Rachel’s Ramblings

I’m famous!

http://rochesterhomepage.net/content/fulltext/?cid=15704

It was on TV, too! And I didn’t look like an idiot!

P.S. There are two basically-FO’s only in need of blocking. No pics of those yet, but this is next up, because I don’t feel like pulling anything out of hibernation at the moment.

It’s my mom’s handspun. And it’s BFL…

Sorry for the lack of posting. I’ve been going crazy with AP’s coming up and biking getting ramped up since the 100 miles is in less than a month! Unfortunately, that’s not really going to change now. Don’t expect much until after Physics, ie May 13th or so.

I’ve kinda given up on the contest, but here’s another halfhearted plea along with a nod at the fifty different links to it around here.

On the bright side, knitting has been happening a bit! There are two almost-FO’s in the works.

*goes back to drowning in studying*

Please, please, please enter the contest! Even if you can only spare a bit! We’re getting kinda worried because we’re still over $3,000 away from our goal…

And if you can’t afford anything (but seriously, look at that yarn!), at least spread the word through your blog! You’ll still get entered for a surprise drawing at the end!

Come on, guys! I want to get to $100 so I can give away that gorgeous yarn!

*nods at the forty different places on this page at which the contest is linked and doesn’t link it again*

Comp Sci review book.

YET ANOTHER REMINDER: Pleasepleaseplease enter my contest!! Remember that you have a chance to win even without donating - just by spreading the word! Although the prizes are more probable and better if you donate to this totally great cause…

Here I shall document my road trip around New England to visit various colleges. Pretend I posted them as separate daily entries…

Day 1, Sunday: The trip from home to Williamstown was uneventful, besides for about ten pages of history notes being taken, and my not having to drive because of taking said notes. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), I think I have enough work to last for all the hours of this trip, and so won’t have to drive. But won’t get to knit much either. Also, on the trip up, the possibility of making the Knitters’ Pilgrimage to Webs was raised…and I am excited.

We checked into the motel, where a very nice Swedish guy recommended a restaurant and showed us a map of the town - which is pretty much the campus. I didn’t realize that, but it’s kinda neat, methinks. We went to dinner at Spice Root, a nice Indian place. My mom got carded when she tried to get wine! It might’ve just been because it’s a college town and all, but it was still pretty funny. The food was really good - I had my Indian standard, chicken tikka, and something new and interesting - ginger lemonade. It was actually pretty good - the ginger wasn’t too overwhelming, just enough to make the lemonade taste a little different. On the walk back to the motel, we stopped at ‘the ephporium’ (the Ephs is the name of the Williams sports teams for some reason…) because we saw a sign outside proclaiming ‘gelato,’ but it turned out to be some Haagen Dasz in a cooler…ah well. However, in there, I saw this, which was amusing:

Notice how they all recommend classy stuff like ciabatta, and then Lara recommends Ring Pops. I’d like to meet Lara…

Day 2, Monday: We spent the morning touring Williams – mascot: a purple cow! That’s pretty nifty. It was a really appealing place – apparently, the food’s excellent. Oh yeah, and it’s really rigorous academically and gorgeous and all that, too. This afternoon, we went to Amherst – we took a tour and went to an information session. The info session repeated a lot of what our enthusiastic tour guide told us, but was still really interesting. Amherst’s main appealing points for me were their membership in the Five College Consortium, so you can take classes at any of the other four nearby schools (with free bus service) and you can also get books out of their libraries; and their open curriculum – there are no course requirements! The food, however, didn’t get quite as good reviews. So I don’t know if I’d be able to choose between those two right now – b/c you can get library books from like a gazillion different colleges from Williams, too…and they have a cool mascot…and good food…

Amherst: option of courses at other schools, slightly closer to civilization, open curriculum

Williams: better food, purple cow, better chance at single dorms, one-month intensive study during winter term

They have pretty much everything else in common, including a fierce rivalry, school colors, total enrollment, general rigor, campus-wide wifi, etc…

More significantly – we went to Webs! It was pretty amazing – it’s huge! I saw a bunch of new yarns and stuff, but the coolest thing was that they have pretty much every color of all the yarns they stock, which makes for a great selection and incredible-looking displays. However, I resisted almost all temptation (and believe me, there was a LOT) and only bought one $2 pattern. Huzzah!

