Astroknot

things

2011-12-14T23:28:00.001-08:00

Things I will miss about Denmark:

Some of the kindest and smartest people I have ever met
A ridiculously welcoming and warm work environment (with the bonus of the best work-based christmas party ever)
The solitude--the haunting and echoing loneliness of being in this city of spires and no skyscrapers, where everything is quiet at night and the lights glittering on the far side of the black and isolated lake make it seem welcoming, but so far away.
The food--damn, can the Danish bake! They also have some mean shawarma places that VA doesn't do any justice to whatsoever.
The city's attitude towards the holidays. I think it encompasses the absolute best parts of the holidays in the states--tiny white lights glittering through the darkness, the smell of pine trees wet in the rain, christmas markets and hot wine, and the gathering of the ones you love.
The outdoor mentality--it's very much a city good for walking and biking, for spending time out of doors.
An excellent bus and metro system
The ability to go pretty much anywhere without it costing $3000 and requiring a visa six months ahead of time.
The wind that sweeps this city every day and makes lovely pulling sounds on the windows.
Lots of yarn stores.

Things I won't miss about Denmark:

Not being near my family and friends
Not having a cat with me.
Smokers. Everywhere. Can't wait to be free of them.
Not having a car.
Being alone.
How frickin' expensive it is to live here. In most cities you can get a quick cheap lunch for <$10 without much effort. Here, you are luck to find anything <$20 at any given time. Laundry costs me $5 wash, $5 dry.
It being gray all the time. Damn do I miss some sunlight.
Having to say "Sorry, I only speak English" every time any one bothers to talk to me--and also the fact that that so very rarely happens.
The way everything in the city closes at 5pm every day of the week, 3pm on Saturday, and all day Sunday.

blooooarrrgh

2011-09-27T00:14:00.001-07:00

does anyone know why my blog is down?

2011-08-15T10:56:00.001-07:00

a storm is gathering its folds on the horizon, above a molten sunset. Cold wind licks the face of the building and whispers through the open window. The trees stir and toss, restless and sleeping. Gold fringes of dying sunlight gild the swollen surface of the clouds, glossing over the gray and scudding base of the storm. The first whistling drops of rain sound out on the tile roofs of this foreign city, hissing through the leaves, tousling poplar and birch and oak. A magpie launches itself from the garden, raucously objecting to the rain. Its cry and the flash of its blue feathers the only thing for miles and miles.

2011-08-09T06:51:00.000-07:00

Ah, my old nemesis, coffee. We meet again. mwahaha!

I will never be an astronaut

2011-07-08T10:11:00.001-07:00

I will never be an astronaut
which is a dream I didn't even know I had until today. The last launch of the space shuttle was today, and watching the astronauts suit-up made me bawl. I don't know why. I hate heights, I hate flying, even. But to be able to taste that feral, untamed edge of the world, to see the positive curvature of the earth falling away, to have all the stars exposed and naked, to see the glow of the planet below cutting across a sky so black it aches...

I didn't know I wanted those things. But they'll never be mine now. And in 5 years, or 10, we'll go to space again, and I'll have missed my chance, and a whole generation will grow up without knowing what that dream is reaching for, without knowing what it means to break through the boundaries of human existance and fly just that little bit further into the vast unbroken emptiness of space.

Hubble is dying. That's the nature of a telescope--there's only so much maintenance that can be done, only so many repairs. Kind of like a car--eventually, even if you replace every component in it, it will fall apart. It's not a piece that's broken. It's everything wearing down. Old age. Chandra is dead, and Spitzer is dying. WMAP is running its course. We have reached the end of the great space telescope era, and that burns even more than the loss of space flight. To think of all the things left in the universe to see and to understand--to think of the inspiration, the portal into the most alien of realms that Hubble gave us, and to know that in 5 or 10 years we will not even be close to seeing anything like that again--that's a deeper, bitter hurt. The James Webb Space Telescope has had its funding slashed, fallen victim to the partisan politics that cater only to money. I know it's a small thing in the face of the poverty, illness, and ignorance that the politics also fosters--but it is a terrible blow to the future. I cannot think but that it is a bad idea to sacrifice the future for the moment.

Me and Knitting books

2011-03-19T06:21:00.000-07:00

I have a secret affection for owning knitting books. I know I can find 1000s of free online patterns. My ravelry queue is more than 5 pages long and a single search for a particular type (say, hat) nets me 5 or 6 new ideas. I have 3 or 4 projects on needles and I keep thinking of new ones. But I really like the books because reading them absolutely drives my inspiration. I find all sorts of things I really love, and I think about changing them, and dream about the types of garments I could make if I had the patience to shell out for 12 balls of yarn.

The problem with this is that I'm frugal. I don't want to purchase a book that has patterns that I dislike. Since I've never encountered one book with 100% me-appropriate patterns, I've settled for a reasonable percentage. 50% to consider it. I'd like to say 80% to purchase, but I've bought a few books far below that.

This is especially a problem with the felting books I'm currently looking at. I am very interested in wool and the concept of felting, and I want to give it a try. I'm a scientist. I'm sure I can figure out how to do it from a minimum of research (and I already know it involves 100% natural animal fibers, hot water, and agitation) that I can do on the web for free, but I want a book because I want to read all about the complications in size, gauge, and color effects.

But every single one of these books (that I've found on Amazon) has felted balls.

I hate felted balls.

I'm sure they look really cool on some people as necklaces, or in some houses as decorations. I even understand the usefulness of starting with a simplistic project to teach me about not killing the washing machine, and the behavior of animal fibers under the hot-water-and-agitation principles. But to me they are nothing more than a cop-out in the pattern department. They're round balls, for crapsake! You're lucky if they're on a necklace and not just something you stuff in a bowl! They are not remotely useful. I know that it is a lot to ask for patterns to be useful, but I suppose I really mean, "something I would ever employ as a knitter." I don't need felted balls, and I really really don't need decorative balls that go in a bowl to look pretty. I don't have kids, but I do have pets--decorations do not last long in my house. Including them as one of your 10 or 16 patterns means that they are 5-10% of the value of the book--this is not fair!

All right, grumpy aside, I think I'm going to have to put up with them if I want to get a felting book. Maybe I can just cut that page out and pretend it doesn't exist. Yeah. Repression is the answer.

what to cast on next?

2011-03-11T08:41:00.001-08:00

I finished a shawl! well, it's really more of a shrug, and I haven't blocked it yet, but it's done!

which means, *drumroll* I get to cast on another project.

Now the real test. what to do? Things I have in mind:

A Pi Shawl by Elizabeth Zimmerman in greens and browns
mittens with that peruvian wool (but... they'll felt :( )
an apple discloth a la Mason-Dixon Knitting (here)
socks from my 5 or so possible sock yarn combinations
something vintage and tunic-y with that caron spa bamboo mix yarn
something with the noro I got on sale
a first major lace knitting project with that heinous scratchy ancient gray caron in sport weight? maybe it softens after washing!
another amigurumi? maybe the loch ness monster this time?
a cat bed with the heinous leftovers I have
gifts: something pink and lacy for Robin, something red and hatty for the WI senators, a buttonhole bag using up that scratchy yellow wool, or the tried and true lace-up wrist warmers

gahhhh! so much to knit! so little time!

8 things

2011-03-10T05:43:00.000-08:00

8 things about me:

1. I have a twin sister! I'm so used to it that I often forget to tell people, and they are always surprised.

2. Just got my hair cut supershort... not short enough, I think!

3. I have half a semester of classes left before I get my Master's Degree and get to do research 24-7

4. If I had a million dollars I would start a foundation for the advancement of society through logic, intelligence, and compassion.

5. I am waiting to hear back from a research grant that will send me to Denmark for 6 months. If I don't get it, my advisors have discussed sending me anyway! (but I'd have to see what my collaborators decided). This is especially exciting to me as I have never before been out of the country

6. If I had to choose one place to live for the rest of my life, I think it would be Puerto Rico. Especially if I could get all my family down there. The land, the people, the science... it is all amazing!

7. One thing I really don't understand, after studying for however many years, is Quantum Mechanics

8. I firmly believe it is insufficient to merely survive, to merely do what is good for ourselves--we must without question strive to leave the world a better place than what we entered into.

I'd tag someone else but all of my friends have been tagged. So if you visit this blog and I don't know you--you're it! leave me a comment and let me know when you've done your 8, and I'll come read it!

want!

2011-01-30T17:45:00.000-08:00

Must... make... amazing things: http://wolfdreamer-oth.blogspot.com/2009/08/luma-plushie.html

http://www.knittingninja.com/patterns/chain-chomp-hat/

Best peeples evar!

2011-01-30T05:22:00.001-08:00

Holy carp! I've been Yarn Stormed!

whoever you are, thank you thank you thank you thank you!

so many luscious fibers, and so many beautiful colors!

And it was completely unexpected.

Sunshine heartily approves:

Want the detailed analysis? Visit my new blog, YarnPorn

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Compassion

2011-01-17T18:26:00.000-08:00

I realize belatedly that no mail today means holiday, and yes, it turns out it's Monday and it's already MLK day.

"Compassion and nonviolence help us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear their questions, to know their assessment of ourselves. For from their point of view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers and sisters who are called the opposition."

One of the things that I find most fascinating about MLK is his commitment to peace. Not just in terms of the idea of non-violent mass protests. That type of protest was a vital part of the endurance of the civil rights movement, allowing them to stake out the moral high ground on which their goals were based. But his opposition to the Vietnam war, to war and to violence in general, and his support of the ideas of compassion and human interconnection--those are what really impress me. Like Gandhi, like the Dalai Llama, to advocate the moral high ground not just for the civil rights movement, but as a way of life--this, I think, is what really made him unique, and part of what makes his legend endure. I hope I can pursue and advance that ideal as well.

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just."

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Thanks. Be at peace.

astronomy

2011-01-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

Lots of studying in the past 3 days, and plenty more to do.

