In which trek sings the praises of Dr PreciousMetal

Wednesday, 5:20pm: Arrive at Dr PreciousMetal's office.

5:22pm: Complete "how are you feeling" form.

5:23pm: Go to Exam Room 1.

5:24pm: Slightly low blood pressure, normal pulse and respiration.

5:26pm: Enter Dr PreciousMetal. Spend next twenty minutes developing appropriate asthma and allergy management plan for the next two months.

5:48pm: Leave Exam Room 1.

8:13pm: Search online for health insurance company's three tier drug formulary in order to determine benefit coverage on medications prescribed.

8:17pm: Discover that three of the four medications are in the highest tier. Discover that the other one is not covered at all. Become very angry at insurance company.

8:18pm: Wonder why we bother to pay thousands of dollars a year in insurance premiums in the first place.

8:19pm: Begin to research alternate medication options.

8:47pm: Inform Number Guy that the medical insurance company is evil and of the devil. Number Guy agrees.

9:02pm: Call Dr PreciousMetal's service. Leave message for office to call in morning.

9:03pm: Resolve not to worry about problem until morning.

Thursday, 9:34am: Answer phone. Explain problem to Dr PreciousMetal's receptionist. Receptionist promises to have him return call as soon as possible.

10:28am: Answer phone. Explain problem to Dr PreciousMetal. Inform doctor which medications are on the formulary in lower tiers. Discuss options.

10:32am: Dr PreciousMetal promises to call local pharmacy with new prescriptions and to mail hard copies to send to mail-order pharmacy.

12:06pm: Answer phone. Dr PreciousMetal says that the drug rep for the company manufacturing the prescription eye drops has just left a stack of mail-in rebate forms. He promises to put rebates in the envelope with the prescriptions. Tell Dr PreciousMetal what a good guy he is!

1:54pm: Show up at local pharmacy. Lose confidence in Total Stranger Pharmacist who cannot figure out how to get the register to accept previous patient's five dollar cash payment. TSP insists that the prescriptions are not there.

1:56pm: Inform TSP that I spoke with the doctor twice today and that the prescriptions were called in hours ago. Suggest that he should check the doctors' message line.

1:58pm: Leave pharmacy. To go to school to pick up Neatnik.

1:59pm: At traffic light, verify with Dr PreciousMetal's office that the prescriptions were left on the doctors' message line.

2:03pm: Call pharmacy. Tell TSP that the office did, indeed, leave the prescriptions on the message line. Suggest once more that he check the line. Begin to suspect that he does not know how to check the line and is waiting for the pharmacy tech to return from break so that she can retrieve the messages.

2:11pm: Pick up Neatnik at school.

2:16pm: Run grocery shopping errands.

3:58pm: Arrive home. Unload and put away groceries. Fold laundry. Supervise homework and room cleaning.

4:17pm: Start dinner.

5:02pm: Call pharmacy to verify that prescriptions are were located and are done.

5:24pm: Eat dinner.

6:08pm: Depart for pharmacy.

6:15pm: Pay for prescriptions. Return home.

6:26pm: Blog.

Hooray for Dr PreciousMetal!!! We like him. A lot. He's a really good guy. Very understanding of financial constraints and dealing with health insurance company restrictions.

fdisk

Some days, blog fodder is very topical and cohesive. It just seems to jump right up and bite you on the fall into your lap and you are a fool if you do not use it pretty much obligated to go with it.

It could be that you were walking around town and couldn't pass up taking pictures of some purple buildings. Or maybe you finally broke a blog curse and posted pictures of a finished Dishcloth (with sleeves) that is both wearable and actually fits the intended wearer. Or maybe your kid did something truly hysterical over the weekend. Or maybe something really funny happened at work or at the store. These are the sort of things that make really good blog fodder. Not using them would be morally objectionable really dumb positively wasteful.

Other days, blog fodder is pathetically thin on the keyboard. You wander through the entire day hoping that something somewhat blogworthy will occur but it doesn't happen. Those are the days that you think about posting. You really want to post but you remember that old adage, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all, and realize that, for bloggers, it should read, if you can't say something that remotely resembles interesting, shut up try posting tomorrow.

Still other days are the ones where vaguely interesting things happened over the course of the day, but each of those occurrences were pretty minor when considered individually. Trying to collect them together into some kind of organized fashion is challenging in the best case and thoroughly confusing in the worst. What is a blogger to do in order to prevent the worst case scenario of manufacturing a monumentally mystifying morass of disorganization? Ah, I shall reveal to you the deepest secret of the blogsphere tell you: a blogger can slap together pull them together as Wednesday Afternoon Bullet Points.

• That was an amazingly long introduction for such a small group of Bullet Points.