Tomorrow, we’re heading to Hanover and Dartmouth to tour the college and visit my cousin who goes there – we’ll probably take him out to lunch.

Day 3, Tuesday:Dartmouth was nice – about three times bigger than the ones we’ve seen so far, but it was nice to catch up with my cousin. We took him to a little place in Hanover for brunch/lunch, and he gave us an informal tour of the campus, during which we got a bit lost and ended up in the business school when we were looking for engineering. Fortunately, it was a nice day, so it was fine. Dartmouth is pretty in a much more majestic sort of way than the others – the buildings mostly match, there’s a big green, etc. Oh, but funny story - Dartmouth was founded originally to educate Native Americans, but for the first 200 years or so failed miserably. Then when they got this new president they dedicated all this money, and now apparently have a bunch of native students. With these millions of dollars of endowment, they wanted to create some kind of monument to this. With all that money, this is what they managed to do:

A pile of rocks in front of the admissions office.

Between splitting with my cousin and going to the info session, we got to wander around Hanover, such as it is, a bit. We went to a great Barnes and Noble and I got Maximum Ride 4, of which Alethia and I will have joint custody – she’s been looking for it for AGES. And by ages, I mean the week+ since it’s come out…The info session was not so fascinating, though – I’m glad I had knitting.

Then we drove up to Portland. We’re staying with relatives there and visiting Bowdoin (for some reason, pronounced BO-den) tomorrow. They have a pretty lighthouse there:

Day 4, Wednesday: Bowdoin was really cool! Apparently, they’re rated top in the nation for their food, and the campus was really pretty, in a more Amhersty way. Also, they’ve got Mathematica on their computers! Nerdfest! Honestly, I have no idea how I’ll ever decide on a college – all the ones we’ve visited so far seem too good to be true - like little utopias, where everyone there is taking classes and such because they want to, and they all actually care. And the general atmosphere is so cool.

On the way back, we visited Spunky Eclectic’s brick and mortar store - fantabulosity. I came out with some roving (I’m picturing socks) and very nice silk lace yarn (shawl):

And hanging out with relatives has been cool – my grandma, uncle, and two cousins are here (the aunt’s out of town, getting in tonight).

The story of the day – I have a much stronger kinship with cats now. My little cousin (third-grade) was giving me the grand tour of their yard after my mom and I went running, and she somehow convinced me to climb one of their trees – she wanted to see how high I could get. I was pretty good at climbing trees when I was smaller, and I was still pretty good today, except maybe thirty feet up, one of the branches I had used to get up broke. I saw ways to get higher, but decided against it – I didn’t even know how I was going to get down. It took awhile, my mom and cousin coaching, and my uncle’s reassurances that at least it was a nice day and he could send up some food for dinner, but I eventually got down. I didn’t, because there were pine needles everywhere, but I felt like kissing the ground. Seriously. For a bit there, I was worried we’d have to call the fire department or something…

We’re staying in Maine tonight, too, then driving back down to Boston to see Haaahvard and MIT - neither of which I can really see myself attending but I want to see anyway.

Day 5, Thursday: Well, we made it to Harvard and had a great tour there - I liked it a lot more than I expected - they’ve got so many sweet study abroad programs and such. But I’m really bad at Boston, and so we didn’t make it to MIT in time for the tour. We’re going to check that out tomorrow before heading home.

We also visited two knitting stores in Cambridge - we’ve decided that we should try to see as many knitting stores as we do colleges…teehee.

Day 6, Friday: Home! Final score - colleges beat knitting stores 6-5. We visited one more store (Colorful Stitches in Lenox) on the way home, but since we saw MIT this morning, colleges still won. MIT was pretty cool, but I still can’t see myself going there. I just like the atmosphere of the small liberal artsy places better for some reason.

I did end up having to drive for a bit, but it was mostly highway and cruise control, so it was okay.

P.S. If anybody watched the iPhone keynote, or probably any other Apple introduction of a new product, THIS should be most amusing.

REMINDER: Please enter my contest. Or at least spread the word! There’s going to be a mystery prize drawing for everyone who mentions it on their blog, even if they don’t donate! So post and link me to it!