Tonight I'll finish going through the topics for Astro Techniques and start reviewing the homeworks
Tomorrow I'll finish reviewing the homeworks for Astro Techniques and for Galactic Astro as well
Wednesday I'll go over the homeworks from Astrophysics and from Stellar, and have the evening review of the Astrophysics stuff with anyone interested
Thursday I'll review radio, pick out and memorize the truly relevant equations, and talk to Mark about any extragalactic questions I have remaining.
Friday I'll go through and review all the notes I've taken, study the details of things for Extragalactic, and work on memorizing the radio equations again
Saturday is the first part of the exam
Saturday night I'll briefly review the notes from the other 5 classes and try not to freak out
Sunday is the second part of the exam.

I should get done with enough time to watch the Packer game and get really smashed.

holy crap I have WAY too much material left to cover.

Preparation

2011-01-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

Owning a cat has taught me that I would be a terrible mother. I am apparently quite controlling, always saying no and shooing or chasing her away from stuff. I am not able to let her explore in an open fashion, to learn about, interact with, and come to understand her environment. Perhaps it's because, in her desire to learn, she keeps chewing on my speakers, and laptop, and my good furniture (as well as the bad furniture and any bit of paper or plastic on the ground). But at the same time I can see this control issue manifesting in her behavior. She still eats the other cat's food. She still tries to eat my speakers every morning. and she is now very skittish.

Of course she's also energetic, and a kitten yet, and she was a stray for however many months (I adopted her when she was 7 months). So maybe the blame isn't entirely on me. Nevertheless, I'm sure having a kid would be 1000x worse.

Or maybe this is just practice, so if I ever do pop out a munchkin, I know not to be a complete doyt about it?

Studying continues at a limping pace. Hard to cram more info in my head without the old stuff leaking, but I feel like I'm going somewhere. Slowly and surely, but going.

Knitting is on hiatus until my needles return from WI, but I am making plarn out of all my plastic bags and I hope to crochet at least a couple of grocery totes.

Writing... is never on hold. It always simmers on the back burner. But I still don't know how to get Indara and Kaina from leaving their tiny home city to the big city where Kaina is ill and eventually gets stolen. Or how to get Dudrect and Bali from their hotel to Dudrect's fortress. Or what Ilviras and Siraya's real quest is, and why. Or why the necromancer would enslave a human man who steals his book. And I can't figure out what it is the two witches are summoning in the urban city, or how Tasiha reunites with Ialio and what happens to her at the mage-school in Kiral.

Nor how to make Crocodile Boy more whole, nor how to tell the tales of Newton in poems.

*sigh* and I've got data to reduce and research to do for no less than 3 separate projects, all about equally important, I would say.

tea!

2011-01-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

Outside, the gray and clotted sky gathers itself like the folds of a cloth. The wind moves through the dessicated bushes and the long yellow grasses. The ancient pines before the Astronomy building move gracefully with it, shedding sweet incense.

My mint tea grows golden in its glass, warm and sweet and intense, the color of honey. Before me, the pages of lecture notes to cover fall away, while Ingrid Michaelson tells me that maybe, just maybe, I won't die alone.

Healing, like living, is not a goal. It is a process, a journey. I am living my healing. Some days are better than others. It helps to have people who care around me, to have the work I love before, to have deadlines (Denmark application, due in 2 days!) and scheduled events (Qualifying Exam in 10 days!) giving me focus and guidance. I still lose one day a week at least to grief. But cats and the strange winter wind of the south and hot mint tea are all part of it now.

Knitting!

2011-01-02T10:42:00.000-08:00

I can't understand why for the life of me I decided it was a good idea to leave every last one of my knitting needles in the car in WI while I returned to the south.

I have plenty of yarn and lots of ideas for new projects
But... nothing to knit with.

Plans: a hat, using that lovely worsted wool in shades of brown
Another hat, using the many-shades-of-blue

I suppose I could give in and turn them both into scarves.

Something lacy with that Lagoon yarn I ordered online.
Another lacy something with the three skeins of discounted hand-dyed Chilean-inspired green and brown wool.
3 pairs of socks (purple and gray, blue and green, and tones of red... o, curse you, sock addiction).

Some day I should do something with that Lamb's Wool Cotton-and-Wool in deep purple.

So much to knit! so little time...

2010-11-10T13:24:00.001-08:00

Wearing plaid makes me feel beautiful.

People in the classroom across the hall are cheering. Note: they are not astronomy students*. That's probably the anarchy class.

Going off to math class, where the prof has decided to surprise us with a 4th exam on harder material that's take-home, instead of the extra credit he promised us. Also he doesn't curve and he's decreasing the worth of the two exams I've already taken that I did quite well on.

When I get home, I'm going to start my new radio homework.

*astronomy students just cry gently** to themselves late at night when their Q parameter doesn't work out and they can't make a program that creates elliptical orbits, or understand why being in a rotating reference frame doesn't change the frequency of an epicycle.

**Except there's no crying in Astronomy. People just die.

awesome

2010-07-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

How To Focus, which is of great advice to me. Guess I'll try training.

While we're in the mood for goals, here are mine for today:

go quick grocery shopping
Pack up 1/2 living room
Pack up all of den
Sort bedroom into books and clothes
Pack bedroom books
Not more laundry tonight, but I'd say start packing the clean clothes into the suitcase.
boil eggs
boil corn
bake potatoes
eat peaches
do 2 or 3 quick dishes
watch Star Wars episode 6

Scary!

2010-07-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

This may be the scariest thing I've ever seen.

Fresh Fruit Season

2010-06-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

I love fruit.

Strawberries, apples, pears, and peaches. Blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and currants. Cherries. Pineapple. Limes and lemons and oranges.

Except for blueberries.

Maybe it's the strangely dry texture, or the fact that they tend to be sour-er. Or maybe it's just the weird skin, or the hint of bitter.

But I'm just not a real blueberry fan.

This week I got a POUND of blueberries with the food CSA, and I think I may have finally figured out what to do with them.

smoothies!

I have yogurt, and a blender, and ice. And many many frozen and fresh blueberries. I can add some fruit juice (which was on sale this week, so I have lots!), and I bet even a blueberry smoothie will be pretty tasty!

This Week's Haul:
2 heads of delicious bibb lettuce
4 ears of corn
2 cucumbers (I traded one for another ear of corn)
1.2 lbs of green beans (but not your average green beans.. I don't know, these look like peas more than anything else)
2 lbs of tiny red potatoes (omnomnom!)
1 little pint of blackberries

(why couldn't I get more blackberries than I know what to do with, instead of blueberries? I have a blackberry upside down cake recipe that looks pretty good).

And of course eggs, and I bought 5 peaches as well. I do love fruit.

Omnomnom

2010-05-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

I am waiting for the sun to come into the office so I can make sun tea.

Picked some mint leaves from my white mint plant this morning. It's certainly thriving! The chives and chervil might not make it, but the mint will, certainly.

Studying for finals. I hope this semester ends beautifully. Of COURSE I'm worried. But I only have the two exams, so after Saturday, all my attention can focus on that last exam. I am sure that will help.

To do:
arrange to pay my disconnect fee/get reimbursed
arrange payment for my internet bill
play with my program more and at least set it UP to get from s to u, f, and h.
study for the first exam
do the dishes

Peace. Come in, sunlight.

Meet Squashy

2010-04-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

Meet Squashy the Quatchi! He comes to me courtesy of Resurrection Fern, and he's Canadian (eh?). Ms. Oomen does glorious artistry with thread and rock and plants and cloth. I happened across her blog not too long ago, and I stayed to gaze at the pretty pictures. (Hey, I'm in Astronomy... pretty pictures are part of the trade). Then during the Olympics, Squashy here was sent on a foreign exchange program to cultivate peace between our two lands.

He's landed happily here in the Astronomy Department, providing a little comfort and joy in our darkest hours. Or, when needed, he dons a mask and gives us motivation.

So thanks! The next time I get to go somewhere fun, Squashy will be with me, getting pins and being trained as an observer.

Everything

2010-04-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

I got some gorgeous new yarn from Yarnia, mostly with projects in mind.

First I got Lane Borgosesia Cashwool in Wine. This is a laceweight yarn that I really want to use for a lace pattern, like Wing O Moth or the Hex pattern put out in Knitty a few months ago. The red is so bright that it glows.

Next is some nice thick Crystal Palace Iceland brown wool; two balls, which will hopefully help me finish off my log cabin blanket. Though looking at the blanket now, I begin to see that even that might not be enough.

I mean, just look at the size of this thing!

I also picked up 600 yards of what's called Lagoon Space Dyed. It's an acrylic, and I hate acrylic--but this is seriously some of the softest stuff I've ever felt. I want to make it into a wrap so I can just snuggle with it whenever I feel like it. Haven't found the perfect pattern yet though! any recommendations? I only have the 600 yards to work with (but... maybe I'll get some more? .... hmmm...)

I couldn't resist snagging a couple skeins of Aslan Trend's Santa Fe sock yarn. It comes in absolutely gorgeous colors, and I find that it's delightfully springy and stretchy.

Finally I grabbed some fizzy stuff by Fizz so that I could get free shipping. It's not hideous. By the way, if you want cheap novelty yarns, Yarnia is having a major sale on them. How dorky is that? pretty dorky, I suspect.

Did some cooking with my friend K. this weekend. We made Brown Butter Brown Sugar Shorties, but ours turned out a bit different from the original site's--they kind of melted in the oven. However, they were still delicious! so we ate a lot of them.

When I was hanging out with L. a few weeks ago we went to Ikea, since I had never gone before. It was silly and fun and cheaper than I thought it would be. I picked up two nice plates and some jars for storing dried goods (currently filled with flour--I think I need more of them for the sugar and tea and and and and...<3 jars!). Anyway, my favorite part, cheap candles and nice draperies aside, was their little discount section at the end of the store. I picked up a couple of cute little tea cups with saucers for 50 cents! To quote the matrix, whoa! Well, they were really plain, so I dragged L. off to a Michael's and picked up some ceramic paint and now they look like this:

Craftiness aside, I've delved much further into research of late. I'm looking for more ways to stay on top of my field. It always seems so challenging, especially at this early stage--I feel like there is NO way I will ever know enough. Add in the fact that I spend all my free time immersed in homework and programming, and I really can't see how getting to true understanding is even feasible. Ugh. Well, just keep slogging on, right? That's what graduate school is for--learning that you'll never catch up.

