"i hate you all!" or "why i didn't do any pumpkin-carving last night"

Right around dinnertime, I decided last night would be a good night to carve the pumpkin I begged the DH to bring me from the regional market last week (or was it two weeks ago, now? Seriously, I have no concept of time anymore. Whole weeks vanish into the ether...). I figured, if I didn't carve it then, it wouldn't get carved before Halloween, and it would most likely meet the same fate as last year's pumpkin, which sat on our living room floor until it rotted and began to leak. So, actually managing to slice up the damn thing is something of a priority for me this year.

But before I could start carving, I needed to settle on a pattern. There's definitely a few Pumpkin Masters patterns I like this year (tho' none of them are free, and I can't bring myself to shell out for another damn pumpkin-carving kit), and spookmaster.com has a wide selection of interesting designs. Extremepumpkins.com is always amusing, even if most of the designs there require more pumpkin supplies, prep-time and/or fire-resistant display space than I have available. My absolute favorite designs there, btw, are the un-pumpkin and the Giant Carnivorous Pumpking, which is simultaneously hilarious and way creepy. But I just don't have the resources to go all-out with my pumpkin this year. It's gotta be a keep-it-simple,-stupid kind of thing.

So I asked the DH for his opinion. I was thinking of doing a cat of some sort. He said to do a skull, because skulls are cool. I agree that skulls are cool, but I did a skull last year, so I'm not really feeling the skull thing right now. So then I proposed bats, and he said sure; but I've got a ton of bat patterns. I wanted to know if I should do plain bats, or, say, the Batman: The Animated Series logo. So I kept pressing my case, and my not-so-DH snapped back at me and got all cranky, like I should shut up and stop pestering him. I just wanted some help deciding what to carve, because I'm about the most indecisive person on the face of the planet. If he was so friggin' annoyed by my asking him, he should've just nipped the thing in the bud when I first asked and said "I don't care what you carve in your stupid pumpkin because I'm a cranky asshole who hates doing anything fun that is holiday-related except for cooking and eating big-ass, fattening meals!" Then I would have gotten the message and stopped asking for his input much sooner.

From that grumpy frame of mind, I went to checking my e-mail, where I got several deeply annoying messages. One was from my family, reminding me that we have to find some time around Christmas to spend with them, because they're coming to a time-share here in NY this year, so they'll be "so close" to us instead of in VA where they usually do X-mess. That's a pain in the ass for so many reasons, I don't even want to go into them. Suffice it to say, Christmas is going to be even more of a hassle than usual this year, and ditto New Year's Eve. I'm not going to get to do anything on those days that I actually want to do, and I'm going to be expected to be cheerful about that, to boot. Grrr.

And then there were the e-mails from my bestest girlfriends. To bring you up to speed here: my friend R left me a voicemail on my birthday, September 20th, that was like, "hey Liz, just wanted to let you know that J and I are getting married on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Virginia Beach, because we figured everyone would be home then. Just wanted to let you know in advance, before the invitations go out in a couple weeks, so you can reserve the date." Well, thanks for such great advance notice. Too bad we'd already made our plans for Thanksgiving, and they involved absolutely no travel outside the Syracuse metro area, because Thanksgiving weekend is the absolute worst weekend of the year to travel anywhere. And nary a "happy birthday" to be heard. Thanks, thanks a lot. So it seems all my other friends have made their travel plans. But I haven't yet, because, again, it's just more hassle than I can deal with right now, in more ways than I even want to explain here. So by this point, I was even madder about everything, and just ready to poke knitting needles into the eyes of every single person I love. I was so frustrated, I had to abandon all thoughts of pumpkin-carving so I could start to hammer down holiday travel plans and reply to those e-mails.

Thank goodness for the internet. All it took to make me feel better was some Stitchy McYarnpants and some blog-jumping. I found a bunch of blogging, knitting medical students and/or doctors and/or scientists! Yay, role-models! There's the Med Student Who Knits, The Doily Maven, Golden Needle, Minicia, The Knitting Doctor, and The Keyboard Biologist. I was seriously beginning to worry, what with that organic chemistry test I bombed on Thursday night, that I really am in the wrong field. It's very reassuring to know there are other people out there who are doing the whole becoming-a-doctor thing (or being a woman in science in general) and still managing to keep knitting and blogging about it.

