Dani has inspired a new Letter to Dalton, this time about pap smears, speculums, and sex toy companies! Read and enjoy. :)

BEHOLD THE EVIL SPECULUM!

Today I found this ASL Browser which shows you videos of American Sign Language signs. I like the sign for mosquito, myself.

Gina and I were discussing Meredith being excitée about going to Paris and it sparked another language mistake story:

Submarine says: So, one of the women in our group was messing up her spanish.
Submarine says: She was in front of a large room of people, speaking at the podium.
Submarine says: And she says "Soy embarrasada"... She meant I'm embarrassed... what she said was, "I'm pregnant"
Submarine says: WE were HOWLING!!!

Being the discourse analysis geek that I am, the first thing I thought was, "Wow, she's following the Labovian narrative structure perfectly!"

William Labov is a super-cool guy. He's done a lot of work in studying Ebonics and language change, and done a lot of work towards ensuring that black students who speak African American Vernacular English are taught in a way that does not discriminate against them based on language differences, but treats their language as worthy of respect, and ensures that they are taught basic skills (like how to read) in a way that takes their language differences into account. He speaks about this in his essay, How I Got Into Linguistics. He has also done work in discourse analysis with regards to narrative structure. He says that there are basically five parts of any narrative, where a narrative is defined as a story with at least two events that happen in a particular order. Here's his framework, as summarized by Deborah Cameron in Working With Spoken Discourse, p.153:

1. Abstract: a clause summarizing the point of the story/how it is supposed to be taken
2. Orientation: a series of clauses filling in background information, for instance the characters, location and time of the story. Often (though not always) these clauses have verbs which denote states rather than actions, like 'there's a woman lives up the road' or 'it was September 1976'
3. Complicating Action: a series of clauses each of which describes and event. The clause order is understood to represent the order of events in reality, so this section moves the story forward in time from the beginning to the end. Complicating action clauses have action verbs, typically in the past tense.
4. Coda: a section that shifts to present time-reference to restate the meaning or moral of the story. In addition, Labov and Waletzsky note the important point that throughout the narrative it is possible to find
5. Evaluation: talk in which the action has temporarily been suspended and the narrator comments on the action from outside the story world. This may be signalled by a shift of tense, away from the narrative time-frame.

Narratives don't need to include all of these aspects, really all that is needed is at least two pieces of complicating action.

In Gina's story, we find an abstract (So, one of the women in our group was messing up her spanish.) which tells the listener what the story is about and what kind of punchline to expect. We also find an orientation (She was in front of a large room of people, speaking at the podium.) so that we know what kind of situation the event happens in. We also find two pieces of complicating action (1. And she says "Soy embarrasada"... , 2. WE were HOWLING!!!), which happen in the order that they are told. Finally, we find some evaluation (She meant I'm embarrassed... what she said was, "I'm pregnant") which is addressed to the listener and is outside of the "story world" and serves as an explanation for those of us who don't speak Spanish. The emphasis on HOWLING!!! is also evaluative (though not in Cameron's rather strict definition of evaluation), because it puts the focus on the hilarity of the moment. Gina's story doesn't have a coda, but if it did it might be something like, "That's one of my funniest memories from that trip," which would serve to sum it up, restate that it's funny, and shift tense back to the present.

See, that's one of the crazy things about being in Linguistics. One of your friends tries to tell you a funny story and you get to analysing the structure of it before they're even done telling it. And that's on MSN. When it's in person, I'm noticing vowels and expressions and thinking about syntax. As Aaron has so kindly pointed out, NERD ALERT!

"I am always amazed by the diversity of lifeforms that evolution generates. I am particularly interested in the kinds of solutions life finds to the challenges of life in the open ocean." -- thegordongouldweblog

Although the story of the tsunami washing deep-sea creatures up on land that Gould was referring to in that quotation was patently false, those creatures are still pretty awesome, and you can find more photos of them at Creature Feature.