If you have a reasonably clear horizon, at this time of year in the west you can spot a really bright Venus shortly after the sun sets. Now if you look three fingers to the right of it and one finger down, you'll notice a tiny little fleck of light. That's Mercury! Mercury is normally really really difficult to see, because it's so close to the sun that it's always hidden in the solar glow. You should take the time to see it now, because you probably won't be able to see it again for half a year or so.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day 2010!

2010-03-23T21:01:00.001-07:00

Have you hugged a woman in science and technology today? For example, Jocelyn Bell Burnell?

Let me tell you a little story. When I was a 2nd year undergraduate student up in the cold midwest, I spent a lot of time putting together a little radio telescope. We built it from scratch based on designs and schematics from MIT, and since I didn't have the faintest clue how much of it worked, it took a lot of time. But after a couple years, we finally got this sucker deployed on the roof and started taking real sky data--looking at the sun and comparing it to the sky, just to simply see if we could differentiate. And there, right smack in the midst of my absolutely blank sky data, was a beautiful, beautiful blip. Not just any sort of blip--an enormous blip with little nasty resonances that raised my continuum by several thousand kelvin.

I was totally thrilled at first, positive I had picked up on some obscure point source at alt 30, az 180 (those were observer's coordinates--not even horizon coordinates, much less equatorial or something useful). That lasted for 30 seconds, of course, until my advisor pointed out that it was probably a hefty dose of Radio Frequency Interference or even just a nasty reflection since the Chemistry Building was RIGHT THERE. But for a brief time I thought I might get lucky and follow in the footsteps of Jocelyn Bell.

Well, she didn't get lucky, exactly--she put a lot of work into investigating every aspect of her data (on miles and miles of paper! no digital stuff) produced by the new telescope she'd mostly assembled and deployed herself. And as a result of her work she uncovered a fantastically consistent pulsating signal and thusly discovered pulsars. After such an illustrious career opportunity as a graduate student, she moved on to work in pretty much every wavelength you can work in, win a slew of awards, and be a pretty cool professor.

For me, Jocelyn Bell Burnell is extra inspiring because she had in all regards quite an ordinarily successful career, despite having gotten into things in the 50s and 60s, a notoriously difficult time for female scientists. In fact in terms of professors she's remarkably normal--proof for me that despite having a bumpy beginning, it's possible to go places and do all the exciting science things that are the crux of pursuing such a career.

Shout out to Ada Lovelace, to Jocelyn Bell Burnell, to all the other women in science and technology, both past and present, who have helped to shape my own place in all of this and who continue to carve a place in the future.

Future posts include awesome pics, as soon as I get my camera up and running.

Knit Knit Knit

2010-03-10T15:36:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks (surprise :P), but I think I've finally caught up. Of course that's only because we've a few days of break here, but still. I am doing all the housework that I've been putting off, taking care of the car, and looking into a new apartment for next year.

I had a FANTASTIC couple of days up in NYC with The Twin, including a fantastic visit to The Chocolate Room, which is, yes you guessed it, a little cafe devoted entirely to fantastic chocolates.

Doesn't that just make you drool? I should have brought some home with me, but I was so tired I actually passed up my chance. D'oh!

I'm noticing an interesting pattern in my classwork and abilities. I'm becoming at least a little bit more focused, and a bit more of a powerful, individual worker. I tend to learn by interacting with others, but frequently I've been driving through homeworks completely independently. Of course this is currently accompanied by a decline in grades (AGH!), but that's primarily due to not giving myself enough time to get my work done. Still, it's nice to know that I'm beginning to pick up some of the skills I was supposed to have when I got here.

A few other things of interest:

Temporary Hearing Impairment Leads to Lazy Ear. I found this interesting article on Science News. This explains a lot for me--I had tons of ear infections as a kid and I often find that my listening is impaired in strange ways now-a-days. I wonder what I have to do to go about re-training it? A lazy eye is re-trained by using an eye-patch on the good eye. Maybe if I use one earplug at a time? That might be interesting.

This article on soldiers knitting from my old old old hometown newspaper. It's not very informative but the idea is still interesting. Let me know if you have any more.

Earthquakes affect earth's rotation. The earth's rotation changes on a 12 month cycle and even smaller timescales anyway so this isn't that big of a deal, but it is interesting.

Finally a possible explanation of dark matter? Hmm, I like this one a lot.

Succinct Summary 2

2010-03-01T08:37:00.000-08:00

Lunch: Homemade meatballs on pumpernickel with neufchatel. Mmm. Also, frozen fruit for later.

Work: Steve's homework. Problems 2 and 3 out of 5 dented. The others glanced at.
Work II: Stats homework. Problems 1 and 2 out of 3 dented. The others glanced at.

I wish I had resources to talk to about these homework sets. I mean, before 11pm the night before they're due. Oh well, maybe I'll learn how to work on these things on my own

Work I am putting off: Li's Program. eeeseeesgghh... yuck.

Good News: Got my tax refunds today! wooHOO. Time to pay off some bills.

Other Good News: I signed up for my food co-op. It starts mid April. Fresh fruit and vegetables! I can't wait.

Succinct Summary

2010-02-27T12:05:00.001-08:00

Lunch: Greek Salad with a small french baguette from Panera. I do like a good Greek salad, and the bread is a good compliment.

Work: Galactic Astronomy homework. This set always takes me forever, and I tend to put it off until last. So today I'm starting it, nice and early, and seeing how far I can get. Hopefully working on it will also help me prepare for the midterm

Work II: Doom-like Statistics homework and studying for the midterm. *sigh*

Knitting: Tiny Fishes for my kitties! Next week or the week after I get to visit them! glee!

Ambitions

2010-02-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

Drowning in work, as usual. Not going to see the Twin this weekend as a result :( but Midterms are next week and if I am lucky, I will be in a good state after that.

Twin and I talked a bit about how my program seems front-loaded--right now, everything is quite difficult and time-essential; but once I'm done with classes, I set my own schedule and have flexibility and so it gets easier. I always work better when I can focus on one thing at a time, very thoroughly, for a few hours straight every day for a week. Which is difficult to due when homework is due M through Th, leaving me 3 or 4 days only to do all my learning. In contrast, her program is very back-loaded; it only gets harder and more intense as time passes. Which to me seems crazily ridiculous.

I am almost interested in finding out how spinning works--I think perhaps mostly because when I become a professor, I'd like to keep a spinning wheel in my office and use it when I'm on tele-cons and holding office hours.

It would be fun. But for now it's outside my time frame. I get knitting done in class and in colloquium, but I don't have time or space or money for a new hobby.

I can't, I can't, I can't stand...

2010-02-15T10:37:00.000-08:00

I can't stand ~~losing you~~ more snow. It won't stop falling! It's snowing again today. My friend's place, in DC, is essentially falling in. Another friend has fled Baltimore--fled it, I tell you!

Meanwhile I'm hoping to sign up for the food co-op and get tons of fresh vegetables and produce and fruit and eggs, and I'm beginning to doubt that they'll be able to grow anything.

I have a problem

2010-02-04T12:10:00.001-08:00

How am I supposed to eat healthy when I can find recipes like these?:

Lemon Drop Cupcakes

Unworldly silky fudge brownies

Scotcheroos

Molasses Bars

lemon cake with lemon frosting

Cinnamon cupcakes with honey frosting

I need to get a muffin tin or a cupcake tin or something... gah!

I love my slow cooker

2010-02-03T14:57:00.001-08:00

Cooking: Shredded Chicken Fajitas
Reading: The Demon and The City by Liz Williams

Today before running off to work I took the time to slap some stuff into the crockpot. And lo and behold, when I ducked back home 7 hours later, I had AMAZING and DELICIOUS shredded fajita chicken meat. This is probably the first thing I've cooked with chicken that I'd consider a success. My chicken tends to get quite dried out in the oven or on the stove top, even if I drown it in broth or oil, etc. But the slow cooker did the trick!

As a note, most crockpots or slow cookers instruct you to fill it no less than half full when cooking. Mine was barely 1/4 full, and as a result there was definitely a little browning going on around the edges. But still, delicious!

You will need:

1-4 chicken breasts, thawed
1 medium onion
1/4 of a green pepper (unless you actually like green pepper. then you'll probably want more)
1/4 of a red pepper (see above)
a couple of mushrooms (optional--I was out of these, but they would've been delicious)
seasoning
(you can use pre-packaged jerk or taco seasoning, but I made my own: a couple of teaspoons of paprika, chili powder, and garlic powder, with a touch of cumin, salt, and crushed red pepper)
1 cube of chicken bouillion
about 1 or 2 cups of water

1) trim your chicken and slice it into finger-wide chunks. Don't wory if these are too big--it will be falling apart when it's done
2) chop vegetables into reasonable sizes
3) put everything in the crockpot and add enough water to just barely cover everything. For me, this was 1 cup. If you have a lot of vegetables, you might want to limit yourself to a cup or two of water--you're not making soup here.

If you want, instead of water and a bouillion cube, you can just use chicken broth instead

4) cook on low for 6-8 hours. If you don't have a lot, like me, this might be done in 6 or 6 and a half hours. if your slow cooker is full, it might take the whole 8.

By the time this was done, the chicken was literally falling apart. I didn't have to use a fork or anything to shred it. I slapped together some quick tacos with tortillas,cheese and a little sour cream.