Hey, speaking of knitting, I was doing that while I was surfing the blogs, and guess what! My Patons Allure Stitch 'n Bitch Nation steering wheel cover is almost done! I just need to make sure it'll fit Lucy's steering wheel, then BO and sew the ends together.


Doesn't it look all nice and round? The pattern actually says to do it in garter stitch, but I thought, hey, it's supposed to go around the wheel, right? Why not stockinette? This may be the first time I've chosen to do stockinette over garter, and I did it because, even besides the fact that I think stockinette's curl works better for this project, garter would've been just too damn boring. For future reference: the thing is a strip that's 3.5" wide (12 sts on size 8 needles), and when I finished one ball of the Allure, I had a strip that was 26.5" long. The overall length of the strip is around 46" right now, which should be just long enough to stretch around the steering wheel. The DH, of course, hates steering wheel covers - but that's his problem, not mine.

Sooo... besides that little spate of irritation and aggravation earlier in the evening which prevented me from doing any pumpkin-sculpting, yesterday was a pretty good day. I wore that red stripy no-sparkle Stitch n' Bitch Sparkle Hat which I made out of Gedifra Fashion Trend near the beginning of my obsession with that yarn.

It was warm, and it looked very cute. And that chemistry test I mentioned? We did get our grades back yesterday (those poor TAs must have been up all night grading!), and I did do terribly, but not nearly as terribly as I had thought I would do. I got a 45 (yeah, out of 100) - which amounted to a D+. The class average was 55, but there were more D's (26-45) than any other grade, so I don't feel too bad about my score on the whole. Hey, I passed! I was only one point away from a C-! I thought my score was going to be in the single digits! With a 45, I'm still in the running for a B for the semester, as long as I get B's on the next test and on the final. That's within the realm of possibility. But it'll be a ton of work. (Ugh.)

And there's still the possibility I can get to carving that pumpkin tomorrow night. But now it is time for me to get dressed so I can go to Starbucks and knit with my crew. Caffeine and knitting, yay!

just one of those days

I ran out the door this morning. I did catch the bus, just barely. But I forgot to grab the newspaper article on which I needed to do a report for homework that was due during my first class. Argh!

I told one of my professors I would come see him during his office hours, completely forgetting that his office hours were the exact same time as the chemistry review session. D'oh!

At the aforementioned review session, when one girl asked a question about tertiary carbocations and the E1 reaction mechanism, I realized I wouldn't know a tertiary carbocation if one bit me on the ass. And that's something I really should have learned to identify last year in General Chemistry. Ayyy!

I forgot to get my prescription refilled again. Durrr...

I bought lunch at 3 p.m., but didn't get a chance to eat the chicken burrito I bought until I got home at 10 p.m. *growl*

I was even later than usual to anime club, and it ended earlier than usual today, so I only managed to catch one 30-minute episode (out of the 6 shown), and in it, the heroine ended up having to sacrifice herself to save everyone she loved. What a bummer.

And now I have to try to do as much of my chemistry lab write-up as possible, so I can spend more time tomorrow learning all the chemistry I didn't learn these past few weeks. But I'm so tired, all I want to do is crawl into bed and pass out. So instead of doing anything productive, I'm posting here. One of those days, indeed.

how about a nice, hot beaker of shut the fuck up

Speaking of chemistry and why it sucks, let me mention my organic chem lab TAs. They are actually pretty cool, most of the time, and surprisingly stylish for chemistry grad students. But our lab section is from 7-10 p.m. on Wednesday nights. It's clear by about 9 p.m. that they are ready to get the hell out of there, whether any of us students are done with our labs or not.

Being the tortoise that I am, I'm usually one of the last few people to finish the lab. By the time it gets down to the last few of us, the TAs start hollering and carrying on about how we need to hurry up and that they're ready to get out of there, and that the last one finished is going to buy them dinner, stuff like that. Harmless, really, but damn annoying (especially when you have to put up with it every week). It's like, if you're so damn ready to leave, why don't you help me dry all these beakers and flasks I just washed instead of sitting on your asses whining and yelling at us?

