Do ya?

I just couldn't resist sharing this email, which arrived in my Inbox just now marked High priority.

To: professor trek
From: Student With Conflicting Notes
========================================
Hey professor trek,

I just had a quick question, how many pages was out(sic) term paper suppose(sic) to be again? In the beginning of the semester I wrote down 2 pages, but I thought I heard you say 3 last week.

Thanks, Student With Conflicting Notes

# # #

I know what you're thinking. "Did she say three pages or only two?" Well to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I've kinda lost track myself... But, being this is a required course, one class which could blow your graduation hopes clean out of the water (not to mention credit transfers), you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, SWCN?*

Should I mention here that I went over the entire syllabus, including the term paper requirements on the first day of class? I might also mention that the "term paper" really isn't much more than a five paragraph essay accompanied by a bullet list, a table, and a cover page.

# # #

To: SWCN
From: prof trek
========================================

Three. And it is due next week.

# # #

Yes, I really did feel the need to remind SWCN that the paper is due next week. You see, they have a test tomorrow morning and I truly do not want SWCN to spend all night tonight working on those three loooong pages of term paper instead of studying for tomorrow's exam.

# # #

* Apologies to Dirty Harry.

Just hatched

Last week, I answered Obsidian Kitten's call for a test knitter for her new Easter Egg Discloth pattern. I'm not sure that this particular colorway showcases the lacy pattern as well as it might, but it is what I had in the yarn dresser.

Now, you can get the pattern here, too

A sheep by any name at all...

My new little sheepie stitch marker arrived in Friday's mail. Took me until this morning to take a halfway decent picture,

but isn't this the cutest little sheep?

I don't know yet whether it is a boy sheep or a girl sheep, so no name yet. Suggestions?

There has been only a very little bit of sock knitting as this weekend has been a really busy one, true multi-tasking mania. Between the school fund-raiser stuff, a piping gig, a baby shower, a birthday party, shopping for both of the previously mentioned gift giving occasions, a library run, and a grocery replenishment mission, I'm we are exhausted.

Good thing I did all the laundry on Friday.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to hit the showers before church and this afternoon's birthday party and ... and ... and ...

I think I'm making reservations for dinnner...

Sheep from the smithy

I got an email that I won a sheep.

Adorable, but I wonder what the breed is

If you'd like to order a sheep for your very own, you can find some at Glastonbury Glassworks. Tell them I sent you, okay?

In which trek has déjà vu

I was seriously thinking that something was not quite kosher in the space-time continuum this week. There was that strange sense of déjà vu. Perhaps it was just a glitch in The Matrix. Whatever it was, I am trying to get a handle on it and a Wednesday Night Bullet Post seems the only way to fly.

If, indeed, today is Wednesday.

• On Monday morning, I checked the monitoring schedule document emailed to me by the Administrator in Charge of Monitoring Intervals. The ACMI informed me that the monitoring interval would end on Tuesday, March 23rd and that I needed to enter the appropriate monitoring codes before midnight so that warning notices could be generated on Wednesday, March 24th.



• My desk calendar clearly stated that Monday was March 23rd.



• Remembering that the Computer Science Department secretary emailed an updated version of the monitoring schedule, I rooted around in my inbox for a while. Soon, I unearthed the correct email, opened the attachment and learned that the monitoring interval was to end on Tuesday, March 23rd.



• Would you believe that I then consulted another calendar?



• Yeah, I really did.



• The second calendar clearly concurred with the first calendar: March 23rd, was Monday.



• So what happened when I logged in to Blogger tonight to make this blog post? Blogger has a note up at the top of my screen telling me there is a
  
  


• Does this mean that tomorrow is also March 25th?



• Please tell me that I am not the only one who finds this just a wee bit confusing.



• Yes, I checked my calendar again. It told me that today is Wednesday, March 25th and that I should not be taken in my Blogger's inability to add one to the current date in order to come up with tomorrow's date.



• Of course, what with the time change and Mother Nature ignoring the scheduled onset of spring, who can blame anyone for losing their grip on that pesky little numbering scheme known as the calendar?



• I decided this afternoon that I would do something more useful than worrying about the date. I answered Obsidian Kitten's call for a test knitter.



• The Easter Egg Dishcloth is half done.



• If not for scheduling a playdate for this afternoon, Wednesday, March 25th, the Easter Egg Dishcloth would clearly be finished and I would have taken pictures.



