I know it's been ages since I've posted anything. But it's not really my site, so the guilt I feel is only a fraction of the guilt Leah and David should feel everyday they don't post anything, so I don't feel too terrible about it.

I've seen quite a few movies over the summer and have enjoyed the majority of them. Some of them were even quite good. I'm not going to mention any of them right now. Instead, I have a suggestion for the next time in the near-ish future when you're wanting to marvel at things that are so horrible but you can't quite turn away from the screen. Because they have been immortalized on celluloid (or 1s and 0s in the case of DVDs), you can be in horrified awe of them over and over again. Did I mention that neither of them are actual horror films?

Continue reading "gawk and awe" »

Posted by Irene | Permalink

Almost two years ago, after a very long time of not being the least interested in any of the traditionally feminine accomplishments, I wanted to learn to knit. So, with some help, I did. Over the winter I had lots of fun knitting a scarf, some hats, the obligatory dishcloths, and then, while working on my thesis, a baby blanket that looks beautiful and sort of complicated, but isn't. It was meant for the son of a cousin and his wife, but as Irene drove us to the airport for our RTW trip, I was still knitting furiously in the back seat. The blanket sat for a year, sad and alone, with only the bind-off row (the last one) to be completed, until the two of us reunited in Vegas and I finished it in about an hour. Sorry Corbin.

So, after a year of not knitting while on the trip, I came back and started my first sweater. It looks like a first sweater (not all of the stitches are perfectly even), but I'm still rather pleased with it. It's actually a combination of two patterns, because half way through the first pattern, I realized the yarn I was using was too heavy (the pattern is for a short-sleeved summer sweater), so I turned the top and sleeves into a different pattern. (The pattern names are "Temptation" and "Bluebell Boatneck," hence the title of this post. If you have a ravelry account, it's listed under the same name.)

And since I have to show it off, David took some very nice pictures, including this one:

From Knitting on Ravelry

Posted by Leah | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last night, we broke with habit and watched some TV, mostly two episodes of House on cable. The first thing I have to say is: really? (...A long tirade about commercials omitted....) While I tried to mute and ignore the ads, I did watch one for McCain-Palin. Maybe it was morbid curiosity. Not surprisingly, it was negative and included statements, which I have read on factcheck.org to be false. But, the negativity I found especially unpleasant. So, out of curiosity, this morning I looked online for an Obama ad and this is the first one that plays on his website:

Naturally I find it more palatable because I agree with many more of his policy stances, but I also really just really liked the positiveness of the messages. A message in this ad of which I'm particularly fond: "I don't want a nation just for me. I want a nation for everybody."

Posted by David | Permalink

Picasa recently released a long awaited (by me) third version, offering more editing features and smoother upload interface. All in all, it's a modest, but welcome, upgrade. Online, Picasa Web Albums also has some new extras. Notably, a facial recognition tool to "tag" your pictures. All last night and this morning I sat tagging thousands (!) of pictures. Now when you visit our public albums, on the right side you'll see current (ahem!) photos of people who've ended up on the other side of our camera. Here's a screenshot of part of the new sidebar:

From Geekery

Ah, the joys of computer toys...

Posted by David | Permalink | Comments (2)

Running consistently in some random place on the trip was nearly impossible. Now that we're back and somewhat stable-ish, we're on the interval running program again. Actually, we've just finished week six (of 13), but I've hesitated to write a post until now, since we've started and stopped so many times. But, now it's seems that it may stick.

To make the pure act of running in the hills hopelessly dorky, I take along a heart monitor and GPS watch. I download the data to a computer, which I then analyze and relish as only an engineer can. Until recently, I'd used the software that's packaged with the watch, but I stumbled on something much better. It's free, open source and called SportTracks. It's feature rich and provides everything a data junkie would want. It stores heart rate zones, course route (on a Google map), elevation, pace, weather, weight and much more. Here is a screenshot:

From Geekery

Tomorrow we journey for the Oregon coast for a much not-needed vacation. Actually, it's more of a sojourn, since we plan to spend almost the entire time at a timeshare that Leah's parents would have occupied, if Adrien's newest knee installation wasn't smack in the middle of the two weeks.

Now, let's hope we can continue running at the timeshare. That should work, right?

Posted by David | Permalink