Since I have so little free time, I like to read when I cook. It's a good way to fit in two requirements: you know, that sustenance thing? as well as my undying need to read. Today I worked on Liz Williams' The Demon and the City. This is the sequel to her Snake Agent book, which I absolutely loved. She has a rich, powerful world that lies somewhere between classic noir and urban fantasy. In her futuristic Chinese world, here's a very thin line between human and evil, which I always like (I like to sympathize with my villains). Her pacing is always very good-- you move through at a nice pace, and it's difficult to put them down, but you can always pick one up again. Williams has a lovely grasp on real characters as well as a unique perspective on fantasy and mystery. Best of all, her novels are always very tangible--I can practically taste the blood and the smog in the market places, the salt spray of the sea on the houseboat, the medicinal tang of the laboratories.

If I could incorporate one part of her writing into my own, I'd go for the uniqueness of it. I know my own stories have that edge of the familiar to them--you know, every story's been told before, right? But Williams' books are powerfully distinct, and even if there is a common storyline in there (oh, hey, a boy meets girl, or a evil attempting to overthrow good), her stories remain above the common ground. That's something I'd love to be able to pick up.

New Things

2010-02-01T13:54:00.001-08:00

I played Settlers of Catan for the first time Friday!

It was utterly AMAZINGLY confusingly awesome. WAY better than monopoly.

I must acquire a set of Flux cards and maybe Munchkins and see if I can corner some friends into playing that.

Snow Defeats South

2010-02-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

Hah. It snowed this weekend. Everyone panicked. Hilarity ensued. Friday night, everything is well, I have a whole weekend and tons of plans laid out ahead of me. But everything went downhill from there (including me, eventually, on my rear. For a few feet, anyway). It snowed primarily on Saturday, and since people here have many concepts of hill and no concept of plow, it is still difficult to get around on the narrow back roads. Since I live in a tiny town, this holds for most of the roads, including my parking lot. I also currently lack a shovel (gasp!), so I couldn't dig my car out. So out went the plans for meeting old friends, having fantastic sushi, and then playing games until midnight. Instead I stayed in, read books, studied, and baked two dozen peanut butter cookies.

The peanut butter cookies were DELICIOUS, which is why there are now only three of them left. Hey, don't judge me. I have a deep love for baked goods! I ate other things too--I made popcorn, and I had eggs and toast once or twice, and I even baked some fantastic crispy shrimp!

Chunky Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe:

1 stick of butter, softened
1/2 to 1 cup chunky peanut butter
a handful of peanuts, shelled, no salt (optional)
a handful of mini chocolate chips (optional)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar + a tablespoon extra for rolling
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 egg
1 dollop of vanilla (or a tsp, if you must measure).

Beat butter and peanut butter together with a mixer until uniform. Beat in brown and white sugar, baking soda, and baking powder, scraping the sides, until uniform. Beat in egg and vanilla. You might want to pre-mix the egg, though with a high speed beater this wasn't a problem for me. Add half a cup of flour and beat it in as well. If the mixture is not too thick, add the next half, and beat mightily until it is well mixed. I had to fold and hand-mix the last 1/4 cup of flour. If you're including the peanuts and/or chocolate chips, fold them in last by hand; don't use a mixer.

You can let this sit in the fridge until it's easy to handle, but for me it was fine to work with right away.

Roll the dough into balls of any appropriate size. (1-2 inches). Roll these balls in the extra granulated sugar (on a plate, or in a bowl), and place a couple of inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. To get the characteristic pb cookie pattern, press the balls flat with the tines of a fork.

Bake in an oven pre-heated to 375 for 7-9 minutes. My oven runs a bit hot, so I preheated to 350 and left them in for 10-12 minutes. Note that when they first come out of the oven, done or not, because of all that peanut butter and butter they feel very soft. I checked mine by carefully lifting them with a spatula to see if their bottoms were a slightly darker golden brown. I did burn a batch, but not too badly to eat. Pop them on a cooling rack for a few minutes and enjoy!

NOTE: These are SWEET cookies. Very sweet. I'm sure some people will say too sweet. If you want a less-sweet cookie, you might consider finding an unsweetened peanut butter in the organic foods section of your grocery store, or cutting back on the sugar (to 1/4 of a cup each), or not rolling them in the sugar.

Just getting started

2010-01-25T16:04:00.000-08:00

Aside from exams, this semester begins with a report of my activities for the last semester. I distinctly remember being incredibly busy, but now I barely have 2 lines to rub together.

Roaring winds all last night, with a lot of rain. I came home late, from the post-qual party, and sat up later, listening to the weather. I'm on the top floor, so the rain drummed its fingers above me restlessly and the wind pulled me with fingers of sound. mmm. Delicious.

My Berry Pie did not turn out too well. I used premade crusts (you just unroll them and put them in pan), and the bottom didn't cook all the way through. Add to that the raspberries and blueberries and cherries were all frozen, so there wasn't quite as much juice as I'd thought; and the fact that it really wasn't very sweet at all; and together you have NotThatGood Pie, unfortunately. Fortunately, I'd like to try again. This time with twice the sugar, and the fruits sitting in it overnight so they can make some juices. Oh, and note to self: if you aren't using a gelatin based fruit additive, you don't need a thickener.

The Log Cabin Blanket progresses.

To do:
Finish Progress Report
Read for Steve's class
Study statistics
Work on TelObs stuff with Rachael

*sigh* busy already. Stats will be hard this semester, since I've never taken it before. Here's hoping I'll survive.

KWALITY

2010-01-23T20:19:00.000-08:00

First-year exam is over. It speaks to how well the blasted thing went that I'm considering going in tomorrow to take the half that only 2nd-years are supposed to take. I don't think it could possibly count against me, and I want to see--what sort of strength I'll need. I clearly have a lot to learn in the next year, but I feel pretty strong about the stuff I did remember, and do. And I am pretty good at the conceptual work in a number of specific areas.

I am currently taking the evening to play around on the internet, bake brownies, read young adult novels, and work on my Log Cabin Blanket.

The Log Cabin Style blanket is very interesting. It's difficult to find step-by-step instructions online. Essentially it's supposed to be easy: knit a rectangle, bind off, pick up stitches on any side, knit another rectangle outwards, bind off, then pick up stitches across both rectangles, knit another rectangle outwards, and bind off; repeat ad-nauseum. I had the damndest time discovering how to pick up stitches, and where I should be picking them up if I were doing this method. Also a little improvisation was required. A couple hints to anyone looking to start log cabin style as a newbie (it's fairly easy, so consider it!):

1) You're starting in the center and you knit outwards. So when you pick up stitches, you have to pick up the whole length of the side. You're going to need big needles if this is a blanket or large project. Just warning!

2) Picking up stitches is a way to cast on attached to a piece of knitting. You can pick up stitches where-ever you like--just pull a loop of yarn through any given hole and onto your needle. KnittingHelp.com has fantastic videos that show you how to do almost anything, including picking up stitches. The only trick for me, and for most people doing log cabin style, is that you have a loose end (of your new color)when you're starting to pick up stitches. Since I didn't know what to do with a loose end, I just tied mine on at a corner and worked from there. It's a little slapdash, but it works!

3) Be careful with your bind-offs for each of your rectangles. Specifically, look up a loose bind off like k2tog or k2togtbl (or the lace bind off), and use that. You might want to use the lace cast on for your initial cast on, too. Otherwise your product gets pinched at the edges.

4) Knowing how many stitches to pick up can be difficult. I think I picked up every OTHER row when I did my first picked up section (the brown in the picture), but since the brown is a *slightly* heavier super-bulky weight than my initial blue super-bulky weight, this makes the end stretch and flare out and be pinched all at once. It's tricky!

With luck later tonight I'll get a chance to try out a granola bar recipe. The trick is getting bars that stay together but aren't as hard as a rock. Wish me luck!

(P.S. I'm signed up for a couple of good astronomy classes and a horrid looking Bayesian Statistics course. I haven't done Statistics before, and this one apparently has a 2-course requisite. I might try and stick it out (honestly, nothing can be worse than 2 semesters of quantum mechanics), but I'm considering switching. My options are a bit limited--I could probably swing switching to either General Relativity (ew!) or a more introductory (for grad school) Statistics course. Boo! The trick is figuring out which of my fellow students are considering switching as well--being able to work with someone on homework is a large selling point.)

(P.P.S. I updated my ravelry page (I'm Cosmoknot on there) with a slew of books in my library/bookshelves and several stored in my queue, since there doesn't appear to be a way to put up a book that *isn't* known to ravelry. These are books I'm interested in, not ones that I have yet. so if anyone knows how to a) make a wishlist, b) get ravelry to read books that aren't in its database but are on, say, amazon, or c) figure out why the books that are on amazon aren't showing up in the database, let me know)

Glory Be

2010-01-18T12:05:00.000-08:00

I helped run the doghouse for last Friday's Public Night at our local observatory, the one where I drag all the undergrads for their labs. We were SWARMED with children in the form of a boyscout troop (or is it troupe?), and tons of parents with little ones. I was completely new to this--the first, and only, Public Night I've been to before, it was so cloudy we didn't even bother to open the domes, and I spent the whole two hours listening to stories from the other astronomers. So suddenly I was confronted with hordes of people. I could (barely) operate the two doghouse telescopes, and I hadn't the slightest idea how to find something fun to look at in the sky.

The sky did not behave. Clouds all up in the crown and dome during our half hour of set up. We fended off childrens and parents for a bit as we tried to get something from the fringes of the sky in the west. While we were busy, the sky cleared in the center, so GV did the Pleiades in the 6" and the entertaining. I fumbled with the automated 10" and suddenly my instrumentationalist instinct kicked in and I got it working. Bam, two stars to calibrate, and the next thing I know it's slewing to H and Kai Perseus. But no matter where we looked, the clouds knew. They'd cover things up in a dozen minutes. I switched the 10" back and forth from the Pleiades to H and Kai Perseus and even the Orion Nebula (GORGEOUSLY clear for a few minutes--we could see DUST clouds. from the earth. with our eyes and that telescope. I can scarcely believe it!).

