San Diego - Graduation Day

The incoming and outgoing presidents of the college (from right to left in the fancy robes):

The professors (and the back of mom's head):

Nate in the procession:

Cat in the procession (I would have loved to have gotten a picture without her mouth open, but... ):

The Graduates, stage left:

Dad filming this from the second floor balcony:

Nate receiving his diploma:
Cat receiving her diploma:
The courtyard where graduation was held:

Nate's Aunt and Uncle's backyard paradise:



And as you can see all of us are a little extra-crispy-dark at the end of the day because we forgot the sunblock in the bustle of leaving the house:

San Diego Day 3 - The Zoo

This posting is shamefully late, but sometimes life just gets in the way and I desperately wanted to finish this set and get these pictures out there. This was my favorite day in San Diego because I got lots of exercise and I didn't get a sunburn because I remembered to slather on the sunscreen before leaving the apartment!
Here's Rafferty, my sister's slightly ornery but well pampered kitty:

And here we are at the zoo. Paul is such a sport for letting me take his picture
(^_^)
I'm going to limit these to pictures that came out well and are interesting, since I'm sure there are much better pictures of animals out there on the web.

San Diego Day 2 - Presentations

San Diego Day 1

Cat and Nate's workspaces

Nate at his workspace

Cat working on her model

Jimmy, Paul, and the 'Rents using the school's internet connection for work and pleasure

Me, Nate, Cat, and Paul at Por Favor mexican restaurant in La Mesa

Mom, Dad, and Jimmy enjoying their drinks. The bartender was from our hometown in MA and sent us out some tequila and lime wedges in addition to our ordered drinks!

A Brand New 1950 Pontiac!

So I was ripping out stuff in a closet that is going to become the home of our brand new forced air heating system, and I found 2 things:

There is no insulation in the outside wall of that room

A bunch of crumbly old newspaper from which I was able to recover a scrap with an advertisement for a brand new 1950 Pontiac.

Here's the ad:

If you have trouble reading it, it says:

Pontiac Village

February 22, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.

You Can Buy From Us

A Brand New 1950

PONTIAC

5 Passenger, 6-Cylinder

Streamliner Sedan

Our first peony blossom of the year!

Here is the first blossom in full bloom.




And Here are more blossoms yet to come.


I'm posting them here now because I'm afraid that they'll all fade before we get back from California and I need the picture here to remind me what they looked like :)

Perling and Knitting Rules

I was perling today. The computer kind this time. Perhaps it was because I've gotten to the straight part of my sock and all I'm doing is knitting, so I have to find my perling (purling) elsewhere. It was just a little text manipulation script but it made me realize that I haven't done any perl in a very long time. I've been doing Java and XML and a smidgen of DOS batch files and that's pretty much it. It was not pretty. I had to google up some tutorials which are never really what I'm looking for, but I piece together a Frankenstein of what I'm looking for and see if it runs. Truth be told I have never really liked perl. I titled my blog for the alliteration :) Don't get me wrong, I Respect perl with a capital R. I know it's powerful, but the fact that it isn't obvious or second nature enough for me to not need comments is frustrating because no one uses comments. OK, so I'll admit. It's the regular expressions. They make me feel like I'm eating alphabet soup. Let's just string together a bunch of characters and see what happens. I've gotten better with them since using them in some of my Java tools, but since I've never really sat down and "learned" them the way I sat down and learned other computer concepts means that I have to look them up every time. I am not an intuitive programmer. I am a step by step methodical programmer. Probably why I have so much trouble costing future work: because I just don't know how long it will take until I do it. Anyway, that's what I did with my Saturday morning. Why? Because my checking account register is always off by $5. Almost always it's in my favor, but it still bothers me because I happen to have a degree in Math from an accredited University and while I know that no one is perfect, it still bugs me that my arithmetic is off, and that it's never consistent in the amount it is off by. It *really* bugs me. So I decided that I would download my bank history in a csv format. That's comma separated values for those not down with the TLAs. The problem came when I realized that none of the spreadsheet software that I own likes csv format... What?!? I thought that was the point of csv, that it was a generic format that you could import into any spreadsheet application, and presto, have the fabulous beginnings of every type A's dream. Nope, at least not on my machine. *sigh* So I decided to use a little perl script to convert it to a format that my computer would like and there was born my futile quest for the right perl script.

