Blink Blink

I’ve been unemployed since January 19th when the lab I worked at closed due to the principal investigator taking a job at a university elsewhere. I don’t mind being unemployed. I loved my job, but unemployment is a nice change of pace, at least for a little while. Since I didn’t quit or get fired, I collect unemployment insurance. It’s not living high off the hog, but it pays my rent. For those finer things in life (like pizza and beer) I’ve had to find a supplemental cash flow. I’ve thrown my hat in the ring as a guinea pig for medical research. I’ve got standards as to just how much poking and prodding I’ll subject myself to, but some studies out there just seem like fun. I remember when I was a student at the University of Utah that I knew someone who got paid $300 to get drunk off cheap vodka and sit in a driving simulator all day. A researcher actually paid him to get drunk and play video games. I figure that’s what the majority of unemployed, mid-twenties males do all day anyway. He was just smart enough to get paid for it.


The only study I’ve done so far is an eye blink study. Researchers were looking at how conditions affecting different areas of the brain affect people’s blink reflex when subjected to loud, unexpected noises. Anyways, they hooked me up to all these electrodes around my eyes, made me listen to weird noises in a pair of headphones, and oh yes, play video games. They weren’t good video games. And there were no cocktails. But they did give me lunch, breakfast, and $270. Not bad for just blinking my baby blues.

Best Foot Forward?

On January 13th, I woke up early to play a monthly disc golf tournament at the Sun Valley Disc Golf Course in La Mesa, CA. The tournament started at 8am. I’m not much of a morning person, so when the alarm went off, I stumbled around with my eyes half open, found clothes and shoes, brushed my teeth, and headed out. I’m much like a zombie in the morning. If I met Abe Lincoln before I’ve had some caffeine and at least an hour of being upright, I’d probably forget it ever happened.

So I got to the disc golf course, did a couple of practice drives and practice putts, and then the first round started. After putting out on the 5th hole of play, I was walking to the next tee thinking to myself, “Gee, I think my right shoe is untied, it feels a lot looser than the left one.” I looked down to check on the lace situation only to be confronted with this:


I was wearing one each of two different pairs of shoes! An adidas running show on my left foot, and a keen hiking shoe on the right. I couldn’t stop laughing for the rest of the tournament. Every time I’d go to line up a putt, I’d look down at my feet and laugh. I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my morning haze before. I’ve even had morning-induced dressing mishaps like walking out of the house with my shirt on inside out. But that seems to be a fairly common blunder among folk. I’ve caught others with inside-out clothing before, but never with two different shoes on. This will probably go down as my worst morning blunder ever.

Beanies!

I haven’t crocheted or knitted anything since I finished my Masters thesis in Utah back in May of 2004. I had taught myself to crochet while living in Switzerland and working on a 6-month research project that year. I wanted to learn to crochet as well, but unfortunately, howtocrochet.com was not nearly as helpful as howtoknit.com, and the only English bookstore in Bern didn’t have a single book on crocheting. (It did, however, have all of the different Harry Potter books that had been released thus far, but that’s a whole different, and slightly embarrassing story.)

I knitted scarves for everyone on my Christmas list that year. When you live in a country where you don’t speak the language or know anyone there who speaks yours, you find creative ways to pass your time. Ha! I like the double meaning on the word “creative” there. I digress.

When I got back to Utah, my friend Lis taught me how to crochet. It was a great way to detangle the massive web of thoughts that filled my head while writing my thesis and preparing a paper for publication. It numbed my brain up enough every night through repetitive motion and it got so I couldn’t sleep until I sat and crocheted for at least an hour. I started a blanket. A huge one! Burgundy red. I’m not really sure what all the pattern gibberish means, alphabet soup to me, but a simple way to describe it would be alternating rows of single crochet stitches where one row would be through both loops, and the next would be through back loops only, and then both, and then back, and so on. It created a cool rippled-looking appearance, but unlike other afghan blankets that have an almost lacy appearance, this blanket is solid, and heavy, and takes forever to make.

I finished my thesis before I could finish the blanket. That’s saying a lot. When I had defended my thesis, I moved to San Diego. Three things about San Diego: 1) Since I was done my thesis, my brain wasn’t so fried at night anymore so I didn’t need to crochet to unwind. 2) I was living in a two bedroom apartment that, for all intents and purposes, housed myself, and four guys. I shared a room with one of them. Another guy had the other bedroom. And there were two guys sleeping in the living room. I couldn’t find a seat big enough for me and the blanket if I tried. And finally 3) What the heck would I do with a 10 pound wool blanket in San Diego anyway?! So needless to say, the poor blanket has gone unfinished since May of 2004.

I probably would have forgotten about that blanket for months or years more, but I was recently home in NH with my parents for the holidays, and my mother asked me to show her how to knit, and how to crochet. She used to knit as a teenager, but hadn’t since she was 17. I hadn’t knit since I lived in Bern, and I can safely say that knitting is nothing like riding a bike, at least not for me. I was hoping that once I had the knitting needles in hand it would all magically come back to me. It didn’t. It’s that pesky first row that is the tricky one. After that it all came back, but again I relied on good ole howtoknit.com to get me back up to speed. Thankfully, crocheting came back a lot easier.

That week, my mother and I spent a lot of time on the couch together in the basement just knitting and crocheting. Scarves. Nice and simple. Rectangles I can do. I hadn’t figured out how to increase or decrease yet. But although my mother lives in cold and blistery NH and she and lots of her friends would love and have use for a scarf, I still live in San Diego. I had already given all my cold climate friends scarves. I needed to expand my repertoire if I wanted to take up crocheting again.

The answer: beanies! I love beanies! Can’t have enough of them. Especially since they’re sort of like hair ties to me; I am constantly loosing them and have to go off in search of another. And even though San Diego is warm, there’s a good chunk of the year where the weather is beanie-appropriate, particularly at night. They’re great for camping too to keep you warm while you sleep. So anyway, after a little trial and error, I modified a pattern I found on line and made my very first beanie! (I have a really small head and that’s why I had to modify it. Average beanies and hats are way too big for me.)



I’m very excited about this beanie. I made it with the same burgundy red wool yarn that the blanket is made out of and it has a little grey stripe around the bottom. Of course, even though it’s modified, it’s still about 6 stitches bigger in circumference at the lip than I’d like it to be. I’m thinking I might be able to shrink it a bit since it’s wool. I’ll try throwing it in the dryer for a few minutes at a time until it’s nice and snug. But even though it’s not perfect, I’m pretty excited because now I know the exact pattern to get a perfectly fitting beanie!