We alternatively pleased and placated the kids. My instrumentationalist instincts kicked in when GV was gone and I had to reset the 6" to the Pleiades and I found them with ease. The kids loved H and Kai Perseus (all those thousands of tiny stars), enjoyed the Greek myths GV told, and were thoroughly fascinated by the wind up mechanism for the 6"'s tracking.

Now I'm back to work, finding that I have, oh, 5 days to study for the biggest exam in my life this far (only beat by the same thing next year that runs for TWO days instead). I am terrified that I don't know enough. Last semester's courses are not instinctual for me, the way instrumentation and radio astronomy are. I needed to work, and I'm shorted a week of the time I planned to do that work in.

On the plus side, when those are done I can pay my bills, arrange my labs, and take a breather.

Luck!

Freedom!

2009-12-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

I am free at last from the semester, like a chest-burster breaking out in Alien.

It's a very satisfying feeling. I won't be checking my grades until after Christmas. No need for the pressure. Here life is all reading books and seeing wonderful people.

I hear it snowed back at the university. HAH. That must be a terrifying sight to see, all those southerners panicking.

Here it continues to snow, and the sky is the same color as the ground--a phenomenon I strongly dislike, especially with the red orange overtones of sodium streetlights at night. It makes me feel as if everything were burning, unpleasantly.

It is difficult to get settled. I feel like I'm walking in a dream. I wish I had a list of things to do (you DO have a big stack o things to do)... well, okay, that helps.

Finish WSTAR work
figure out car and house insurance
call stupid billing people about my health insurance
finish christmas shopping (!!! FUCK)

glub glub

2009-12-14T08:48:00.001-08:00

glub, glub glub. glub glub.

The Great Convulsion

2009-12-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

So here we are. Last day of classes. Everything coming to a head.

I'm coasting. Not quite on top, but with my chin above water. Like being pushed by a reasonably sized coastal ocean wave--my feet don't touch the bottom, so it can send me anyway, but I'm pretty buoyant so I can still breathe. And for now I'll let it carry me along. It's my direction and my guidance. I can try to return to shore later (and we'll see if I have the strength for it).

Things to do today:
finish Steve's lab write up, gah!
finish Li's analytic write up
finish my motherfucking star.
study at least 2 hours solid for Li (which is 3 hours attempted, I believe).
sleep like hell.

Those are good goals. I have a lot of studying to do for the next couple of days, with a splendid reward on Saturday night in the form of a cookie-baking-plus-alcohol-drinking party.

I can do this. Just keep paddling... just keep paddling... paddle paddle.

Crazy Astronomers!

2009-12-01T14:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was fun! It consisted mostly of panicking about programming until 5 in the afternoon, panicking about a locked up key until 5:30, an hour and a half of break, and then 4 hours of lab followed by 8 hours of observing.

If you did your calculations carefully you should see that this leaves us at about 7am, which is the time I was driving home this morning. I was surprised and a little pissed at the early morning runners who decided that the road was the best place in the world to do their jogging. Seriously, people? It's still dark out, and you think that you need to cross the road at the blind spot on the downside of a hill? get outta my way! *honkhonk*

I made it home accident-free and crashed until the afternoon. Now I'm all wired, which is good since I have a butt-load of homework to do.

Thanksgiving was fantastic. yay for family! and plans have been laid--INTRICATE, UNWIELDY, AWESOME plans--for getting home for the holidays. Glee!

Now I just need to survive the next three weeks. *sigh* at least one final has been commuted into "project". That will help.

Telescopes of the Southwest United States Part 2

2009-11-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

Other things I've done for the first time now:

Found bones in the wood.

Or wished was the first time, but it isn't:

1am IHOP party!

Hah. Now I am back in town but still sort of drifty and out of it. Trying to catch up--as always. There's work to do, data to reduce, people to see, problems to fix.... sleep to catch up on, I suppose. Family to talk to.

TelObs tonight followed closely by sleep and then homework.

Telescopes of the Southwest United States

2009-11-11T18:45:00.000-08:00

Things I did for the first time on my tour of the telescopes of the southwest US:

been above 9500 feet
experienced altitude sickness (just a bit)
saw at least 10 deer at once
went sledding on something that wasn't snow (in this case, white sand)
climbed a sand dune (that was freakin hard!)
gone through border patrol
peed in the woods
run an optical telescope
Judged a telescope operation based on its weird slewing noise
seen the sun set from 9500 feet
seen the milky way AT FIRST GLANCE (even before my eyes adjusted--my GOD it was gorgeous)

Things I wish I could say I did for the first but I've actually done before:
Swung from part of a telescope
Climbed around on a mesh catwalk while it swung around, so I could look down through the mesh at the earth spinning away below my feet (eek! at least this time it wasn't 500 ft up, just a few dozen)
thrown pine cones at someone
lived without the internet (well... sort of)
cursed unknown weather gods.
lived in a cabin on site of an observatory
fallen in love with New Mexico *sigh*
crunched through deep carpets of pine needles

The trip has gone well. We spent a crazy couple of days running between Kitt Peak National Observatory, the giant Mirror Lab, and the location of the Large Binocular Telescope. We finally ended up here at Apache Point Observatory, where we settled down for a luxurious 4 days of frantic observing. We had three gorgeous days with photometric seeing, and tonight, when we need the most data, the weather is crappy and our seeing is 2 arcsec (here's a hint: that's TERRIBLE).

Friday we go to the VLA. I can't wait, radio being my specialty and the VLA being one of the epitomes of powerful radio science these days. Then I can add something else to the second list: cooked without microwave! since they're not allowed at the VLA.

Missing home. Lots of work to do--Li's homework and WSTAR data (hey, I actually worked on that!) and emailing Arecibo about the proposal and more. Oh, and did I mention studying? so I can actually understand what's going on? that would be useful!

First All Nighter

2009-11-03T03:03:00.001-08:00

My first all nighter tonight, in the quest of a difficult homework assignment.

I'm surprised at the weight of it. Like my shoulders and thighs are bearing heavy bags. (which, I suppose, they are. :P.). But my fingers, too, are heavier.

Gonna poke a few more points into this set. I can write up an answer to 4, calculate some stuff for number 2, and see if I can pull anything out of my ass for number 5. number 1 is hopeless. number 3 is probably fairly hopeless with the amount of time I have left before class.

Shoot. what am I going to do with the car until I can drive home at 10:45 and pass out?

Speckle-tacular!

2009-10-29T13:53:00.001-07:00

Even for me the level of stress has been high at work lately. I ended up visiting The Twin a few weeks ago for a weekend, and when I got back on Sunday I discovered that one of my profs had decided to surprise us with a lab. So on the following Monday and Tuesday I was up at the local observatory trying to figure out why the camera suddenly stopped taking images and hauling on a giant 100 year old telescope and praying that the tracking gears didn't turn off by the time we finally got things in focus. I stayed up there until 3am both nights, and we had so much trouble with some of the data that we had to trim some of the parts off the lab, but on the plus side we got some sweet images of Jupiter and resolved a lovely binary despite it being smaller than the seeing would allow.

Scientific aside:
(What I mean by that is that the atmosphere is full of fluctuations that keep you from distinguishing really small things, like two stars that are very very close together. Ie, binaries. Basically the atmosphere bumps your image around so much that you can't distinguish between a point of light that might've come from one star or a point that'd come from the other. But... there are secret methods! Speckle interferometry, specifically. You see the atmosphere is lumpy and tangled and turbulent, but it acts kind of like a whole bunch of lenses (like from your glasses) spread fairly evenly across the sky. So you can use those lenses and some statistical methods to pick out which points of light belong to which of the two stars in a binary and thus figure out how far apart they are! fun!)

Anyway, the Wednesday after that was the day before a large homework set was due so I stayed up until 4am finishing it. Thursday night I started working on the huge set due on Monday, but I also had to plan the picnic, which took up all of Friday and Saturday. Sunday I came in and worked until 3am, Monday until 4am. Tuesday I got home by 2am, and last night (this morning) by 4am.

So basically, sleep deprivation is prevalent, and now I have to start a new lab, a proposal, and a homework set.

It's very strange, though. Once I finish a homework set (especially a big one like I just turned in), a great calm envelopes me. It's cathartic--just letting go and being free. Even if I have a ton of other stuff piling up around me, for a few minutes anyway I feel rested and relaxed.

This weekend I am going to buy a cheap, small laptop from someplace like walmart or AT&T or something. we're talking $200, for reals now.

What bothers me the most

2009-10-25T18:57:00.001-07:00

I think what really bothers me the most about being in my field is the fact that most people are convinced that there isn't a problem.

Even here, where I've found a welcoming environment and classes I enjoy and challenging, interesting research--even here we have at most 3 female faculty and 1 African-American. Even here, there's a lack of parity in admitted graduate students, and at every other level.

These people are SCIENTISTS. Look at the data! And don't try that "Well, [x group of minorities] just don't seem to be interested in the field." Scientist, remember? Ask why! Look for causes and correlations. Try experimental techniques (like putting some of x group on your recruiting posters, or nominating them for awards, or hiring them). Plot results. Repeat experiments. TRY.

Instead I get the "shrug", or the "yeah" and moving on, or, *shudder* worse yet, the "Well, I wish there were more of x group as well." Yeah, some of your best friends are x group too, right?

Fall

2009-10-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

Autumn has come at last. The fall air closes its crisp mouth over the auburn and cinnamon leaves. Outside, decades of pine needles lay gathered like straw colored hair, sweetening in the sun. The air without sun has a bite to it, and the air full of sun is yellow as sunset, waiting for winter to gather.

Last week at my food coop I got apple cider, more broccoli than you can shake a stick at, honey, 2 lbs of apples, 2 lbs of potatoes, sprouts, and bibb lettuce. oh, and a pumpkin!

too bad I can't make pie out of it--it's too big. But I will carve it and roast its seeds and love it and call it George.

