Anybody want to join in on ordering a 11 lb + batch of undyed yarn and some acid dyes and having a dying party? Like summer camp where you make tie dye, only better because it's yarn. We could do cotton or bamboo, since it's warm weather and wool is kind of silly.

Also, anybody want a job calling users and reminding them to update their profile in our database? It's not selling anything (thank god), it's just reminding them that we appreciate getting their information and that the more often they feed it to us, the better for their exposure to people who want to give them money. I can't be at work during particularly useful hours for calling to the east coast, and my coworkers don't enjoy being on the phone with (often busy) finance people. I think it's fun, personally, and I wish I could make my schedule work.

Cultural Anthro: 3.2
Fundamentals of Psychological Research: 3.2 (and it's not a lecture course, either)
Biopsych: 3.9

Pak. Chooie. Unf.

I'm getting tired of being a shut-in. I've gone out a few times but it's sort of exhausting, and my mom has forbade me from going out until I'm better. I feel silly being all "my mom says I can't go play!" but she does live with me, and she has noticed the effects of going out on my health. So here's what I've been doing, since for the first five days I didn't have the short term memory capacity to knit:




Moping around on my bed was getting bad for my back, so I sit at the table in the dining area.

There's my teapot. Right now I'm having peach ginger apricot flavored black tea. I have 18 varieties of loose leaf and some bags I don't use (except for the Market Spice stuff when I'm making srs chais).

Far left is the last 2 ounces of what is probably a 7-8 ounce batch of wool being spun into yarn. It's my first substantial project. To the right of that are coloring pens loaded with spun singles. Not shown are the four loaded "bobbins" of white merino that I'll be plying it with. I have four white spindles and four variegated blue/purple spindles, but since the purple stuff is a bit thicker, I'm going to spin one more bobbin just to be sure. You can see my drop spindle next to the scissors. Yes, I'm spinning it all by hand on that thing.

Hiding behind the teapot are my medicines, which are amoxicillin+clavulanic acid and fluticasone, which is better known as Flonase and which has gotten rid of the sinus headaches entirely.

For those of you who haven't been getting regular updates, I'm now fighting off a secondary infection that I acquired while weakened by a primary throat infection, which was likely an abnormal form of strep. The first illness lasted five days, but I haven't recovered my energy levels and my sinuses have been filled with green goo. I started antibiotics last night and I'm already seeing improvement. I should be able to convince my mom to not yell at me if I go out some time in the next four days.

I'm still looking at how spinning wheels work. I'm actually very attracted to the simple designs of electric spinning machines, which have a bobbin and a flyer and a motor to connect them. The main thing is that most of these machines appear to have one or two speed settings, and I want better control than that. However, I'm thinking that getting a vintage treadle in-table Singer and finding a way to get some kind of gear ratio switching mechanism in would bridge the gap between simplicity and control.

Spinning wheels are expensive.  The cheapest I can find is $160 for something made of PVC (yech).  Does anyone out there have basic woodworking tools?

http://www.interweave.com/spin/projects/LittleGreatWheel.pdf

This doesn't look too difficult, though it's probably at least three weekends of work.

As usual, I detest spending money for something I could make myself.

1.  The boy and I have decided to not spend quite so much time around each other, in an effort to be able to keep our tempers better.  So far it's working, though I spent more time away from him than I planned because of...

2.  I came down with not-strep!  My culture came back negative for strep, though I still heavily favor a bacterial agent (green goo).  At first I thought it was mono, but the horrible body pain went away after a few days, so it probably isn't that.  I haven't taken any antibiotics, but my immune system seems to be taking care of it with gusto now that the fever is gone.  The doctor was a good sport and palpated my spleen and liver (even though even if it was mono, there's no way they would have been inflamed at that point), and taught me how to locate the liver with nothing but a stethoscope.  I was too sick to concentrate enough to knit, but a package arrived in the mail containing...

3.  DROP SPINDLE!  I have successfully made yarn, and I'm about to buy a pound of undyed roving to dye and spin it into a significant amount of yarn.  WAY CHEAPER!   Seriously, I'm going to pay $20 for roving (and that's not the cheapest, it's just that this particular website has pictures and better descriptions and it's a brand I've tried before), and I dare you to find a pound of yarn for $20 (that isn't from discontinuedbrandnameyarns.com). 

Spinning my own gives me the level of control I want over the texture and width.  I can spin cotton and wool just fine, and I'm going to pick up some sampler bits of bamboo, rayon, viscose, maybe nylon, and maybe some other bits of cute things to see how they go.  Some fibers are like whoa expensive (angora, baby llama, other cute animals).  I'm looking forward to doing my very own dying =)

4.  Dying looks expensive and annoying (lots of weird chemicals and heating and cooling and blah blah blah).  Does anyone know anyone in the Seattle area that would be interested in a foray into natural dying with me?  Not the death kind, the kind that results in colorful things.  Both involve significant weird smells though.