• I really should be excused the long introduction, though, because I wrote it while proctoring tests this morning.



• My students had a lecture material test today and their grades were absolutely abysmal.



• Captain Obvious came by to tell us that we are at the end of the semester.



• The students who had A averages coming into today's class were allowed to take next week's exam a week early. I allowed students who did not have A averages to take the exam early if and only if they scored 100 on the practice test.



• Half of my eight o'clock class took home As this morning. Of the other half, four students are taking the test next week and three others did not bother to come to school at all today.



• The grades for my later class were slightly lower overall but I did not have to issue any Fs and so we call it a success and move on.



• Do you remember the Student For Whom I Had No Papers from last week? He had to take both of his tests today because he has to be in court next week. I thought that he meant he was called up for jury duty.



• He wasn't. He has to appear in court. After class, he felt the need to explain to me precisely why he has to appear in court next week.



• My head is still reeling from the level of TMI involved.



• SFWIHNP is about half my age and a much wilder edition of late adolescence than I ever was and I still haven't figured out why he feels the need to confide in me. Truly, I do not. It isn't as if I asked. In fact, I tried to get out of today's dose of TMI.



• It did not work.



• Days like today, I really wish there was an fdisk utility which could be executed on certain portions of the human brain because I really would prefer to forget SFWHINP's recent misadventures and need to appear before the local representatives of the judicial system.



• I get to visit Dr PreciousMetal this evening. The tree pollen population is calming down a wee bit and I am hopeful that I will be seeing a happy doctor tonight.

Well, that's about all I have for this afternoon.

I think maybe I'll go research the availability and possible hazardous side-effects of a biological fdisk utility now. Can't be worse than the sedative effects of the various antihistamines, now, can it?

Swift...or not so much

When confronted by the need to take massive doses of antihistamines, a knitter will do so. A wise knitter will avoid complicated cables and/or lace projects while under the sedative influence of said antihistamines and stick to simpler, less demanding projects for the duration. Preferably small ones.

Apparently I overestimated my ability to knit under the influence because I cast on and started knitting this (Ravelry link) pathetically simple mop cover three times before getting it right.

Dude...seriously!

I showed my progress to Number Guy at lunch time, pulling out the mop head itself so that he could see how the knitted cover was going to be put on it.

Dude...seriously??

Okay, so I am now working on my fourth attempt to make a mop cover that will aequately cover my mop...

In which Neatnik hides

The trek family is visiting grandma's house where they have just finished having birthday cake on the patio. The children, Neatnik and Bobblehead, are playing Hide and Seek...
Neatnik comes around the corner of the house and stops briefly, examining the yard for "good" hiding places. She decides to hide behind the wicker loveseat upon which Number Guy is seated.

Moments later, Bobblehead comes around the same corner of the house, looking for Neatnik. She stops dead near the assembled adults, with hands on hips, asking, "Do you know where Neatnik is hiding?"

Number Guy and trek both point behind the couch. Bobblehead runs around couch whereupon both children erupt in giggles. They leave the patio together for the next round.

A little while later, it is once again Neatnik's turn to hide...
She chooses the pine tree near the back fence. Bobblehead finishes counting, returns to the back patio, and once more asks, "Do you know where Neatnik is hiding?"

This time, all of the adults point to the pine tree. Neatnik is found. The children giggle and vacate the area.

Still later, Neatnik chooses to hide behind the barbecue grill...
She requests that we not tell Bobblehead where she is hiding. Bobblehead comes looking for Neatnik. With her back to Neatnik's hiding place, she asks, "Do you know where Neatnik is hiding?"

A disembodied voice from behind the barbecue grill cries out, "DON'T TELL HER!"

If a picture is worth a thousand words,

then this post is a novella...

Demolition is a very noisy operation!

Laminate floors require level underlayment

Two options for tile arrangement
We went with the one on the left

Laying a floor requires attention to detail

Job well-done

In which trek knits a perfect neckline

Around here, we have an unreasonable hatred intense aversion to sweaters that bunch up under the arms. Since this sweater (Ravelry link) will only ever be worn over a long-sleeved shirt, I decided that the armholes had to be a little bit deeper than the pattern specifies. So, I was knitting merrily along, this past week, working on the left front panel, measuring carefully to ensure a nice, deep, non-restrictive sleeve opening.

Yesterday morning, I finished what I thought were the last two rows before shaping the neckline. Then I consulted the instructions. That's when I realized that I should have worked the neckline decreases four inches ago.

Oh, bother.

Okay, I could handle this. I am a knitter and I like to knit.

I ripped back to the lifeline, double-checked the directions, and re-knit the front of the left shoulder, this time with decreases on the neckline.

