I'm ok!

Just that time of year...

Aside from finals starting next week (the first is on Thursday, a week from today, arrggg!!), life is good. Stuff is going really insanely well with the LYM, I got promoted again in aikido, the weather is getting nice, and I got to re-landscape a whole flowerbed last weekend at the LYM's house. Digging up over a ton of rocks was way too much work (someone had put down landscaping rocks as a ground cover, then covered the rocks with a 3 inch layer of mulch. WTF?!), but it was good to get outside and do something other than read for part of the weekend. I needed that. And for some reason I find digging in the earth very relaxing and comforting. I love the feel of well-tilled (and relatively rock free) soil in my hands as I plant things.

I did manage to re-injure my thumb last week, which made the gardening slow and somewhat painful, and has slowed me down a lot. Stupid thumb. I'm back in a splint for the next two weeks at least, which is annoying to say the least. At least all I have to do is study, so that's something. It just gets hot with this thing stuck to my hand and wrist all day long.

I'll post more when I can, for now it's off to my internship and then class, then aikido. Crazy days.

Finally, fiber!

My dad is in town to visit for a few days and brought me the best present ever! A shiny new Ashford skein winder! I was able to assemble the thing and wind off 4 bobbins full of yarn in the time it took to wind two bobbins with the niddy-noddy. This thing is a life saver for big projects, I had so many bobbins full of finished yarn after winter break, I was avoiding the task of winding them off so I could set the yarn. That much niddy-noddy action kills my arms.

He also brought me a McMoran yarn balance, which is a fun and geeky little spinning tool. It's a small plastic balance that allows you to estimate how many yards per pound you are getting. The yardage estimates seem to be pretty accurate too. For larger spinning projects this thing will be very useful. I think if you need a fairly small and precise amount of yarn for a project, counting yardage on the skein winder or niddy-noddy would be better, but for anything else this is the clear way to go.

Now if only my thumb was better and I had less reading to do, I could finish spinning the Shetland over spiring break. Oh well, there should be a few slow evenings for spinning before summer.

Thumb update

I went back to stupid health "services" today, missing two classes in the process, but it was a good thing. The doctor was actually nice about things, looked the thumb, stuck me a huge splint, and sent me (predictably) to the hospital to rule out a break of the joint. Which would be a Very Bad Thing indeed, and require trips to an orthopedist. I got lucky though, it's not broken, just very badly bruised. I have to keep it splinted for 10 days, then "wean off the splint" for awhile and if anything gets worse and fails to get better I have to go back. So really it's all good, and should be fine, even if the process of finding this out was hideously annoying and inconvenient.

At least this week is not so busy as last week. Aikido is on spring break, so I don't have as much training, and since spring break is next week most things have kind of slowed down a little. Which is good, since I have an extra assignment all the sudden I have to get done and Daddy is coming in to town on Wednesday. I'm calm about it all though, after last week just about anything seems sane.

As for knitting, probably won't be doing any of that for awhile because of the thumb, but the scarf I knit for the LYM while I was sick got used for the first time this morning and he seemed very happy with it. Seeing him wearing it and having fun playing with it was rather wonderful. He was absurdly cute for one thing, and having the satisfaction of knowing that I was keeping someone I cared about warm and comfortable on a cold morning is always a nice thing.

Oooo like I need another reason...

...to hate being a student. Add Student Heath "Services." Yesterday, being Sunday, I did something terrible(tm) to my thumb in kendo. It feels worse today and is swollen and tender and I cannot move the bottom joint at all, and there's a red patch which hurts really bad when I poke it.

So I went to the alleged Student Health "Services" office, and they said, well, sorry but we have no doctors you should go to urgent care and pay $100 for what we should be to do as part of the absurd amount of money you have already paid to have access to our stellar "care." To which I say, feh, and demand to see someone, anyone, who can tell me if this might be broken. Which someone turned out be a clueless nurse who told me nothing I didn't already know and put a splint on the WRONG KNUCKLE, and then informed me that I need to come back tomorrow to see the real doctor, who will send me to urgent care for x-rays I will have to pay for anyway. WTF? I have class all day tomorrow, and no money, and now you want me to run all over stupid town to get x-rays you really should be able to do on site? gah. What is the point of you people?!