OMG, I just nearly knit my boyfriend something. BAD IDEA.

I've broken up with guys after thinking too hard about knitting them something. Even though I feel ever more secure with this fellow, it's not worth the risk. I'll crochet it instead!

Whenever I get a new medication, I ask for the insert that came with the medicine. I used to get these all the time, but they stopped giving them habitually, so now I ask. I've even been known to get extra ones for my dextroamphetamine to give to my friends who I know will be taking amphetamine recreationally or for studying, just so they can get in the habit of reading up.

Anyway, according to the insert for propranalol, it can cause... lupus! Except it's never lupus, so I'm probably okay.

So this article says that in lab rats, propranalol prevents the body from building a tolerance to the metabolic side effects of dexedrine. However, this article describes successful treatment of chronic headaches with dexdedrine and propranalol to ameliorate the side effects. Then again, maybe they were depressed and headachey because they were too fat, and the combination helped them lose weight.

This article says it reduces amphetamine toxicity in mice.

I am currently making a gigantic (1 quart) batch of candied ginger, and using the syrup to make lemon-ginger sorbet.

I was prescribed propranolol, a beta blocker, for performance anxiety. In case some of you didn't know, I've been playing classical flute for a long time, and I've never been able to perform without serious anxiety. I tried some for a day and it was absolutely lovely, and I sort of want to be on it regularly for anxiety.

That is all.

My 3.5mm hook has gone missing, but I want to crochet flip flop socks out of this happy shiny green yarn. Pooh.

School is intense. I'm keeping a (hard copy) journal now for memory reasons.

I hate sharing Microsoft Access Databases! Sharing is NOT caring!

My peanut butter. YOU ARE USING TOO MUCH FOR YOUR SANDWICH AND THERE IS NOT ENOUGH LEFT FOR ME.

Other than that, not much, even though you definitely have to remind me to do it. Only child woo.

No internet for a while, laptop getting repairs.

In case you haven't heard, LJ is owned by a Russian company. This company has recently decided to allow only paying accounts to be registered, and if you didn't register before March 12, you can't downgrade to the free account.

Here is the translated interview in which the owner outs himself as a complete jerk. In protest, people who don't like this will simply not post on Friday, and we'll see how the hit statistics fluctuate (and if they'll admit it). So uh, I'm not posting Friday.

Also, I'm about to send my computer back to Dell to get a new/better LCD, so I won't have internet regularly for a while.

So, for the third time in nine months, a doctor other than my doctor wrote my dextroamphetamine prescription, and got it wrong.

I can't use time release capsules. My work/school/R&R schedule is a bit chaotic, and some days I need medication in the morning but I need to be calm to handle stressful things in the afternoon. Some days I need the morning to be unmedicated, but then I need to take it at 3pm and still be able to fall asleep at 10. I need to be able to do this with a pill, because grinding them up and nasally insufflating them is not okay at school or at work or pretty much anywhere but my own home.

This means that each time, I have to go back and get a new prescription for the same total amount of speed, and each time it makes me look like I'm a script farmer. This puts me in a really bad position, and I'm really pissed off that I might be penalized for the doctor's fuckup.

The system is all computerized, too! I've NEVER been officially prescribed time release capsules, only the tablets. The only time I've been prescribed the capsules is when they've fucked it up.

This is second in retardation only to the two pharmacies in a row in Delaware that didn't know what Dexedrine was, followed by the pharmacy that insisted that there were no such things as 10mg tablets of that chemical, even when I showed them my bottle.

More likely than you think.

I've taken to just rinsing the thing's water reservoir out before I use it. There's always a bunch of those tiny red ants, but there's never a convoy line leading to or from the iron, and they don't come out in clumps as if they were nesting. Not to mention I've cleaned it out as much as possible with vinegar and weak bleach water, which gets rid of their scent trails.

What do they want in there?

And yeah, I'm getting a new one once I have the money.

Having intense crushes is my most entertaining hobby, followed closely by experimental sex and making strange clothing.

Post here if you're apparently banned from Steamfashion - we're mounting a bitchfest frontal assault on LJ's support people.

My boss has softened to the idea of having someone separate make our website, rather than browbeat and hand-hold our database programmer in India into it. So, if you're decently fast with web design and can hook it up to a FileMaker database (bleargh), contact me. Also, you have to be in Seattle (sorry Dana) because even though it's ok to have your database person in India, the web guy simply MUST be in town.

I'm designing the UI, so yeah, you get to work with me for the four weeks it should take you to build the damn thing.

Castrate and defenestrate on sight. She moved her cat in with him. Her stupid, wheezing, unspayed cat. Vlad beats the hell out of her though, so at least there's that.

AND he left town without contacting me, so I'm probably not ever getting my stuff back. I don't even know if he still has it, since he's done nothing but lie to me in the last two months.

This is the point at which love makes no difference, and I'm glad to finally be here. What a cuntbag. What a goatfucker.