After I decreased a total of nine stitches along the neckline, I realized that at the rate I was going, I was going to have knit a twelve inch deep armhole.

I don't like a tight, strangling sleeve, but I also wasn't planning for this sweater to be a kimono. I decided that I should (triple) check the instructions. The pattern said to work decreases on every row for the first eleven decreases, not every other row - as I had been knitting.

Double bother.

People say that the third time's the charm and I am here to confirm this theory: after unravelling the work back to the lifeline, I very carefully re-read the directions and re-knit the front of the shoulder correctly.

If practice makes perfect,
then this is a perfect neckline.

I am working on the back of the sweater right now. After that is done, I shall cast on for the right front panel of the cardigan. It should be pretty easy, right? After all, I took copious, highly detailed notes on the left front panel shaping. And those detailed notes will come in really handy when I need to:

Work in patterns as established and work armhole, neck, and shoulder as for left front, reversing all shaping.

A first...make that a twenty-first

One of my students didn't turn in any assignments last week. I was pretty sure without checking my attendance records that he was not in class last week but I asked, just to be sure. The conversation ran like this:

professor trek: "Student For Whom I Have No Papers, weren't you absent last week?"

Student For Whom I Had No Papers (looking up and cheerfully chirping): "Yup! I was too hungover to come to class."

prof trek: (nodding) "Okay, then."

SFWIHNP: "Well, yeah, and I'm not going to lie to you or anything. See, my buddy turned twenty-one and I thought I'd just go out for a drink with him, you know, to celebrate. I really thought I'd just have one drink."

prof trek: "Seriously? A twenty-first birthday celebration and you seriously thought that you were going to have one, single, solitary drink and then go home?" I might have sounded a wee bit disbelieving.

SFWIHNP: "Well, yeah. But it didn't quite work out that way. And that's why I didn't come to class because I was really hungover."

Dude...tee-em-eye.

Seriously.

In which Keeb is excited

Hi blog people!

Mommy says I can do the Wednesday Afternoon Bullet Post today! I'm all excited!

Can you tell how excited I am? Can you?

Want to know why I am all excited? Do you?

I'll tell you why I am so excited:

• Our new kitchen floor is here! See?
  
  
  Seven really heavy boxes of tiles
  and some padding stuff and some trim


• It is so our new kitchen floor.



• It's just resting in the dining room until Friday when the installation guys come. The Clever Carpet and Flooring Company people said that the tiles have to ak-lum-ate for a couple of days.



• I asked Mommy what ak-lum-ate means and she says it's sort of like letting the bread dough rest or the steak marinate.



• I like food metaphors!



• This is Mommy's cardigan. Well, the left front side of it, anyway. She's been working on it while she and Neatnik and Daddy all play bored board games after dinner.
  
  
  Ready to shape the collar

Isn't Mommy's sweater looking pretty? I'm pretty sure that Mommy's going to work on it while the Clever Carpet and Floor Company Crew does the floor on Friday.

While wearing earplugs.

Demolition?

When you want to have a new kitchen floor, you have to make some decisions. A lot of decisions, actually.

First, we had to decide who shall supply the flooring? This wasn't quite as straight-forward a decision as might seem at first glance. We knew that the two local home centers do flooring. We like one of them but do not like the other one. We also knew that a national carpet and flooring chain did a very nice job on our carpeting seven years ago.

Off we went to the Home Center Where They Wear Orange Aprons. The nice guy in the flooring department told us that it costs $35 for them to come to the house to measure and prepare a job estimate, etc. Hmm. He did assure me that this fee gets credited once you make the actual purchase. Okay. Next, we had to discuss the sort of flooring we would like to purchase and what was already on the floor.

The flooring guy really didn't have good manners, I must say. He actually asked how old the house is. You all know that our house is older than dirt. I mentioned it back in the dim recesses of blog time January: you are blog peeps and I volunteered this information. Didn't his mother ever tell him that it is not good manners to ask a lady's age?

Hmph. Anyway, after learning that our house was born back when Wilson was in office, he got this concerned look on his face. He started tossing about things like asbestos, show-stopper, and abatement.

It seems that back in the fifties, people sometimes installed nine inch square asbestos floor tiles in their kitchens. Made sense at the time: wonderfully fire-resistant and long-lasting. No one knew about those health hazard issues.

Now, of course, we know very well about the potential health risks associated with associating with asbestos. These health risks are the reason why the flooring guy used the phrase show-stopper. If they started the job and they found asbestos tiles, no matter how torn up the work area, they would immediately walk off the job and contact the county health commission and we'd have to coordinate an asbestos abatement.