I find it interesting that we interpret curiosities and beauty according to our worldview. As a Christian, I could look at billions of stars and think, "Wow, God is so cool." Now, when I get the chance to look at stars at all (stupid light pollution!), I think "Wow, the universe is fascinating... I'm looking at things millions of light years away, that blows my mind," and God doesn't enter it at all. I did a lot of research on evolution this past summer, and if anything, it's utterly fascinating and beautiful.

Talk Origins
Understanding Evolution (Berkeley)
Becoming Human (nice site design, excerpts of the documentary on site)
Things Creationists Hate (ignore the title, there are some neat things in here)

I sent an email this week that offended a bunch of my friends, and I totally didn't mean it that way and I feel really bad about it. I didn't express myself well, left things open for misunderstandings that made me look like an awful person, and jumped in where I didn't belong. It's difficult to fix especially since these friendships are relatively new and I inadvertently insulted someone whom they have been friends with for many years, and they are justifiably defensive. I don't know what to do but apologize and admit that I shouldn't have said anything and try to explain what I meant to say in the first place. It is, as my first roommate would have put it, a pride-kicker. It's especially frustrating because I really intended to help and do something positive, but I should have waited and read things over and just recognized that it's not my place at all, and I didn't, so it backfired and now I'm embarrassed and look (and feel) like a jerk.

Funny, I was talking to my counsellor today about how my Protestant upbringing makes it hard for me to deal with the fact that I'm not perfect and I feel guilty or frustrated when I don't do things 100% right. Just goes to show ya, I guess. If I were still Christian, I would say that God's trying to teach me to be humble. I'm not Christian anymore, but I think I'm still going to take the kick to my pride and try to rectify what I can of the situation and apologize and then just move on with a bit more caution, I guess. Damn, I feel like a jerk though.

Some remarks on the comments on my last post... I find it unbelievably insensitive that anyone would argue with someone who is grieving, or accuse them (or the person who died) of being responsible for the death due to lack of faith. It baffles me, it is cold and it seems less than human. Regardless of the changes in how I view Jesus, it's not something I would expect him to inspire. He blessed those who mourn, he didn't condemn them.

Trevor's comments hit home, especially this part:

"I too went through a time of questioning when my mom died, It wasn't about whether there was a God, I did that when she was diagnosed with cancer, it was more about who God is. I guess I'm still working through that but I will say this, we like to make Him who we want Him to be and when He doesn't fit that we point the blame the wrong way. Mom died. Maybe it was her time to go. Maybe God saw the bigger picture. Maybe he doesn't heal everyone. Maybe just maybe and I'm not saying for sure but maybe God just plain doesn't heal anyone. But any argument from scripture or that guy's thoughts doesn't change the fact that mom loved God so much and mom is dead. Sometimes things we experience don't always line up with things we believe.
But I still believe in God. I can't change that. I just have to keep figuring out why he works the way he does some times.

That's where I was at until October 2003, that's how I moved through bible college and the place from which I tried to construct a functional theology. Jane's death (and Kathleen's death, and my experiences with a manipulative church, etc.) didn't make me question God's existence, that was obvious to me and I didn't question it until much later. It made me question his intentions. It made me question which verses I could count on to be effective in the real world.

I get emails almost every week in response to my Faith Dissolved site, usually from Christians who want to help. These people often tell me that they can't see why I left, and that I didn't list any reasons, and have I ever thought that maybe things are more about having a relationship with God than understanding him? Somehow they miss the entries where I talk about having a relationship with God, where I talk about finding him beautiful or merciful or active. I suppose they just can't comprehend my going from that to atheism, so they assume that I couldn't have really been a Christian, obviously didn't really know God. Well, as bizarre as it is to say from an atheistic perspective... I did know God. I believed that I communicated with him and he with me. I don't know how to explain that except to tell a story.