• I am not complaining, though: playdates are good and healthy for the Neatnik.



• They are good for Mommies, too, because we get to talk to other grown-up, adult-type human beings for the duration.



• Sometimes, we can even talk about grown-up stuff like philosophy and religion instead of child-stuff like potty training and manners development.



• The kids decorated cookies and cupcakes today and ran around outside for a good hour.



• It was too cold outside for knitting but the kids treated us Mommies to an inpromtptu circus and I wouldn't have been able to applaud properly if I was knitting, now would I?

Well, even if I can't figure out what the date is come morning, I still should finish the test knit some time tomorrow. There might even be photographic evidence.

In which classes resume

Yesterday saw the resumption of classes at the community college where I engage in my adjunct education efforts. I have to admit right up front that I was rather dreading my classes as I drove to the school; it was a bright sunny day and I was very much afraid that my students would still be in "spring break mode". And I was on the second day of an extended visit from Alice.

Yeah, some people complain about Aunt Flo coming to stay. My personal recurring nemesis is Alice. Flo at least visits at reasonably predictable intervals. Alice just comes barging in with neither notice nor reservations whenever she %&#@*^! feels like it.

I took some Alice-placating medications, popped an afternoon dose of same in my pocket and ventured forth in the general direction of the Halls of Higher Education. Despite being cut off in traffic twice by people paying little to no attention to the road and its naturally fluid population, I arrived on campus in plenty of time to run off several dozen copies of a handout I planned to give to my students. I even got a really good parking space.

Three-quarters of my first section of lab students arrived on time and they were both quiet and cooperative. Some of them even turned in their homework. The Alice-placating meds were still working and things seemed to be moving along well enough.

As an aside, only one of my students returned to class looking as though he spent all of last week on the beaches of a tropical island. Either that or he lived at a tanning salon during spring break. Since this latter option would be a really sad thing, we're giving him the benefit of the doubt and remaining convinced that he was stretched out on a sandy beach near the equator. We are also trying really hard not to be a wee bit envious of his good fortune.

After finishing the lab exercises and giving them pretty much all of the information they needed to complete the homework assignment, I had them log on to the testing software. Yes, they had a test the first day back from spring break. I had no choice: the snowstorm two weeks ago which closed the school for a day and a half preempted our schedule.

Amazingly enough, they did really well on the exam. The class average was 88.6 with grades ranging from 70 to 100.

I was feeling pretty good about my students when I walked over to the adjacent classroom to present the lecture material of the day. About 15 minutes into lecture, I stopped feeling so good when I caught a young lady in the back row trying to hide the fact that she was text messaging someone.

Yes, I ejected her from class.

No, I did not feel badly about it at all: I warned them on the very first day and this is the second student in this class to violate policy. She should have learned when the previous student was ejected, no?

I really don't like telling a student to leave, though, because it interrupts the flow of my lecture and it takes me a minute to regain my rhythm.

The second lab session went, if anything, even better than the first session. By this time, the headache medications were wearing off and all I wanted to do was to finish up and hide in a dark and quiet room. I told the students exactly that and that we were going to try to finish up early. Given how easy the assignments for yesterday were, this was not going to be a problem.

We breezed through the tutorial and the homework and got started on the test. These guys did even better than the first section, with an average of 90.9 and a range from 75 to 100.

I guess that having a week of break in the middle of the spring semester is good for the students. Perhaps not so much for me because I'd really like to do last week all over again. Good heavens, I am starting to sound all Sheepish! Before you know it, I'll be going on about becoming a Sheep of Leisure. Perhaps I should consider honing my napping skills.

I let them leave as they finished their exam. At least four students approached me to say they hoped the migraine cleared quickly because they themselves suffered from them and knew what a multi-day visit from Alice is like. Who would have thought that so many people in the same class would suffer from the same ailment?

Roadkill

Good morning, blog peeps! It's cold outside yet again today. Somehow, we here at chez trek thought that spring meant the onset of rising temperatures. I guess Mother Nature missed the memo because we don't seem to be suffering from incipient spring here at all, at all. More like lingering winter weather.

Given the continued chill in the air, outdoor kwitting hasn't been much in evidence. On the other hand, I can tell you exactly how many minutes it takes to get from the far end of the local mall all the way to the movie theater and the food court.

