looooong rambling news from here...

Warning: this is long, and full of my rambling. Read on, skim through it, jump from heading to heading – or just skip it. (You aren’t missing that much, trust me. :-) )

Knitting:
The lace bug has bit me. I’m afraid to say too much for fear I will screw something up, but there is a shawl in my future. I’m also knitting socks – that is if knitting socks means knitting an inch or so into a sock, then playing around with yarn overs, and knit 2 togethers and ripping it all out because I don’t like how it looks with self striping opal yarn only to start again and find myself tinkering with possible lace patterns again. (that was how I knew it was time to start a shawl…) I’m taking a sleeve of Rogue with me for the car ride this weekend, and will see how much of that I can get done. (I like stockinet, but it seems that I’m ready for something less mindless now that my mind has returned. I mean no offense when I write mindless, it’s just that I’m craving cables, patterns, and (gulp) lace. It was bound to happen, I just thought I had another few months…)

Laptops:
The other one has arrived, and appears to be in good working condition. (I’m never sure til I have it up and running.) My “old” laptop is going to spend some quality time with my friend Katie; she’s doing graduate work and will use it so her thesis is a bit more portable. (the cow went to her lab – I hear it’s doing quite well.) I’m glad that someone will use it, and I look forward to having my own copy of her final draft!

I’ve been in wireless limbo for a few days, and am woefully behind on emails (both reading and writing) and have no idea what’s been going on in the world of knitters who blog. I hope to get caught up later tonight, after the next round of packing is complete.

Packing, moving and getting rid of things:
This is the third time in two years that I’ve packed up everything I own in preparation to move, and experience has taught me a few lessons. I’ve given up trying to fill paper boxes (that sometimes need copious amounts of packing tape to be use-able) and dug out my plastic bins (of various sizes). Most everything that the lecturers decided I needed a hard copy of has been recycled, and books that I’ll never look at again have been passed off to other med students. My breakables are safely in storage at my parents house, and this afternoon (after work) my dad is coming by with his truck so we can load up the rest of the “big” items (bed frame, dressers, a bookcase and such). My mom and dad did some work on the garage and essentially rebuilt the loft area; this will allow me to keep things there until I have a place of my own, and I need my things again.

(I have loved this apartment; it’s in a great location, has a corner view of the park across the street and has everything I could have possibly needed; as soon as I walked into this place I knew that I wanted to live here. This hasn’t been the case with people that are looking at it – every weekday in July there has been at lease one, sometimes two or three, different groups of people walking through, at various times in the 9-4:30 window of time. I get a call the night before it’s shown and have tried to be “out” while they do the walk-throughs. I was worried about how it looked for the first few days, but now I’m sick of organizing packing boxes and trying to make everything look neat and tidy. The realtors have been nice about the whole ordeal, and know that I am packing to get out of here, but still; I detest the knock on my door that means another group is here to see what it looks like.)

My third year of school is spent in the hospital and surrounding clinics; they provide housing for students and I’ll be living in one of the two houses (my fingers are crossed I’m placed in the one out on the lake…). The area that I’m going to be in is remarkably close to my parents house and some of my fellow students figured I’d live at home; I did my best to keep a straight face as I asked them if they’d consider moving back in with their parents…most openly scoffed the idea and saw where I was coming from. I love my family, and I like the house I grew up in; but the house is small, and in order to continue to love my parents I think I need a spot of my own.

My yarn is all packed up, and I have more then I thought I did. I keep going through it thinking that I’ll be able to give some more skeins away, or that I’ll find something that is an easy project. So far, that hasn’t been the case. Many of my odds and ends have been donated to the Children’s Museum, and a few skeins of “what was I thinking?” yarn have been knit up into charity hats.

My lease isn’t up until July 31st, but with any luck I’ll be out of here before then. I’m trying to get almost everything settled in other places before I gallivant, and so the pressure is on…


Gallivanting:
This Friday my mom and I are taking off for Quebec. I mentioned at one point this spring that I thought I’d need to re-do a class this summer, mostly due to my lackluster test performance early on this past term. When I found out that I had indeed pulled my average up so that I was out of the “danger zone” my mom’s first response was “We’re going to Canada.” I love Cirque Du Soleil, and the newest show is in Quebec through the end of the month. I’d waxed poetically about how wonderful it’d be to make the trip, and how much fun it’d be to see another show, and when the news came through that I was “free” this “summer” we decided to head north. I’ve looked up the French words for yarn, knitting, store, and will write down the words for wool, lace and hand-dyed. (my thoughts on how crazy it is that most of the words are masculine will need to wait for another day. I know that the gender of words is almost completely arbitrary, but I still find it interesting…) My 9 years of French should come in handy while we’re there, though I suspect some of my verb knowledge was flushed in order to make room for board studying…

I’ll be back from up north for a day or so before I head west. My childhood friend is in Utah, and it’s been a long time since we’ve had a chance to sit down and talk. She has a family and I’m looking forward to seeing how much her kids have grown.
I return from Utah with a few days to spare before I have to vacate this apartment. Hopefully there will be very little left to pack and move, and I’ll get a chance to take care of other things that need to be done before the end of the month. Then I’m off to sit on some cats in the Albany, NY area. I’m going to use the last two weeks of my “summer” (I use quotes because people like Mia and Theresa are already out on rotations – I’m lucky that I have as much time “off” as I do) reading up on topics in internal medicine. The first 12 weeks of my third year will be spent on the IM service and I want to cover some bases before my first day. I’m also going to knit like there’s no tomorrow during that time – hopefully a Rogue will be finished and a St. Brigid started and completed. (I need the state’s only copy of Aran Knitting to get to me via ILL first, but once it’s here I’m diving in!)


All in all, life is good. My body is finally getting a chance to process some things (sleep has been hard to come by, but it will pass) and my mind has almost stopped racing. I’m afraid that I’ve forgotten a lot of the knowledge that I spent the past two years cramming in, but there’s time for me to review it. People who have known me for awhile have commented that it’s as though I’ve returned to being human again; I think they’re right.