My parents never taught us about Santa Claus, it just wasn't part of Christmas for us. I remember being at a friend's house when I was about seven years old, and having him tell me that he saw Rudolph fly across the sky on Christmas Eve. He was convinced, it wasn't a plane, he knows what planes look like, this was Rudolph. I, of course, knew that it couldn't have been, that it was preposterous, but he knew that it absolutely was. He knew that Santa was real because he had seen his reindeer. I knew that Jesus was real because I talked to him everyday.

I'm not meaning to belittle anyone's faith by drawing such a juvenile comparison, but the fact of the matter is that we often see and hear what we want to see. If you 'know' that a house is haunted, you're much more likely to see or hear weird stuff and think there's something creepy. If you have a huge crush on someone, you interpret the smallest signal as proof that you have a chance with them. I interpreted feelings as interaction, good circumstances as blessings, the faith of others as proof, my misunderstandings about modern evolutionary theory as further proof, and Scripture as irrefutable evidence. Now I interpret those things differently, and I don't see any further evidence for a god. I guess that's that.

In other news, Chris has put up pictures from our trip to Montreal last weekend, so here's the rundown:
- "Look, their metro entrances look like Paris!" If I ever let Chris go to Paris, I'll never get him back. :)
- My sister, Melissa, and I in the bed and breakfast: 1, 2
- Chris and I out drinking with Melissa and Joseph (friend of Chris's from online) at Brutopia
- Melissa at Brutopia
- Mandatory metro shots: 1, 2, 3
- funky hallway in the underground city
- really pretty complex in the underground city: 1, 2
- part of the Berlin Wall: east side, west side
- olympic stadium
- Biodome: tropical rainforest, parrots, capybara, different parrots, this fish has his eye on you, waterfall, reflective fish, upside-down fish, fish with weird head, alligators (1, 2), wood duck, porcupine in tree, lynx and mate, snotty penguins, penguin thinking about taking a swim
- horse and sleigh
- Nôtre Dame Basilica: outside, statue of a nun, altar from back of church (another shot), pulpit on stairs, pipe organ, chapel in back of the church, another outside shot

I got my marks from last semester:
Phonological Analysis: B+
Grammatical Analysis: A
Language, Power and Persuasion: A
Discourse Analysis: A+

Very exciting. :) Also, I had a meeting with the head of the department, who was my Discourse Analysis prof and is fairly well-known in the realm of discourse analysis, to talk about my ideas for grad school and a Master's thesis, and she was very encouraging and said that my ideas fit the Linguistics Master's degree very well and are well set up to become a PhD farther down the road. So that's also exciting. :)

I had a series of kind of disturbing dreams the other night. In one of them, I was at a camp where the girls all had to sleep in bunks and I woke up in my bunk during the day only to find that it had become an infirmary. I got up and found my mom on the bunk below me, in a coma-like state. Not only was she there and comatose, so was my Uncle Herman (who committed suicide last June), my sister Melissa, Jane (Chad and Trevor's mom, who died of breast cancer a few years ago), and a bunch of other people. I promptly freaked out, yelling and crying, especially since I couldn't wake my mom up. Funny how emotions are so much stronger in dreams, I often have dreams where such losses are really intense.

A couple of dreams later (I kept switching between situations that night), I came back and those people were up and around. Specifically, Jane was awake and hanging out with John (husband) and laughing with him and it made me REALLY happy. I was just so relieved to see her awake and not sick and happy... It wasn't until a while after I woke up that I realised that it was odd to have her in my dream, not just because she's from home and I haven't seen her in a long time, but because she's dead. Her death hit me really hard, it came at a time when I was getting homesick and really struggling with my faith, and God's refusal to heal her felt like a slap in the face. I had to work, so I couldn't go home for the funeral, and I was really upset about it. I wanted to be there, to be there for Chad, to see the funeral, and have a rite to participate in to get some closure. I wanted to come together with my community and mourn her death, because there were hundreds of people that I know who were hit hard by it. Not because she was perfect, I don't like it when people idolize the dead, but because she was nice and she was one of us and we loved her. Because Christians find their identity in the body of Christ, and she was part of that community, she was one of us. Because I had known her as long as I could remember and she was one of our moms and our moms aren't supposed to die, they're supposed to make cakes for our weddings and babysit our kids and stay with our dads and keep on laughing. I was upset by my mom being comatose in my dream because I need her and I'm fiercely protective of her, and Jane was one of our moms and we couldn't protect her and it scared me.