Then this afternoon I went to Barnes and Noble to finish reading Knitting Rules because I suffer from this disease that causes me to pick up books at bookstores and chew through chapters while sitting in the bookstore cafe, until I get a good ways through(let's say halfway), decide that I'd very much like to continue reading the book, pay for the book and bring it home only to never touch the book again, or read a scant dozen or so pages over the course of a month as the book languishes on my bedside shelf because once I get to bed there's pretty much no more brainpower left to fuel the concept of reading. So I devised this plan, to never buy a book at the store without reading it first. If I finish the book while I'm at the store and deem that I still want to buy it then great! But at least I *finish* it. There are a few problems with this plan. The first being that I can't read the book unless I'm at the store. The second being that instead of a bookmark I need some way of remembering where I was when I left the store so that I don't waste valuable reading time once I get back to the store. I've used chapter headings and page numbers both to somewhat good effect. The third problem is the most serious and that's what happened today: the book sells out and they have no more copies left at the store. This happened with Knitting Rules. I picked it up on a lark since I'm vaguely new to the whole knitting thing and found it hilarious and informative, so I kept reading. At about a third of the way through the book I thought it might make a nice gift to my mother-in-law for Mother's day. Something small and not too extravagant, but enough to let her know that I did in fact recognize that she is someone's mother and that I do bother to take note of her interests. But then I had my doubts. You see, she's been knitting for years and the tastes of a relative novice are not always to be trusted in the art of gift-giving, so I put it off. Then when I was about halfway through I realized that it would make a suitable birthday gift for my friend Kemper, and I decided to buy it for her and use the opportunity to finish reading it before I wrapped it to give away. You see I thought that by setting a firm deadline of the very next day that it would foil the book curse. It didn't. By the time I was finished running errands that day I was exhausted and mildly flu-ish, so I took my NyQuil and went to sleep. I wrapped the book without any reading the next day. I read about a quarter more the next time I was at the bookstore, and having read 3 quarters of the book I thought to myself, only 1 last bookstore venture and I'll have read the whole thing and know, for sure whether I want to own it. Today I went into the bookstore and ... It wasn't there. The book was no where to be found. There were a dozen or more copies on the Mother's day display the last time I was in and this time everything was cars and sports and stupid men books (ok, I know that's not fair, just not what I was looking for). I *scoured* the craft book section. I went book by book through the knitting and crocheting books. Then I branched out into the quilting and beading books. Not a single copy to be found. There was Stitch n' Bitch and Happy Hooker and even the One Skein book that my coworker brought in to show and tell. But not a single copy of *my* current read! I know I shouldn't be surprised. It is after all a bookstore's main purpose to sell books, not be a library, but it was still highly unnerving. So... I ended up going to Borders, reading it to the last few pages, and then buying it, because yes, it was that good.

I like the Yarn Harlot. I like her self-deprecating humor. I like that she admits to being disorganized and imperfect. I like that she doesn't take herself or her knitting that seriously. She gives loose general instructions and guidelines on how to accomplish the basic commonly knitted items. This above all else is why I bought the book. I refuse to follow a pattern exactly. I think it might come from living in Massachusetts where traffic laws are guidelines and speedlimits are suggestions. I hardly ever follow a cooking recipe exactly, because whoever wrote it up was either from the Midwest and likes their food bland or without enough vegetables, or they are a spice-lover who tamed it down for a "wider audience". So I guess that's it. Whoever wrote that knitting pattern isn't me. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else, but I know I don't knit exactly like anyone else. And if I don't like the way it's coming out why continue on to have a finished product that I don't like when I can do something about it in the meanwhile? Why be complacent when I can be adventurous and customized. I guess that's maybe the real heart of the matter. I don't like the idea of being exactly like anyone else. I want to be unique, and if that means my socks don't match perfectly, so be it!

