the Math of the Moment

My Thanksgiving break =

2 hours of folk songs with San + 13 hours at Holly's + 7 bottles of wine + 4 episodes of Forensic files + 4 episodes of the X Files + 1 episode South Park + 1 episode Firefly + 300 minutes of Pride and Prejudice + 1 trip to IGA + 0 dumplings + 2 burritos at Agave + 7 ends to weave in on Blaze + 3 days in a row of knitting with Cory.

Recent Nerd-related Evidence

During the last few days, I've made a few X Files references. People think I'm a nerd, but after some other folks had ridiculously long conversations about which characters are lovable and intolerable on 'Lost', it doesn't seem quite as ridiculous.

I don't remember what the first one was, but it was while several of us were chilling at this little beer garden in Pskov, which is about 4 hours south of Petersburg and quite beautiful. Maybe it will come to me later. This was right after the original and during the reprisal of the aforementioned 'Lost' conversation. I've never seen 'Lost' and now have a little more appreciation for how people feel when we go off on Mulder and Scully tangents at the Hammonds'.

I'm ashamed to say I can't remember the episode that the second one was derived from. I thought of it last night when we went on an excursion to the Mariinsky Theater to see an opera (Nikolai Gogol's The Nose). The nose was often portrayed as this man in a sheet. Not like a bedsheet, but like a stretchy sheet that he was enclosed in. Then, during this really odd part where there was a lot going on that I didn't understand (and I'm not even sure it made much sense to anyone), there were several multicolored noses in similar stretchy sheet constructions. A rainbow of them. An orange one. Which looked almost exactly like that orange thing in that behind-the-scenes clip from (I looked it up) Fallen Angel (1x10). Except without the blue flippers. It was awesome.

The third occurred not more than an hour. My friend Emma was using this computer to check her email, and her dad had sent her a news story about a little dog (a Dachsund, I think) that ate its owner's toe while she (the owner) was sleeping. Apparently, the owner didn't have feeling in that toe, which is why she didn't feel it. It brought Queequeg to mind. In the pre-Scully days of his life.

That's all for now, folks.

For Liz, and Walter

I've written another song!

I wrote it as my final project for the X Files eXco. (There's probably an explanation of ExCo somewhere else on my blog - for those of you who don't know what it is. For the purposes of this post, you just need to know it's a class.)

I really wrote it for Liz (of FTFDB fame), who has pointed out on multiple occasions that a certain balding man on the X Files does not get enough love.

So this is for you, Liz.

Important information for listeners:
Each verse is from a different perspective.
verse 1 - random person on a local police force
verse 2 - a certain Russian ratboy
verse 3 - our favorite redheaded M.D.

Russian Roulette

So in the X Files eXco class I'm taking (a 1 credit class taught by fellow students or community members on almost any subject imaginable), there was a presentation on an episode we watched a couple of weeks ago. The episode is called "Pusher", and it's about this guy with the ability to mentally force his will on others. Late in the episode, he forces Mulder to play Russian Roulette with him, and at one point has Mulder point the loaded gun at Scully instead of at himself.
The presenters mentioned that the Wikipedia article about Russian Roulette involves a really complex formula about one's chances of losing. I was intrigued, so I checked it out. Turns out, it really is complex. There are also several young people who have foolishly played and lost. But there's one instance that kind of makes me laugh/sigh:

"In 1999, three Cambodian men all got drunk, and decided to play Russian Roulette with a land mine, each taking turns to stamp on the mine. The three died in a great explosion minutes later. They were later posthumously awarded a Darwin Award."

I don't know if the Darwin Awards are a good thing or not. They make death seem slightly more humorous to smart people, which includes pretty much everyone I know, but I suppose the recipients end up having their ridiculous, fatal decisions magnified. But, then again, they kind of deserve it. A land mine? Seriously.

Spring Break!

Here's everything you could possibly want to know about my spring break, which is drawing to a close. I'm sorry if this ends up being a really long, self-indulgent, overly-detailed account of the past week. But hey, what's not to like - the list is ALPHABETIZED!