I had a couple of dreams a few months back where it was almost like my Uncle Herman was visiting me. I don't mean that literally, I don't believe in that sort of thing, but... well, in the first one he was just sitting around in his house with people over, like a birthday party or anniversary or something, and he was laughing a lot and was obviously content and things were okay. In the second, I was working on some other weird situation that I had to solve in the dream, and he came over and asked me what I was up to, just generally inquiring as to how I was doing and what was going on, all friendly-like. The thing is, those are the only dreams I ever remember him appearing in, and they both occurred a few months after he killed himself.* The second really was like he was just checking in to see what was up and to let me know that he was okay, that he was happy and things were cool. Maybe my brain is just trying to reconcile it.

*I keep wanting to say "after he died," but it feels dishonest. It softens it. Hell, the obituary called it an accident, even the death report called it an accident and they got insurance money for it, but the man sped his car into the river with the windows down. I've seen the dents in the sidewalk, that's not an accident. I feel it would be almost dishonouring him to ignore his last act.

Dave's Blind Date made me laugh. It's a guest strip on Narbonic by Derek Kirk Kim, whose site I somehow stumbled onto last night.

So, Montreal was good. I'm sure Chris will put pictures up fairly soon, and I'll link to some fun ones. We went out with jph from an IRC channel that Chris & the geekhaus crew frequent and my sister came out with us on Friday night. We went to the Biodome and saw monkeys and parrots and penguins and pirahnas and lots of weird stuff that apparantly lives in the St. Lawrence River (?!). Also, we saw the Notre Dame Basilica and the girl who was giving us the tour was cute and Quebecois and said "Oh God" when she messed up some of the stats she was telling us about, which made me laugh. We also took a tour of l'hôpital at four in the morning... Chris pulled a muscle in his side and woke me up in the middle of the night with "fuck fuck, oh fuck" and couldn't find a position where he wasn't getting stabbing pains, so we sought help and they gave him some anti-inflammatory stuff that fixed it up real nice. The whole trip to the hospital only took an hour, too, very impressive!

I learned a new French word, branchée. I saw it in the Metro newspaper in an article about Les femmes branchées, about women in technology, and an ad with Paris Hilton on it that said Mode branchée and our helpful Québecois bed and breakfast woman told me that the first would mean "connected women" and the second would mean "up-to-date fashion" sort of... it's the idea of being hip, online, etc. I like it, it was confusing me how it could pertain to technology and fashion at the same time, but now it makes a lot of sense.

What else... Chris is moving downtown in March and I'm getting progressively jealous as I look at ads for apartments. I used to move about twice a year, sometimes three times, and now I've been in the same place for a year and a half, and it's a little odd. I like it, but it would be so great if it wasn't so far from everything, my apartment is at the extreme north end of Toronto and it takes a long time on the subway to get anywhere interesting. I'll stay here for a while yet though, the rent is (relatively) cheap and the roommates are excellent and not crazy (though the cat is). Anyways, about Chris moving, the boy doesn't own very much house stuff, but Craigslist has come to the rescue with this excellent starter set of dishes that we're going to pick up tonight. I love Craigslist, it's a great resource.

Reading: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, by Eric Hoffer

Sometimes I read something and think "Crap, that's me."

