a little progress

 this week was mostly school work and research work and not much time to myself (even this afternoon, almost entirely spent grading while I was battling what was either an allergic stomach upset/food intolerance or maybe a little food poisoning - I never get VERY sick but I definitely don't feel right. I really suspect it's allergy related; it's been BAD here (hot and dry and I spend Wednesday afternoon in the field and there's some kind of funky solvent smell in the building right now)

 

But I did give a couple exams, and right now the easiest invigilating project is the big shawl out of the bamboo yarn (pattern is called Syyslaulu; the yarn is Theodora's Purls in "Egyptian Stucco")

 I counted the stitches and it's close to 110. But 176 is the suggested minimum for an adult size, and I'd really like it to be a little bigger (I think it's multiples of 6 if you are adding stitches). It's a simple increase - just doing one every right-side row so it's easy to adjust. I'm still working on the first ball; I might see how many stitches I have as I get to the end of that one. I definitely don't want to run short; two skeins I got (the dyer picked them out for me) were ones she said she dyed together so they're as close to the same dye lot as possible. (I did NOT feel like alternating skeins, not for a project I knit on while invigilating). 

I do need to clean house a little this weekend (if I feel up to it) but I also want to do some knitting; I haven't been able to for a while. 

 

a mixed day

 gave an exam and almost got it all graded. I would have, if I hadn't had to deal with them having to update my office computer (we have to migrate to Windows 11 soon, and my e-mail climate for my campus e-mail quit working, so they just did mine early). It took some fiddling after the update to get things back the way I wanted them. (More and more, I find that minor changes, like in an interface I have to use, throw me off and annoy me and I can't work efficiently)

Then a package came to my house. 

Way back in July I had ordered some fruit snacks a friend had given me. I liked them, but nowhere in town sold them (Now several places do, even the local wal-mart). But the seller - one of those third parties - seemed to have put the wrong postage on it and they weren't very polite when I messaged them and told them I'd already paid postage in my order (they wanted more payment) and I felt like it was a scam. So I cancelled it with the main site and got my money back and told myself they had never sent it, anyway, and probably never would have.

Then yesterday I got a mysterious "parcel tracking" on my informed delivery:

I know that's hard to read but that's a JOURNEY and it's been stopped like 3 times because of "delayed for postage"

I wondered about it. And I very briefly hoped maybe it was the Skoggy I had to cancel because of no shipping info and no response when I e-mailed the company several times.

But it came today

Womp womp. I see why the postage was questioned by the PO:

 

Yeah. "for donation use only." Now I'm wondering if someone was abusing their position at a food bank using it to meter packages they were sending.

It WAS the fruit snacks but after three months on the road in hot trucks, I don't think they're edible any more, and anyway, I don't want to chance it (they are "yogurt covered" and I bet that coating can go off). I had thought of taking them to one of those "blessing boxes" but hungry people won't want food that might be spoiled. So I think I just throw them away; I got my refund for them back in July. But what a waste, and if the seller was illegally using the meter at the food bank where they work - or worse, selling donations they got for profit - shame on them.

Then, after AAUW meeting, I got a UPS package. A gift from a friend. Most of the stuff in it was great, but UPS didn't handle the box well.

She got me a handmade piece of pottery. But

 

I don't even think it can be glued because there are some tiny chips down in the bag. I'm not ready to throw it out yet though - someone put in effort to make that, and it just got destroyed in transit.

So many careless people in this world, destroying so many beautiful things. Symbolic of a lot that's going on.

Anyway, the rest of the things made it:

 A sew of sewing clips, and a kit for an owl doll you embroider yourself.

And about 1000 yards of dk weight wool yarn:

And a dancing Moomintroll pin:

 

 And finally, a sticker from her recent travel. Because we are both mature adults who appreciate such things:

 

looking for peace

 today was not a good day.

I came in to my office door ajar. Nothing was missing, so I assume it may have been the IT guys plugging stuff in or unplugging it. But internet connectivity was intermittent for the first hour I was there, which was not great given I was wanting to enter exam grades. (The IT guys were doing some stuff with the server racks and it finally resolved). 

But also: apparently someone got into the building last night. The presumption is it was someone without a home who had been sleeping there but apparently when the campus police came and spoke to him, he was found to have some stolen stuff on him. I don't know if it was stolen from campus or elsewhere. I didn't seem to have anything missing (even though someone left the research lab unlocked again). There were a couple things missing that are slightly alarming from a chemical safety perspective  - not for anyone else, but for the person keeping and using them. Or at least the presumption is that that's what happened to the items; I presume it's possible someone was being solicitous on the construction crew or the new custodian and threw them out - but that would still be haz-mat-y.

And yeah, the wider world. Lots of things are upsetting and for me, personally, the rise of what looks like turbo-misogyny in our government is a big concern.

So I am trying to find peace. I changed the sheets on the bed tonight. I used the shark ones (most of my sheets were bought a year or two ago from Target, from their "Treefort" line - they're aimed at kids but really? sheets with sharks on them are great. And I have one with bugs. And another one with winged unicorns.) They're microfiber and I hope they're not too warm (it's still been hot here, I wish it would cool down). I did notice the fitted sheet is MUCH easier to stretch onto the mattress than the cotton ones; either it's a bit bigger or the microfiber fabric is slightly stretchy. That's nice because it's often a pain to put fitted sheets on.

I also weirdly find peace in webcams showing water. I don't want ones that "invade" people's privacy; the ones I like the only humans you see are at a great distance and are things like dogwalkers. 

One of my favorites is the Mackinac Bridge Webcam, broadcast from a Mackinac City hotel:

 It's live (that's a static photo from last summer but when you click the live feed comes up). It's nice to look at at sunrise (earlier than sunrise here) and it's nice to see it at night with the bridge lit up. I've driven over that bridge (Well, ridden over the bridge, as a passenger). Every summer, while she lived (up until 1989), we went up to visit my grandmother in the UP, and because we lived in northeast Ohio, the most direct route was up the middle of the lower peninsula and across the bridge.