The mall may not have fresh air and sunshine, but it is temperature controlled and definitively lacking in potholes and precipitation.

I've gotten so I recognize the various security guards and customer service people. We do the friendly wave and nod and even the occasional cheerful, "hello" on my way past their kiosk.

I've logged enough hours in those ceramic tiled halls that even the rude cosmetics people have learned to leave me alone.

Hmm, that sounds like it needs a bit in the way of an explanation.

In addition to all of the shops, anchor stores, food court restaurants, and hair salons, the local mall has a number of free-standing kiosks in the middle of the mall corridors. These kiosks sort of resemble Conestaoga wagons parked in the middle of the floor. Despite the very temporary looking setup, some of these kiosks have become rather like permanent fixtures. Others come and go.

Lately, several skin care kiosks have sprouted. At each one of these, the person minding the store is clad in an apron with the product logo and a cafeteria tray of samples. The product lines always seem to be for salted hand scrubs and lotions made from Dead Sea salt. Um, check me on this, nothing lives in the Dead Sea. That's why we call it the Dead Sea. Doesn't this tell us something about the properties of the waters of the Dead Sea? Why would I want that toxic waste on my hands?

But I digress.

The cosmetic reps approach people with the same line, "Sir/Ma'am, can I ask you a question?" If they succeed in hooking the poor unsuspecting sap person with this line, they proceed to rub the product du jour into the potential customer's hands and to exclaim over the state of their skin. I've even seen one of them literally drage an old lady across the hallway by her hand to gey her closer to the kiosk where the rest of the skin care products were all artfully arranged.

Can I tell you that I have seen this little play enacted identically multiple times a walk each and every day I have walked during store hours?

Honestly.

I kid you not.

Same script, different audience.

I cannot understand it, either. The idea of a total stranger fondling my hands totally skeeves me out. The fact that they swoop across the lanes of pedestrian traffic in order to accost people just makes it worse.

I don't know. Is it just me? Would you talk to one of these dudes?

Not only are they strangers, they are strange strangers.

In which Keeb addresses the matchy-matchy

Hi, blog people!

Mommy says that I get to write the blog post today because she's having something called an ish-ewe with a sock.

Or something like that.

I don't know what an ish-ewe is exactly, but I'm a ram and I wish I had a ewe to call my own. Maybe Mommy will bring one home for me someday... She doesn't have to be a fancy ish-ewe, either; a nice, pleasant everyday Corriedale or Merino ewe would be a fine mate.

Anyway, Mommy says that she's pretty sure that she's told the blog repeatedly ad nauseum about how she likes her yarn socks all matchy-matchy. I'm positive that Mommy's mentioned the matchy-matchy on other people's blogs comments, too. :: waves a hoof at Chris ::

Well, Mommy started these really simple plain socks a couple of weeks ago. She was really, really careful to pull the yarn out of the skeins to match up the color repeats. She made sure that the reds and the yellows lined up all even and tidy. Then she put slipknots at exactly the same spots on each skein of yarn so that when she cast on each sock, the tops would be perfectly matchy-matchy.

Mommy did an awful lot of kwitting and finished the first sock the other day. Then she started working on the second sock. It all looked really good.

Right up until she got to round #9 of the 2x2 cuff.

That's when Mommy realized that the color repeats did not match!

Take a look for yourself:

Lined up on the *actual* pattern repeat

See how on the cuff of the finished sock there is one round of bright red and then the magenta color kicks in? (You might have to clicky to embiggen to really see it clearly.)

Now take a look at the newly started sock. It has two rounds of bright red before it begins a magenta round.

Yeah.

Mommy says that even though she is a great fan of the matchy-matchy, she isn't planning to rip out the second cuff. She decided that since the pattern repeat cropped up halfway through the first sock, she'd have to tear apart the whole second skein in order to locate the correct spot in the yarn to make with the matchy-matchy. And then there would be extra ends for weaving and what if, after all of that effort, there were knots?

I think that Mommy's going to have a little lie down now.

Opposites

We played the Opposites Game yesterday, the Neatnik and I. I know that you have played this game: one person names something and the other person rejoins with that thing's opposite. We visited some of the usual suspects yesterday:

Neatnik: Up.
Mommy: Down.

Neatnik: In.
Mommy: Out.