"A few times, I've told friends they were fucking up, talking about it in as Oprah-esque a fashion as possible. This never, ever ended well. Finally I realized I'd been harboring a secret fantasy that after this little talk, my friend would say, "Omigod! You're so right! How could I have not seen this? Oh, you saved my life!" Or some version of that. So it was really my problem. Since then, in similar circumstances, I've been supportive and smiley and non-committal, which is much easier on everyone. And happily, not all my doomy predictions have come true."
posted by vetiver at 6:54 AM PST on January 10

It is my ongoing project to a) stop worrying about situations that aren't mine, and b) stop interfering with situations that aren't mine. Through friends and pondering and my counsellor, I'm realising how much of my fretting is absolutely unnecessary, so now I get to try to change a life-long habit. Should be easy, right?

I will be so tempted to become this kind of parent.

Some quotes of things I have seen in the last little while that I have found interesting or useful:

Yet another reason to love organic chem professors:

"How's this for a note card hardware hack: an organic chemistry professor told me of a way to sort thousands of note cards. He would write down an organic reaction on a notecard, across the top edge he would punch a series of holes (with a paperpunch), each one corresponding to a type of product (aldehyde, ketone, alcohol...) and turn the one that was the product of this card into a notch. The same for the side of the card, but these holes corresponded to the starting material. He would fill out a card for new reactions he saw in journals and place them in a box, lined up. If he wanted to see what reactions you could use to, say, transform a ketone into an alcohol, he would stick a knitting needle through the ketone hole on the side and the alcohol hole on the top and pick up the cards ( and shake slightly) by the knitting needles, leaving only the cards he was interested in. I suppose you could also use the other two edges for a 4-dimensional sort."
posted by 445supermag at 12:01 PM EST on January 9

A quotation of the "founding godfather of American neo-conservatism" that shines some light on the state of American media and "truth":

"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."
--Irving Kristol

Annie Dillard on models of theology that trade omnipotence for mercy:

"For the Jew the world is not completed; people must complete it." So said a nineteenth-century Frenchman, Edmund Fleg. Recently Lawrence Kushner stated the same idea powerfully and bluntly: "God does not have hands, we do. Our hands are God's. It is up to us, what God will see and hear, up to us, what God will do. Humanity is the organ of consciousness of the universe. . . . Without our eyes, the Holy One of Being would be blind."
For the Time Being, pp. 196

God's being immanent, said Abraham Joshua Heschel, depends on us. Our hearts, minds, and souls impel our spines to lift or dig, our arms to take or give, our lips to speak good words or bad ones. God needs man; kenotically or not, he places himself in our hands. Some Christian fundamentalists, too, find this most modern of ideas invigorating.

In March, 1992, Brother Carl Porter, an Evangelical Holiness minister from Georgia, preached to a responsive crowd in Scottsboro, Alabama, where writer Dennis Covington heard him. "'God ain't no white-bearded old man up in the sky somewhere. He's a spirit.' Amen. Thank God. 'He's a spirit. He ain't got no body.' Amen. Thank God. 'The only body he's got is us.' Amen. Thank God." The only body he's got is us: a fine piece of modern theology. That it bollixes the doctrines of God's omnipotence and completeness-in-himself apparently bothers few believers, perhaps because it solves more problems than it makes—saving, for a mere example, the doctrine that God is merciful and good.
For the Time Being, pp. 200-201

Today I tutored for two hours on Phonetics. We went through the IPA charts for consonants and vowels. I lent my student my copy of A Course In Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged, a book I will never ever sell. I love Ladefoged, and not just because his email address is oldfogey@ucla.edu. I lectured on marked features and universals and the oral cavity vs. the nasal cavity and the difference between [k] and [q]. I got chalk dust all over my hands and my coat, which was hanging on a chair beneath the chalkboard. I love tutoring, it makes me look forward to teaching. Someday, maybe in just two years, I will be a TA and then a professor. Exciting!

I also went downtown and spent some time in BMV, a used book/video/DVD store, and purchased the following:

- The Living, Annie Dillard
- 40 Stories, Donald Barthelme (not a clue how to pronounce that)
- Room Temperature, Nicholson Baker
- Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley
- The Believer, September 2003
- The Believer, October 2003

I don't have any room on my bookshelf anymore, I'm stacking books horizontally on top of the books that are already shelved. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up another bookshelf next week, as Chris and I will be renting a car.