I didn't like it much, especially once I got older and got nervous about things like that. And then later (? I think, maybe post 1989), there was a news story about a woman who was driving a Geo Metro and got blown off in high winds. (We were usually in a Dodge Tradesman van - my dad's personal field vehicle - because you could fit a lot of luggage and the cat carrier in it) 

I think the last time I was in Michigan was like 2006, when one of my Traverse City cousins got married. (Yeah, 2006. It was the summer after my dad's knee surgery and I remember riding in the back seat of the minivan - my brother and his wife drove separately - and my dad's walker was sitting next to me, and every time the car took a left turn, it rolled over and whacked me in the knee.)

 

Another one I like is the Port Huron cam; it mostly shows shipping and so sometimes it's pretty empty, but here it is: 

 

 

I'm working again on the "Alive" mitts but haven't done any today; I was kind of Big Mad when I got home about everything (the fact that the building STILL IS NOT DONE though we were promised it would be in early August, the fact that it's not secure, the fact that I'm going to have some students angry because they thought they didn't have to study much for the exam - there were a number of people who scored in the 80s and 90s so I don't think it's me, but I will still be blamed. Most of the people who struggled either have never had me in class before, or are from a different major on campus known to give easier (=all multiple choice) exams, and I give synthesis essay questions as some of the questions on mine. So that, along with all the warfightery talk and the misogyny from official channels, kind of became a perfect storm of "do I actually just want to stomp off to a cabin in the woods and have no contact with other humans"

Sadly it does seem like a lot of days the vast majority of my interactions are either (a) "I want you to do this thing" (on top the too many things I already to) or (b) "I am angry with you because you won't let me do this thing that isn't permitted/ I am angry that you have high expectations" Or like yesterday, I caught someone totally ignoring what was going on in class and while i didn't violate FERPA by saying "you might actually consider paying attention given your last exam grade" but I was irritated.

 

And hurt. I'm more easily hurt these days and it hurts to think that I'm seen as boring and my classes are nonessential, and so it's preferable to look at other websites or read a book (!) while sitting in class. (And for pete's sake, I don't take attendance! You can just skip, you won't lose points!)

So I don't know. I need more peace in my life. And more fun. And some days lately those can be hard to find. I keep telling myself this is a side effect of four classes plus two research projects, but I don't know if that's just it; it does feel like life is kind of on hard mode right now. 

at long last

 I finally finished the knitted chicken for my niece. This is the third one I've made (I made one back in May for myself, I made one this summer for a colleague with an awful schedule, and now I made one for my niece.

I was anxious about getting it done; her birthday is Saturday and of course I had to build in travel time for the chicken (I sent it UPS; it was expensive but they will also pack it in an appropriate sized box)

I got all the knitting done last night but ran out of steam for  sewing it up. Here it is "spatchcocked" (not shown: comb, wattle, and underbelly)

I managed to get home early enough today to sew it up and wrap it, and write out the card, and then get it out to the UPS place on the other side of town. Too late for it to go out today, but it'll get on their truck tomorrow. The woman said it would most likely get there by Friday, I have a tracking number I can check

 

 I think is came out pretty well but I'm glad to be done with these, at least for a while. That's a LOT of garter stitch, which gets tedious to do

 

I hope she likes it. She's going to be 13, which is a tricky age: some thirteen year olds want to be VERY grown-up and don't like to be reminded that not so very long ago, they were children. 

Then again, she is in 4-H and one of her specialties is raising chickens, and this is almost as much a cushion as it is a soft toy, so maybe it will be okay.

I'm happy to make gifts when they are appreciated but I admit it's also nice to get back to my own knitting
 

Friday evening thoughts

 A video that came across my Bluesky timeline, and I've been thinking about it for a couple days:

 This is something people have talked about periodically: how the rise, and now supremacy, of recorded (and now: streaming) music has replaced many people making music on their own. But again, I am a bit older, and my family was demographically older (my maternal grandmother was born in 1897) and I remember older female relatives who sang while doing housework (my grandmother usually favored hymns). And I knew people growing up who had pianos or guitars or other instruments, and they played for their own or their family's entertainment. Oh, it wasn't COMMON by the time I was a kid, but it was understood "a lot of people used to do this regularly"

And church choirs used to be more common than they are now (some churches largely dropped them during the pandemic, for safety reasons, and never really brought them back; others have "praise bands" which are, I guess individuals making music in a different style*) And I guess in some congregations there isn't really congregational singing any more?

(*I admit "praise songs" or what is sometimes derided as 7-11s - the same seven words or phrases, done rock style, repeated at least 11 times - are very much not my style; I prefer the hymns with older roots. Some hymnals have also brought in hymns from other cultures - we sing a couple that are based on (in one case) a Maori song and (in the other) an East Indian folksong, and I remember when my parents were in the choir at their church a couple times they did a South African hymn/song called Siyahamba. And I like that; I like the explicit reminder that there are people around the world who, whatever our other differences, have a big thing in common with me)

I've also thought how recently home-sewing is MUCH harder to do than it once was - unless you're in or near a large city that would have dressmaker shops. JoAnn's is gone, most of the fabric you can buy in huge areas of the country is restricted to either quilting cotton or maybe what you can mail order (the problem there, being, you can't FEEL the fabric first before buying it). And now paper patterns will be much harder to get, given that the companies have been sold off and it's not at all clear if affordable ones will still be printed.

I am old enough to remember when it was more affordable (at least for the quality) to make clothes at home than to buy them (then again: I am also old enough to remember "look for the Union Label" on clothes that were made here; now, very, very few clothes are). 

