Wednesday Ten on Tuesday

I don't really want my blog to go the way of the dinosaurs, so I'm making an attempt to post. I'm trying something new - Ten on Tuesday, and I may try to come up with something for another day of the week to get back in the habit. I haven't got a whole lot to report on the knitting front, but I have a long car-ride coming up later today, so things may change rapidly. I do have miserable insomnia tonight.

10 Things You Are Thankful for This Year

1. My family. Losing my father has been rough. I'm not okay yet, and there are days when the sadness just leaks out with surprising intensity. Keeping busy has kept a lot of it at bay, but there's still a deep visceral hurt. I'm glad to be able to spend Thanksgiving with my mom, my sister's family, and my own. I think my cousin is coming too, and I like him a great deal as well. Cuddling with my son has been one of the few things that's gotten me through this time.
2. My job. Oddly enough, despite the fact that it's causing me a tremendous amount of stress, I do love what I do. I don't love where I'm doing it, I'm not infatuated with exactly what I'm doing, and I don't love the fact that I'm soon facing unemployment and some serious uncertainty about the future. I do have a paycheck, and there are moments where it seems worthwhile.
3. My friends. I just got back from a conference where I was able to spend time with some amazing people who love me. I'm lucky to have the friends I have, and I don't know what I'd do without them.
4. Books. Part of blogging less and reading fewer blogs has been related to reading more. Some work-related reading, but also novels have snuck back in. I just finished Ghostwalk, and am partway through Prep and Kushiel's Chosen. Great literature it's not, but reading feels good. I like the escape.
5. Running. I haven't been out in a while, but running was working for me. It felt good, in a very simple way. I enjoyed seeing myself get stronger and better at it. Hopefully, I'll get back to that soon.

For now, 5's good enough. Especially since it's 4:30 in the morning, and grabbing another half hour of sleep could only do me good.

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Your result for The Find Your Philosophical Era! Test...

The Modern

19% Ancient, 13% Medieval, 44% Modern and 25% Post-Modern!

Congratulations! You are: a Modern!

(Keep in mind, by Modern, I mean the era which began around the 17th century and ended in the 20th century.)

Throughout the Modern era, philosophers and scientists were forced constantly to do battle with the forces of censorship, philosophical conservatism, and pure inertia.This was the age in which “innovation” was a bad word, and the Moderns were all about innovation. Despite all the opposition they faced, Modern philosophy is the most optimistic of any era. The Moderns seem really to have believed that, for instance, giving men freedom from kings and priests and tyrants will make men happier and better. Their goal was a political community based on reason. But while some Moderns concentrated on becoming more and more scientific, rational and civilized, others, such as Wordsworth and Rousseau, reacted against this trend by turning back to what they saw as the pure, uncorrupted truths of nature. However, the Romantic and the Scientific trends in Modernism are two sides of the same coin. The two are united in their disdain for the status quo and for social norms, and their search for more real, trustworthy truths upon which to build the new society they all dreamed of.

Some modern philosophers: Newton, Voltaire, Bacon, Hume, Rousseau, Hobbes, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Darwin, J.S. Mill

Some modern artists: Da Vinci, Molière, Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw, Mozart, Cervantes, Swift

Typical modern art forms: opera, comic plays, portraiture, the concerto, the confessional memoir, descriptions of nature

Take The Find Your Philosophical Era! Test at HelloQuizzy

Proof

Ok, it's not a great photo, but I'm actually wearing a handknit today. This scarf is incredibly comfortable, even if it was painful to do the finishing.

I've worn a few of my knit items out in the wild, including one sweater (Sprout), several scarves, hats, and of course, socks.

I'm craving cardigans.

Unrelated photo

It's a bit of a blogging tradition that especially if you don't have much to say, you should still post a pretty photo. I haven't been out much lately, so this is a bit of a stretch. We've officially hit my crazy time of the year, and my sporadic updates get even more scattered.

I leave for Washington DC very early Thursday morning. After that, things will slow down very slightly, but I'll be with family for Thansksgiving, which is coming up fast, then it's just a few weeks before Christmas and the new year. It starts to all blur together for me starting around Halloween, frankly.

This year, I'm not doing any holiday knitting. My plans are to get through my meeting, hang out with friends, and to come back and work to generate more data and hopefully be working on a manuscript by the beginning of 2009. Other than that, I'm just hoping to survive the holidays.

This year, I'm not planning on any crazy baking, either. Last year I was so sick of baking that the smell of butter made me ill. It is baking season (I made a loaf of pumpkin bread and some chocolate zucchini bread today) but I'm not going overboard. I'm planning on making a few batches of cookies and cooking lots of soups and roasts for my family. Maybe some more breads, too.

On the knitting front, well, I finished a dishrag this weekend, but that doesn't seem exciting enough to post. The big red blob is ALMOST done, and I'm looking forward to the end of that project. There are some tough memories knit into it, but also, well, it's boring. I'm working on some garter stitch rounds and then binding off, but the stinking thing is huge now, and each round takes me a while. I started a Lace Ribbon scarf out of some really nice yarn, Handmaiden Sea Silk in periwinkle. It may be for my mom. It's my kind of comfort knitting right now. My orange sweater still needs seaming (I need time that I don't have to work on it.) Oddly enough, socks are beginning to sound more appealing again, and I'll take some yarn and needles with me for my flights, but I don't expect to get much done.

Facebook is still sucking up a lot of my time, thanks to word games I play obsessively. But now I really should go read and prepare....

History.

Something big just happened. I'm glad I was part of it.