Neatnik: Fast.
Mommy: Slow.

Then Neatnik hit me with a really clever zinger. I was so impressed with this pair of opposites that I could not wait to tell Number Guy about it when he got home. I got all the way to, "Guess what Neatnik said" and then I forgot what the opposite pair was. I could not remember it at all.

I asked her tonight what the really cool opposite pair was from yesterday. She immediately told me "Remember and forget, Mommy."

Happy shamrocks

I tried to come up with a really cool post for St Patrick's Day but, alas, no really cool blogworthy event happened in or about the environs of chez trek. When the environment lets a blogger down, what is left but a Tuesday Night Bullet Post?

• Neatnik's school declared today pretty much an academic holiday so the children were directed to wear their gym uniforms, all the better for engaging in the festivities.



• There was a live DJ and the kids themselves presented a talent show for their schoolmates.



• Neatnik chose to do a song and dance routine to one of the songs from last year's VBS.



• Gosh, I wish I could have been there.



• Ah, well. While the children were busy entertaining each other and singing and dancing, I hit the local mall for some laps. Usually, I walk the upper level on the odd laps and the lower level on the even ones. My normal routine was somewhat thwarted by the following:
  
  
  The "up" escalator was out of commission though
  the "down" escalator was quite functional


• I had to adjust. It was a struggle and a challenge, but I did it.



• I wasn't about to let a busted up people conveyor derail my kwitting: I had a sock to knit!



• Said sock is nearly complete. We are in the decreases of the toe.



• Following today's constitutional, I noticed something outside the mall that kind of matched that warning barricade:
  
  
  How matchy-matchy, eh?


• Most people seem to associate yellow with the onset of spring around here. I suppose that it makes sense since daffodils and forsythias are often the earliest bloomers each year and they are both screaming yellow.



• I, however, do not associate yellow with St Patrick's Day.



• I needed some green. I found some in the yarn dresser.
  
  
  Socks That Rock
  Colorway County Clare


• Winding this hank of yarn tomorrow will prolong the festivities, right?



• Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it like paint on a sheep.

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
May the rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

In which Neatnik has the day off

Not much to say today, except that all of that kwitting paid off: Neatnik's got a nifty new pair of yarn socks.

All done!

She also has the day off from school, so today isn't much of a blogging day. 'Bye!

In which trek is feeling "Butchered"

Back in 2007, I started reading the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. I'm pretty sure that I was introduced to this series by Chris as a result of my reading recommendations plea following the Infamous Ankle Incident. While nothing would make suffering an IAI anything even remotely enjoyable, reading an excellent new author did at least introduce an element of tolerable into the equation.

Or maybe that was just the Percocet.

One or the other...

I've read all ten of the published Harry Dresden books and I think I've caught all of the short stories and the novella. Number Guy recently got interested in reading Harry's misadventures, so I've been bringing them home from the library for him. Since the library's been letting me down with new books and since I've been eagerly awaiting the eleventh Dresden novel, Turn Coat, I decided to re-read the preceding books.

I had to visit the author's web site to double-check the publication order of the first ten volumes. That's when I learned that he was posting the first five chapters of Turn Coat at weekly intervals.

I promised myself that I was not going to read them online, no sirree Bob, no way. I was going to wait for the whole book, thank you very much, and that was going to be the end of that.

Did I mention that the library's been letting me down on the book requests lately? Yeah, I think I did that up there in paragraph four.

What can I say? I was weak. I caved.

I read chapters one through four and then nearly had a major myocardial infarct. I considered writing a bit of a nasty note to the author for leaving me hung out to dry like that at the end of chapter four because I had to wait a whole 'nother week to find out what happened next.

Well, chapter five was duly posted this past Tuesday so all five of the promised chapters are available now. The break at the end of chapter five was more palatable than that at the end of chapter four, but I still have to wait until at least April 7th to get my hot little hands on the whole thing.

Gah.

During the next few weeks, I seriously need some new reading material to keep my mind off the fact that I really, really want to read the rest of this book. Would everyone reading this post please make some recommendations? Please? I'm dying here.

PS - Happy Pi Day.

Proto-meat

It's Friday. Friday the 13th, to be precise, but that isn't my point.

Today is a Friday during the Lenten season. Those of you of the generic Christian persuasion may or may not know where I am going with this. Those of you who are of the Catholic persuasion definitely know where I am going with this.