And I worry a bit about the apparent decline in knitting again, after a high period from the late 1990s until shortly after the pandemic, and I DO suspect we'll lose a lot of yarn shops to tariff costs. (Maybe being online will save some of them). And magazines are mostly gone. Oh, I can still get Simply Knitting, for as long as we're allowed to get printed matter coming in from the UK without huge tariffs. And yes, online patterns are a thing, and thank God especially for places like Knitty where the patterns are explicitly peer-reviewed, and they've made a strong pledge not to use AI (there have been cases of "AI patterns" that make no sense showing up places on line......perhaps you set out to make a sweater and wind up knitting a ranch house?)

But there are also far fewer knitting books coming out than there were in the earlier 2000s, and some of the ones I see advertised online have a whiff of "might be AI" about them. 

And I do worry about this a bit. One thing some of the faculty have talked about is how you can tell people who did "creative play" (for lack of a better term: I mean stuff like building with Lego, or building models, or making doll clothes) as a kid; they are more comfortable working with stuff in lab, sometimes have better fine motor skills but also *less fear* of working with physical things. 

And today on Bluesky the question came up: Did your kids (or, if you're younger) have to read "whole" books in school? 

 And at first I was like "bwuh?" but apparently some places are just giving excerpts to read? And yes, that also used to be a thing - the old SRA system I loved a lot as a fourth and fifth grader were very short pieces, in a few cases things abstracted from longer pieces or things like a very short précis of some nonfiction topic. But we also read books, and in fact when I blew through the whole SRA box before Thanksgiving (it was supposed to last the whole year), the teacher kind of sighed and told me to pick something from the classroom library (that's how I read "Where the Red Fern Grows," which, I was probably a little emotionally young for at that point, I didn't deal well with....well, if you've read the book, you know)

We also had what was called SSR (sustained silent reading) in the early grades - at the end of the day, 15 or 20 minutes where you could bring a book from home, or use a book checked out from the school library, or a book from the classroom library, and you just read. You could sit at your desk or under your desk or on the floor, as long as you weren't disturbing anyone it was fine. I always like that because it was quiet and it was a nice cool down after the day. 

But maybe that's less common now with the rise of high stakes testing where there are particular subjects that "must" be covered, and covered in the way the test will approach them? Several of my colleagues, including people 20 years my junior, have complained "the students we are getting now.....they don't READ. They're not comfortable with it, it's not something that's been expected of them" and YES I understand things like dyslexia and other LDs, but those aren't that widespread, and also, things like audiobooks work as an accommodation. These are just folks who....don't seem to do narrative stories? Or want to do a sustained deep dive into a non fiction topic?

And that's another concerning thing, and I already had a student complain about a (20 page, and not terribly complex, and most of the information was stuff I had talked about in lecture) reading I assigned them because "I'm not good with reading long things" (this is not someone with an accommodation)

And I admit, I do fear we're losing that. I don't know if that's an "elitist" concern, or if I need to "check my privilege" - but for centuries, reading in one form or another was the primary way people got information. And one thing I like about printed books is they don't change....I've seen stories in the news presented one way, and then spun another way later, or completely disappeared without a trace. And I do wonder if the people who only know what they see on tv or on TikTok are more easily....duped into things. And certainly, there's the concept some have written about, how reading fiction specifically helps grow empathy in a person (And I'd argue that's something our society seems to lack, now). 

And I admit: I don't read as much as I once did. Right now, with four classes and two research projects, it's kind of a lot, and some days I don't have the energy to read more than a couple pages in SPQR (which is enormous and is going to take me a while) before I can't concentrate on it any more. I keep saying I need to make more time to read, but I have so many things (have to finish the chicken for my niece's birthday! have to practice piano! have to grade!) that seem more urgent and eat up the time.

But I do still read, at least some. And I HAVE read, there are a LOT of books I read in the past and remember. 

But also, I realize more and more: I don't fit in. I'm an oddball, a weirdo. I'm the "egghead" that students called me when I was a kid, and it's hard to relate to the rest of the world even as I want to. I don't know the same pop culture other people do, nobody knows the books I do read. 

And I don't know how to fix that. I miss having a group, a tribe, which I don't really, but I'm not sure the "try to make myself normal" thing I undertook in seventh grade (watching the shows - at least, the ones I was allowed to - that my classmates said they liked, listening to "top 40" instead of classical), and it really didn't help because I do have the stink of the oddball on me. 

But I also worry about all of us becoming increasingly "helpless" and shackled to consumer/media culture in how things have changed - if you can't make your own clothes (because no supplies), you have to buy whatever fast fashion has churned out. And fast fashion isn't well made and doesn't last. (And now, with tariffs - it will be as expensive as "proper" clothes once were). And I admit I worry, I don't know how we fix or change any of it. 

Another field day

 Last Saturday, I went out with a colleague and a group of her research-class students to help start a vegetation survey of an abandoned golf course in town. (Right now it's being kept as a semi-natural park, and one of our aims with this study is to encourage it to be kept so - right now people do go there to walk (there are paths and trails) and to fish in the former water hazards, which I guess have bluegill and other small fish. We're going back out again this Saturday, and while it's a bit of a push for me to add this on with four classes and my own research, it feels good to do it.

But today we went out to the local Choctaw cultural center - a couple of people from OU had come down to help a couple of their people with a survey of a prairie. I hadn't realized what TYPE of prairie it was at first - it's literal virgin prairie, as far back as land use records go, it's not been plowed, and also it has some topographical features (mima mounds) that likely would not be there if it had been cultivated. I really don't know how it escaped cultivation; I am not sure who owned it up until the cultural center was built (I wonder if it was a tribal member or members who liked it for the link to the past, and just maintained it). 