- BENNY and Joon. I watched this movie early in the week, probably Tuesday. I had intended to view it earlier in the semester with a couple of friends after a Contra Dance, but we only had a VHS copy on hand at the time, and couldn't find an open lounge with VHS capabilities. However, Linden (my roommate) has the DVD. It was interesting. I'm still not entirely clear on why 'Joon' is spelled the way it is. I know that Sam (Johnny Depp's character) isn't good at reading and writing, but we the spelling wasn't mentioned in the film (though the spelling of 'Benny' was). Hm.
- CLEAN room. Finally. Sort of. Mostly, anyway. I should still vaccuum and recycle some bottles, but it looks waaay better than it did during midterms.
- ELYRIA. Liz didn't leave for break until Monday, so on Sunday (after church) we took the Lorain County Transit to the mall in Elyria. I bought some suspenders for my Drag Ball costume (I'm going to be a newsie), and Liz contemplated some hair dye. We ate in the food court, and I discovered (due to my non-meat Lenten discipline) that being a vegetarian leaves one with few options in a food court. Then, we went to Michael's and Jo-Ann's, where I looked for royal blue Wool-Ease so I could make a hat (which will be mentioned later) using the same brand of yarn in for the multiple colors involved. I didn't find what I wanted, so I settled for some gray Red Heart yarn, deciding to make the hat in a lower-quality yarn. This means:
- As of Sunday, my successful yarn diet came to an end (after four months!).
- FOOD! I ate at the Agave Burrito Bar a couple of times, dousing my burritos with cayenne pepper. I also purchased food from IGA, and spent too much money on the good green beans and the good orange juice. I had some delicious cereal, and scrambled eggs. Later, some cous cous with peanut sauce. I still have a potato, carrots and canned fruit. The food I ate was pretty healthy, overall. There's just so much! The culprit: My sleep schedule was so off that sometimes I only ended up eating two meals a day. (It seems ridiculous to eat dinner when lunch was at 10pm.)
- HARRY Potter. Several subitems here.
1. I listened to MuggleCast quite a bit. (It's a podcast talk show run by the folks at Mugglenet, a leading fan-based HP website.) Provoked much thought regarding book 7, and film 5.
2. The cover art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been released.
3. I watched the Prisoner of Azkaban (which I have determined to be my favorite of the movies thus far) and Goblet of Fire. While knitting hats, of course.
4. I have started rereading the Order of the Phoenix again, which I tried to start back in August, but was distracted by schoolwork. If hope to reread at least books 5 and 6, if not all of them, before the release of 7.
5. I Ravenclaw scarf may be in the works. It would probably be more along the lines of the PoA scarves, though I'm not sure.
6. In the third and fourth movies, I noticed Draco's cold weather hat choice. It looks like they put a cossack on top of a black baseball cap. Really. It doesn't cover his ears, and in one scene, if you pause it, you can see some of the cap's black fabric underneath the fur. I don't think hats like this really exist. I think the costume people are making it up.
- KOFI Annan. So I have this one class that has about 200 pages of reading/week, at least, and my professor told us to get this book about Kofi Annan (former SG of the UN), and to read it because it's interesting. I read the intro and Chapter 1. So much progress!
- LORAIN County Clerk Center. I applied for this really awesome program to study Russian language in St. Petersburg this summer, so I applied for a passport. This really nice guy from church, Marty Buck, gave me a ride.
- MIA Knuck. I knit up a pair of these fingerless mitts earlier this year, and painted an X Files theme on them. The knuckles read 'trustno1', but more recently, it says only 'tno1'. I can't find the right one. Also, Ben Franklin is out of the yarn I used to make it, as am I. It's been missing for a while now, but I did my laundry this week, and didn't find it amongst clothes. I'm starting to lose hope.
- PARCEL. On Tuesday, I got a nifty package from my parents. Contents included some chocolate, music, and little Eastery basket things. My mom even wrapped everything in pastel-colored tissue paper! The best part:
- RUSSIAN children's book. My mom got me a book from the Red Balloon Bookshop (this really great children's bookstore in MN), called 'First Thousand Words in Russian', and it has an online pronunciation guide. Russian vocabulary through direct object association! How great is that? (Answer: really great.)
- SHIRT. I've been knitting this shirt since summer, and I finally finished the front this week. Last Saturday, a few of us watched Pleasantville, and I began working on the back. Which I'm about 1/3 of the way through now. It should actually be done soon, maybe. Probably before those socks I'm (still) working on.
- STAR Wars hat. Specifically R2D2. It turned out really well, for my second attempt at Fair Isle (multicolor knitting technique). It didn't pucker at all, and only looks funny around the parts where I was trying to knit little circles of color in the round. The best part is, the awesomeness of the fact that I'm wearing R2D2 on my head overpowers any small flaws.
- TEENAGE Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had never seen the first movie all the way through, so I watched it early on in the week. Then I decided to make up a knitted version of a crochet pattern I found on Craftster last week for a TMNT hat. I made a Michelangelo hat, since he's sort of my favorite (though I'm quite partial to Rafael, too). (Photos in pattern post.)
- WAVE hat. Oddly enough, the pattern is named Cowabunga and it has nothing to do with the preceding item. Go figure. I'd attempted to make this last fall, but it turned out really bad. (Probably my worst project.) It used Fair Isle (see STAR Wars for more info), but it puckered a lot and looked really bad. The brim was kind of out of control, and it was really big. The instructions say to cast on 132 stitches, which is way too many. I also failed miserably at the Fair Isle part, since I was using 8 double pointed needle, in absence of an appopriately-sized circular needle. This week, I undid the failure hat and reknit it using fewer stitches and a circular needle, and came out with something much, much better. Behold the before and after shots.

- WHERE the sidewalk ends. No, I didn't read Shel Silverstein poetry, but I did go for a walk. For those of you who know the geography of Oberlin, I walked along West Lorain street, which passes Wilder and Hales. I walked all the way to Sacred Heart (the Catholic church), where the sidewalk on the north side of the street stopped. It was quite enjoyable. The Student Health Center has the weirdest architecture. I really must go on more walks in the future. I was going to go on another walk early Friday morning, but never really got around to it.
- X Files. Yes, I watched the end of season 8 and the beginning of season 9 without my friends. Here's a ratio that makes it seem less bad though. New X Files episodes viewed during spring break last year/this year. 43:7. How can Linden and Liz be disappointed in me?

Here ends this beast of a post. If you read this, you've just read three Microsoft Word-pages of text. Congratulations. Hasn't this been a wonderful way to spend your time?