On Fridays during Lent, "adult" Catholics abstain from meat. Meat is defined as the flesh of mammals and fowl. It does not include the flesh of fish, which we here think is kind of odd.

In addition to fish, foods made from or by animals have the Canon Law Stamp of Approval. Dairy products and eggs get a green light.

We here at chez trek are not quite sure why chicken meat is on the verboten list but proto-chicken is perfectly okay but since we aren't the biggest fish fans, we accept this distinction between the fully fledged fowl and its pre-embryonic counterpart.

Did anyone else enjoy some proto-meat for lunch? We had ours fried, over-easy.

In which we have grey

Welcome to the Wednesday Night Bullet Post - The Grey Edition. Yes, there was a lot of the grey today.

• We woke up this morning to a lot of grey. The time change is killing us here, especially the Neatnik. Poor kid doesn't want to get up in the mornings and who can blame her, really? To be honest, it isn't so much grey here at 6:15 in the morning as it is pitch black.



• But I digress.



• Neatnik boarded the school bus under grey skies. I embarked upon my commute under the same grey skies, as did Number Guy. At some point after lunch, the great flaming orb in the sky threatened to put in an appearance, but it only threatened; perhaps it was intimidated by the grey skies.



• Raindrops fell from the grey clouds onto my windshield during this afternoon's round of errands.



• I wore blue and grey yarn socks today. It was only fitting given how well they seemed to go with the weather.



• Even though the skies were grey, I called TazzMom to see if she wanted to take a walk this evening. The temperatures were in the low to mid-sixties.



• I had to cancel on TazzMom at eight o'clock tonight because Number Guy had just called to say that it would be at least another hour before he could even consider leaving. My mood felt very grey after that phone call.



• I tried very hard not to let disappointment show in my voice, though. Number Guy has been working very long hours lately for a major product deployment. Things were breaking today and he really didn't need me to add to his level of grey.



• Between teaching and meeting Neatnik's school bus, I squeezed in some kwitting time at the local mall. It takes about four and a half miles to knit six rounds of leg, a heel flap, and a heel turn on an SJ Gym Crew Sock. While I was pleased with the sock's progress, I was not so thrilled with the photograph I took of it tonight, so I converted it to greyscale for your viewing pleasure.

There's really much more pink in person

Here's hoping that your day had a little less of the grey than mine did.

In which trek answers the question

Back in 1969, the burning question was "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?". Knitters aren't concerned so much with the answer to that particular question. Knitters, I find tend to be more interested in knowing the answer to this question: "How long does it take to knit a heel flap?"

The answer is four miles.

Whirlybird progenitress

Yesterday afternoon, I sent Neatnik to bed for a much-needed nap. For a variety of reasons, she was up late both Friday and Saturday nights and what with the whole losing an hour's sleep deal (thank you William Willet and both the 89th and the 109th Sessions of Congress), I knew that the only way to have even the slightest chance of getting her up, fed, dressed, and on the bus on time this morning was to make her take a nap.

Okay, yeah, I bribed her with cookies, too.

So sue me.

While Neatnik was napping, Tulip Twinkle kept me company, advising me on design features and sizing requirements for finishing the toe of an SJ Gym Crew Sock - Now with Blue Toes.

Tulip Twinkle likes the purl stitches
on the instep just before the toe

That brings us to this morning, when my eyes opened to see that it was five o'clock. Now, I don't have to get up at five, so I didn't. I have to get up and rouse the Neatnik at quarter after six. More accurately, the alarm clock goes off at 6:15 and I hit the Snooze button and really get up ten minutes later.

Neatnik claimed both that she was "very tired" and that her throat hurt this morning. A quick peek at the back of the throat proved that there was reason for the latter complaint: looks like a bit of post-nasal drip. I already knew the reason for the former claim: she didn't fall asleep until her normal go to sleep time, because her body is not clued into this whole Daylight Saving Time thing.

Well, look at that: a recurring theme throughout the post.

A little acetaminophen and a little antihistamine and she should be good for the day. At least, I sincerely hope so, as my Monday students missed an exam last week due to a foot of snow and next week is their Spring Break. They have to take this test today.

# # #

Speaking of my students, when I checked my college email account this morning, I saw that I had a voice message. Yes, a voice message. The school has adopted a new phone system. As of this semester, if someone leaves a message on my college phone extension, a copy of the recording is automatically forwarded to my college mail account.

