Day 1

Nothing has hatched yet.

wait what

in midieval europe class this morning my professor started explaining about the mystery cults and how the romans were suspicious of them because they didn't quite follow state religion and met in secret where the romans couldn't keep an eye on them.

and he gets to this point about the cult of mithras where he's explaining they met once a week, and had a sacred meal, and the meal was led by a priest, and they drank sacred wine and ate sacred bread, had baptisms, and what does this sound like...?

and you could just feel the sudden hostility in class when he asked that question.

i donno. i thought it was really funny.

Fall Semester

Oh man, second day of fall semester tomorrow.

The first day was kind of a bust- my cell phone has this battery saving feature that if it's plugged in long enough it shuts off, which is really great when it's your alarm clock. All my favorite coffee mugs were in the wash. Parking was a nightmare, and when I got to class it was so full there were no seats so I had to sit on the floor. Some guy showed up about five minutes after I did and the teacher laughed and told him to "pull up some carpet and start taking notes".

However, the classes themselves were great, whatever snags there were. Medieval Europe, Gender in Media (it's a Gender and Women's Studies class- sort of on interpreting books and tv shows), British Literature until the 1600s, and Latin. I've got the BritLit one with a teacher I had a few semesters ago, so it's good seeing her again.

The other thing that was really great? I'm sure some of you have heard how angry I was about the meal plan business the school started up- it's mandatory even if you live off campus and expensive and I don't really like the campus food. Well, they built us a new dining hall which is named the Culinary Center or something pompous sounding like that. To get in you walk under this roof that looks like Lady Liberty's crown, and swipe your school ID card and you're let loose in this mall sized open space that has all these kiosk restaurants. The only thing I can think to compare it to is a really good Vegas buffet, minus the high end seafood. There's a place that does southern food, a coffee bar, breakfast bar, international food (THERE WAS GOAT ON THE MENU ON TUESDAY CAN YOU BELIEVE IT), a diner type place, Italian, and a salad bar... Oh, and a Chinese place. I'm probably forgetting about half the places in there. And there's a bazillion tables and booths and lots of windows and some sort of space age robot dishwasher where you put your plates on a conveyor belt and they disappear to the future to be cleaned.

Only con: I think I saw TWO power outlets in the place. They designed it to keep you from camping. Which isn't really a con, I guess. I donno. While I was eating in there I wanted to work on a story and couldn't.

ALSO THEY HAVE CHEESECAKE.

CHEESECAKE. OMG.

Anyway, I only get to go there eleven more times this semester... Unless I want to buy more visits or something... So I'm going to try and save mine til November, and remember to bring a powerstrip.

Speaking of November, I already put up two Nano fliers on campus. Yay!

Nostalga

I miss the good ol' days of the internet when every webpage had gifs of flickering candles and a final fantasy midi playing.

Knitting Terminology

That is a kimono. The huge belt around the middle is an obi.

So, I'm teaching a friend to knit and she's asking me about some yarn she got that came without labels and how to find out what it is, but what she really says is, both skeins "had their obi removed".

I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING.

Choose Your Own Senior Thesis Topic

It's probably the six cups of coffee I've had tonight but I saw this picture and it's one of the funniest thing I've ever seen- to the point that I now want to write a thesis paper on it. With a title like "DEATH FROM ABOVE: SHARKNADOES IN THE SOUTH DURING THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA". I could even make up lots of primary sources- letters from Plantation Owners about the how the Great White Sharks that year had bitten the corners off the house and the high winds had damaged the old oak tree.

Heeeeeee.

(Pic is a shopped 'Choose your own adventure novel' in case you didn't recognize it. Shopped by iconzicons)

So...

I found this really fantastic shawl at the Thrift Store. Like, really, really fantastic. It's purple and soft and knit with boa feathers in some places, and it has tassels.

AND SOMEONE HAND KNIT IT- AND WHOEVER IT WAS HAND KNIT FOR, THEY DROPPED IT OFF AT THE THRIFT STORE.

*sigh* I mean, before I took up knitting I'd never have been able to tell the difference between machine knit and hand knit, and I'd never have thought anything about seeing something hand knit at the thrift store. But now I'm like "do you have any idea how long it took to knit that? how much it cost? do you have any idea how much someone cared about you to make it?". Of course, the person who dropped it off can't hear me- but I wish they could.

Oh well. It's *mine* now. ^_^

I was going through these Alice Starmore knitting books- they're like knitting sudoku in russian with a blindfold- brilliant, beautiful patterns but Alice even admits to how insane they are... There's a quote near this one shawl pattern about how "some of my cable patterns are too big for sweaters" so you need to make something larger than a sweater to hold the whole cable design- and this shawl is the size of a small blanket. I really want to do the shawl but you need a mountain of yarn for it. But look at this thing- it's art.

The Harry Potter scarf I'm working on is coming along pretty well. It's... about half done, I guess, but it doesn't seem like it's as long as it needs to be. Because it's circular it's almost half an inch thick- I'm not going to die of hypothermia this winter. ^_^ I should have some left over yarn from the project, so I might do a pair of gloves to match, or just add more stripes until I think the scarf is the right length.