In other news: homework eats me alive. I have to finish a huuuuge lab report for Tuesday, and a huuuuge homework set for Monday. And then there's the weekly medium-huge homework set for Thursday, and meetings galore, my flu shot this week, I need to reduce data from my thesis, I should write letters and call people, mail packages, get kittens, go shopping, go to the halloween party, clean and organize my apartment, study, learn, study some more.... oh, did I mention I started my research? It looks pretty neat! But you know, more time.

(I think my head may explode. If so, remember that I love you all and I am made of candy)

Homeworks

2009-10-14T17:53:00.001-07:00

Yep. They're coming to eat you.

Delicious food and deadly homework

2009-10-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

I was here until 4am this morning, and came back after 3.5 hours of sleep. nrrrr. But I also got permission to turn in the programming/graphing part of the homework in before today is over. So; yay for that!

On a more positive side: a fantastic haul from the CSA this week!

1/2 gallon apple cider (!!!)
1 giant turnip (stew!)
5 radishes (what am I going to DO with them?)
2/3 lb of green beans, 1 lb of roma tomatoes (nom!)
1 lb of red apples of some sort
2 jalapenos (oh, shoot!)
2 heads of bibb lettuce (the guinea pig rejoices. So do I!)
1 dozen beautiful eggs
1 lb of granola (I have so much granola that I am going to start making granola bars with melted peanut butter)
2 loaves of bread (I splurged with my store credit... don't know why I got two, but they look great!)
3 small loaves of pumpkin bread (! these are like the mini-loaves from the farmer's market back home. They're very delicious, as I have not had so many baked goods in recent times)
2 zucchini (I am SO making walnut zucchini bread this weekend)

They had walnuts and chestnuts, too, but I didn't get any because I don't know if I could crack them--I don't have a cracker, nor a mallet. Might be challenging.

Last night I made tacos and today, a salad. Things are looking up, foodwise.

Sweet, Sweet, Spacey Freedom

2009-10-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

I got my cast off! Success on all fronts! the ankle is sore and the muscle has disappeared (!) but I've done a lot of walking in the last couple days and I think that's helping.

This has been a productive weekend of getting ready for life, since we had a break here and for reasons unknown to me the homework content for this week went down. I kind of view it as starting over at the beginning of the semester. I purchased a carpet, a dining room table, appropriate clothing for work, and a new lamp. And I got my hair cut and decided to try a perm for the first time (boy is it WEIRD). I also started a new knitting project (doh!) and made good progress on scarf #1 out of 2. I frogged #3 and will have to start it over (but I got some black yarn now, so I think that will go well with the dark purple. Somehow.).

I also gave some serious thought to getting some kitties. There are two brothers at one of the local shelters who are pretty young, and adorable. I think, however, that I might just have to wait until next year, when I live in a better place. Or... until I have more money. Also I worry that the guinea pig will be sad because I will pay less attention to her. And I love the little piggy. Even if she's a spoiled brat sometimes.

Today I tried something exciting with my squash. I call it spice cake:

Squash Spice Cake

2 c flour
1 1/4 c sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 stick (1/2 c) of butter
1-2 cups of boiled, mashed, skinned squash (I used 2 small yellow squash for this and did my best to pick out the seeds. Not sure why.)

1) mix eggs, milk, and butter until relatively smooth.
2) in a separate bowl, blend/sift/stir flour, sugar, cinnamon, spices, soda, and salt until well mixed.
3) Pour dry mix into wet mix slowly while beating. Beat until smooth or uniform
4) add squash and mix well.
5) pour in a greased 9x13 or whatever type of pan you like and cook for 40 min at 350 degrees.

NOM

Tonight there will be joy!

2009-09-25T14:00:00.001-07:00

Eggrolls with Napa Cabbage:

This is based off of many other web recipes. They all pretty much run the same, so I thought it might be beneficial to post one here.

1/2 lb or 6 cups shredded or finely chopped napa cabbage
1/2 cup shredded carrot
1/2 cup fresh bean sprouts
1/2 cup finely chopped/minced onion (the sweet cooking onions work great for this)
1/4 cup chopped sweet pepper (to taste, really)
1/4 tsp garlic powder (it's hard to get fresh garlic to distribute as evenly as the powder)
1/8 tsp chili powder (or more if you feel bold--you can also use a bit of finely chopped hot pepper)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 or 2 eggs
2 dozen egg roll wrappers
1 or 2 tablespoons of cornstarch slowly added to with water, to seal the wrappers. (you can also use a lightly beaten egg to seal the edges, though it's messy)

1) Mix up all your vegetables, soy sauce, garlic and chili powders until well distributed (a big salad fork works well).

2) Scramble your eggs together and cook them in a medium heat skillet. Chop them up finely once cooked. Add to vegetable mix and stir gently. You can mix in a 1/2 teaspoon of cornstarch here if you want, to hold things together

3) Lay out your wrappers. (I find it easier to do these all at once before step 4, but if there are two of you working you can have one person fill and the other person fry). Add 2 tablespoons of filling to a wrapper (or use your best judgement here--you'll soon discover how much is too much). Apply the beaten-egg or cornstarch-water glue to the edges of the wrapper and roll it up. It should mostly hold together--if not, use more. I prefer to use my fingers for this, since it's more precise, but you can use a spoon.

4) Fry in hot oil until golden brown (remember to roll if you're using a skillet). Put them out on paper towels to drain.

and Nom! Tasty egg rolls for you!

Magneto Awkwardynamics

2009-09-24T15:01:00.001-07:00

At the beginning of class today, as one student went off in search of another who hadn't shown yet, my professor made a comment that the first one was using "the Chinese social link".

I'm feeling guilty for not speaking up, but to be fair I wasn't entirely sure what he was referring to. Still, if this is one of those "they're all Asian students so they must all be connected" thing, I think my anger is a bit justified.

In other news, I'm a big frickin hypocrite, as I ... um... well... accidentally insulted another professor today (?!). I was endeavoring to make a joke when he was explaining why one equation looked a certain way on the board (he eventually said that "we all have our little obsessive-compulsive tendencies" or something; I had suggested the word "neuroticisms" when he was hesitating), and it went... awkwardly. Joy for my voice recorder, which now has that whole conversation on tape. *facepalm*

Finally: what do you do when someone you don't know tries to flag you down in the car in broad daylight? Especially when you're going slow and full eye contact is made? (here's a hint: no easy answer, and they're all bound to be embarrassing).

I've had my share of incredibly awkward experiences, but I have to admit that most of the time it's not my fault that people ask me crazy stuff. (There was a random guy who proposed to me on the street; or the guy who wanted me to call an apartment for him and find out if his ex girl was still working there).

So, share your awkward, weird public or private experience?

Cooking Therapy

2009-09-23T20:14:00.001-07:00

So, after becoming overwhelmed with work, I had to find a way to take a break. And something other than the addicting internets would be best. So, lo and behold, in steps my Community Shares Agriculture with my bi-weekly food shares. This week I picked up:

1.6 oz garlic (yay!)
2 heads of bibb lettuce
1 lb of concord grapes
2 lbs of apples (apples! awesome!)
one ENORMOUS head of Nappa Cabbage. This takes up 1 shelf in the fridge by itself!
2 small yellow squashes of some sort.
4 orange sweet peppers
2 lbs of sweet potatoes
1 dozen beautiful eggs
1 pound of the most amazing granola I've ever had

and using some of my credit from coming late to the season I got a loaf of bread and 2 lbs of cooking onions.

Pics to follow.

I stirfried a leaf of the cabbage with olive oil, garlic, and chopped onion. I think it turned out all right. probably too much olive oil. Then I crushed the grapes and made fresh grape juice. I know, it's a sin right? concord grapes? I killed them? but I did. The skins are so tough and the flesh is so chewy and the seeds are so big and the flavor is AMAZING that this was the best plan. And it was cold and sweet and delicious, so, win!

Stellar Awesome Red Jeans!

2009-09-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

Graduate School has risen from the depths like some many-fanged beastie and consumed me. I can just hear the music: duuun DUN...duuuun DUN.... DUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUN!. (or insert Jaws theme here if you can't translate that). Literally, however, I just do not have enough time for everything. I have homework due Friday, and chapters of reading to do to understand it; programming and a new homework set due Monday or so next week; and a new homework set in the never-ending, perpetual-tuesday-homework series. And I have to organize papers for my first TA job, find a grader for my second TA job, and contact my professor for my third TA job. And I need to reduce data for my work this summer, and fix my computer so I can get AT that data.

On top of that, my Arecibo proposal is coming up in about a week and I don't think I can ask my collaborators to look at it overnight. And I am thinking about putting in a second proposal for some supplementary data to the Arecibo proposal. Additionally, I need to pick a research topic for my research credits this semester. And I have to give a talk next week Tuesday. And tomorrow I have to pick up my food and my packages, and I wanted to go look at kittens but I don't think I'll have time.

And I should study so the homeworks don't kill me as much every week, and write letters to my family, and thank you letters to my undergraduate scholarship places so they know what happened to me.

And I need to clean my apartment and my car and buy a rug and vacuum and finish unpacking and set up the books and my desk and move my couch and do the dishes...

*explodes*

Knitting things!

2009-09-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite web-zines, Knitty.com, just updated to their September issue. They have free patterns and contests, so it's worth signing up.

I'm especially excited by this Hex Pattern, which more than ever convinces me that I really want to start knitting lace. I like nice warm scarfs and all, but I really want to make beautiful flowing ponchos and shawls for my wardrobe, and I think getting the thinnest of yarns and using lace patterns is the best way to do this. If you've ever heard of Eunny Jang and her Print o the Wave stole, you might know why I'm interested: it's GORGEOUS! Eunny's main site is my introduction to lacemaking.

The main inhibitors? Time and Money, as always. I'm currently up to my elbow in three scarves, and they're luscious, and it's the right season for scarves anyway. I'd like to finish them before I start lacing. And of course, I'm going to need different needles and yarn (maybe even thread) for lace. But I am nonetheless excited about it.

Here's a task for you today:
Set yourself a short knitting goal. (Mine is to make a lace bookmark). You have one month! Post and let me know what your goal is and keep track of your progress!

