Busted!

Well dangit. Jen went and updated her blog and put a link to my blog on it. Now there's much more pressure to actually update this thing once in awhile. Bah. Darn you, Jen!

Ph.D. candidate!

I passed!! I spent two and a half hours talking about things. The right things, apparently. Although at the time I was annoyed that they weren't asking me about the crap that I had studied and stressed over for weeks. No, instead they were asking me about friggin kinase domains and expressing kinase dead mutants! Gah.

This morning I decided that the best analogy for a qualifying exam is skydiving. You want to do it, or at least part of you wants to. And you crawl into the plane (= grad school), knowing what you're in for, and that it's scary. And then the whole ride up in the shaky plane (= first 2 years), you're thinking, "good god, what did I get into." Then you get to the point where the four-point harness is the only thing attaching you to the guy sitting in the plane (= 2 weeks before qual), and you're scared. Very scared. And stressed. And every imaginable permutation of "what the hell am I doing?!?!" goes through your head, and then the guy pushes you out the plane and you're falling (= qual starts). You proceed to "freefall" for awhile (= during the qual, except that it ain't so easy and it isn't fun). And the whole time you're just praying that your parachute opens eventually (= your brain remembering things).

Turns out, taking a qual or skydiving, at the end it's a huge adrenaline rush and you're done and moving on. Only difference....I would actually like to skydive again.

PanicPanicStudyStudyNapStudyPanic

One week to go!! I'm going to go give my committee chair what I hope are final drafts of my two research proposals. If he says there are major things I have to change, I just might...I don't know what. Hit him with a wiffle bat. Because in my mind, it is now time to study incessantly for whatever 24 hours times 7 days is. I can't do the math right now. And quite frankly, I am tired of editing. So here goes nothing.

That reminds me!

Thinking of the pink and brown Cascade 220 reminded me of the Christmas present I made for my mom. It was the "Carried Away" felted tote from a book that I can't remember the title of. I knitted it up here, and then felted it while I was home over the holidays. I think part of the fun of making the tote for Mom (and wrapping it up all unfinished) was that she got to see it go from loose-knit hole-y fabric to the dense felted wonderfulness of the finished tote. I even made a lining to sew into it:
Here's my mom modeling the finished product. I was really happy about the way it turned out, especially the bow on the strap. The strap was too long even after lots of felting, so I just cut it and hand-felted the ends so they didn't look weird. But then I had just enough extra strap length to make a bow, which was like the icing on the cake. Except that it was the bow on the tote bag.

Holly ignores the blogging world for a month

I am a bad blogger. I wish I could say that I was going to really be better about it this time. However, the next three weeks are going to be insane. Even more insane than the past three. Because I have to pass my qualifying exam. Three weeks from this morning. Hopefully that means that exactly three weeks from now I'll be sitting in lab with a bottle of champagne and a ridiculous smile. We shall see. I still have to write two research proposals and read a shitload of papers.

And then after I emerge from my lack-of-sleep + excess-of-champagne delirium, I will make Sam and Emily's wedding present afghan. They're getting married on May 28 this year, and I've already told them that depending on how things go, they may end up getting their afghan on their first anniversary. Which they were okay with, fortunately. But I would really like to have it done in time for the wedding. So far this thing has been a bit of a headache. I cast on at SnB one night, which was a horrible mistake. Never cast on while bitching with other stitchers. Over the next few days I knit 12 border rows of 288 stitches each, plus 8 of the pattern, until I realized that I had cast on 50 EXTRA STITCHES. And since the pattern was on a multiple-of-6, that wasn't going to work. Away went all that work. I ripped it out, cast on again, and got back to the pre-ripping-out point. And then I skipped a row of the pattern. I blame it on the poorly written pattern, which said things like "Row 3 and 5: knit. Row 4: blahblah. Row 6: blahblah." Of course, I didn't look at the row numbers when I was knitting, so I went straight from 4 to 6. Bad mistake. So I ripped out those 5 rows (again) and reknitted them. And put it away in my knitting bag and haven't looked at it since. That was, um, early February. Hopefully once the quals are over I'll be less scatterbrained, and able to sit and knit for hours and hours and hours. And hours. By my calculations, if I knit 2 rows every night it will be done in a year. And I'll only have 6 weeks. Wheeeeee.
Here's a picture to show you what I'm working toward:

I showed my new book, Easy Afghans for Knitters, to Sam and Emily, and this is the one they picked. The crazy hard one on size 7 needles. Not any of the easy boring patterns on 11s. They wanted pink and brown and khaki, so I got lots of Cascade 220 to use. It will be marvelous when it's done. That's what I have to keep telling myself so I don't go insane.

Thing 3 (where 1=quals and 2=the afghan) is going to the gym more regularly. Lucy and Sally, two postdocs in my lab, both managed to convince me that going to the gym more, despite being crazy stressed and busy getting proposals written, would be a good thing. So I joined the on-campus gym, and have been pretty good about going "regularly." I have found a couple step aerobics classes that I really like. Sally says that when I get good enough I can start going to "stepography" with Devin, who she says is the best, most amazing aerobics instructor ever. My first workout was pretty easy and I didn't feel like I had to work too hard, except that I realized during my second class that it was because I spent half the time being confused by which way I was supposed to be turning and why my feet weren't matching anybody else's feet. Turns out the workout is harder when you actually do it.

Holly enters the blogging world

Well it finally happened. I started a blog. In last November. But I didn't like the title, and still am not entirely happy with it, but it's the best I can do. I spent four hours on Friday night trying to come up with a new blog name. Four hours! Blog names are so difficult!! I tried various anagram generating tools, random assemblages of my name and other words...nothing! So, I am stuck dabbling winsomely. Which isn't so bad, I suppose. I dabble in things. In a lighthearted cheerful sort of way. Hopefully less of the "childlike or naive way," as the dictionary defines it. I prefer the thesaurus for defining words. More options.

I have lots of previously finished knitted objects that I should post pictures of. And the occasional random rant here and there. My goal is to post once a week. Of course, I also made a goal for myself today to ride my bike from home all the way to lab by next week. I've never done that before, mostly because it's a good 5 mile ride. But the time has come for me to get in shape. Death March 2006 (aka the lab showshoeing trip) is coming up, as is my friend's wedding. Here goes nothin'.