This week, I was cleaning up my bench, and I asked one of them if I could go ahead and toss my TLC plate. He said yes, so I chucked it in the regular garbage, and he immediately said "No! Not there!" like there was a special trash can I should have thrown it in. And I was like, great, jerky, now you tell me that. So I offered to reach in and get it out and dispose of it properly, and he was like "I'm joking! Ha ha!" HA HA?!? Bitch is lucky he didn't get a Pasteur pipette jammed up his nose.

So I'm thinking maybe I need to start doing my labs at an even more leisurely pace, just to be all passive-agressive about this. The problem with that strategy, however, is that it means I'll end up spending more time in organic chem lab than strictly necessary - which, now that I think about it... that's a pretty bad idea. More organic chem lab? *shudder*

panic.

Our second exam in organic chemistry is next week. That alone should be enough to explain the title of this post - but wait, there's more. I went to the review session given by the chemistry frat tonight (what? I have something better to do at 6 p.m. on a Friday night than study chemistry?), and within the first few minutes of the session, it became quite clear to me that I know nothing about what is going to be on next week's test. Nothing! No-thing, absolutely nothing at all. You'd think after sitting through all those lectures feeling like I maybe kinda sorta get it, something - the tiniest scrap of information - would have sunk in. But nope, nada. Zilch, zero. The sound of explosions you'll hear on Thursday at 5 p.m. will be me, bombing on that chemistry exam.

Actually, what is going to happen between now and then is that I'm going to spend the weekend panicking about this test, and then I'll have to do all the problem sets (or do them again, as the case may be), re-read all the lecture notes, go to every review session I can, try to set up a meeting with my tutor (who is so hard to get ahold of, and not particularly good at explaining things to me anyway)... and then I will still bomb, because the test is at 5 p.m. on Thursday, the exact day and time of the week when I am most burned-out and exhausted. By 5 p.m. on Thursdays, my brain is so fried it's about all I can do to crawl aboard the bus home, sit on the couch drooling for a couple hours, and then head back out to school for a rejuvenating Thursday Screeners arthouse film experience (or as art-house-y an experience one can have in the same lecture hall where one began one's day 9 hours earlier with BIO326: Genetics).

Ohh, I am so doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed... Goodbye, all hopes for a B in o-chem. Goodbye, all hopes of attending medical school in the continental U.S. Hello, Xavier University School of Medicine in Aruba!

a Rhinebeck recap

Saturday was rockin'. I'm so, so glad I got the chance to go to Rhinebeck, even for only one day. Muchas gracias to Erin and her mom for providing transportation! It was my first fiber festival experience, and I'm definitely up for doing it again in the future (memo to self: start planning now for next year, so maybe you'll be able to do a whole weekend then).


The day started out a bit overcast, as you can see in this pic of the available health food offerings.


Look! Bean made a new friend!

I admit I'm not much of a knitblog-reader - I basically read the blogs of people I know in person, and that's about it. So I know there were a lot of famous bloggers there, and I had some of them pointed out to me, but I really couldn't tell you who I saw. I'm sorry! I'm oblivious, what can I say? Of the people I actually know, tho', we were hoping to run into Diana, at least... But instead, we ran into Rachel (yay!), whom none of us had seen in quite some time, and with whom we did not get to spend nearly enough time. It's a shame we had time for little more than hello's, but... the fiber was calling us all. We only had about 5 hours to try to cram in the whole show, so, alas, there was no time to waste.

I had made myself a promise when I decided to try to go to Rhinebeck this year - I swore I wasn't going to buy any roving or a drop spindle or any spinning paraphernalia at all, because I do not have time to get into that right now. I don't even have time to knit these days - how on earth could I cram spinning into my schedule, too? So I swore I wouldn't get pulled into the spinning thing, and I'd only buy yarn if I found something really special. And I stuck to that promise! I bought no roving at all, unlike certain people I could name (tho' I'll admit some absolutely gorgeous stuff from Indigo Moon Farm sorely tempted me. It was $4.50/oz, tho', and I just didn't think I could afford it).