So now I am in pain and frustrated to the point of tears and no closer to a functional thumb than I would be if I sat on it for an hour rather than wasting my time at Health "Services."

Don't even get me started on the brilliant people we have "helping" us over at the Financial Aid office.

Hmmm

So I've been sick as a dog, again, still, who can tell anymore, but I'm finally starting to feel better. I'm over a week behind in reading, but what are you gonna do? Really, I'm weirdly calm about this. No sense in freaking out about the amount of work I have to catch up on, that will hardly help anything.

Anyway, stuff is going ok in spite of the Flu of Doom and reading backlog. The LYM took fabulously good care of me while I was sick, I'm cooking dinner for his family this weekend, I got promoted in aikido, and for the first time ever I realized I'm actually glad to be out here doing this whole law school thing. It's not been easy, but I wouldn't change anything if I had it all to do over again.

I just wish I could sleep for about a week. I was out of school sick all last week, and came back into one of the busiest weeks of the semester. On top of everything else, we have a compressed ethics course for the next two weeks, so I have an extra hour and a half class, plus all the reading, every day this week and next. All to learn really complex things like it's a bad plan to take your client's money to Thailand to buy under age prostitutes. Very useful stuff. At least spring break is only a week away, then I can sleep a little and get caught up on the reading.

Blargh

Ok I am a little cranky today. Yesterday was weird, maybe in a good way but I don't know. I'm not sure the LYM gets the whole V-Day concept really, but he was really very sweet and nice even though nothing particularly special happened. We'll see how the weekend goes I suppose.

Anyhow, I want to go home and spin and finish this Shetland I've been working on. But instead I have class all day, then aikido with the group I am less than enthused about, and I'll be lucky if I get home before 9. This semester is just brutal, but at least it's almost spring break. And I should have a reasonably relaxing weekend, even though I have iaido and kendo on Sunday.

The brown sweater of doom is getting there, the first sleeve is done and I have at least started the second one. Maybe I'll get it done over break, I can only hope.

Trial, feh

Just a quick note about the trial...

We did really well, made good arguments, the prosecution offered no real evidence. Our instructor said we did great, the other sides instructor said it was ok they lost since we didn't call the defendant and they had no evidence anyway.

The judge came out.

The judge ruled for the prosecution.

He did this because it's Legal Skills, and he thought we had to appeal to case. My instructor and I talked to him afterwards and he said in real life, it would have been tossed out on the motion to strike if not sooner. Yet we lost because it's skills, a class meant to teach up how things work in the real world. Feh.

I hate legal skills. It's the single most useless program at school. If it's supposed to work like the real world, the judges should rule like it's real world and not make mistakes on purpose so we can have an appeal (an appeal, I might ad, no one in our group needs to make for the purposes of the class).

It was very demoralizing and I felt really bad after, but god bless the LYM, he managed to make a fairly convincing argument that we won in every way that really mattered so that's something. And thank god legal skills is nothing like real life. I'm just so tired of everything about law school being set up so that you fail. No achievement seems to come without some absurd reminder of how inept you really are. We did good, we won, just let us have it already.

Anyway, I'm cranky now and have pretty well decided that I'm going to relax as much as I can this weekend. So while I wait for the LYM to get up (he's been sick, he needs to sleep) I shall knit and watch Heros instead of read Admin Law or something else. Maybe I will even finish this sleeve, that would be nice. I'm getting tired of looking at it.

Nerves!

So today I have to argue a case in court for the first time ever. Not real court mind you, they won't let me at real clients like that quite yet, but Legal Skills court. Legal Skills is our practicum course at school, it's really pretty silly in many ways, not least of which is that it's a pass/fail class that takes up a huge percentage of your time, but there it is. Anyway, the point is, this afternoon I have my trial and I am really nervous.

Really really super nervous.

It should be ok. We are the defense in a criminal case, and there is no real evidence of any useful of conclusive kind, so all we have to do is not f* it up too badly and we should be ok, but holy crap I am still nervous. My head hurts and I don't wanna go. I have to go cross examination and closing arguments, both of which I seem to be better at than direct and opening, I think because you have to think on the fly and respond to what the other side has done more, but that's not saying a whole lot really. I know in my head this is all good practice and it will be good to have my "first" court appearance over with before I get out into practice, but the whole skills program is so contrived and so poorly executed that I don't think it really has the desired effect. Seriously, they give us dreadful cases and no evidence to work with and it's all quite absurd and in real life the cases would never get to court. But we have to argue it anyway. blegh.

