarious. We finally had to put the frisbee away because she was wheezing and still trying to leap into the pool), and then did laps for a while. I definitely feel less sluggish today.

It occurred to me that these people will very likely be my in-laws someday. I don't know why this didn't occur to me, y'know, a year ago when we were talking about rings. Maybe it's because yesterday was actually the first time I've been over there without Jim (other than when we lived there, obviously, though actually Jim was almost always around even then).  It's a very interesting thought, like some part of the nebulous future has kind of gelled up a little bit.  It's comforting, but disconcerting at the same time, in kind of the same way deciding on a graduate school disconcerted me. It's... you know what, this is probably worthy of its own entry.

Jim is taking me to Mackinac Island for the weekend (or so he says. he won't even be home until tomorrow morning, so we'll see how the schedule turns out in reality).  I've been to Mackinac the town, but never the island, which is apparently a second small town that's very old-timey. There are no cars on the island. I'm not sure why this is a big deal, but every time someone mentions Mackinac Island, they mention that there are no cars.  I think it has to do with the Michigan "cars are god" mentality; lack of cars is a huge thing.  Anyway, said town/island are also famous for fudge, and I think I can make Jim take me on a horse-drawn carriage ride, and this weekend is the start of some sort of Lilac Festival, so it should be a good time.  

In gaming news, I've been playing Oblivion and WoW.  Oblivion is interesting in that it's taken a lot of the good parts of Morrowind, added in a few new good things, and then a few new ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE things.  The inventory and stats interface is just freakin' awful.  They also removed the teleportation spells, but they made it so you can instantly travel to certain key areas on the map you've been to before. They turned lockpicking and speechcraft into minigames, both of which are just awful in implementation, but I do like the concepts in theory.  I also seem to just completely suck at playing, so almost every mob I've encountered so far (other than like, rats) has been really hard for me to kill. I'm clearly doing something wrong.  But anyway. It hasn't fully pulled me in yet, but, as with Morrowind, I find myself wanting to play it just so I can level alchemy (why yes, I do need to get back into bench science) and spellcasting. Sigh.

In WoW I've been playing pretty casually, working on some random old-world goals (like getting every cooking recipe in the game, including that annoying purple one that takes you through an extremely painful quest line and reputation grind), leveling a few alts, and actually reading quest text. The next expansion is going to drastically change the game world, and I wanted to see the Alliance side of things before it goes away.  I also stumbled across a guild made entirely for low-level dwarven hunters, so I created one and joined up and it's been a lot of fun so far (and it's made me want to play my level 80 hunter more). They have a large event planned for tonight, so it should be interesting to see what they came up with for 300 level 19 hunters to do.

Other than that... Not much is going on. I made a small silk shawl/scarf thing last month, but haven't knit much else. I've been reading a little bit, but nothing really notable.  Jim is gone a lot, and I miss him.  Claire is going insane with the weather being warmer and the porch door being open. She's started clawing the screen. It's far enough gone now I'm almost not bothering to stop her anymore; we're going to have to replace it either way. Sigh. That cat...
She actually woke me up the other night trying to chew on some dangly earrings I'd fallen asleep wearing. That's right. She was trying to chew on them while they were IN MY EARS.

It's overcast again. It better not rain in Mackinac this weekend.