I took some surreptitious pictures, but the lighting was crap, so I don't think they quite do the fabulous colors justice.

The stuff on the right is the stuff I wanted. Bee-yoo-ti-ful. Stunningly perfect mixture of blues and purples... it breaks my heart, but I just couldn't justify buying it in any way.

I did buy one skein of Alchemy Yarns' Synchronicity (50/50 silk/wool) in my favorite shade of periwinkle blue, because it's just like the Fiesta Yarns La Luz that I've been drooling over at the Knitting Connection, only in a color I love, and $5 cheaper ($20/hank at the festival vs. $25/hank at the store). I know exactly what I'm going to make with it - it's going to be a small loosely-stitched bias-knit crochet-edged scarf that will slide around my neck in the most heavenly way. I just have no idea when I am going to get around to starting on that. Maybe by summer 2006?

I also bought some super-ultra-chunky-bulky purple stuff from Hudson Valley Sheep & Wool for $5 a ball (I got two of 'em, so, like the song says, I've got big balls - hee). I have no idea what I will do with that yarn, but I had to get some. They had it all out in a big basket, and it just looked like a basket full of fun. I was powerless to resist (tho' I am going to have to figure out something to do about the pungent farm smell this yarn emits). Besides those things, I got a bag of maple cotton candy (which, ironically enough, looked like a bag full of roving - enough so to fool Erin's mom) and a tiny felted sheep ornament which was, honestly, one of the cutest things I've ever seen. And that was it. Hooray for me! I managed to get some special, festival-unique bargains without losing my head and overspending like a maniac. It's a rare thing when I set boundaries for myself and actually manage to stick to them.


(Me with my "roving").

The other condition I set for myself, if I was going to go to Rhinebeck, was that I had to get some homework done on the way there and back - or else. And again, I was so good - I worked on my Japanese homework in the car most of the way there. On the way back, I tried to do more, but we'd barely been on the road for 20 minutes when I passed right out. I was so pooped! And being massively sleep-deprived didn't help matters any. (Still, I got enough done that I was able to hand in my Japanese homework on time today, for a change, so "mission accomplished" there.)

Even tho' the day started out overcast, the sun did end up coming out by day's end:



Me, Bean, & Erin with our loot.


On the way home.

I thought I'd had such a full day when I got home and went to bed at 10:30pm - but my DH, who had gone to see Bill's band, The Hot Steppers, play at the Dinosaur BBQ in Rochester, didn't get in until after 4 in the morning! And he was still up before me on Sunday! I swear, he's a crazy man. I told him next year he needs to come to the fiber festival, because they had that whole exhibition hall full of NY State food products and cooking demos. He'd have been entertained. It'll be fun for the whole family next year! I can't wait.

a touch of deja vu...

In case you couldn't tell, I've been having blog issues all weekend. For some reason, Blogger couldn't keep its connection to my ISP long enough to upload all my files. So I kept trying to post... and they all went through on the Blogger side, but didn't quite make it to my ISP's server.

Tech support told me to try again today, and it finally worked! But now I've got a post in triplicate. So I'm editing these so I don't seem redundant. So I'm editing these so I don't seem redundant. So I'm editing these so I don't seem redundant. (Heh.)

At least it's working again. *whew* I thought I was going to have to start migrating files over to blogspot... which I really don't have time to mess with right now.

i ain't shit ('cause I don't have time to knit anymore)

Last post I mentioned I didn't think I'd be able to go to Rhinebeck like I wanted to this year. But, thanks to Erin and her mom, Bean and I will be heading out in the morning for a one-day survey of the festivities! Yay!! I'm excited. I'm not sure why I'm excited, really, because (as noted in the title of this post), I have zero time to knit anymore. Seriously - the last time I did any knitting at all was the weekend of the last time I made it to Starbux, October 1st-2nd. Before that, the last knitting I did was, I think, before my birthday on 9/20. I'm literally going weeks between stitches. And it's all the fault of school. Think of all the knitting I could do if I didn't have to do homework, write lab reports and papers, go to class and recitations, and hit up all my TAs' office hours! The mind boggles. I'd at least have one finished project for the season by now.