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog post…
I’m off for most of this week, driving around New England and visiting colleges. I’ll hopefully remember to take pictures and notes so I don’t mix them all up…seeya!

EDIT: I was tagged! By Survival of the Knittest, to be exact. It’s the ’seven weird things’ meme again. I’m never good at coming up with interesting stuff for this, but here goes anyway.

1. I have recently been realizing that it is possible to be good at something but HATE it. Examples: standardized tests, history
2. I should be doing my monstrous pile of break work right now. MONSTROUS!
3. ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ is playing on Pandora right now…
4. I have an HP laptop, but REALLY want a Mac - despite being slightly screwed over on the whole iPhone thing (I got one soon after it came out, then they cut the price, and now there’s a new one coming out soon and I’m thinking I should’ve waited for that or just gotten a new iPod and a cell phone that’s smaller and I could put in a ski jacket without worrying…alas).
5. I just found a knitting needle, row counter, pen, battery, and the back to my booklight inside the couch.
6. Last night, I went to bed, and slept until I woke up. It was very exciting. In a sleepy sort of way.
7. I have a bad habit of when I make cookies, eating so much dough I make myself sick. It’s just so tasty!!

EDIT again: I forgot to tag more people! Here goes…

• 10 feet high
  
• Zeitgeist
• The Happy College Knitter
• Froomla
• mariknits
• yarny girl
• anne is an artist

My first contest! I’ve created a WP-page for it here, but below is exactly what it says.

Yep…it’s my first contest! My mom and I are co-running this to support our efforts for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society - scary thought: We’re supposed to have all the $9,600 in about a month, and we’re only about a third of the way! So, inspired by Stitchcounter’s contest, we’re running one, too.

What is this stuff you will win, you might ask? Welllll…yarn, of course! (this contest functions as a nice destash for us, too) Here’s the outline:

• For donating $10, your name will go in the figurative ‘hat’ once.
• If you mention this contest on your blog and link to it, you get another entry (yes, you have to donate first, but feel free to mention it anyway. You’ll still win good karma!).
• For donating, $50, your name will go in the hat six times for being so generous!
• If some kind soul out there donates $100, they automatically win!
• Otherwise, after each $100 donated, a drawing will happen and whoever wins will get the yarn - for teen readers out there, this obviously means you’ll have to provide me with your address, so keep any parental-imposed limitations on that front in mind.
• Every once in awhile, assuming I remember, everyone who’s donated and hasn’t won anything will get thrown into a drawing for some more yarn!
• If you donate, email me at fiberfiend6891 AT gmail DOT com with your full name (or whatever name you used when donating). If you win, I’ll email you for your address.
• Remember donations are tax deductible and support a great cause!

DONATE HERE!

Current Yarn up for Grabs:

Past Winners
(List will go here)

WARNING: I AM POSTING THIS WITH A LIMITED AMOUNT OF SLEEP. YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED.

Anyways, now that that’s over with, and I’ve been dizzified by the new WP new post page layout…The trip was amazingly fantabulously phenomenalorious! I’m going to try to include everything I can remember here, because the whole experience smells of college essay material to me…so bear with me if stuff seems completely irrelevant…although that could be due to the fact that we got back at after 4AM…(essentially, feel free to skip to the end with pictures, because this post is mainly for me to remember everything I can)

So basically, this trip served a dual purpose. One, for my teacher, Alice, to bring her advanced improvisation students and demonstrate some of her program and teaching techniques. Second, we were doing this at a free outreach program in Providence, RI for underprivileged kids which is run in part by her former student, Jessie.

We all showed up at the music school at around 8:30 Friday morning, insanely excited and high on adrenaline. We actually did get going by around 9:00, as planned. There was a moratorium on sugar for the ride down, instituted to prevent crashing before the concert that night. Plenty of sugar was snuck on or feebly justified, however - resulting in a rather hyper batch of teens and pre-teens on a pretty small tour bus for about seven hours…interesting times.

The concert that night went really well. All transitions were smooth, but more importantly, everyone played really well, and the audience got so into it! It was really cool, although we were all still feeling a bit awkward, being pretty much the only white people there and not knowing many people.