We went home. Once home, we pulled up the wooden threshold strip between the kitchen and the dining room so that we could examine the layers of flooring. Good news! The flooring was exactly as we had hoped: linoleum/plywood/hardwood/subfloor/joists. No asbestos.

Liking the fact that the Clever Carpet and Floor Company provides free estimates and brings the samples right to your home, we decided that they should supply the flooring. A nice fellow showed up with his handy-dandy tape measure and samples and we settled on a faux-stone laminate.

Stone Creek
It is sort of pinkish, but it goes well with
the walls, cabinets, and appliances.

We also decided that we would remove as much of the old flooring as possible since they charge per square foot and per layer for removal.

The linoleum layer came off easily. Cleanup was easy, too. Then we pulled up the first bit of underlayment (that's what TazzDad says it is called, instead of subfloor) - the plywood under the tiles. This piece spanned the doorway to the dining room and was only about six inches across. It came up really easily.

Sunday morning, we started in on the plywood in earnest. That is also when we noticed that the plywood seemed to have rather a lot of nails. Not to panic, though, we had a towel and pry bars and pliers and all sorts of demolition tools. In our flurry of earnestness, we were able to remove a section of plywood about 18" x 36" - if you measured generously. We cleaned up the demolition zone and covered the whole floor with area rugs scavenged from the basement.

After two grueling, back-agonizing hours, we had come to a decision: some jobs are much better left to strong, healthy twenty-something males who have not yet evolved lumbar nerve endings. Seriously.

Besides, paying the Clever Carpet and Floor Company to remove the plywood will be much more economical than a visit to the emergency room would be.

Rockyview

We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging...or so we hope!

Neatnik is back at school, having enjoyed the previous week and a half of Easter vacation. Despite a bit of fear that she would have trouble getting out of bed, it was fairly easy to rouse the little one this morning and to get her started on her day. Hope you are having a great morning, sweetie!

Here's a picture of the sock I worked on during Neatnik's school break. I named it the Rockyview Sock in honor of a bed and breakfast, on the north edge of The Burren, where Number Guy and I stayed in County Clare back in 1998. The yarn is Socks That Rock mediumweight in the County Clare colorway. This sock is knitting up wonderfully and the colors remind me of the greens of the fields and the blues of Galway Bay.

All soft and squishy!

One thing that we'll always remember about that trip to Ireland was something that happened on our way back to the farm house on a Sunday night. We had driven west along the Coast Road to see the Cliffs of Moher. After the Cliffs, we continued on the Coast Road to Lisdoovarna, where we enjoyed mixed grill for dinner.

We had a road map from the rental car company and we noticed that there was an alternate inland route from Lisdoovarna to Ballyvaughan, so we decided to take it back to the farm house; after all, we had already driven along the south shore of the bay, so why not see what there might be to see inland? Besides, it would be a shorter drive and it was getting late.

I drove east until I reached the northbound road. I turned left, confident that all I had to do was to keep driving straight until I hit the Coast Road.

My confidence took a minor ding when we unexpectedly encountered a T-intersection. :: blink, blink ::

Did I mention that the northbound road was drawn on the map as a straight north-south line?

No matter: we were on vacation and this was an adventure!

We quickly reviewed our options and decided to turn left. That way, if things went awry, we'd at least still end up on the Coast Road eventually and not in Tipperary.

We followed this new road uneventfully for a while. Then we ran right smack into another T-intersection. Correcting for making the previous left, this time we turned right.

Yes, this was way back in the Dark Ages of automotive navigation, when you had to rely on dead-reckoning, when GPS wasn't even a glimmer on the dashboard of our littel, white, rental car. Actually, nothing out there was glimmering at all except for a few dim stars and the lights on the dashboard: there were no street lights, no house lights, no nothing. Not even another car's headlights.

It was dark. I mean, dark, out there.

I continued to drive right along, feeling just fine, until Number Guy decided to mention that it was pitch black out there and that we were in a foreign country, late on a Sunday night, apparently miles away from anything at all, with no idea exactly where we were, and only half a tank of gas.

Those cramps in my fingers and hands had nothing at all to do with how tightly I was gripping the steering wheel. It was muscle fatigue due to jet lag.

Fortunately, we reached the Coast Road just a few minutes later, turned right, and proceeded without further incident to Rockyview Farmhouse and warm, snug beds.

The lesson we learned?

Never follow an uncolored, unnamed road, on a rental company road map at night.

In which no plan survives contact with the enemy

We were supposed to go away for the weekend. It was going to be a big surprise for the Neatnik: we planned to wake her very early on Friday morning, bundle her into the already packed minivan, and head for the ranch. Please note the liberal use of words like supposed and going to and planned.