As it is, I'm still plugging away on the Wonderful Wallaby for my nephew Adler. It's actually going pretty quickly, considering I've barely had any time to work on it at all (the advantage of knitting for small children, eh?). I've already joined the pouch up, and here is where I ran into a weird problem: when I joined the pouch and body of the sweater, it seemed like I had way too many rows on the sweater without corresponding pocket rows (so the body was kind of warping and baggy behind the pocket). I tinked it, then ripped back a few rows and tried the join again, making sure to count the number of rows I had on the pocket so I could match them on the body. And it looks a bit better now, but it still looks too baggy on the body behind the pocket. Diana, if you happen to read this - you're the one who's done that pattern more than anyone else I know (plus, you gave me the pattern). Is this a problem you've ever had, or am I just some kind of freak? I know the whole thing will probably work itself out with some blocking, and heck, it's for a two-year-old, I know I don't need to be so careful with the details. But since I'm doing the pattern for the first time, I just want to make sure I'm not totally screwing up, y'know?

Anyway, pocket weirdness aside, I'm still at a bit of a difficult spot now, because I don't know how long to knit the body before I start on the sleeves! I forgot to take a measurement of the kid last time my sister-in-law & her husband came to visit, and I have no idea how long it'll be before I get to see them again. Does anyone know roughly how long a size 3T-4T should be? The kid is 2, but he's big for his age, and growing like... uh... something that grows really fast. I'm following the directions in the pattern for a size 4, and the circumference looked about right when I held it up to him. But the pattern doesn't explicitly say how long to make it.

So... I might be putting the Wallaby aside for a little while, until I can figure this out. But that's okay, because I have scarves I've promised people which need to be finished, 'cause cold weather is coming soon - much, much more quickly than I realized, because I tend to forget that fall doesn't exist in the 'Cuse. We have 3 seasons here: Too Hot, Too Cold, and Mud Season. Literally - remember last week, how it was still so ridiculously warm for early October? It was like, 80 degrees out! And then whoosh! Over the course of about a day and a half, we skipped right over autumn and went straight into the dreary gray and cold of winter. Okay, it's not quite cold enough yet to really be called winter, but it has been downright nasty out, hasn't it? And the way it's been so cold and rainy, but not quite cold enough to suggest snow? That's exactly what winters are like back in VA. We haven't yet had any of the glorious fall days like I love, where it's crisp in the morning, but warm enough for a short-sleeve t-shirt by the afternoon. Highs around 63, totally clear, bright blue skies. None of this perpetual soggy, damp, gray wretchedness. The only tiny consolation I can glean from this cold snap is that I get to break out all the winter gear I've produced since last season (those Araucania chunky Nature Wool fingerless gloves, that bright green Caron Bliss ruffle scarf... pretty soon it'll be time for the hats, too).

Oh, right, but like I was saying - if I put the Wallaby aside - should I finish the scarf for Bill first, or start on that Dr. Who scarf I promised the DH? On the one hand, Bill's scarf is almost half done already, and it's a big, chunky, quick-knit thing. If I just hurry up and finish it, I can get it off my couch and get those needles back so I can use them for something else, and fulfill my obligation to Bill so he can be toasty as he walks from the parking garage up the hill to work every day. But on the other hand, the Dr. Who scarf is huge. It's going to take me ages to finish that, anyway - it's like, 15 feet long! Maybe I should really hurry up and get started on it - because, as I mentioned, Bill's scarf is a chunky, quick-knit thing which I could, in theory, finish off quite quickly should he start to wonder where his promised neckwear is. Eh - I dunno. I guess I'll figure it out soon. Soon like, in the morning, because I need something to work on on the trip to Rhinebeck... Wheee, yarn shopping! I'm so excited I can hardly wait! But first! I really ought to update my yarn stash spreadsheet so I know what I already have and just what I am allowed to buy more of... hee hee...

