kareina

This morning I was motivated to start a new modern sewing project. I think I mentioned some time back that I had finally gotten around to cutting open the front of a modern sweater and putting in a zipper as it was a great weight for a summer/autumn jacket, but that it was still too big, and I ought to alter it. Today I finally did. It was another of those stupid modern shirts where the arms are not designed to be raised, and it was too big around for me, which meant that the sleeves hung just a bit too long. So I marked where the edge of my shoulders hit the sweater and cut straight down from there, giving me a central body rectangle (with a zipper in it for the front part). Then I cut the sleeves off of the bit that had been between them and the body rectangle. Then I cut the bottom of that bit into a triangle which I sewed to the body rectangles as gores from hips to waist, and the part that was left I sewed the straight bits together (that had been next to the body rectangle before being cut off), then trimmed the other edges to make that part a more symmetrical diamond shape, which I sewed in as under-arm gores that fill in the arm pit where the sleeves used to have a weird curved attachment to the body, making it hard to raise one's arms, and extending down from there to the waist. Actually, it was long enough to go past the waist, so I opted to leave both sets of gores as long as they could be, and they go past one other at the waist. The result is quite comfortable. This all took 6.6 hours of my day, not counting various food breaks.

When I was done I re-arranged the office furniture, which makes me happy. I love re-arranging furniture. However, David may not be so pleased, since he wasn't here to discuss my plans and had no input. However, he and Caroline dropped by today so he could work on a project in the shop and she could get some more things to take to the apartment, and even though they were here a couple of hours, he didn't make time to talk with me. I asked him to join me when I sat down to eat during a sewing break, but he didn't want any of the apple-nectarine cobbler I had baked*, so I suggested he sit down and talk with me while he ate, but he wandered off to do something else instead, so I returned to my sewing, and a short bit later they shouted from the door that they were leaving. If he didn't want to make time to talk, then he had better not be bothered when he notices I moved his desk without asking first. (I am fairly certain he will be ok with it.)

Tomorrow I hope to pick more berries, even if it is still raining (it has been since yesterday), but it all depends on how healthy I am feeling. I haven't gotten any sicker, but I still have that hint of soreness in my throat if I swallow. I also have another issue I have forgotten to mention--my left index finger has kinda swollen and hurting at the base if I try to do anything with it since Thursday evening, and I have no idea why. I didn't bump it, it has no cuts to be infected, I wasn't even doing anything that used it that evening--I was at the computer, but mostly reading instead of typing. Oh well, if it is still bothering me on Wednesday when I see my physical therapist I can ask about that, too.

*I had thought to make a fruit salad, but the nectarines were so insipid that I figured the only way to make them palatable was to bake them with the tart apples, a bit of sugar, and a topping of oats, walnuts, butter, yoghurt, and more sugar. No, UI didn't make it sweet, but I figured it needed a little to do something about the poor nectarines, who were picked before their time and sent who knows how far around the world to languish in the fridge till I noticed we had them. It worked, they were much tastier after baking and adding other yummy stuff to them.

What have I been up to?

Today was an SCA demo at a Scout Camp. The entire camp has a Medieval theme, so we fit right in. Some of the leaders of the Scout group have participated with Frostheim before, and they really appreciated the fact that we could come out. We had the whole afternoon available, so the plan had been to do perhaps half an hour of intro, then a good 40 minutes each of dancing, fencing, and heavy fighting. I liked that plan as I would have time to change out of dancing clothes and into armour while the fencers played. However, plans don't always go according to schedule. My first clue was the morning phone call from the guy who organized the day--he couldn't make it, he needed to take his kid to the doc (it turns out to be Scarlet Fever), but he assured me that the local Count and Countess would still be coming. My first thought was "great--that was our one native Swedish speaker", since my Swedish is still poor, and he comes from England and she is from Finland. However, despite not being a native Swedish speaker, she is fluent in Swedish.

Therefore she did the intro talk, and then I started the kids dancing. We had time to do a farandole and I started to teach them the Maltese Bransle before the rain started. Since it was a decently heavy rain we decided to take a break, and the kids scattered to various places under cover. We stood on the porch for a bit, chatting with some of the Scout leaders, and then decided that since it didn't look like it was going to stop raining anytime soon, perhaps we could move the dancing into the hall. It was a bit crowded, but by having an inner and an outer ring for the bransle we were able to make us all fit. We did several more dances before switching to showing the kids the armour and talking about what we do.

With the organizer of the demo out that left only one person who could have done fencing, so we skipped that part, and instead the knight did a talk (in English, translated by one of the Scout leaders, which I appreciated, as it helped reinforce my slowly growing vocabulary) about fighting, passed around his armour to look at, and then put it on and let me hit him a bit. We decided not to fight in the rain--not only is it not so pleasant for the audience, slippery grass increases the odds of injury, especially for knees and ankles. The room's ceiling was far too low to consider actual combat inside, so we didn't bother to put me in armour at all. After showing them the basic blows the rain stopped, so he took the kids outside and let them take turns hitting him. Everyone seemed to enjoy the day.

This week's two biggest work accomplishments have been filling in paperwork to apply for a visa to visit Russia and resubmitting a paper. The visa paperwork took a while. They wanted to know every country I have visited in the last decade (I opted to list only the most recent visit to countries I have visited more than once), every university I have attended, and all civil, professional, and/or charitable organizations I have ever been a member of. These questions did not exist on the form for my collegues, who have Swedish passports. It was because I am using an Australian passport that I had the extra questions. I am curious as to if I would have had even more questions had I used my US passport, but not curious enough as to actually try it.