That night, my friend Clare, my teacher, her two kids, and I all stayed with Jessie, aka ‘Monty’ - we did manage to be asleep before midnight, which was mildly surprising. Her house was SO cool, too - she had a music room with foam and stuff all over the walls and ceiling, so it’s so dead that if you practice in there, you’d sound amazing anywhere else because you had to work really hard to get any kind of good sound. Pretty nifty.

Saturday. Everybody taught five classes, two in the morning and three in the afternoon, with a 1.5-hour lunch break. In the morning, Clare and I assisted my teacher with improv classes. These kids had barely ever improvised before, and trust me - it’s terrifying the first time you do it. But most of them got into it by the end, which was really cool to see.

During the lunch break, we finally had a chance to get to know some of the kids, many of whom were really cool. One guy showed us all these poems he had written, many about city violence and how sad it made him - amazing to see such a ‘tough guy’-looking kid have such a soft side. Then there was a five-year-old girl named Amy who basically attached herself to me and told me her life story, everything from her loose tooth to her family’s house burning down and somebody writing on the wall ‘I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.’ Talk about scary. And we all played cards together and got to talk until the pizza got there. It was seriously cool. Here’s Amy:

Is she not adorable?

In the afternoon, I assisted with two more improv classes and also helped teach a fiddle tune. Then we and a few of the kids from the program went out to dinner at this Asian place. I had chicken and broccoli with white rice, which was really good, but HUGE. I didn’t finish. After dinner, we were originally going to go to the zoo, but since it was raining, we went to United Skates of America, where I rollerskated for the first time in forever. It was weird, really different from rollerblading. Then we had an epic game of lasertag in which I came in second to last. It never ceases to amaze me how bad I am at any kind of game like that - lasertag, paintball, any similar videogame, etc. But it was really fun. However, all of us having fun resulted us leaving Providence not at 6:00ish, like we’d planned (which would result in us being home at the completely reasonable *eyeroll* time of 1:00AM), but instead around 9:00PM!

The ride home was the only unfantabulous part of the trip. I can’t fall asleep except on my stomach, so I was on the floor of the bus, but Alice’s son kept sitting right on top of me, and this other kid WOULDN’T SHUT UP. So I didn’t get much sleep on the bus ride. We all slept over at the school, so I got another maybe four hours there. But all in all, the sleep tally isn’t too high.

Seriously, though - the trip was amazing. If you’ve seen the movie Music of the Heart, it was serious deja vu to that.

In fiber-related news, my mom and I are both participating in the Earth Day Yarn Swap, and my buddy loved her package! I sent her some bamboo yarn, a pretty stitch marker, chocolate, and tea. Apparently, her daughter was also pleased:

I haven’t received my package yet, but I’m really excited! It’s my first swap, unless HAT ATTACK counts. But that’s just a hat. This is yummy yarn and goodies!

Ta ta for now, then. Keep your eyes open - a contest approaches, as soon as I get up the energy to write the post for it! While you wait, check out the fun contest here.

It finally got up past 60 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, and I had an epiphany - I’ve had cabin fever since about November. Seriously, when you’re used to feeling a certain way, you take it to be the norm. But then the Sun comes out and I feel like a plant - just soaking up endless energy! I feel so great, and just need to be outside. So yesterday, despite the gusting wind, I went rollerblading for about an hour. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the greatest workout since I’m not very good at it and couldn’t go so fast.

But remember the Ripstik I blogged about getting for Chanukkah? Well, today I took it out - at first, I could do approximately nothing. I couldn’t even stand up without clutching someone’s shoulders. But after a bit, I could start myself and coast down the slight incline of our street. It’s pretty nifty, and I think I’ll be playing with it more, hopefully eventually being able to keep myself going on a flat surface…

Oh  yeah, and Friday, I leave for Providence, RI for 2+ days - my music school is sending ten kids to do an improvisation demonstration. I’m really excited - I get to ride a huge bus with only 15ish other people for six hours with my friends!

Seriously. Euphoric delirium. Despite the still-bruised legs and butt and a 5-7 page history paper due next week…

P.S. I started the collar on the sweater…it’s chugging. Slowly. And not helped by my knitting ADD at the moment…