We will be renting a car because we are going to Montreal next weekend, to visit my sister (Melissa) and one of his friends from the interweb, and because we will have been dating for six months and the French are rumoured to know a thing or two about love. We're going to stay in a bed and breakfast, tour (and photograph) Old Montreal, laugh at the penguins at the Biodome, go out for drinks and conversation one night, go out for a nice dinner another night, comment on the Metro vs. the TTC Subway, etc.

Lately, I have been watching documentaries: Supersize Me, The Corporation, The Power of Nightmares, Power and Terror (Chomsky), Berkeley in the 60s, Manufacturing Consent (Chomsky), Ralph Nader: Up Close, etc. (I'm probably missing some. Chris?) Thoughts so far: Corporations are bad. Mass media control is bad. Nothing I hear on TV is true. Blah, blah, blah. What they sell in the cafeteria at school is bad for me. I should eat better. I should read more. I should research more. I should question more. I should read some critiques of Chomsky, just in case.

As much as I am linguistically predetermined to worship Chomsky (or hate him, but then I would be a fringe linguist), I do tend to think that many of his movies end up being full-on wank-fests for the man. Okay, we get it. You are awesome. People love you. Yes, they're still clapping. Why are you still recording it, please just keep talking so we can learn something other than the fact (?) that you are the greatest thing ever. Yes, he still shows quotations of people critiquing him, but I think they're there so that we can say, "Wow, the New York Times called Chomsky's political views simplistic? They're morons!" Dude. Let people draw their own conclusions, were you afraid that we wouldn't like you if you didn't show that hordes of others do? I thought you were against the mob mentality? [/rant] (p.s. i still love you, dr. chomsky, all hail, etc.]

I was on the subway today beside a young mother and her toddler and watched her entertain him for a half an hour and she was clearly exhausted and I don't know how anyone can keep up that level of energy and enthusiasm for teaching a child to count to 5 and add and play peekaboo and "ben, stop kicking me" and "no you can't get out of your stroller, it is too crowded!" and on and on. Toddlers, man. I both look forward to and dread the day that I have to (get to) take care of one. Where is all that energy going to come from?

I always felt, when I was struggling with my faith yet holding onto it, that most of the questions that I argued with people were not the questions that were at the heart of the matter for me. I could debate whether or not God was righteous with Job, or free will vs. determinism, etc., all day, but what I really wanted to know was why my friends' mothers who had been devout Christians had died of cancer after praying so long for healing, and why I found prayer so hard and God so distant. I wanted to know why I felt that I didn't fit in church or bible college anymore, why I spent so many chapel services thinking "I don't fit, want to get out, must hide the fact that this doesn't work for me, they're going to ask why I left early..." I wanted to know why it bothered me so much that homosexuality was "wrong," why gay people I read online, people I liked and respected, were looked on with such disgust and why they needed to leave their lovers and best friends in order to know God. Because, the thing is, I never found it possible to damn them, and I wondered how an omnibenevolent God could find it in His heart to do so.

I also looked at stories like Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac, and something whispered in the back of my mind, "Even if God planned all along to stop it in the end... isn't that child abuse?" Suddenly everywhere I looked in the Bible, I saw genocide and a God that would kill David's child because of his adultery, and a God that would blind a man from birth "so that the work of God might be displayed in his life," and I realised that that's not good. Suddenly this God seemed harsh and insecure, and I couldn't bring myself to call him good or wise anymore. I wasn't even sure if he was there. Where had he been when my uncle cried out to him in despair before committing suicide? Where was he last month when a tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people? Maybe he sees every sparrow that falls, but the world is still littered with dead sparrows.