In this case, the enemy is me. Or, more specifically, my biology. Or, more precisely still, my allergies and asthma. We have established beyond the suspicion of doubt that in addition to being allergic to horses, grasses, and hay, trek is allergic to tree pollen.

The pollen counts here are extremely high and almost as high at the ranch. We cancelled our reservation on Thursday night and will reschedule for a weekend when the pollen counts are somewhat less elevated.

Instead of a lovely weekend of fun filled activities like horseback riding, hiking, playing in the pool, and sporting on the lake, we did some other fun stuff. We took Neatnik out to lunch Friday and then she and I visited the library and then came home and played some games.

Neatnik loves Guess Who? and is really good at it

The three of us spent some time ripping up the kitchen linoleum over the past couple of days. It must be at least twenty years old. We've been here for twelve years and it didn't have any of its no-wax surface left when we arrived. Neither Number Guy nor I were thrilled with how it looked, but other things were given higher priority in the Home Improvements Queue - until recently, that is. The tiles in front of the refrigerator decided to buckle this winter so a new floor changed classification from Nice to Have Eventually to Necessity Now.

Very ugly floor tiles,
which were impossible to get really clean,
unless scrubbing on hands and knees and using bleach

It quickly became easy to figure out where there had been water spills in the past twenty plus years: those were the areas where the tiles came up relatively easily. In other parts of the floor, the tile glue displayed considerable inertia and resistance to removal. Thank you, TazzDad for the loan of the big, industrial floor scrapper tool!

Isn't this gross?
No matter: the subfloor is going, too.

After cleaning up the detritus of demolition and ourselves, we zipped over to the warehouse club store to procure some groceries and a couple of rotisserie chickens.

When I went next door to deliver the "thank you chicken", TazzMom told me that TazzDad had flushed a nest of bunnies whilst mowing the lawn this morning. He was able to put a couple of them on our side of the fence, but one little guy is probably not going to make it. On the bright side, I was able to catch one of the unharmed ones and show it to Neatnik. She loves bunnies and is very gentle petting the newborns.

Thanks for the photography assist, Number Guy!

Aside from the reading, gaming, demolition, and errands, there has been some knitting. I'm well along in the upper part of the left front panel of the cardigan (Ravelry link) and just about ready to start the heel flap on the current sock.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to vicariously enjoy the beautifully warm sunny day by sitting near the west-facing dining room windows with the blinds open but the windows hermetically tightly shut and locked.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

In which trek counts to eight

I carved out a nice little slice of knitting time late yesterday afternoon. Neatnik and I had spent the earlier part of the day visiting three different thrift shops and the library, so I was entitled to a little downtime.

Neatnik was due for her mid-afternoon snack, so I popped some popcorn, popped in a movie, and popped myself over on the couch to work on the left front panel of the Cables and Ribs Cardigan. On Monday night, I had finished the 100th row on the back panel, which put me ready to begin the armhole shaping. All I needed to do yesterday to match up the length of the left front panel with the back panel was to knit rows 88 to 100.

Or so I thought.

In a fit of brilliance, before considering the shaping, I laid the front panel on the back panel. That's when I realized that "something was not right".

The back was more than an inch longer than the front.

How could this be? I logged each and every row of the front. I had to do it: there are two charts and they have a different number of rows in their pattern repeats.

Could I have miscounted the rows in the back? Possible, I supposed, but it was off by a lot.

Before dragging the work over to the really, really bright lamp and counting up 100 rows of dark chocolate knitting, I would check how many rows longer the back was than the front.

A stroke of genius, I tell ya! When I counted the number of rows above the end of the front panel, I learned that the back panel was eight rows longer. There were eight rows in the initial ribbing on the front panel.

I knew immediately what I had done. When counting the rows for the front panel, I counted eight for the lower ribbing, then I started the first rows of the charts, counting at row nine. When I counted the rows for the back, apparently I counted eight for the lower ribbing and then restarted the body rows at row one.

Problem solved!

Sweaters fit so much better when
the armholes begin at the some point
on the fronts and backs, don't you think?

In which trek bags some bags

Like fishermen need tackle boxes and race car drivers need trailers and a tailor needs a sewing basket, we knitters need bags to hold and transport the tools of our trade.

Monday of last week, a very cool bag arrived at chez trek. It is a genuine Nantucket Ditty Bag sent to me by knitzu for being the random drawing winner of her snow melt contest. I haven't taken pictures of it in use yet because I am still admiring its extreme pink-ness. Thanks, knitzu!

The Nantucket Bagg is a big bag, designed to hold all of your gear at the same time. Sometimes, though, we need smaller bags that hold just a little bit of gear.

I ordered this little bag about a month ago and it was delivered yesterday. It was almost like an Easter present for my knitting. Except that if I told you I ordered an Easter present for my knitting you would pick up the phone to dial 9-1-1 to request that the nice young men in the clean white coats come visit for a little intervention.