But first, we met for lunch - the center has a cafe serving traditional Choctaw food (and less traditional things: they also have a gelato bar). I wound up getting the pork plate - grilled pieces of what I think was pork shoulder (it was very, very good - grilled just right, and lightly but adequately seasoned, and it was good pork, too) and pinto beans (also good, unlike some places they don't oversalt their beans) and then something called Banaha bread, which I'd never had - it's a simple cornmeal "mush" that's steamed inside a cornhusk - like a tamale but without meat (one of the two center employees we ate with noted that it was also traditional to make it with beans in the center, and it would have been good that way, less plain). It  WAS very plain, but maybe the idea is next to the meat and the beans something plain is good? Or maybe it was keeping with tradition and that was how it was made. 

After lunch, we went out to the site, This was where Ian - one of the center employees who was most involved with it - told us it was, as far as they can tell, a site that had never been plowed. As I said, it has mima mounds which you tend not to see on sites that have seen extensive plowing. 

It's pretty amazing.

 

That's the casino and the casino hotel in the distance. It's really very close to town, which is why I'm so amazed to learn about it - I never knew it had existed before today

It's got a lot of vegetation diversity - most of the common prairie grasses you'd expect, like Indian grass (which is flowering, so I grabbed a picture)

And also an old friend I knew from Illinois (and perhaps even earlier, from Ohio): Echlinochloa crus-galli, also known as barnyard grass:

 

There were also lots of forbs - the broadleaf plants most people would think of as wildflowers

 Euphorbia corollata, another old friend I knew from prairies in Illinois. It's in the same family as poinsettias.

And I don't remember what they said this purple one was. I thought they said it was an Orobanchaceae (a hemiparasite), but the flower shape is wrong for that family, and I can't think now of what it might be. But it's pretty

 there were lots of Asteraceae (what used to be called "composites," for reasons related to their floral structure). This is probably Solidago missouriensis, Missouri goldenrod:

 

Some species of aster, not quite heath aster but similar:

 

 

Or it might be heath aster, and it's just extremely variable. (Or hairy white aster, S. pilosus)

 

And I don't remember which this one is. They mentioned the name but it's not a familiar species and I don't remember it:

 

 

There was also a tick-trefoil, likely Desmodium sessilifolium, with small white flowers. This plant was a little worse for wear but I took a photo anyway

 

It was a very good day.

Bit more chicken

 If I can get this done this week, I should have plenty of time to get it to my niece in time for her birthday. (She is going to be 13 but is a 4-H chicken keeper so i think she'll enjoy a big stuffed chicken, and anyway, it's more like a cushion than a toy, if she's no longer into stuffed animals. It's always hard to know - even at my age I'd welcome a stuffed animal as a gift, but some young teens get very unhappy if you think they're "younger" than they are.

Anyway, I am now up to the neck stripes; the tricky parts with shortrowing are at least done, so hopefully the rest of this won't take too long.

 It's just a simple acrylic yarn; both colors are Loops and Threads from Michael's; their house yarns are really halfway decent for simple knitting.

halloween decor time

 the fieldwork went a lot better than what I was worrying about. It's always fraught for me know, especially with other people - can I keep up with them? what if my knee gives out? But it went well.

 

Yesterday afternoon I decided it was close enough to Halloween, so I decorated. (I did most of it yesterday, but some today).

First, a little movie showing the blinky lights I put up, and the moon-phase garland (which I love so much and now am glad I bought from JoAnn's when we still had JoAnn's). And then the critters on the piano. The little Bluey wearing a pumpkin is new this year, as is the pink sparkly ghost (which amused me, both because it's glammed up, and because it vaguely reminded me of the minor Egyptian god Medjed) 

 Today I also put up the wreath and got the haunted-house doormat (there is a very small white ghost peeking out the door, waving. It's very cute and reminds me of a vintage children's book illustration)

 

I also got out the thumbs-up skeleton hand and stuck it out in my front garden. This was another JoAnn's purchase, either in 2022 or 23. 

 It sure hits different now, I'm putting it out a lot less ironically and a lot more "not great, Bob"

 There's a Spirit Halloween in town now (I know! We don't have a bookstore or a craft store or much of a supermarket, but we have this, at least for the season). I finally got out there this afternoon. Mostly costumes, and mostly kid costumes (I think it's smaller than most Spirits) but they had some of the anatomically-improbably skeleton things (I already had a spider, and the octopus was too large) but I did buy another "My Little Bony" in a gold finish to match the black with iridescence one I already had:

And I got this skeleton thing to hang up on the inside of my door. Both I and the checkout person thought it was a Mothman skeleton (and I think that works better!) but it rang up as an "angel skeleton"

I don't know. For one thing, theologically dodgy, for another, it lacks a halo. Anyway, I'm thinking of it as a Mothman skeleton

 

'least it's over...

 Today wasn't a great day. 

For one thing, I slept badly last night, had one of those distressing dreams where I'm driving and then can't see where I'm going (this time: the windshield fogged up and also there was fog all around outside the car). I relate these to when I'm worried about something in the future; my subconscious is as literal minded as my conscious mind is ("you LITERALLY canNOT see the ROAD AHEAD" yeah thanks brain)

Then, when getting dressed, first, I couldn't get my hair to look okay (it's been very dry, I don't know why, I think it's the extended hot/no rain/but humid weather and I'd been putting a "curl serum" in it to try to control it, and I think there was too much from when I washed it the previous night; it was kind of "clumpy" and acted like my hair had really thinned badly). No time to rewash it, I literally had 20 minutes to finish dressing and get out the door to be prepped in time for my class. 

And I opened the new replacement-foundation (couldn't find the Benefit product I'd been using so subbed in another one) and found that the color I had matched to my wrist was way too light for my face, and I wound up wiping most of it off and using a tiny bit of the usual stuff I had left (I might have another small tube of it squirreled away to fill in, and I mailordered more that should be here next week).