puck you

I've spent most of my life really hating sports. Playing them, watching them, hearing about them - just hated it. But sometime around my junior year of high school, I started to realize that hockey was pretty cool, as far as pro sports go (this revelation came about in part thanks to my burgeoning obsession with Canada at that time). At some point since we started dating in college, my DH came to the same conclusion, and really went nuts for hockey. He and his brother even went so far as to get the hockey package on cable back when he'd first moved to Syracuse and they were roommates. Since he became totally hockey-mad, I've had little choice but to go with it, and honestly, I've really learned to like hockey.

Last year was a pretty rough one in this household, with the lost season and all. I was just starting to get into the game, learning players' names and actually sort of caring who won the Stanley Cup, and they had to go and screw up a whole season. That's the kind of thing that can kill a sport, if it's not doing so well, and by many accounts hockey is struggling nearly everywhere south of the U.S.-Canadian border. Heck, they're not even on ESPN for most games this season, let alone on network TV like football (blech!) or baseball (the other sport I have sort of begun to like, if only because I like the Red Sox and the Mets and the Orioles and I love to hate the Yankees) or basketball. But at least they're playing again. Even if all the teams are mixed up, with people like LeClair on the Penguins now and Lindros on the Maple Leafs (my team! Too bad he's past his prime...). Even if they've got all these new weird rules, like the game-ending shootout in case of a tie (bad news for my team, who lost their season-opener in the first shootout under the new rules). Despite all the changes, it's okay, because it's finally hockey season again. *ahhh...*

The DH and his brother and a bunch of their friends have done a fantasy hockey league before, so we're trying to get one going again this year. The DH christened it the Lake Effect league - we're on Yahoo! Sports, and we were hoping to have our draft finalized before the real hockey season opened on Wednesday, but people are (okay - ugh, I had a whole long post written, and then Safari crashed, and all I could recover was everything up to this point, so I am going to try to recreate the rest of the post from memory as fast as I can, because it's past my bedtime and I'm tired) - uh, what was I saying? Oh yes, people are being slackers about joining up. We've only got 4 teams so far (I think we were expecting at least 6), so if anyone reading this wants to join, drop me a line and I will send you the password. I named my team the Maraschino Protest because I saw that phrase in the subject line of a spam e-mail I got once, and it made me giggle. Of our 4 teams, 3 of them have names related to food (go figure).

So in real hockey, as I mentioned, the team I root for is the Toronto Maple Leafs. Here's why: first, they're Mike Myers's favorite team, and he is one of my absolute favorite Canadians ever, so if they're good enough for him, then they're good enough for me. Second, they're Toronto's team, and I like Toronto. I haven't been there in ages, but I really enjoyed it when I visited there. Third, do you remember last post where I mentioned that my mom's maiden name means "leaf" in Chinese? Quelle coincidence, no? If you ask me, it just indicates that me + the Leafs = meant to be. Also, one of my online handles is "Maple" - I chose it mainly for reasons unrelated to the Leafs, but they were already my team by the time I picked it, so I considered that an additional reason to choose that name. Ok, here I think I mentioned something about how this season has already been unkind to my team, what with their captain Mats Sundin taking a puck to the eye in the season-opener (they say there's no damage to the eyeball, but the orbital bone is broken, and there's no telling how long he'll be out recovering - ouch), and then them losing in that shootout to the dippy Ottawa Senators (whom the DH, his brother & I saw beat the Penguins two weeks ago in a pre-season exhibition game in Binghamton, home of the Senators' farm team). I guess that means there's nowhere for their season to go from here but up, right? Always look on the bright side of life... You can read nhl.com's opening-night recap here.