It's a stressful start to a rather long weekend. Today is my trial, then I am off to the LYM's. Tomorrow we are going to my neighbors 30th birthday party, then Sunday there's an all day self-defense clinic. Somewhere in there I have to read for next week. Gah. Good luck with that. I am sorely tempted to just say to hell with it and really take the weekend off, but I sort of feel like I've been slacking as it is. Of course, I am a little behind, but only in one class, and once this trial is over my schedule will go back to something passably normal, so probably I am due a little bit of a break. We'll see I guess. Right now I just want to crawl under a rock and hide until this is over.

Hmm. Just realized, tonight will be the first time the LYM has seen me in full lawyer-drag. It's been nearly a year that we've been doing whatever it is we're doing and in all that time he's never seen me in a suit. Funny.

Yay me!

So it's 19 degrees outside, and the school has the A/C on in the lecture rooms. WTF?! The run the heat all summer and the A/C all winter? Sick bastards.

Aside from freezing, things are going ok. I got offered a job for the summer with the firm I'm interning with, things with the LYM are lovely and moving in a positive direction, and my overall outlook has improved quite a bit. Ok, yes, I did get my class rank, and it was not good, but I didn't have a minor break down about it and it's really not bothering me in the least. It helps that I got offered the job before I read the rank email, but still, I'm pretty proud of myself for not bursting into tears or something.

Anyhow, things are insanely busy but classes are going ok, they are mostly interesting, my stupid mock trial thing will be over Friday, and while financial aid is being slow as hell about getting me money to live on for the rest of the semester (seriously people, when I say I have no food money, does that sound to you like going even slower with things is a good response?) I'm ok. Stressed, yes. Hysterical, not so much. And this is good.

I have sadly little knitting or spinning progress to report. I have so much reading to do that I don't seem to have much time to knit at all. Hopefully that will change some after my trial is done, maybe spring break. I really want to finish the brown sweater I've been working on forever so I can do some baby gift for a classmate who is having a little boy over the summer. I think I know what I want to knit for him, I just need to get something off the needles before I will let myself start something new. Tonight the LYM and I are going to go have dinner to celebrate my job offer, maybe I can knit some this afternoon. We'll see. The weekend is going to be insane so it might be better to try to get ahead on the reading.

busybusybusy

Sooooooo busy. Seriously, all four of my lecture classes seem to average between 20 and 50 pages a class. It looks like most weeks I'll be reading somewhere in the 330-400 page range. Not to mention the work I'm doing for my externship, legal skills, or aikido and kendo stuff. It's nutty but it's interesting stuff (except for administrative law, which still makes me want to eat my own head).

I'm really loving my externship. It's time consuming, but so totally worth it. Right now, I'm working on personal injury cases, a criminal case, and some trademark stuff. And it's all really interesting, plus I get to see how all the crap I've been learning actually works out in the real world, which makes it so very much easier to care about classes. I might actually get to *use* this stuff! And it might actually made a difference in someones life! Who knew?

I've been getting a tiny amount of knitting done. One sleeve of the Sweater That Will Not End is almost done. Once that's done, I have one more sleeves, the turtleneck collar, and finish work to do. The end is in sight! The other active project I have is the Liberty Sale Socks, made from yarn I got in 1997 when I was in London. I'm most of the way done with the first foot. Really, I could finish those in a day if only I had day to sit and do it. I don't mind so much though, they are for me so there's no pressure. It's hard to resist planning the next project though, especially with so many UFO's and WIP's laying all over the place.

Spring semeter, the first week

I have survived the first week of the semester. Seeing as I lived through The Cold of Doom, a disastrous hakama related accident leaving me unable to move my right arm for nearly 2 days, and getting my grades (I don't want to talk about it), I think I'm doing ok. Still achy and a little stuffy, and my confidence has taking a pretty nasty beating, but really I'm ok with it.