But I wound up crying at myself in the mirror - why am I so ugly? and why can't I look like a normal woman? Why does my hair always have to be weird and why doesn't my complexion match and why, why, why

Made it through the day, including ALL THE GRADING (because I volunteered to help some students in the field tomorrow afternoon, sigh, so basically giving up a big chunk of my weekend) 

Left campus around 5 pm. Got home, was walking up to my house from the garage when one of the local Yahoos drove by. And he barked at me and I think he yelled "piggie!"

 

Yeah dude, I'm fat. Thanks for reminding me, I might have forgotten I am unacceptable to your eyes and I don't belong.

I didn't react; years of being bullied in school taught me to walk tall, act fine, and never look back (or never look at your tormentor). Just. Keep. Walking.

So I did. But I did hear it, and it did affect me, and it reminded me: this is why you're fundamentally a hermit. People can be awful and a lot of the time it's not worth whatever small benefit you might get from an interaction. (I wish that my interactions were not mostly negative, but often they seem to be)

 

At least I got a little more done on the chicken, and if I can get up early enough and get the groceries I need, I might have an hour or two before I have to go out in the field to work on it. 

I could really use a couple days off, though, to do what I *want* to do instead of what I feel like I *must* do. 

some more progress

 I've been working on the chicken; once the tail part is done it moves a little faster to work on, because the short rows are more logical. 

 here it is with the first half of the back done; then I knit back over to the other edge and do the shortrowing again on the other side. Then there's some curved bits to form the breast, and then you decrease for it to get smaller for the neck and head.

So maybe hopefully I can get it almost finished tomorrow evening, if I can get home at a decent hour. Saturday, unless it rains, I'm going to help on a field research project so there will be minimal time to work on it then. 

 I'll be glad to finish this and move on to another project. I have a couple ongoing ones to finish but my yarn for the "Campus Cardigan" came today - I ordered a dark green called something like Midnight Forest. I like the idea of a big heavy sweater; those take less time to knit because the yarn is bigger. 

I do need to finish the mitts, and some socks I have on the needles, and I've got a vest and the Moon Moth sweater to work on and the Syyslaulu shawl  - which is my current invigilating project.  

I will say, ordering from Lion Brand (directly) is sort of a replacement for JoAnn's, a lot of the yarn I used to buy from them was Lion Brand. (Michael's has SOME, but not a big selection). And yeah, I am still looking for "replacements" for things I've lost. Mail ordering is quite not the same; there's not the serendipity of getting to see (and feel) the yarn in person, and you have to wait (and with Lion Brand, it can take a while) for it to arrive. 

And yes, at some point I may need to shift over to Brown Sheep, given that it's made here and less likely to be affected by tariffs and shortages....

 

At any rate, this was another week that felt months long. I do kind of wish I didn't have the commitment on Saturday, though it will be good experience and it'll help students, but I'd rather stay home.... 

something very weird

 ....but weird in a good way

This was mentioned on Metafilter today (there's also an interesting short article on the "making of")

But it reminded me - I had all but forgotten this - but I have seen the video I linked below. Way back in, as far as I can remember, fall 1989, when I took Biochemistry. 

I took it through the med school at Michigan; we needed it for graduation with a BS in Biology, and our choice was a so-described "Keller Plan" version or taking it through the med school. 

Because I was busy (taking 16 credit hours, as I remember), I thought a self-paced class might be a bad idea - I'd get busy and put off doing units of it, and then have to be scrambling at the end of the semester to catch up. ("Keller Plan" is apparently a grown-up version of the old SRA reading plan that my teachers used when I was a kid in the 70s, and while I LOVED it then (and blew through the whole box before Thanksgiving in fifth grade), I knew I'd not be organized enough to learn biochem that way.

 So, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I trucked off (about a fifteen minute walk, as I remember it) to the Medical Campus, and sat in a big lecture room with people planning on going to medical or dental school, and took notes from four different profs, including one who brought in a roll of that acetate overhead-projector film - literally on a roller - and wrote with one hand and scrolled it with the other, and God help you if you couldn't write fast enough to keep up.

And then when we did protein synthesis, one day, the prof wheeled in a 16 mm projector and set up a film

And it was this.

Sit through the first three minutes of a very square 1970s era chemistry prof talking, then it gets freaky. 

 

 I'm not sure I could have learned protein synthesis JUST from this (I had already done the relevant reading). But,wow. Just wow. I rewatched it just now and sat there with my mouth open and a big stupid grin. It's so SILLY. And yet it works.And there's a joy there. (I'm not sure I accept the claim "I have to tell you, none of us were high for this" but maybe not everyone was....)

I sent it on to my (nearly 30 years my junior) genetics colleague to see how she reacts. I'm not sure if some of the stuff in that is regarded as inaccurate now (now that we've learned more). But it's definitely, as the kids say, a vibe. 

Tuesday evening things

 * I got the stitches picked up and the stripe of green done on the chicken. Now it's ten rows of orange, and then I start the shortrows to shape the body

I am ready to be done with this. I want to work on one of MY projects, or start something new

* Like the National Park hat (Cuyahoga Valley version) that I bought a kit for from Yarns and You when i went there. I thought of it again today when I got their newsletter in my mailbox. The good: apparently they are going to Rhinebeck*

the not so great for me personally: that weekend they will be closed while they're out of town, and that was my mid-fall break day, and I HAD considered going back down there. Oh well. Maybe I find something else. I HAVE to do something fun. (I don't know what, now. If the weather's OK I could go to Chickasaw but often it's rainy here in October)

(*A friend said they weren't on the list. But A Chick that Knitz is, and she's one of their dyers - so maybe they're buddying up with her for their stall. And I'm glad to see A Chick that Knitz having a broader reach; I remember ordering from her on Etsy shortly after she opened in 2019.)