My question was more about the nature of goodness and how I was to strive to be good while worshipping a God that seemed more and more malevolent. It distressed me to think that he might not have my interests at heart when I had always been taught that he loved me. I looked at the story of Job and thought about the common myth that God has a "wonderful plan for your life" and wondered what Job would say to that.

Why should God require death in payment for sin? Anything is possible with God, right? So why wouldn't he just forgive us if we came to him in faith that he would be gracious? How could I in good conscience worship and follow a God that I suspected wasn't playing fair? How could I ever pray for something, knowing that He had done nothing when he could have healed cancer, softened earthquakes, let us feel something other than resentment.

I'm not angry anymore. Well, I feel angry, but angry in the same way I feel angry at Saruman. YHWH became just another fictional character with terrible power and a terrible attitude. A theist on the Internet Infidels board said something really stupid the other day -- warned someone not to get to the point in atheism where you denounce and curse God. Stupid, because atheists don't believe there's a god there to denounce and curse, it would be a waste of time.

Just some thoughts.

I've been crocheting a ton of stuff in the last little while. My latest project is some baby socks (PDF) for a certain Christmas surprise*, and I think I'm going to have to make a blanket or two and some bibs and washcloths to throw in with it. What can I say, I have a great love for all things Poelman, so I can't resist sending a big package of stuff to help out. (If you are as yet uninformed about the Christmas surprise, let's just say that Ryan is no longer The Littlest Poelman, and his cousin Julie no longer holds the family record for being pregnant unawares the longest [and her record was 7 months!].)**

Over Christmas, I made a saucy red scarf and toque set for the lovely Meredi, and I have also made a toque for Chris, which took him about three months to lose. (We'll see how long it takes Meredith, as she is famous for losing accessories!) I also made a toque for my dad, which was two colours, and I made a zigzag scarf and toque for my sister, Amanda, for her birthday with some funky hand-dyed variegated wool from Romni's on Queen Street West. Romni's is like a candy store with every kind of wool you've ever thought of, and then a few hundred kinds you've never even imagined. It's overwhelming and wonderful and crazy all at the same time, AND they feature a 10% student discount. :) Things on my list to make/learn to make soon include a new toque for Chris (but he gets to pay for the wool this time!), legwarmers, mittens, and slippers. I've also been buying extra-large sweaters with fun colours of wool second-hand just so I can take them apart and get tons of wool really cheap. My latest was a huge orange sweater which I paid five bucks for, and reaped about thirty bucks of wool from. Yay!

It takes me an hour on the bus to get to York U, so I have about two hours of TTC time a day. I've been using it for sleeping, catching up on my readings, and quite a bit of crocheting. With all this practice, I've gotten pretty fast, so I can whip up a toque in about two hours. It's fun, it uses a slightly different part of my brain than school does, so it's relaxing. I've found a couple of sites online that have fun free patterns, noteably Crochet Me. There are a ton more knitting sites, which is unfortunate because I like crocheting better. I find it faster and it's a whole hell of a lot easier to transport a crochet hook than knitting needles. Knitting needles are really long and the ends are pointy, so if you're not careful, they'll stab through the bottom of whatever you're carrying them in. Why do you think my roommate has a designated knitting bag? Because it has a reinforced bottom. Crochet hooks, on the other hand, are lovely in that they are shorter and do not have points. Lovely! Also, I don't have to spread out as much to crochet as to knit, so I can do it even when there are hundreds of people on the bus.

*I do hope it's okay to let the cat out of the proverbial bag. A proverbial bag, like a dope trailer, is no place for a kitty! [/Bubbles]
**Let me just note that I now know THREE girls who had periods for their whole pregnancy and didn't know they were pregnant until really far along, one at 7 months, and the other two until they were in labour. One went to the hospital for suspected appendicitus, the other for a panic attack, and they both came home with surprise babies. Crazy! I suspect there may be something weird in the water of Brock Vegas and surrounding area, because I've never heard of such a thing anywhere else, especially so frequently.