So, here's the report so far:
1. Administrative law. The most boring. class. ever. Just looking at the book makes me to poke my eye out with a highlighter. Seriously. I may eat my own arm. And we're graded on class participation. Crap. Isn't staying awake enough? Now I have to contribute? gah.
2. Trademark Law. Yay! This is fun! I love the prof, but I think my unfortunate lack of knowledge relating to popular culture might be an issue here. The LYM teases me that I'm Dr. Brennan (from Bones). He's not wrong. This should be fun.
3. Intellectual Property. I had forgotten how much fun this prof was! Good class, interesting subject, should be lots of fun.
4. Employment Discrimination. For a class I singed up for at the last second and took only because it was the only open class that fit into my schedule, this turned out great. The subject is far more interesting than I thought it would be and the prof is interesting and engaging.
5. Legal Skills and Ethics. I have a trial and an ethics exam this semester. Like pulling teeth this one is, but oh well. Not much to be done.
6. Externship. Yay me I got one! This is my last best hope for ever scoring a job. But I think it'll work out well. I start really working on Monday, but so far I like everyone at the office. If nothing else, I will find out if actually practicing law is something I can deal with.

Really, any semester that starts out with 2 class discussions involving Elvis as a focal point can't be all bad. I'm starting to get in to classes where I can actually see how I might use what I am learning, and that feels pretty good. Hopefully my job search will go well too, my grades are going to be a problem but thanks to the LYM and his mother, I'm starting to get somewhere with the whole networking approach to job searching, so I have hope. I still seem to in a place where every accomplishment comes with a blow, but the blows are getting to be less or maybe I am just dealing with them better. Either way, I'll take it.

Still alive

...barely. I have contracted whatever the most recent plague happens to be, which I find interesting seeing as I have not seen a living person since Wednesday, and then it was only because I had aikido. Seriously. You would think my hermit-like lifestyle would nicely preclude getting contagious diseases but there it is.

It's been a rather not so good last week or so, but I have some hope that things may be on a bit of an up-swing. Maybe. Who knows. Class starts on Tuesday, so as least I won't be so bored.

I've got very little knitting and fiber progress to report. I got some work done on my crazy quilt, and have the thing planned out now so at least I know how many squares I need to make (30). That helps. I've got more than half of them done, after that I can sew them together and make the border (a 9 inch band of crazy style piecing) and then finish it off. I have no idea how I am going to mange the actual quilting, the thing won't fit under the arm of my sewing machine. At the moment, I may just tie it. Not my favorite method of finishing but better than hand-quilting the whole thing. I could also do it in sections, piecing it together as I go, but we shall see.

Now I must take cold pills and go to kendo. Which might be scary, but at least it will get me out of the house and around other people for a little while.

Stupid cat

I think my cat has a death wish today. She woke me up at 6:30 this morning and would. not. stop. meowing. until I manged to drag myself out of a bed to take a shower around 8. (I know, some of you have to get up much earlier than that, but this is my winter break after all) She then decided to station herself on the bathroom rug so I would trip over her when I got out of the shower, and has been putting herself right in the middle of wherever I need to walk all morning. Stupid cat. Between that and the leg clawing (I have some really nice little holes in my thigh from that, thank you very much), it really is amazing I haven't locked her out of the house yet. But, as the LYM reminds me, I am a submissive masochist, so it all makes perfect sense I guess.

Aside from cat related domestic strife, things have been fairly calm the last few days. New Years day was the best day I've had in recent memory, Tuesday was mellow and yesterday I spent most of the day in fiber-y pursuits, spinning, weaving, knitting and scouring a babydoll southdown fleece with a rather sad story behind it.

I'd always thought that if I were to get married, I would make my husband-to-be a sweater from a fleece I had processed and spun totally on my own. Last September, I bought the fleece. Things didn't work out, in a rather grand fashion, but there is still the fleece. For a long time, I sort of forgot about it, mostly out of self-preservation than any distaste for the fleece. It's a lovely fleece actually, very soft and springy, there's some discoloration but it should dye nicely once I've spun it and decided on a color. Since Thanksgiving, I've had the guy in question on my mind a lot for some reason, but he made it clear he has no desire to see me or talk to me anymore, even as friends, which hurt a lot more than I was expecting it to. It's probably all for the good, but there was still this fleece, sitting there, the last reminder of hopes and dreams now finally and totally destroyed.