* Even though Math for Knitters will be considerably delayed, I (perhaps foolhardily) decided to try ordering a book from the UK - Folio Society is republishing a replica (I guess) of the original Paddington Bear book, with the Peggy Fortnum illustrations, and I wanted one. The order went through, I hope a place as large and generally-respected as Folio has figured it out, but we'll see.

I'm tired of the chaos, and I admit I'm also worried about being able to get things like yarn (almost entirely made overseas; even the stuff dyers here dye is mostly spun in Peru or Turkey or elsewhere, and there's not a LOT of stateside spinning capacity; I think Brown Sheep may be the largest remaining yarn producer that spins here)

* I got a call from the textbook rep for the company that does our intro class book (that's the one that the students have the greatest involvement with - there are online exercises they get access too in addition to the textbook and she wanted to be sure they weren't having any trouble in accessing it) and in the course of the discussion we got onto other classes and when I mentioned I taught environmental policy, she asked if I also covered environmental impact statements as a class (I don't; we used to offer it but the guy who did it retired) and I admitted regretfully I didn't have the background for it. And as we continued to talk, I mentioned I had taught myself what I needed for policy and law, one summer, by reading a lot of books and also going through the various government and policy-wonk group websites. And then I sighed and said "That was back before the pandemic. I'm not sure I have the capacity now to do that kind of thing again" and she laughed kind of ruefully and said that a lot of people (including her) have found doing new things that require a lot of attention and learning much harder after the pandemic. 

And I felt very "heard" and in a way I rarely seem to be. Everywhere it seems that the expectation is we're back to "normal," and if we didn't have a severe case of covid or long covid (I don't think I ever even had it at all - never tested positive, never had clear symptoms, got vaccinated yearly once the vaccines were out, and am fundamentally a hermit), we're expected to be exactly back as we were before, with no lingering trauma or psychological stuff.

 

But. I notice it in me. I walk into a store and the shelves seem a bit bare, and my mind blips back to the weeks in 2020 where you could only find one kind of milk (Usually whole, which was too rich for me, and a couple times I went with - ugh - oat milk as a replacement) or there were no eggs to be had, and it makes me nervous again. And all the chaos now - this time, entirely human-imposed, entirely imposed by a small group of humans even - it exhausts me and does remind me of 2020. And I admit I worry about things getting worse, and for some reason or other it becoming unsafe to go out much.....and we're back in July 2020 again, when I sat in my house and wondered if there'd be anything much to come out to once the pandemic was over. (And yes, I do feel like a lot of things I saw as Good Things are disappearing now, maybe never to return - we've already lost JoAnn's and some small businesses, what if we lose more small businesses and places like Books a Million, literally the only large shop selling new books within an easy drive of me - well, how do I go on?

And I admit, in all the talk of "social media is a cancer," that some are saying now, rightly or wrongly, I hear a tiny undercurrent of "you losers who don't have a nuclear family or a ton of close friends, and do a lot of socializing online, we want to shut that off, and you can just suffer and be alone because you're weird and wrong."

But also: the fear that if going out much becomes inadvisable again, like it was in much of 2020, how do we make it without people to talk to online? And finding local people......that's hard and scary and I've found some people here really don't understand me and seem not to want to try. 

(So much of my young life was me being told I was weird and wrong by my peers, I have internalized it and kind of believe I AM)

SO anyway - I DO want to go out to places like yarn shops and bookstores *while I still can*

And I know I need to figure out "replacements' if all that goes, and I'm not sure I have the energy to. 

the chicken tail

 I really wanted to be farther on this; I need to have it done by the 28th if I am to get it sent to my niece in time for her birthday. But I made an error on one of the tail halves and had to start over, and had a couple days of feeling meh about it and not wanting to work on it.

At least I got this part done tonight. The tail is a big piece, and it's fiddlier and requires more attention than the other parts. Next step is to pick up stitches (in green; it's one of the stripes) along the long edge, and then with a combination of increases and shortrows you shape the body. 

 the other parts are an "underbelly" and then the wattle and comb. So hopefully I can get a bunch more done tomorrow and Wednesday (thank goodness, no evening meetings this week

 Other than that, it was a challenging day - had to soothe an upset student (exam grade), had to negotiate "how do I protect myself in This Climate and yet also allow folks to record my lectures if they think it helps them" (I fear creative editing, though maybe I don't need to, but I don't want to find out my lectures were posted online; that feels like a violation of my privacy and potentially my intellectual property)

And I got home later than I originally planned; I started moving stuff back to my lab - it's the big soil-analysis lab in ecology this week and there are So. Many. Pieces. Of. Glassware. I need, and it's a good 350 or so steps between my research lab (where it is) and the teaching lab, and so I can't be running that a LOT once the lab is going (I do not have a TA)

Also, they're not done in the building, and the stuff is still occupying my preproom so I can't easily put things away, and that precariously leaning ladder seems like a hazard.

we were all but promised this would be done TODAY. That photo was taken at 4 pm, after the guys had left for the day, so. I'm going to complain if it turns out "yeah this is just where this stuff lives now, deal with it"

It also eats up a LOT of room where I had been storing things. 

There aren't enough labs or preprooms that I could just move. So it's either live with it (hoping it will be done soon) or move to one of the "portable" buildings, which lack climate control, and it's been HOT here again.

It was also loud again this morning and that kind of nerfed my ability to work or concentrate. Loud drilling and using those powered screwdrivers. I am just very tired of everything. 

Another small upset today: I had pre-ordered Kate Atherley's "Math for Knitters," which, yeah, it's partly on me because it comes from CANADA and I should have foreseen this, I guess, but - she currently can't shop here because Canada Post apparently shut down shipping to the US. It "might" restart in October, but then there will probably be more delays because apparently Customs will have to examine every package.

And I know, it's a tiny little thing, and the firstiest of first world problems, but - it's just another reminder of how BROKEN everything is, just like the empty shelves I occasionally run into in the stores here. It's mildly upsetting and given my particular brain-wiring, makes me wonder how much worse the future might be. 