I tell my students not to leave me voice messages because I do not dial in to check the messages. Now, with the new system, any voice messages which appear there actually hunt me down.

Super.

So far this semester, I've received about a double handful of messages - mostly from the administration concerning things like the delayed openings, closures, and special events which they think I really have time to consider attending.

This morning, however, there was a message from a helicopter parent. The call was logged before eight o'clock this morning. The mother stated that her daughter received a letter saying that she was in danger of failing the course and the mother wanted to know what was going on.

Hmm, let's take a peek at this together, shall we?

:: prof trek opens the gradebook spreadsheet for the appropriate section and looks up Helicopter's Daughter's grades ::

Ah, yes, Helicopter's Daughter currently has a 59 average, which falls into the region known here in the Halls of Higher Education as an F.

I stand by the warning notice: the student is in danger of failing this class.

Wouldn't you agree?

Warning: sock pictures ahead

I never thought that I would be saying this, but it is true none the less: the colors of the red striped sock are more accurate in today's photographs than the colors in the blue/green socks. Go figure.

First up, we have a picture of the completed Dublin Bay Socks - Herbal Edition.

They got to be "herbal" because the yarn
reminds me of parsley, sage, and lavender.
But not so much with the thyme.

You should take these socks as proof that kwitting works. And by "works", I mean that one can accomplish finished socks through this (one) knitter-tested method of knitting.

Did you happen to see that infinitesimal speck wee little loopy bit of yarn over there to the right of the socks? Look carefully: I promise you that it is there.

Maybe you should clicky to embiggen.

There, see it now?

That's the eighteen inches of yarn remaining after grafting the second toe shut. I was so worried about how much yarn there was that I actually grafted the first sock shut with a freakishly long tail. About six feet worth of tail. Yes, that is freakishly long, isn't it?

Koigu comes in absurdly short hanks.

I must admit, though, that I did have a wonderful yarn donation in this colorway for emergency toe finishing, if needed. Someone sent me a wee little ball of the same colorway. It wasn't close to the same dye lot but if I needed to use it, I wasn't going to care. Besides, no one else would care nor notice nor even see the toes of my socks, right?

This logic did not prevent me from attempting to force a full pair of socks out of the original two hanks of yarn. And, yes, anal-retentive really does have a hyphen in it, thank-you-very-much.

Since the donating knitter doesn't want the yarn back, I think I'll knit a Sockie out of it for the Christmas tree.

Having finished those socks yesterday morning, I needed to cast on another sock for the kwitting but I didn't want to break out the yarn ball winder.

I looked in the sock yarn dresser for something already wound into balls. There was nothing.

Next, I decided to see what I had in skeins instead of hanks. There were several skeins of stuff but most of it was in 100gm skeins. And I still didn't want to break out the yarn ball winder.

Down in the bottom drawer, there were two 50gm hanks of solid white yarn, two 50gm hanks of variegated blue yarn, and two hanks of violently red/hot pink/orange/yellow self-striping yarn.

Neatnik likes bright colors. She likes stripes. She likes what she calls "rainbow color" - meaning an item or article of clothing with lots of different colors in it. When I originally showed her this yarn in the skeins, she said that she didn't like it. When she got home from school yesterday afternoon and we went to the local mall for some exercise, she asked if this sock was going to be hers.

     ???

     "You said you didn't like this yarn."

     "I like it in the sock."

     "Well, no, this is my sock."

The colors in the sock really are
pretty accurate in this picture.

Down here in the comments is where everyone tells me how proud they are of me for knitting something waaaay outside my normal color palette.

In which trek explains brakes

Being the person around here known as "Mommy", the formation of the character and education of the young mind of the Neatnik often falls upon my shoulders. Sometimes, it falls heavily.

Like tonight when she asked what "those things" on my chest are called. We have previously addressed breast feeding in a skimming sort of fashion, so providing her with the anatomically correct term was not a problem. The teaching challenge this evening was, well, interesting, to say the least.

Neatnik wanted to know if "those things" have teeny, tiny, itty-bitty holes for the milk to come out.

Stop laughing.

Right now.

Oh, and I'm really sorry if you just spewed your lovely beverage all over your keyboards.

Yes, I told her they do and that we will discuss this in finer detail when she is older. Much older.