So I washed it. And it was ok. I wasn't sad, it didn't hurt, and I didn't think about him and what the fleece was meant for except in a very cursory sort of way. He may be gone, but the fleece is still full possibility, ready to become whatever I chose to make from it. He broke my heart, but there is still life, and as battered and bruised as he left me, I can still make whatever I wish of it. There might be a bit more dirt and VM to get out, but the raw material is full of endless possibility.

Resolutions

1. I shall buy no new fiber. No yarn, no spinning fiber, and only such fabric as I need to finish project I already the main fabric for. Bess says it can be done, so I shall try. It should help my pocket book too, being in school and tyring to buy yarn is a bad plan.
2. I will get to my goal weight this year, damn it all. I'm sick of being on WW. I am sick of losing the same 10 pounds over and over. This will stop. Today.
3. I will stop fighting against things I cannot change. Aikido is all about flow and blending, if I cannot flow with my own life, how can I expect to do it well on the mat?
4. I will find an OES chapter locally and start going to meetings again.
5. I will carry on my good work with martial arts.

I think 3 is going to be the hardest. 2006, and really 2005, was all about fighting against the immovable. I'm tired of fighting. If I don't do something about this, I will exhaust myself. I've come so close to giving up all together in the last year, I don't think I can survive that again. I simply have to accept that there are some things I cannot control, and let them be what they will. Reading the Tao helps with that, so that will be my guide.

Edited to add:
The socks were a great success. He liked them! yay! And I know I hate sock knitting, but have 125 grams of koigu left over from something, anyone know if that's enough for a pair of socks? I would think it would be, but I have no idea how long to make the cuffs. I want to do a heal-flap so these will end up being top-down instead of toe-up like I usually try to do.

New year, new things

I did two totally new things in the last day. First, I saw the ball drop in Times Square live, instead of on a 3 hour tape delay. Which was interesting, same thing really but the realization that it was live was kind of...well...interesting? Can you tell I'm a little sleep? The other thing I did was watch the sun *rise* over the ocean. I've never seen that, it was pretty amazing. Trying to do kendo while watching the sun rise and on maybe 4 hours of not so great sleep was also interesting, but I'm glad I did it.

I just can't believe I'm this tired...makes no sense really not having done jack shit for the last 3 days other than sleep, spin, and bake bread, alone and hermit like in my house. Really, hermit like is fine, but only if you are living that way by choice. When that's all you get, it really sucks. At least I'm not stuck in the house alone today, not the best way to start the year, pacing around your house like a rat stuck in a cage...

ARGG! I had nice thing to say about my current spinning and stupid blogger ate it. Grr. Ok, to sum up...I've been spinning a whole lot the last couple days, I've done nearly 2 pounds of fiber. Yay! Most all of it is things I have 4 or 8 ounces of, so it's been fun to experiment. Right now I'm working on about 13 ounces of chocolate llama and merino pencil roving, which I love working with. It's got some neps, which I don't love, that should add some nice textural interest to the finished yarn. I think it may end up being a hat, mitten and scarf set when I am done, but who knows. It all depends on the yardage I end up. Next up it 8 ounces of morrit colored Shetland wool I want to make a faroese shawl out of. We'll see how that turns out, I'm doing ok with super fine spinning at the moment, it just seems to depends on how well the fiber has been prepared to begin with. After that, since I should have another 2 weeks of break left at the rate I'm going, I'm going to start drum carding one of the several fleeces I have stashed away. There's a story with one of them...but that will have to wait until I actually start on the carding.

So that's an A...

So, I'm insane, and decided to check and see if any of my grades for the semester had been posted yet.

I got an A in my seminar class, for the crazy privacy paper I was working on. Which is a good thing, I was getting a little worried about that towards the end. If I managed to avoid any C's or B-'s my GPA will be in much better shape.

Why am I not excited about this?

On the knitting front, the socks are almost done. Thank god. I hate knitting socks. I have no idea what possessed me to knit socks. As a gift. So not only am I knitting socks, which is bad enough by itself, but I am giving them to someone who may or may not like them, and may or may not appreciate them. We shall see I suppose. I hope he likes them. That would be nice. I've not quite 4 inches of cuff left (knitting from the toe up) and they are done. Hurray!