So Much New

2009-09-09T05:23:00.000-07:00

New Things:

New City:
That's right, I've moved away from the land of quality cheese and adequate popcorn, to the land of delicious cherries and no popcrn whatsoever. I live in a Small Town now. I realized this when I went for a drive last week and determined that there really isn't much else besides what branches off of the main road. Now the main road is quite long and there is a lot of shopping, and the university is at the end of it... but really, if you go anywhere else (okay, maybe follow one cross street) there's nothing there. In half an hour drive I start seeing signs like "Watch for Fog on Mountain". Mountain? that explains why my car's been groaning for the past 10 minutes. Poor vehicle--it doesn't like inclines, and we're surrounded by them.

On the other hand, the view is great. So many trees that there are rabbitholes everywhere. Beautiful star shaped flowers grow along the edges of the parking lot and pool into some of the spaces, filling the air with a sweet scent in the mornings. At dusk I get the cicada effect--it reminds me of Puerto Rico, the way all the insects call out to the dying light. You can even hear it indoors. And coming down a mountain, the land falls away like a blanket, and you can see forever.

New Field:
That's right, I've converted to Astronomy fully now. Sort of. Actually there is not in fact that much difference between Astronomy and Physics. I mean it! I mean, the topics we cover are clearly astronomically focused, and yet at the same time we're delving into and expanding thermal physics and gas dynamics. I will admit that the approach is different--look at the labs! Last week I spent 4 hours in the doghouse at the university's local observatory, with a huge brilliant moon ruining the seeing and stars like pinpricks and the wind blowing fresh and cold above us, squinting through different eyepieces of a 6" refractor. AWESOME! so much better than shoving little resistors and capacitors into a breadboard and wondering why the hell my signal is still zero. And in November the department is taking the entire lab class out to Kitt Peak to do onsite observing and touring of various telescopes there.
New People:
Well, I miss my friends and family like nothing else. It's crazy to come home alone and just be myself in my big empty, boxed and unsettled apartment. But the people here are very nice. Albeit I've only met the ones in the department, but the level of welcome is almost unbelievable. And when I compare it to the physics department back home--well let's just say there are quite a few differences. I haven't found a new advisor yet, though I'm meeting with a guy next week who does cosmology instrumentation (woo!).
New Experiences:
Besides learning how to deal with the heat and humidity, figuring out how to keep my car from overheating, learning to drive in NYC (where Twin lives) and pay tolls and park (it's all confusing there), I've managed to sprain my ankle when I.... um... dove from this burning building to save 18 kittens and a bird. That's right. Anywho, I have a cast on and have learned how to walk with crutches. It's a big pain in the ass, but I'm getting pretty good at it. Fortunately, I should be able to have the cast off this Friday and then, who knows, a walking boot or something?
I've also signed up for a local Community Shares Agriculture, and I get my first batch of food tonight! I don't know what I'm going to get, but I'll let you know tomorrow and also update you on what I plan to do with it. If I can get some baking soda, vinegar, cooking wine and cooking sherry, I should be equipped to cook almost anything!

Knitting:
I've taken a passionate interest in scarves, and am currently working on three of them. Yes, I realize that's a bit excessive. I'll share more as I get some pictures, but one is a beautiful brown and orange, my first time doing stripes, the second is turquoise blue in the Ocean Current pattern (from that book of patterns inspired by the ocean), and the third is purple in a design I'm inventing.

2009-08-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is me. I had my wisdom teeth out yesterday. My cheeks are so big that I can see them when I glance down. I feel like I've packed them with nuts in preparation for winter.

I had laughing gas (nitrous oxide... let's see, that would be NO3, right?) to put me under, and let me tell you, that was the trippiest experience of my life. The room started to spin and my arms and legs started to tingle and it felt like I was moving in slow motion and the dentist and his assistant were at x20 speed. I closed my eyes and the darkness and the weird 70s music and my body all blurred together in one giant spiral, spinning in on each other, and then they did things in my mouth. And then I opened my eyes, a little more oriented, to find out that they were only done with the first stage. There were at least two more stages of them cramming things between my teeth, and a stage where the assistant kept pushing on my jaw and nearly closed off my trachea in her efforts. And there were drills and pliers and other things. But the most important part was that it was fine. A little freaky with the crunching noises, but not that big of a deal.

When they were done and after they had x-rayed me and I'd come up out of the gas I cried just a little bit--not because it hurt, but because it had all been so much, and they'd left me alone and I was worried and scared and disoriented. I would say that having someone to pick you up and help you get your prescriptions and get you home and settled is the most important thing. Mom and I don't get along real well but it was really good to see someone who knew me and cared about me when I was ready to leave.

Surprisingly, I found myself quite well able to talk, and now (about 22 hours later), the numbness is gone (even though my root was exposed and they were worried about long term numbness). However, I have to admit that I am RAVENOUS. I can't even eat soup for another 3 hours, so all I've had is 4 milkshakes in the past 24 hours. And a pudding cup. No straws. Seriously, though, I would kill to get down a vasty cheeseburger with sauteed mushrooms and crispy onions. And some bacon on the side. Plus some potatoes.

Wisdom Teeth Food

Milkshake:

Get a big glass.
Pack half full of ice cream of your favorite flavor (vanilla, or chocolate--no crunchy bits!)
Fill the rest with milk.
Stir until it's a good texture.
Drink (no straw!)

Orange Smoothie: (for when you get sick of milkshakes)

Freeze some vanilla yogurt
Chip out 1/3 of a big glass of vanilla frozen yogurt (or vanilla ice cream might work--but at this point in time you probably need protein! go for the yogurt!)
Add a half cup of milk
Fill the rest of the glass with orange juice.
Stir until it reaches a creamy consistency.
Drink (no straw!)

Soon I'm going to upgrade to soup. I can't wait. :)

Juicy Chicken Dilemma

2009-06-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

I have a problem, and that problem is chicken. I want to like chicken--I really do! As fowls go, it's readily available and reasonably healthy AND can be purchased without bones if need be.

But I can't for the LIFE of me cook a juicy chicken breast. Without frying it. Frying is cheating and also not very healthy.

I tried, really I did. I dug around to find recipes on the internet and combined a few of them to come up with my own garlic-paprika crusted chicken. Theoretically it doesn't matter what you put on your chicken, at least when it comes to how the chicken itself cooks, right? Turns out that's not true, but ANYWAY. I love paprika and I love garlic. So I tossed in a few other items--all of which are delicious--and it LOOKED great when I pulled it out of the oven!

But it was dry on one end and medium-dry at the other end. Shootshootshoot. Does anyone have any advice? Perhaps if I'd cooked it for less time...

Parmesan, Garlic, and Paprika Crusted Chicken

1/2 cup of bread crumbs
1 tbsp paprika
1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, shredded or crumbled
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped ( 1/2 tbsp of minced garlic will also work, but not garlic salt)
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1 to 2 boneless chicken breasts
1/8 cup olive oil
tin/aluminum foil

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Clean and trim the chicken breasts. Maybe even flatten them. place each individual breast on an individual tin foil packet big enough to wrap over and close around them. paint or drizzle them with the olive oil.

2) Mix bread crumbs, paprika, and parmesan on a large plate until evenly distributed.

3) Roll the breasts through the dry mixture and deposit them back in their foil.

4) Sprinkle the chopped garlic on top of the chicken and the chopped onion around the chicken. Drizzle with the remainder of the olive oil if you like. If you want more of a bite, dust some more paprika on top.

5) Close the packets and bake the chicken for 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Now, when I was done, I had to add
6) broil on high for 45 seconds
because the breadcrumb mixture was a bit soggy. Perhaps this is why my own chicken turned out dry. Maybe I broiled too long.

I know this recipe would probably turn out very tasty if the chicken was sliced, rolled, and quickly fried in a pan with oil. But I really wanted to try baking. And it looks lovely. So... any tips on keeping chicken moist?

I'm a real scientist!

2009-06-18T09:02:00.001-07:00

I feel a bit like Pinocchio when I say that. But it also feels good. When I was down at Arecibo Observatory finishing up last summer's research, I had a great time. I did finish the new receiver (relatively speaking--it was being installed on the platform last thing I heard), AND I teamed up with some collaborators who are staff scientists to submit an observing proposal! Observing proposals are requests for telescope time--if I'm awarded it, I can use the telescope for my ~~nefarious~~ scientifically-motivated plans. Heh.

I've started a new knitting project, but it's going badly. I'm using circular needles for the first time ever and... well... okay to be fair I'm also trying to make a hat for the first time ever. And I'm not following a design--I'm trying to do something logical. It seems to make sense to me that if you want a nice round winter hat, you just knit and knit and decrease after a while. And continue decreasing. Okay, it might turn out pointy, but still, it should work! right? I guess we'll find out.

Uncovered a neat new band: Sensuous Enemy, which is apparently a dark techno band. Also there's a band called Battles whom I am really starting to like (I heard the song Atlas at a friend's house). They are creepy but neat.

The kittens are doing well. No new pictures of them instead so I give you the following:

Yeah, the kittens are kind of like that. Cute, but dumb. The Twin and I visited the kitten store, which has many small kittens running around. They are very small and snuggly and they love to curl up and purr--but it doesn't last long. Soon they are tearing through the store after a piece of string.

Apartment hunting goes well. I think I know where I will end up in fall--just need to call and arrange. Try as hard as I might, I haven't really been able to use logic in these decisions. I honestly visited a dozen places when I went searching, and while I can logically explain and rank each of them (I have a complicated system based on four criteria: cost, location, like, and pet-friendliness), I still knew almost as soon as I saw the apartment which one I was going to go with. It's not even that it's significantly nicer than the others--my brain just appears to have gone, "want!" and away we go.