Refuse to Choose

I finally finished reading Barbara Sher's Refuse to Choose. It's interesting. I really wanted to finish reading it before I said anything about it in "print" so that I didn't say a bunch of glowing words about something that ended up being a bunch of bull. It's not even that I'm that skeptical about this book specifically, I guess I'm just skeptical about any kind of "magic pill" sort of thing. I guess living in a society that preys on the naive will do that to you. So even though there're no promises made in the book it has a lot of feel good, be happy vibe to it, which is one of those things that the dual puritan/liberal culture of Massachusetts struggles with, as though being happy in itself is a sin, but oh what a good sin ;-)

Life shouldn't be all serious, or what's the point in living. And she does point out that you don't have to try to make a career out of things that you love. She talks about the "Good Enough" job that basically pays the bills. But the "Good Enough" job can't be too taxing or it takes away valuable time and energy from the things you really do love and want to do. There are different tips in each chapter about how to get the most out of your "scanner" personality (is it my hatred for pigeon-holing people that makes me resistant to this?) by using various techniques to keep track of them, feel a sense of accomplishment, and generally get the most doing for your time so you aren't wasting too much in wheel-spinning mode. Those are all probably useful things for most people, not just scanners, but especially scanners.

But why should I (or anyone else) limit myself to the good enough job? Why should I keep doing what I'm doing, just because it's the only thing I've ever done? I've been very sensible with my life up to this point, and I'm not feeling very sensible anymore. I'm feeling kind of bent out of shape. It's like being on a diet for too long and then bingeing on every chocolate confection you can get your hands on (not that I would know anything about that!). If I don't follow my dreams now, when will I ever? And why do I have to set aside all other pursuits for a career that is slowly killing me, maybe not physically, but psychologically by sucking all of the joy out of my life until I no longer have the will to live. If I convince myself that is the only life there is then what's the point in living? Why should I go into work everyday surrounded by unhappy people, who don't believe in what they are doing outside of the necessity for paying the mortgage. Or for buying new toys. He who dies with the most toys is still dead, and whether or not you believe in an afterlife, there's still no way around the dead thing. If there is Judeo-Christian-Muslim god, then I'm sure the afterlife will have everything you desire. And does all that crap really make you happy? Or does it just put you further into debt so you're stressing out about paying your bills and thus stressing about working?

Here's what I want out of life:

• financial stability


• a sense of adventure


• lots of opportunities to learn new things (but not necessarily have to use them!)


• lots of travel and exploration


• following my conscience


• supporting and promoting the arts


• math :)


• good food and cooking


• working with my hands to create things


• ... and more that I'm probably just not thinking of right now...

A friend of mine who loves the Franklin-Covey system suggested that I use the things that I want (like being able to spend time with my String Bean) as a source of motivation for doing my current job, but I'm so far beyond that now. My current plan is to enroll in a math class at one of the local colleges or universities each semester until I can decide if and where I want to do my PhD. I figure that the professors at Hood didn't seem to care for me that much because I did my foundation courses at WPI, so I started with 300 and 400 level classes rather than getting vetted through their curricula. I guess maybe I had attitude? Being at Massacademy with all those competitive boys did not exactly prepare me for life at a liberal arts women's college. But at the same time I'm glad I went there for the sake of my social development. I think it taught me a lot about being kind, being a bitch, and knowing how to tell the difference ;-) Anyway I don't think that I want to rely on the Math Department at Hood to give me recommendations. The CS profs, maybe, but then, that's not exactly what I want to be doing... So by taking classes at various local universities I'll get to meet some of the faculty, perhaps cultivate some networking connections and get some references. That way I'll have something when it comes time to fill out the applications. And if I decide that the academic community is not for me, I've only wasted several hundred dollars and a few semesters rather than several thousand over several years. And I know I'll never starve, because I am the budget queen. My frugality is known across the lands! (sometimes as miserliness by certain of my family members ;-)

Sleepy Kitty Cuteness

There are lots of baby pictures being passed around the internet these days, so I thought I would combat it with Kitty pics. Unfortunately the sound of a digital camera about to fire mere inches from his/her face is enough to wake a sleeping cat, so they're only partial sleepy pics. I guess I need to acclimate them by taking more pics ;-)

Here's Miss Molly lying infront of the refrigerator exhaust vent. Why that's necessary in this heat wave I really don't understand.

And here's Mr Mick sleeping in one of their favorite spots on the cow pillow.

And now returning to sleep after I so rudely interrupted him ;-)