I'm having a hard time deciding how many of my UFO's I should pack. I have the back of a really pretty brown sweater almost done, so that's coming with me. Hopefully I can get that done before the semester starts. And maybe knock off one or two other smallish UFOs I have lying around. I think my resolution for the new year needs to be to finish all the UFOs. We'll see how long that lasts! I've made some good progress though, these socks are a UFO, the lace collar for my Dickens's dress has been sitting on needles for years, and with luck I should be able to knock a few other things out before going nuts so I have hope. It would be nice to know exactly how many needles I have though, which I can't seem to figure out with all the smallish projects I have laying all over the place.

Now I must get back to the socks so I can pack tomorrow...

The dress...is done?!

I did this one in record time. All I have left to do is the hem. I've even sewn in all the hooks and eyes. Go me!

Finally, dress progress!

I have been so lazy today it's amazing I got anything done at all. But, I did manage to cut and fit the muslin for my Dickens dress bodice. Hurray! If you read my earlier post about this, there's 9 inches of ease (WTF?!) in the bust of this dress. So, I cut out a size 8 front and a size 12 back, and low and behold, it fit! Quite well actually. The darts needed a little fiddling, but that's always the case, especially if you are wearing a corset and your boobs don't sit in a perfectly straight line under your chin. There's a little ripping in the shoulders, but I think once I have it done out of the right fabric and have the neck trimmed down, it'll be fine and nice and smooth. I certainly can't get it to be much better on my own.

So a part from the freakish amount of ease in the bust, this is a pretty easy to deal with pattern. The pieces all fit together well, the instructions make sense, and it fits nicely. The trick is to look at the finished measurements on the pattern. For me, it worked out to pick the front with the right bust measurement and the back with the right waist measurement. The other pieces are all very straight forward, so it should all go together nice and quick. Hurray!

The plan for the rest of the day is to loaf around, knit the socks, watch some girlie movies, and maybe cut out the dress pieces if I can get up enough energy to vacuum the floor first. I can't believe how tired I am. Getting through exams took the last little bits of energy I had. Thanksgiving feels like it was a hundred years ago.

Anyway, I'll post pictures when I have something worthwhile to show off. In the mean time, if anyone has suggestions about a hoop or petticoat that I can fit into a suitcase along with a weeks worth of cloths, Christmas gifts, and the dress, do let me know. Can you get inflatable hoops? A small petticoat should smoosh into my bag ok...we'll see how the ones I have with me work. I think the one that would be best under the dress is at my parents house back in CA for some reason which surely made sense to me at the time...

Half way there!

Well, as of noon I am officially half way done with law school. My exams are all done, paper is turned in (whether it's done or not is really not relevant at this point), and I'm still upright. For the moment anyway.

I feel like I've got nothing left, I'm tapped out. As long as I can hold it together for another few hours, just enough to get through this interview this afternoon, and maybe aikido tonight, I'll be fine. Then I can finish falling apart.

Really, I'll be doing good if I can figure out which suit to wear this afternoon. gah. This should not be this hard. Will I look less worn and haggard in the black, the brown, or the plum?

Not dead yet!

(bonus points if you get the reference...)

Two exams down, one paper turned in (whether it's done or not is another question entierely), and one exam to go. Thursday by noon this should all be over, for another semester anyway. I was so tired after my exam yesterday (1st Amendment, it sucked) I thought I was gonna die. It was a major victory to get food in me at all.

I did knit some. I finished a silly potato chip scarf I'd started over the weekend out of desperate need to get my mind off the studying for a little bit, and have been working away on a pair of socks which will be a gift for someone. Hopefully I will get them done, I'm terrible about finishing socks, but I have hope. Both are started. I had been doing 2 socks on 2 circs, from the toe up, and got done with the toe before I got totally fed up with the whole 2 sock concept, and equally fed up with the 2 circs concept. So now I'm doing one sock on one circ, and it's working much better in my exam addled state. Really though, the whole 2 circ concept has never worked for me. I get all tangled up in the extra set of needles and crazy cables all over the place, and it's just annoying. I guess it works for some people, presumably who are more coordinate than I am, I just find it highly annoying. Give me a set of DPNs any day over that mess.

Must get back to the evidence...if I just make sense of hearsay I should be in good shape.