Or maybe you wouldn't: you are a knitter, too.

Ahem. Moving right along...

You probably won't believe where I got it, and while I am surely not using it the way the distributor expected, it fulfills the needs of a SIP very well indeed. It fits an 80 gram ball of Socks That Rock (mediumweight) and the sock in progress comfortably and the bottom has reinforced edges
so it stands up even when empty.

Definitely outside my color palette...

...but it was only available in this fabric.

I really like this little tote. I liked it so much in the catalogue that I ordered two: one for me and one for someone else. Who is that someone else? Well, I really don't know yet. I'm going to save it to be a prize for a summer blog contest.

Happy Easter! Alleluia, alleluia!!

In which trek has slices of pie

This week has been a week of preparation for Easter with a nice little side order of crazy added just to keep things interesting. Since slices of crazy pie cannot be served up in any sort of organized fashion, I am relying of the inherent randomness of the Late Saturday Morning Bullet Points.

• We started off the week with Palm Sunday mass. Or rather, we tried to do so. Sunday morning dawned all bright and cheerfully sunny and we had breakfast and showered and dressed and drove ourselves over to church. On the way, I realized that my chest was feeling a little bit tight. "Not to worry," I thought to myself, "I've been taking my asthma medication and the allergy-fighting antihistamines. I'm covered."



• This was, as it turned out, rather more optimistic than the circumstances warranted. No sooner did we reach the church and locate a nice, empty stretch of pew than I started to cough. A lot. Deep, tearing, chest-ripping, hacking coughs. I later described the sound as what a broken-down, retired racehorse would make on being forced to run too fast for too long.



• No, I didn't have my rescue inhaler on me. I snagged the car keys from Number Guy and drove home to get it. Immediately I got home, I sucked down a couple of puffs and made a nice cup of tea to sip while I waited for the old beta-agonists to agonize the appropriate bronchial receptors.



• Yes, I used to be a pharmacist. Why do you ask?



• When things settled down some, I returned to church, where I immediately re-commenced with the hack-shudder-cough routine. Obviously, there was something in the church that morning that my lungs did not appreciate.



• Honestly, I have no idea how I am going to manage tomorrow's mass.



• Back home, I loaded up on additional antihistamines and put in a call to Dr PreciousMetal. He didn't like how I sounded. That was no surprise, of course: I didn't like how I sounded. We made a date for the following morning.



• My lung function test were off-the charts stellar on Monday morning. Quick action allowed us to arrest the progression of the breathing difficulties.



• We had minor asthmatic reprises on Thursday and Friday afternoons: looks like trek is now also allergic to tree pollens. Highly allergic. Joy.



• When we originally set the time on the DVD player, we told it to automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time. There was a brief power outage a couple of weeks ago. We fixed the time then but forgot to change the DST setting. The other day, I noticed that the clock on the DVD player is off by exactly one hour: yup, Palm Sunday was the first Sunday in April this year. Guess we'd better change the DST setting.



• That or buy a new DVD player; one of the two.



• Speaking of the DVD player, we haven't been watching as many movies lately which explains why the progress on my sweater has been, well, non-existent, until yesterday evening. I sat down with the back of the sweater and knocked out more than a dozen rows while watching Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune with the Neatnik.



• We introduced the Neatnik to Hangman years ago. She loves Wheel.



• I also did some sock knitting while we played Scrabble right after dinner. Don't who won the game, since we didn't keep score, but the sock was certainly a winner.



Very squishy!


• Wikipedia is very handy for the clickies.



• The college IT people decided that the middle of the semester would be a really great time to change over the email system from SquirrelMail to Outlook Web Access. I am sure that this will be a major improvement - eventually - but making this change in the middle of the semester? With no way to export saved emails other than accessing each mail item individually and forwarding it to an alternate address?



• The new mail servers went live yesterday afternoon. This morning, I attempted to access my college email account. I could not. The software insisted that I check my login ID and password.



• I called the help desk.



• I waited on hold for twenty minutes.



• They didn't even have bad hold music: they had college announcements interspersed with frequent reminders of how one could go online to complete an online help form and they would then reply to your college email account.



• Uh huh. I waited.



• I needn't have waited because after I explained the problem to the help desk guy and told him what account information I had been advised to use and that the system kept telling me that the login ID and/or password was incorrect, the help desk guy told me he had no way to look up the correct login/password combination.



• I have to wait until Monday morning for email access.



• I am making a cheesecake for tomorrow's Easter dinner. More precisely, I just baked the cheesecake and it is resting comfortably in the refrigerator.