Tales from Food Science Land

2009-05-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

Just studying for my food science exam tomorrow, and I came across some useful advice. Lots of it, actually, but here's a sampling:

Eat More Soy: Soy is damn good for you. First off, it gets you protein without any of the pesky extra cholesterol (which comes from animal products only). Second, soy contains phytoestrogen, which, like it sounds, is shaped a bit like estrogen, that hormone that both men and women have. The accumulated effects of estrogen in the ovaries or mammary glands (yes, for guys too--guys can and do get breast cancer) is related to increased rates of cancer in these areas.
So what can Soy do for you? Well those phytoestrogens, like I said, are shaped like estrogen, so they can get stuck in places where estrogen might normally stick, blocking the effects of estrogen. So they help reduce risks for ovarian and breast cancer.

By the way, I hate tofu, miso, and most soy-based sauces. And soy milk is nasty to me (what can I say? I like cow milk). So how does one get soy into one's diet when one does not like these things? Or how about healthy alternatives for picky kids?

For me the best way is edamame which is frankly delicious and super easy to make.

Delicious and Fun Soy for Kids (and Adults too!)
1 cup frozen soy beans in pod.
2+ cups of water.

Bring the water to a vigorous boil. Add the frozen soy beans (try to get the unsalted kind--like we need more sodium in our diet, right?) and bring it back to a boil. Boil for 7-10 minutes or until beans are no longer ... crunchy. Salt to taste (or don't--they're delicious without it!) and eat. Don't eat the shell. I mean, you can, they're not *deadly* or anything, they're just very fibrous and tough and not tasty at all.

Fun for kids 'cause you can pop them out of their little shells at each other like BB guns.

I absolutely love edamame--to the point where it's starting to take the place of snack foods like crackers and chips in my diet. Slowly but surely!

LaTeX

2009-05-07T05:30:00.000-07:00

Today is the day to learn LaTeX!

Well not much to learn really--I found a site of LaTeX Commands and how to use them and I'm going to follow them and use them when appropriate. Going to type up my work for the Thermal Project and see how that works out.

If you are new to LaTeX you might consider using Jext as your word processor. It includes lots of options for markup and will color the appropriate commands--so you can use it to see if you are doing things right.

Thermal Physics Project

2009-05-04T20:24:00.000-07:00

I begin work on my project for thermal physics this week. It's due Friday--I know, I am running late. Sometimes that's the way things work.

Requirements: 3 pages of work/writing/calculations "on a problem." Not very specific!

What I intend to do: Rederive neutron stars in some fashion. Or just degenerate stars. Or maybe just play along with the equilibrium equation of a star and see what happens.

In any given star you've got something pushing out (radiation pressure) and something pulling in (gravitational force/unit area = gravitational pressure). For a star like our sun, these are about equal--the material's trying to fall into the center of the sun due to gravity, but it keeps running into other stuff and, eventually, combining with that other stuff to make new stuff + energy/light, which pushes everything back out.

Now for all stars, eventually you're going to run out of stuff that can combine and make energy. You've started with something light, probably hydrogen or at most helium, and run hydrogen into more hydrogen to make helium, and helium into hydrogen to make, oh, Lithium or something like that. And then you run that into something else and so on until you end up with iron.

Now the problem with iron is that when you run iron atoms together, or iron + a hydrogen, or iron + anything else, it doesn't release energy when they smack together and stick. Instead, it starts to cost energy to smack those things together and make them stick. The star doesn't want to do this, because it's lazy, like all things. It doesn't want to put in the work. Or perhaps more imagine it that it is not human so it can't have human emotions like "motivation" and "inspiration." there's nothing around to make it do that extra work to make those things stick.

What does that mean? Well eventually you're going to have lots of iron, but it's not going to be making new things + energy, so the radiation pressure, the energy that was pushing it out, falls off and disappears. But gravity is definitely still working, and it is still going to try to pull things together.

Now here is where things get fuzzy. I know you get the following: some sort of large boomish sort of event, followed by some sort of condensing of the core. The star repels its envelope, the hot outer gas and material. Whether it does this via going supernova (and blowing up the rest of the star, too), or just by pushing the envelope off and letting the rest of the core fall in on itself (to become a white dwarf or a neutron star or a black hole, depending on its mass), I am not sure. So I don't know precisely how this works. Why would it push that stuff off first? why not just let all of that stuff fall in? Observational evidence says it doesn't (otherwise how could something small like the earth get big nuclei like those for cobalt or iron? we're not hot enough to make them--we must have "rolled up" remnants of blown-off star bits)

UPDATE: well, investigating. We'll see what happens

The Best Astronomy Pictures

2009-05-04T04:57:00.000-07:00

If you don't already know about it, you should take a look at Astronomy Picture of the Day, which you can find by google-searching APOD. As you can see, it's quite beautiful. I love to save some of the pictures and use them as my desktop background. One of my favorite type of images are those that use prolonged exposure, like the one from Friday: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090501.html

Knitting and pictures

2009-05-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

Newbie Ribbed Scarf:

So I started knitting, not this past winter holiday season, but the one before. I borrowed my older sister's Stitch 'n Bitch book while we were at her house for holiday. It was a fun read and I figured out how to cast on right away. Then I promptly put it away and forgot about it. Two weeks later--after unraveling many things and putting them back together--I started a nice ambitious newbie project--a ribbed scarf. It is quite skinny--only 30 stitches across--with k-3, p-3 as the pattern. And it ended up loooong! I wanted it to go around my neck once and come back to the front, which it does, but it's definitely half again as long as I am tall. At least. Okay, I'm short, it's true, but still, this is beastly long in size. Maybe 8 feet.

I like this as a newbie to knitting, and I think it is a good simple pattern for other newbies because it teaches you how to do several things: the knit stitch, the pearl stitch, and how to move between knit and pearl (because you have to move the thread to the back when you are done pearling and to the front when you are done knitting).

The fun thing about knitting is that once you get into a pattern you can do it in the dark. You can feel it with your fingers as you knit. You don't have to watch--though I usually did--you can do other things with your mouth and eyes. Like watch TV. And talk. Or, you know, sing. :)

Want the precise pattern? leave me a comment and I'll see if I can dredge something up, though like I said it seems to run, "cast on, knit 3, pearl 3, repeat until tired."

Adventurous

2009-05-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

I think goals and dreams are both important things to have. And I want to learn to push my boundaries, to challenge myself. So heretofore, before I leave for Graduate School, I am going to try something new:

Knitting Goal for Summer 2009: I want to try double-pointed needles to knit in the round. Probably a hat in that lovely paprika color, or maybe some socks.

Cooking Goal for Summer 2009: I want to find and bake one recipe off of TasteSpotting, that most delicious of websites. Maybe with lemon curd. Lemon curd sounds delicious.

Writing Goal for Summer 2009: I want to submit my poetry with intent to publish. R. says it's ready--it would be nice to see it show up somewhere.

Astronomy Goal for Summer 2009: I want to buy and read The Physical Universe by Shu.

and, for fun, Nerdy Goal for Summer 2009: finish either Okami or Final Fantasy X.

There. I feel productive.

Quick and Easy Breakfast

2009-05-03T13:15:00.001-07:00

Here's a quick and easy breakfast in the morning:

1 large egg (70cals)
2 slices of your favorite cheese--sharp cheddar for me! (~100 cals). If you are feeling adventurous, try cream cheese
1/2 whole wheat bagel (~130 cals)
1 tsp of water

Try to eat whole wheat when you can. It has a lot of vitamins in it. Enriched flour has had vitamins or minerals added to it that were not there originally. Fortified flour has had extra vitamins or minerals added to it, usually to replace nutrients lost during processing.

Put a skillet on medium-low heat and crack the egg into it. Open the yolk so it spreads out on the top. Split and toast the bagel--in another skillet if you must--and put the cheese on one half. When the egg white has turned... well, white... and is no longer very runny if you poke it, toss the 1 tsp of water onto the skillet and cover for 1-2 minutes. Remove the cover. If there is excess water remaining on the skillet, pour it out. Flip your egg over for 1 minute, then add on top of the cheese.

voila! sandwich!

What is your favorite fruit?

2009-05-03T13:12:00.001-07:00

I love fruit. It's pretty healthy and it is darned tasty to boot. I am not very good at cooking with it yet, but I will eat it plain anyway.

So favorites?

Cherries. Absolutely at the top. I love their flavor and texture and juice.

Blackberries may be my favorite berry--though fresh raspberries make for stiff competition. Strawberries are very good, but the dark sweetness of blackberries is a little more appealing.

Otherwise, pears (I had one for breakfast this morning!), apples, pineapple if fresh, papaya, oranges. I don't much like oranges--too much work, and too much mess.

Cooking, Knitting, Writing, Astronomy

2009-05-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

Why do you knit?

I love the power in being able to make things for myself--the ability to create something beautiful. and with yarn, no less! I'm a newbie at this, so I'll share tips that I uncover as I learn.

Why do you cook?

One of the best ways to lose weight is to cook your own food.

For one, you can better control the size of what you eat.
Next, you gain a better understanding of what goes into the foods you enjoy. Balance that with a reasonable amount of understanding and you can figure out healthy substitutes.
When you splurge, such as at a fast food restaurant, you are more likely to go overboard--to not only get a burger and fries, but dessert as well. This is less likely in your own home.
When you eat at home, you are more likely to be eating leisurely--taking your time to cook and prepare your food. You can notice more easily when you are full.
Finally, you can better track and regulate your intake in your own home.

It takes 3500 food calories to gain or lose a pound. This is true whether you avoid carbohydrates or bacon. Eat 3500 less calories than you burn, and you lose a pound. Eat 3500 more, and you gain. It's That Simple.

I'll share my favorite recipes, my new attempts, my food thoughts and joys, and all the fun cooking failures that crop up anyway.

Why do you write?

Oh, that's an easy one: because I have to. Tips for writers will follow. Once I find them. heh.

Why do astronomy?

I absolutely love knowing how the world works; but when it comes to understanding new things, nothing's really quite as fascinating as the sky. I mean, you've a good probability for anything you look at that it'll explode, right? How cool is that?!