Other teachable moments are not quite as challenging but can be just as interesting.

My minivan's brakes have been a wee bit on the soft side lately. Once or twice, in the past week, a pleasant little ding! has sounded and a red light has blinked on the dashboard. Couple this with the recent influx of wintry precipitation and the fact that this vehicle must pass state inspection before March segues into April, and it is time, if not past time, to have the brakes done.


Number Guy followed Neatnik and I to the Wheel Fixy Place after dinner. In case you are wondering, the Wheel Fixy Place is that subset of Car Fixy Places which only does tires, brakes, and alignments.

On the way to the Wheel Fixy Place, Neatnik asked about how the brakes break and how they work. I made the following analogy.

Imagine that the brakes proper are a slice of break. The brake pads (or shoes) are represented by a thick slathering of peanut butter. Every time you need to stop the car, you scrape off the tiniest bit of peanut butter. Eventually, you will run out of peanut butter and be left with just the bread. Some time before you scrape every last bit of peanut butter from the bread, you go to the Wheel Fixy Place to get more peanut butter.

Hey, it worked: she explained to Daddy all about braking and peanut butter on the way home. And Daddy was way impressed.

# # #

PS - Three laps of the mall this morning finished the foot of the sock and the first couple of rounds of the toe.

PPS - After school sneaker shopping with the Neatnik polished off the rest of the toe. Just the grafting remains.

In which trek takes five

Some days, I am really grateful to Sheepie for instituting the Wednesday Night Bullet Post. There isn't any codeine here, but, yeah, today is one of those days.

• This being Wednesday, I was due on the other side of the county by eight o'clock in the morning. I know that I was supposed to be there because I have a little reminder thingy in my email client which reminds me of Things I Need to Do.



• Before departing for those Halls of Higher Education, I needed to put Neatnik of the bus so that she might visit the Halls of Primary Education.



• There were only fifteen pathetic little degrees registering on the ol' mercury this breezy morning, so I started up the engine of my trusty vehicle and Neatnik and I waited for the bus as the engine warmed.



• Neatnik's school bus was rather delayed this morning. This was not the sort of delay authorized nor sanctioned by Sister Principal. Nope, the bus was a good old-fashioned twenty minutes late.



• I had just about decided to put Neatnik back in the house and assign Number Guy the task of driving her to school on his way to work when the bus finally arrived. The driver reported mechanical failure issues. Eeep.



• Oh, well. At least this way, Neatnik was not tardy: the kids don't get penalized for the bus running late.



• With my beloved offspring en route to the Halls of Primary Education, I made my way to the Halls of Higher Education.



• We worked on Excel spreadsheets today. Things went pretty well. So well, in fact, that I gave my students a leg up on their homework assignment.



• Believe me: some of them could use all the assistance they can get. Especially
  
  
  • those who neglect to turn in their homework assignments
  • those who turn in their homework assignments late
  • those who fail to attend class on days of scheduled exams, and
  • those who just don't bother to show up for class
    
    
    • when they feel like sleeping late
    • when the moon is in the seventh house, or
    • their cat coughs up a hairball



• Things went so well that I was able to dismiss my second lab section of students quite a bit earlier than normal. Students of all types and ages seem to appreciate this sort of occurrence.



• It didn't warm up noticeably today and the most of the sidewalks where I like to take walks have not been shoveled. Ours has. The neighbors on both sides and across the street all have clean sidewalks but that seems to be about it.



• I pocketed my sock in progress and drove over to the local mall to walk indoors. Each lap is a mile.



• I motored along for five laps.



• I knit twelve rounds on the sock.



• There would have been more of the sock knitting if a friend hadn't called my cell somewhere around mile marker 3.5.



• Just before the phone call, I ran into someone from Number Guy's pipe band. This used to be my pipe band as well, so I knew this person from way back when. She was astounded that I was kwitting and reported that her husband's grandmother tried long ago to teach her to knit.



• She claimed to be an incapacitated lefty trying to manage in a right-handed knit. Aha! A missionary possibility!



• I asked if she can crochet.



• She can.



• I then showed her how holding the yarn for and the action of knitting continental looks an awful lot like crocheting.



• Is anyone surprised that she requested that I start attending bagpipe practices again to teach her to knit?



• No, I didn't think so.