• The sides seem a little bit darker than I expected. Should I have used the non-stick spray only on the bottom disk of the springform pan?



• Have I ever mentioned that cheesecake is my favorite kind of pie?



My very first cheesecake!


• We left the cream cheese and eggs out on the porch overnight since it was both significantly cooler than room temperature but yet slightly warmer than the refrigerator's setting. This ensured that I only had to wait a short while this morning for everything to be warm enough and soft enough to start the recipe, which my sister used for last week's pre-Easter dinner.



• I added a wee, tiny pinch of salt to the shortbread crust and a tablespoon of vanilla to the custard batter but otherwise followed the recipe exactly.



• In past, Neatnik has rejected cheesecake but this morning she asked if she could like the mixer paddle. I scraped up some batter for her and she liked it and asked for a second taste. Then she said, "I think I'm going to like this cheesecake!"

So, there you have it. Little bits of this and that from the previous week. We'll let you know how the cheesecake goes over at dinner tomorrow.

Happy Easter!

Daffodils

At the park today, we saw this definitive sign that spring is here:

Daffodils!

Neatnik's Easter vacation began at eleven o'clock this morning and it continues through the end of next week. Blogging might be a wee bit on the sparse side for the duration...

In which term papers are due

Term papers were due today. Most of my Wednesday students turned in papers.

Too bad most of them turned in papers on topics other than those which were assigned to them.

I intended to spend a goodly portion of my evening grading papers. Instead, I spent a little time grading papers and a lot of time reviewing off-topic papers and writing emails to those students who must now rewrite their term papers. Most of said emails read along these lines:

To: Student Writing Off-Topic Term Paper
From: professor trek
========================================

While you followed most of the directions for the formatting of your term paper, you did not write about the topic correctly. I advised everyone at the beginning of the semester that papers submitted on the wrong topic would receive no credit.

You wrote about [fill in incorrect topic here]. The proper assignment was to argue whether or not you believe that [fill in actual ethics in technology issue here].

Reread pages xxx-yyy in the textbook and then rewrite your term paper on the correct topic. It is due next class.

# # #

I could really use a beer about now but we don't have any. Of course, we do not have any because if we bought a six-pack it would remain in the back of the refrigerator for 9.27 years and that just has to be beyond the shelf life of the product, no matter what brand you drink.

I didn't knit today, either.

Tomorrow will be better. It has to be: Neatnik has a half-day at school and an afternoon playdate in the park.

In the meantime, I think I shall go to bed now.

In which we wonder

Sent by Student Needing Term Paper Direction at 11:33pm Monday evening...

To: professor trek
From: Student Needing Term Paper Direction
========================================
prof trek..

I was looking over my ethics paper that is due on Wednesday and I was wondering if I did it correctly. I wrote about e-commerce and [insert SNTPD's somewhat lengthy description here] with everything that was needed in the paper. But then I just glanced at the textbook and it had an example of something that could be e-commerce. I was wondering if I should rewrite my paper because it was not what was assigned. I just thought you meant the pros and cons of any aspect of the topic not the pros and cons of a specific assigned example of the topic..


Please help..

Thank you so much..

# # #

• The term paper is really only a glorified five-paragraph essay. It shouldn't take all that long to write. On the other hand, I did assign the paper on the first day of class so that the students would have plenty of time to do a some research.
  
  I wonder if SNTPD understands that a term paper, no matter how short, does actually require some research to be done.



• On the first day of class, I explained that papers not written on the assigned topics would be given zeros - no matter how well-written or compliant otherwise.
  
  I wonder if SNTPD has read my reply yet: the paper is due twelve hours from now.



• I wonder why SNTPD used two periods for the sentences at the ends of paragraphs.

# # #

To: SNTPD
From: prof trek
========================================
Yes, you do need to rewrite your paper. You are to write about [actual ethical issue with pros and cons here] as described in the textbook. Pick a side, pro or con, and defend your position.

# # #

Hi, blog people!

Mommy has to get ready for tomorrow morning's class so she said that I should tell you about the socks she finished last night.

Mommy finished the toe on the second Sunset Stripes Socks last night, except for the Kitchenering. She grafted the toe this morning and wore the socks all day. Mommy says that they feel good on the hoof but that she wasn't really happy with the yarn while she was knitting it. She described the yarn as "rather splitty" and says that she doesn't want to knit with it ever again.

Do you remember when Mommy had the ish-ewe with these socks? She was all annoyed that the stripes weren't perfectly matchy-matchy even though she had pulled out all kinds of yards of yarn to try to match up the pattern repeats.

I wonder why Mommy gets so uptight about identical twin socks. Her feet are fraternal twins so why not knit fraternal socks?

Thanks for the photo-assist,
Number Guy!

