r o b o t m i n i o n

The Inanimate Tragedy

While clearing space on my hard drive, I ran across a few short films I made back in 2000 when I ws a starry-eyed undergraduate. This is a dramatization of Edward Gorey's tale "The Inanimate Tragedy" and one of my favorites. With help from the miracle of You Tube (where I've recently been posting our biology videos) I thought that Halloween would be a good time to share this.

If we do not win free pizza for this, there is no justice in the world.

We can spell
Originally uploaded by robotminion.

In honor of Scarlett and Gray Fridays, my competitive coworkers and I decided that we would enter ourselves into a contest to win a free pizza lunch for the office by showing off all of our spirit.
Which we have.
In abundance.

I'm the first half of that last "O." True to form, it's the one that's a bit off center.

Learning something new Everyday

Last night I realized I liked brussel sprouts.

Long have I hated them, much to my significant other's dismay. He's cooked them twice before and I have deemed them palatable, if not exactly tasty. This means I have eaten them and almost been successful at not making the brussel sprout face, but not quite. This scares me because if we have children, I know that they will inevitably inherit the brussel sprout face from me and when it inevitably shows up, Justin will be all, SEE?

But last night, I went back for seconds of brussel sprouts. The trick is to make them brown, cook them in something acidic (vinegar? lemon juice? what did he use?) and after steaming them, saute them with bacon. That is the power of bacon. It can make me like brussel sprouts. The fact that we bought the brussel sprouts still on the stalk (or tree!) at the North Market on Saturday might have helped as well.

In other news, I am (finally) nearing the finish line of the lace scarf I am knitting for a birthday present. Because we are going to visit friends in Chicago this weekend, it mist be blocking by Friday night so as to be given on Sunday. It's very pretty, but I am looking forward to being done with (intricate) lace patterns for a while. It's only 10 lines, and only 5 real lace lines and I am 21 repeats into the pattern and I haven't memorized it yet. I can remember my friend Jackie's phone number in the 2nd grade, but not this damn lace pattern. Go figure.

Life without Thesis: Part I, In Which the girl returns to media consumption

On September 19th, I turned in my thesis. Everything, all of it.

I defended a week and a half before that and revised my thesis, got ready for a new academic year, processed the reorganization of the program where I work and took a whirlwind, day-long trip to Baltimore in the middle of all of that. I was a little burned out and with only a few minor freakouts, I'm now trying to return to a life where I actually have time to do things that I enjoy.

For the record, the title of my thesis ended up being: COLLABORATIVE DESIGN OF SCAFFOLDING TOOLS FOR HIGH ENROLLMENT UNDERGRADUATE COURSES: HOW STRATEGY, POLITICS, CULTURE AND EMOTIONS IMPACT THE DESIGN, TEACHING AND ADMINISTRATION OF BIOLOGY 101.

It sounds like a real page-turner, doesn't it?

Now that it's done and we still have no clear idea of when we are moving to another state, I find myself with actual free time for the first time in about two years. For the past two weeks, I have been consuming movies and books faster than I ever have before. I've been making trips to the library at the rate of every two days to check out books to read and books for knitting patterns that I'm interested in. I'm experiemnting with books on CD so that I can do two of my favorite things at the same time — knit and read.

The thing about reading is that I cant give it up. Even in the midst of heavy thesis writing, I always had at least one book that had absolutely nothing to do with my research going. I am notorious for reading late at night well past whatever time I had been planning on getting to sleep. And get this, (and I've done this almost all of my life, save for brief stints of bathroom-sharing roommates in college) my favorite place to read is while drying off after I get out of the shower at night. Whole chapters have been consumed while shaving my legs and brushing my teeth. I am very often accused by the other member of my household for hogging the bathroom. But I think that only applies if one is doing particularly girly things while in the bathroom. It's not like I'm perfecting my eyeliner applying technique, I'm reading about goddamned super volcanos.

Despite my marathon thesis, summer was still pretty eventful. I'll try to recap it at some point, but for now, I think I'll just try to ease this blogging thing back in slowly. Not that anyone ever reads this anymore. Most have probably given me up for dead. (Not dead yet!)