I don't know. If she can't get the book to me before November, maybe I politely request a cancellation of my order? If I'm going to be waiting who-knows-how-long. Because given how the world is know, who even KNOWS if I will be here, like, next year, to use a book. We could all be going together when we go, like Tom Lehrer sang. 

Anyway. there are a lot of things I want (primarily: for the work in my building to be done, the noise to be over, me be able to move all my stuff back to where it belongs) but I'm not going to get ANY of it. And it makes me feel somewhat that I don't matter in all of this; that no one cares about my feelings. I mean, I know they don't and I suppose they shouldn't have to, but it's still an incredibly isolating feeling.
 

Week is over

 Why does every week now feel like it's a month long? I suppose the world is just more chaotic now. 

And there were small tastes of chaos in my own world - the husband of a good friend of my mom's wound up in hospital with an abdominal obstruction; apparently he's going to be okay now but had to have surgery (and it was only his dentist-child who told him he needed to go to the hospital). 

And a school district near me has been shut down for two days because of "threats." Apparently they caught the kids making the threats and they would have amounted to nothing, but that's not cool - it's scary, and it disrupts education (and kids having to stay at home, if they're in single parent homes or one where both parents work, I'm not sure how that's dealt with on short notice)

And finally today, we had an "unwanted guest" in the building. Apparently not *really* a threat, but someone who's not supposed to be here and is apparently known to the campus police (I don't know if he was the one harassing some of the women students in the past) and we've now been told we need to call the police if he shows up again. I saw him; I was talking to my department chair and a grad student who were sitting out in the hall where he was. I am bad at picking up on signals and didn't realize they were out there *watching* him and when I walked out to my car the secretary followed me and told me, and said that if my chair had coughed loudly she was to call the cops. (I later found out via e-mail that he left willingly when the campus police showed up). But now we're supposed to call it in and we're supposed to keep all the rooms locked when we're not in them and that makes more work for us and also, if you're carrying a lot of stuff between rooms? I guess you either get a cart, or make more trips and have to fuss with the door every time.

Life on hard mode. It's been on hard mode really since 2020. 

***

So I needed to get out of town. I had wanted to go to Albertson's for better groceries than I can get locally (more choice, and some brands like the Icelandic style yogurt (less sugar, and I like it better) that nowhere in town sells. 

And honestly? I wanted a lunch out and a trip to the yarn shop. So I got that

I also went to Michael's. Didn't buy much but I saw this and said "that's the silliest thing I've seen in a while"

 And then I laughed and said "I bet that would fit my big Discord plushie I got yesterday" and so I bought it (it was cheap, and I had a money-off coupon, and I figured if it didn't fit I could wear it once or twice myself as a gag).

 

but it does fit. And it amuses me. And you have to take amusement where you can find it now

 I went to the yarn shop partly because it's one place I feel welcomed when I go there (you need that some times). But I also wanted to see if they had a suitable yarn for Again around the Sun from the new Knitty (I sponsor them on Patreon, so I get slightly early access). 

I had remembered they had a worsted-weight color gradient yarn that I thought might work. I did not remember it was *the very yarn the pattern called for* so I got it (but in a different color - this one is called Prismatic Kaleidoscope)

The green yarn is a dk in "Zombie Green," dyed by the original owner (now semi retired). I have a Tin Can Knits knit-purl patterned hat I want it for. 

I've also been working on the Syyslaulu shawl, and I looked the name up and to my delight it means "Autumn Song" in Finnish, and actually references a song based on a Tove Jansson (the Mooomintrolls author). It's not at a photogenic stage right now (it's still the all-garter-stitch part). I'm also working (at home) on the chicken but it's going slowly.

Here's hoping next week is calmer.
 

this sparks joy

 A week or more ago, I spent some "silly money" -I bought an expensive thing I didn't strictly need, which maybe isn't prudent in a time of rising food prices and the possibility of high inflation coming.

 

but it was something I had wanted since I heard it was being made, and anyway....sometimes things that make you happy are good.

 

It's a gigantic (like, 30" tall) plushie of Discord from My Little Pony - officially licensed and all (no fakies!) made by Symbiote Studios. I admit I was leery of ordering having been burned by ANOTHER site selling plushies earlier this year, where I had to do a chargeback on my card after they charged it, never sent the thing, and did not respond to multiple e-mails and FB contacts with them.

But Symbiote is solid, it looks like - acknowledged my order right away, a couple days later said it had shipped. It got hung up a couple days in Dallas, but that's USPS' fault, not Symbiote's

Well, it finally came today, as I was grading exams. I took a break to get up and grab the package off my porch (I was at home)

At first I wondered if if was smaller than I was told because the bag was fairly small, but when I opened it, he was all pretzeled up in there:

 He expands to be BIG. He's made out of minky - not the plushest I've seen, but certainly nice quality - and he has wires inside for posing/to hold him upright. (He's still pretty noodly though)

 He is very cuddly because he's basically a big noodle as I said, and is fairly softly stuffed (also, I look at this photo of me and cringe a bit, I look like my dad in the face more and more every day , it seems. It might be partly the angle making my face look fatter than it actually is)

 And yes, he is nice to hug

 

I had thought while he was still in transit "maybe I should knit a little sweater for him" but it might be hard to make one with sleeves big enough for his lion paw and eagle claw without it being too large (and it would have to be a cardigan, a pullover wouldn't go over his head.

Or maybe I just knit him a scarf as winter gets closer. I think he'd look good in a scarf.

He's also fun to pose - he's big enough he can sit at my piano:

He's large enough that he can sit on the bench and still reach the keys!
 

future project thinking

 Of course, when I have a project with a deadline, and lots of other unfinished stuff, I find myself thinking about new things I want to start. I have a couple sweaters on the needles already, and some socks, and the mitts, and the Syyslaullu shawl. 