In which trek lolz

It's another cloudy/rainy day here at chez trek. My students have an spreadsheet software exam today and I have an emergency-scheduled-on-Sunday-due-to-asthma-problem visit with Dr PreciousMetal before class.

Sometimes, one can mitigate the apparent size of the slice of crazy pie planned for the day with a little early morning lol.

Evn bettr when u capshuns teh goggie yrself!

Come on by and vote for my lol! Please?

Cheers

Today, the weather is, well, crummy here. No, really. The temperature has been riding at about 50°F all morning and the rain just keeps coming down. It isn't a torrential downpour, more like a constant drizzle that won't quit. While this is really good for the grass, it isn't so good for the kwitting. The sock would get very soggy, you realize.

This was obviously one of those days where walking indoors was infinitely preferable to walking outdoors. I donned my parka, stuffed the SIP into a pocket, and sallied forth to march the mall's corridors.

The local mall may not be the place where everybody knows my name, and I might not always be glad I came*, but I realized this morning that walking and knitting there in the early hours is getting me some recognition with the Customer Service staff.

My parka got fairly damp in the dash between the doors of the buildings and that of the minivan, so I decided to leave my jacket with Customer Service. The lady there took my parka and said, "Oh, I don't need to give you a number**. I know you: you're the lady who knits the socks." Then she asked to see the sock in progress. Nice lady.

Fame, it's a burden, but I refuse to let it go to my head. I shall just soldier on as normal...

# # #

Here we have a picture of the previously finished sock and the one in progress. As you can see, the pattern repeats are well and truly off, however, I have decided not to be concerned with it: I just won't ever wear these with shorts!

Stripes all lined up***

* No, I haven't watched a single episode, but I have heard the theme music often enough to recognize the opening lyrics.

** Yes, I did get my parka back from the nice Customer Service lady despite not having a little coat-check ticket.

*** And, yes, that's the current book: A Face at the Window by Sarah Graves. Just started it this morning. Sarah's a great lady, by the way. She sent me a signed copy of Trap Door after the Infamous Ankle Incident.

And she knits, too!

Hissy fit

My students had a test this morning. The goal was for them to demonstrate how well they could use the spreadsheet software they have been learning over the past several weeks.

Our class format includes me leading them in a tutorial and assigning the homework which is always due the following week. These past two weeks, the tutorials have not taken up the full lab session allotted to us, so I have been getting them started on their homework.

That is, if you define "getting them started" as basically covering the entire homework assignment, including formula specification and chart design. Pretty much all they have had to do on their own has been formatting the spreadsheets according to the instructions in the textbook.

In addition to the tutorials, we also make practice tests available. The practice tests are structured exactly the same way as the official exams but the students can take the practice tests as many times as they like. Also, the practice tests are available to them online and without password protection so they can take them any place: in the lab, at home, at the local wi-fi hotspot.

I've been telling my students since before spring break to take the practice test. Some of them did, some did not. Of those who did, most of them took it one time and one time only and didn't even attempt to improve their scores.

This morning, I had all of the students log into the testing software and take the practice test. If they achieved a certain minimum score, I let them take the real exam. If not, I had them try the practice test again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

My strategy was fairly successful, wouldn't you agree?

Eight o'clock lab

Ten-thirty lab

Of course, there was that one student who had a perfect score on the practice test but somehow managed only a C+ on the real exam. Then, there was that one student who took the practice test four times and achieved the same (failing) grade all four times. The idea, people, is to learn from your mistakes and correct them.

But I digress. I do that fairly often. Why don't you stop me?

Sorry.

On the whole, I am satisfied with the exam results. That is, I am satisfied overall with the final grades which the students earned. I am somewhat less than pleased they didn't do the homework as assigned. Think about this: if you took a practice test and scored only a D or a C on it, do you really think that when you walk into the classroom to take the live exam that you will do any better?

I rest my case.

Most of the homework grades were pretty good today, as well. Except for the one student who had four different spreadsheet files on her flash drive, none of which had the same data as the hard copy which she turned in to me. When I questioned her, Student Lacking the Correct File practically yelled that she stayed late last week working on it. I had to inform her that unless she redid the work, she would have to take a zero.

SLCF actually tried to argue with me that the work on the flash drive was the same as the printed pages - though they clearly were not. I said that I was not going to argue with her and handed her the flash drive.

Believe it or not, SLCF snatched the flash drive from my hand, stomped over to the door, flung it open, and cried out, "You're so unfair, it's ridiculous!" before attempting to slam the door shut behind her. I expect better manners and social behaviors from my six year old.

Yeah, that's right. I'm so unfair. Really, expecting my students to do the work as assigned and to comply with the course requirements and department policies regarding homework.