My other favorite hockey team is my hometown AHL team, the Norfolk Admirals (not to be confused with the other AHL Admirals, those imposters from Milwaukee). I love the (Norfolk) Admirals! I love 'em so much that (here's how you can tell I'm getting a little carried away with this whole hockey thing) I was going to buy one of their jerseys this season. But, because I don't live in Hampton Roads anymore, I didn't know the Admirals changed their team colors and logo last season to match their affilated NHL team, the Chicago Blackhawks. The Admirals' colors were always blue and white with yellow accents, even back when they were still an ECHL team called the Hampton Roads Admirals. The colors and the logo were, y'know, nautical and stuff. The new colors, black and red, are not nautical at all. The new logo keeps a bit of the nautical theme: it's a battleship (okay, makes sense) - firing hockey pucks from its guns (*groan*). I pretty much agree with this site's assessment: "The destroyer in the logo is well executed…unfortunately, the rest of the logo reeks of Limburger."

So I don't want one of the new-style jerseys - but it seems I missed their old-stock clearance sale already, so I will have to resort to eBay to find one of the now-vintage jerseys I desire. Actually there's a guy who just had (and here is roughly where I was when my damn browser crashed before, because I was trying to open up eBay in a new tab so I could paste the link to this) an old-style jersey up for auction, but 1) it's an Away jersey (blue background with white writing) and I'd prefer a Home jersey (white background with blue writing) and 2) it's way huge. I want a jersey in a size I can actually wear without drowning in excess fabric (meaning, probably, nothing above L; XL and XXL are right out). Is that asking too much? Maybe so... but I'm on a quest now. Will y'all please keep an eye out for me, too? I'm also going to have to scour the local sporting-goods stores next time I'm home.

*Whew* Okay, I think I remembered to mention everything I was planning on mentioning when I started this post. These things always end up taking way longer to write than I intend them to take, and always end up way longer than I intend them to be. I just can't keep my loquacity in check, I guess. I oughta work on that.

Oh yeah, and for those of you who are wondering: yes, there is a post about knitting coming up in the pipeline. Mostly, it's going to be about how I haven't had any time lately to knit. Bummer. And about how it's looking less likely by the day that I will be able to go to Rhinebeck this year like I want to. Bummer x2. Eh, well, we'll see.

my family tree is me

I have an overdue paper I desperately need to finish writing for my philosophy class (PHI191, aka "Ethics and Value Theory," aka the class I'm only taking because they say medical schools want to see it on applicants' transcripts), so naturally now is the perfect time for me to make a post on the ol' blog. Actually, I'm treating this as sort of a "pensieve" kind of thing, like in the Harry Potter books - a place to dump a few stray thoughts for a while so I can get them off my mind for right now.

So I think I mentioned wanting to go on about genealogy and my family a bit. I got a chance to talk to my cousin Amy not too long ago (this is my cousin Amy G., on my dad's side of the family, who is like, 50 and married and a retired Naval Intelligence officer, as opposed to my cousin Amy Y., on my mom's side of the family, who is 11. Ah yes, my family: two cousin Amys, and two Uncle Roberts - and unlike the Amys, the Uncle Roberts are both on my mom's side of the fam. Confused yet?). She is very into tracing our family tree as far back as she can, which I think is way cool, and which I'd love to get into if I had more spare time. We are related through our grandmothers, who were sisters, so Amy has traced that part of our common family - the Eichelbergers and the Buntings. Apparently, if you go back far enough, we're related to Charlemagne (heh). But the really interesting bit for me is how far back you can trace our family on this continent. It's the Bunting part of the family that stretches back to 1608 on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The first relative of ours to come over from England was a boy (13 or 14 years old!) named Thomas Savage, sent by his family to earn his fortune in the New World. He came with Christopher Newport (of Christopher Newport University fame, among other things), who, shortly after landing here, passed off young Thomas as his own son in a hostage trade deal with the local Indian tribe. Thomas lived with the Indians for a while, and even learned their language. He's referred to in some later documents, toward the end of his life, as "Ancient" Thomas Savage, to indicate how long (relatively speaking) he'd been settled here. You can Google that and see what I mean.