Resubmitting the paper was nice and easy. Both reviewers suggested that it be accepted, with minor revisions, and I was able to do most of the revisions on my own (I am extremely grateful for the reviewer who took the time to go through the text and highlight typos--no matter what I typed the first time, rocks are not "wildly" distributed across Tasmania!). There were only four points which I felt necessary to consult with my PhD supervisor, so I emailed him straight away, and the next morning I had a reply. His reply included an offer to write a tricky paragraph if I wanted. My first impulse was to say "yes, please", but then I realized that given the time change and the fact that he would be asleep by the time I saw his message, I had plenty of time to try to write that bit myself and then ask him what he thinks--he would still be free to write it himself if my version didn't make him happy. So I did, and he approved, so I submitted the paper in less than 50 hours from first seeing the letter from the editor giving me the reviewer's comments. With luck the editor will be happy, and I am finally well and truly done with my PhD project, and it (or, rather, a short, sweet, distillation from it) will soon be published.

Last week, and the first part of this week, we had a house guest, which was much fun. She joined me for yoga daily, and we got out and practiced silly people tricks. She didn't make it this far north all that often, but I will still miss her when she moves to France to start her PhD.

Speaking of house guests, we have done some major preparation for my mother's visit next month. Mom won't be able to sleep on a mattress on the floor when she is here, so we have created a space in the office to set up the massage table (legs lowered to the lowest setting) to give her a bed. In order to do this it was necessary to take the project off of the big floor loom which had dominated the office floor and take the loom apart. In order to have someplace to store the loom bits it was necessary to block off the corner of the room that lead to our walk-in closet. However that meant we needed to move the furniture in the hallway which had been blocking off the other entrance to that closet. It took all evening, but we managed to do the moving, and now we have many of the boxes and set of drawers that had been in the hallway stacked (in a very different configuration) in the corner of the office, and the hallway is much emptier, with only the treadle sewing machine and a single chest of drawers (upon which now sits the electric keyboard) flanking the newly unburied door to the closet.

I know that other people think I am mad for it, but that that was a truly fun evening. I really do love rearranging furniture, finding a new, improved, place for everything, and cleaning underneath and behind stuff in the process.

In other news, summer has progressed to the state of fireweed being in flower--a very pretty time of the year, but, to my mind, even better because once the fireweed blooms winter can't be so very far off, and winter is even prettier.

Next week I need to make more progress with my data (see last week's entry for how that is going) in hopes of having something to say when I start to put together a talk about my research for the upcoming departmental "kick off" retreat. We should also hear if our visa is approved, and if all of the ore deposit folk in our department are heading to Russia to see some of the geology of the Kola Peninsula the following week.

It has been hot in Milan lately, and, alas, I am one of those people who don't do well in the heat. My energy levels and motivation are the first causality. If I try to ignore it the next causality is my personality, as I become grumpy. Fortunately, I know about this tendency, so tend to treat the problem with frequent cold showers to lower my body temperature and thus keep myself from getting grumpy and unpleasant to be around. Therefore my life for the last week has been focused on coping mechanisms, and no where near as much work as I would have liked got accomplished. Because my house-guest, the delightful aelfgyfu was flying out on Friday morning, I took Thursday off of work to spend the day with her.

She chose ( shopping as the entertainment of the day. ) 7 hours later, we finally went home, and I was completely exhausted!

Her flight left from the Malpensa airport at 09:00 on Friday, which meant leaving the house at 05:00 to walk her to the station to catch the airport bus. I like walking at that hour--no traffic, no waiting to cross streets, no slow-moving, smoking, pedestrians to dodge, and it isn't too hot yet. However, soon there after the heat of the day settled in with a vengeance, and other than getting a nap, I didn't really accomplish much.

Saturday I moved my computer across the hallway into the library, which is air-conditioned. I can't really do this during the week, because the room is used by lots of people, but on the weekend there is pretty much no one in the building, and the few of us who do come in stick to our own offices. I wound up hiding in the library all day long. Every time I left the room to go to the loo it was like walking into a solid wall of humid heat, and I fled back to the comfort as soon as I possibly could. (note: when I say "air-conditioned" it means that it is cooled to just comfortable--it isn't cold or anything.) Late in the day I did head out to the local grocery store, which closes at 9pm, since I was out of fruit/veg and none of the stores are open on Sunday. Even though it was nearly 9pm, it was still hot enough out that I wasn't willing to take the extra time to climb the stairs to my apartment to bring my food home, but instead I hurried back to the library, and spent several more hours in a comfortable climate, until I was sleepy and needed to go home.

However, despite being comfortable without needing icy cold showers for the first time in days, I still didn't' accomplish as much work as I would have liked. I did write some letters of inquiry for information about jobs that were posted to the geology lists I'm on, but much of the time was spent chatting with friends and reading blamebrampton's fic. When I finally decided to head home after midnight I was delighted to discover that a wind had come up, and the evening had cooled off to not much warmer than the library. Since it was late enough that there was no one smoking in the hallway of my building, I opened my front door and turned the fan on to get a cross-breeze going from the balcony through the apartment. By the time I climbed up into my loft to sleep it was actually a comfortable temperature.

Much to my delight, when I woke up this morning the temperature was still comfortable! For the first time in weeks I wasn't driven out of bed needing an ice cold shower to cool off. Not only that, but the wind had cleared the haze out of the sky--for the first time in weeks the Alps were clearly visible! I celebrated by finally packing up clovis_t's books into boxes and ( rearranging furniture ) The morning's house-work took 2.5 hours, and there is still more to be done. But I decided that I should head in to uni and see if I can accomplish uni work, too. I've now caught up on reading LJ, facebook, etc. so now it is time to see if the cooler day (and the fact that my computer is still in the cool room) means that I will accomplish useful work tasks, too. I hope so--I've many missed hours this week to catch up on.