There was a bit more to my afternoon, what with meeting the school bus, picking up groceries for dinner, visiting the library, and exploring the local bird shop but really, all of that rather pales when compared against the possibility of creating a new knitter, doesn't it?

Aftermath

For a brief while during the shoveling of the snow yesterday, I considered calculating how much snow I was shifting. I knew that the snow I was endeavoring to clear was approximately a foot deep. I could measure the width and the length of the driveway. After that, it's a simple calculation:

volume of snow = length x width x depth

And then, since a pint's a pound, the world around, I would be able to convert the volume of the snow to a weight measurement and share it with my blog peeps, all of whom, I am certain, were waiting today with bated breath to learn.

I'm sorry to disappoint all of you, but I decided that actually calculating the weight of the snow I shoveled yesterday was not only an enormously geeky thing to do but depressing as all get out. I had that revelation after an hour of non-stop shovel-wielding which succeeded in clearing less than 25% of our freakishly long driveway.

Have I ever mentioned that when we owned two Dodge Neons, we could (carefully) manage to park the two of them side-by-side in the driveway?

I spent nearly three hours working in the cold yesterday morning and almost another hour in the afternoon. By the time evening rolled around, I was listening to the whining and complaining of the shovel-swinging muscles.

This morning, I discovered that my various and assorted muscle groups did, in fact, unite in common cause against me, form a union, and attempt to go on strike. I was able to placate the insurrectionists, though, with the promise of a hot shower and a leisurely morning: Neatnik's school had a two-hour delayed-opening.

It might seem a bit excessive to have such a delay after cancelling the school day entirely yesterday, but it really wasn't. I drove Neatnik to school today and waited at one particular intersection for four cycles of the traffic lights due to the inches deep accumulation of icy slush which was causing the drivers ahead of me to spin their wheels pointlessly. Yeah, the primary and secondary roads were really clear but the side streets, not so much. Good thing I left plenty early.

Neatnik's school bus driver, apparently, did not. I stopped at the grocery store for a couple of gallons of milk on my way home from the school. Upon arrival at the domicile, I put away said liquid nourishment and broke out the salt. Whilst I was applying the salt to the driveway, just outside the side door, Neatnik's bus stopped to pick her up. Half an hour after school started.

Um, yeah.

Snow day

I rather wanted to post earlier today. Much earlier, in fact, but there were some circumstances that conspired against early blog posting.

The weekend weather forecast resulted in a late-night phone call from Neatnik's school's instant alert system. A snow day was officially declared as of about 9:30 last night. Coupling this happy occurrence with the fact that my Monday classes commence at noon, caused us to turn off the school day alarm on the clock.

Upon awakening this morning, everything outside was coated in vast quantities of the white stuff, with more expected during the course of the day. I checked the college web site and was relieved to discover that all classes were cancelled at all locations. Next, I called the emergency services line for Number Guy's work and learned that his location was also shut down for the duration.

Yes, we, the residents of chez trek, were treated to a Three-way Monday of Closed Places.

I was fairly certain that I would be able to make with the knitting some time during the day but not until after certain other high priority events happened.

The snow has a fine powdery texture, prefect, really, for skiing but not at all good for snowballs. So, there were no snowmen built here today but Neatnik made some quite spectacular snow angels. Number Guy and I created a couple of Neatnik-shaped dents in the snow drifts, too.

Both before and after the snow playing, there was an awful lot of snow clearing. Here is a picture of the driveway after the first stint of snow shoveling.

Snow was about a foot deep

This level of driveway cleanliness was the result of nearly five man-hours of snow removal. Most of my nearly three hours out of doors was spent with a shovel in my hands. Number Guy was able to borrow TazzDad's snowblower for a short while which was quite a blessing, otherwise we might still be outside, suffering from frostbite and loss neural function of the assorted extremities. Thanks, TazzDad!

After a nice, hot cup of tea, followed by a nice, hot shower, I scored some of the knitting time.

And it's grown a bit since the noon photo shoot

Some additional flakes fell by mid-afternoon, which may not have been as bad as it sounds: I used those late-comers as an excuse to re-introduce my shovel to the driveway and front sidewalk.

I was sort of hoping that this activity would prevent my various and assorted muscle groups from uniting in common cause against me, forming a musculature union, and going on strike by morning.

I'll have to let you know how that all works out.

Tomorrow.