Apparently we've also got some wacky, colorful characters in our family tree. While you're Googling, check out Col. Edmund Scarburgh. He was staunchly loyal to the monarchy during the time of the whole Charles I-Charles II-Oliver Cromwell hoo-ha (I know there's a term for that period, but it's just in that period where my English history gets a little murky, because I never entirely got what was going on then with the Roundheads and rebellion and the monarchs in hiding, and really, it just seemed like they were all trying to be Dutch at that point anyway, having their portraits painted by van Dyck and getting Rubens to paint their ceilings and all), so he clashed with the Commonwealth-sponsored Virginia Colonial Government until Charles II came to the throne. He was Speaker of the House of Burgesses and Surveyor-General of the Colony, and Amy tells me he's sort-of indirectly responsible (somehow - I didn't really get all the details) for Bacon's Rebellion. He wasn't really a nice guy, what with the slaughtering of Native Americans and expeditions against the Quakers and whatnot - but it's fascinating to me that people I'm related to were actually in on all those things I vaguely remember from history class.

There are a few areas of the country where history is just inescapable, and Hampton Roads is like that (they dragged us to Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and the Adam Thoroughgood House tons of times when I was in grade school, and I grew up within walking distance of the Lynnhaven House and Old Donation Church). It's just neat to realize I have a more personal connection to those obscure places and events of hundreds of years ago. Dude - I've got 5 members of the House of Burgesses in my family. That means I can join organizations like First Families of Virginia or the Colonial Dames (or rather, I could join them if someone would invite me to - the FFV especially is kinda snooty, from what I hear). I'm eligible to join the DAR! Hee.

The kicker for all this, to me, is that this is all my dad's side of the family - on my mom's side of the family, I'm the first generation born here (well, unless you count one of my Uncle Roberts, my mom's younger brother, as Mom's generation - they're so far apart in age, tho' - 15 years - that I really don't). My mom was born in China - she's a naturalized U.S. citizen. God bless America, eh? Where the heck else could you end up with a family like mine?

So while Amy has done the research on the Eichelberger/Bunting part of the family, which we share, no one (to my knowledge) has yet done my grandfather's side of the family, the Williamsons. I know that my great-grandparents were both from tiny neighboring towns in Scotland, but they never met until they both came to the U.S. and joined a club for Scottish immigrants in New York City. My great-grandfather James came to America on February 16, 1909 from Tillicoultry, Clachmannanshire, Scotland (it's across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh). My great-great-grandfather, William, owned a shoe cobblery in Tillicoultry which is now a bakery (I visited there with my grandmother and my mom the summer before I spent a semester in London), and he once won the Tillicoultry bowling championship. My great-grandmother, Anne, was from a nearby town called Alloa (I think). That's about all I know about that part of my family. So I want, someday, to head over to Scotland and start digging around and see what more I can find. Oh, someday...

And then there's Mom's side of the family. Both my grandparents had tons of siblings, most of whom are still back in China, I guess. I have no idea how to even begin to trace them, since both my grandparents have died, and I don't speak or read Chinese, really, and, I mean, dang. I just have no idea. Even besides the language barrier, the cultural divide makes the idea of trying to trace my genealogy in China seem hopelessly daunting. Here's about all I know about that side of my family: my mom was born in Xi'an, Shanxi province; my grandmother was from Hubei province; my grandfather was from Chekiang province and graduated from Chiao T'ung Ta Hsueh, which is apparently a very prestigious university; his father, my great-grandfather, was a general in the Chinese army and had two (!) wives. My relatives in England are all descended from my grandfather's half-brother, the only one of his siblings I ever met: my Uncle Liang (who totally looked just like a Chinese Col. Sanders, and who has, sadly, also passed away). My favorite thing about my cousins in England is that there are two boys out there who are only 1/4 Chinese and who don't look anything but full-on caucasian British, but who have the surname Yeh (which, if you're wondering, means "leaf" in Chinese). Hee. I so love my family.

Ok, well. I think I've killed enough time with this post now. I've got some philosophizing to do. Oh, but before I go I should note a couple genealogical resources Amy pointed out to me: Cyndi's List, which is a huge compendium of how-to's and links to genealogy resources; and Genealogy & Historie of the Eastern Shore, aka GHOTES, which has neat things like a virtual cemetery (with some pictures submitted by Amy!) and stories about the Eastern Shore. Whoo, family trees!