But I think about Greenstone, and the big bulky-weight cardigan (the yarn for which was one of my last ever JoAnn's purchases, though I didn't know it at the time), and a couple other things

I had ordered some yarn from a UP dyer (Powers! I know where that is) on Etsy. One of the colors I got was called Hexagonaria, which is the genus name of the fossil coral that makes up Petosky stones. I've always liked those (I even have a pendant that is cut from one) and when I got it, it occurred to me that a hexagon-pattern sock might be nice. I wasn't sure I wanted to do something heavily cabled or like a re-do of the Snicket socks (lots of traveling stitches, and they came out TIGHT). 

But I found a pattern with a simple "small" cable on it, reminiscent of a vest from Knitty I made years ago (Sarah Castor's Honeycomb Vest)

it's called Honeycomb Socks, and is by Studio North. So it maybe even fits with the UP North yarns...

 Also one of my Bluesky friends who knits - I think it was Heather, aka Kitty Furniture, referred to another Knitty pattern, "Wavedock," which is a half-round shawl that takes about 500 yards of yarn (so: a generous single big skein, or 2-3 smaller ones). And I thought "maybe sometime I make that) and hunted about in my stash for yarn* and found a couple balls of a light fingering bordering on lace that I have 600 some yards of, and it's in dark jewel tones. I bought it for a small shawl years ago but never found a pattern I liked. 

I remembered it, and found it

 Yeah, that'll work. That'll work well

I should take everything that I find a pattern for, and put it together in a bag (ideally a clear one because I am very much "out of sight, out of mind" now) and store them somewhere accessible so when I am ready to start something new I can "shop" my "self made up" kits.... 

(*I suspect given tariffs and no more de minimus and everything else, a lot of us with stashes of supplies will be digging in them, and heck, I may even be opening my boxes and sharing with friends who knit or crochet)

And I realized that Syysaula would work as an invigilating project: I'm still on the long "increase every rightside row and knit all in garter stitch" long triangle part (I should wind off the second ball). It won't take a lot of concentration, it's not having to begin something new (I won't have much time tomorrow, and probably won't post an entry because of a full day of teaching and also evening meetings), and it will get some progress on a project that's already going.

I did finish the first section of the chicken's tail tonight and cast on for the second. I need to motor on this a little this weekend so that I can have it done in time to send to my niece before early October when her birthday is. 

out of sorts

 I started the chicken for my niece this weekend. Was motoring away on the tail section and then realized I'd made a mistake, and I couldn't easily how to get back to a spot I could pick back up from, so I ripped the whole thing out and restarted.

 So this is all the further I am:

 I also need to figure out something simple and portable (A simple hat, maybe, as a potential gift) for later this week when I have to give two exams. Nothing I have going on is either simple enough or small enough to be easy to carry (the chicken takes too much attention)

***

I'm trying to the coverage of That Book (you know the one, the birthday book for that guy that That Guy allegedly contributed to). I honestly can't believe how gross some men are, and I'd prefer not to know how fully gross, to keep the illusion that there are some good men still out there (even if probably every one remotely close to my age is partnered up already.)

Just everything feels upsetting and ugly right now.

***

Part of it is being peopled out. Thursday was AAUW, and it was stressful as the original host was awol (I hope she's okay, but I think I'd have heard if it was something bad, I suspect the likely explanation is she forgot, and got invited to the tailgate on campus, and went, and that's why she wasn't home). So there was a lot of shuffling around (another woman was able to host on short notice). 

Then Saturday was a get-together/housewarming party at a colleague's.. It was fine, but it lasted really long - I left after three hours and I was the first one to leave (and I hope that wasn't too unsociable or awkward, but most of the people there were talking college football, which I'm not into and couldn't contribute, and I was tired, and I felt a little uncomfortable, and I didn't want to talk any more)

Tonight was CWF. It was okay at first but the meeting ran kind of long, and I was supposed to do a devotional at the end and I thought I'd picked out a really good one about the restoration of Notre Dame, but at that point everyone was distracted from having had to change plans for a meal we're serving after a choir concert and then one of the women started complaining that the day care that uses our building had blocked one of the storage closets with their stuff, and it needed to be moved so she could get things in there, and then someone else went and looked and they were both unhappy about it (but the problem is? there's nowhere else to store those). And by the time I got to reading what I had everyone was tired and distracted and I felt talked over.

I should be used to it, but.

And Wednesday is Board meeting, so that's more people. 

Maybe tomorrow will be better... 

leaving this here

 for my use when I update the NEPA stuff next week for environmental policy

 

changes to CEQ and NEPA 

changes to OSHA 

 Deregulation, in the EPA's own words

 whole Wikipedia article on what has happened at NOAA 

I also gotta admit, updating some of the stuff about agency/department heads, it really hurt to take Deb Haaland's name out, and sub in Doug Burgum's. 

 

it's been a hard week even if it started with a "vacation" day (which I spent working) and this is not cheerful stuff to read late Friday afternoon. 

a dumb "want"

 Today was kind of a rough day: allergies bad, four classes (one a two hour lab), wrote two exams after all that (so got home LATE), hurting (I hope I didn't injure my knee again, it's been bothering me). Bailed on piano practice because of no time and that makes me sad. 

Thinking about a fad. The Labubu dolls (? or is it animals? mascots? I'm not sure what to call them).

When I first saw them, I immediately thought of the trendy rich girls I went to grade school with and how they'd get all the fad things and then mock and exclude those who didn't have it (which would have included me; we didn't have the money for fads, my parents thought they were foolish, and I had almost no spending money. And I remember the slight displeasure when I spent some of my saved-up allowance on Smurfs; I guess I was supposed to spend it on something more "mature" like a book....)

And so, initially, I kind of got the ick off them. It also doesn't seem to help when you see people (mostly young white women, but not exclusively women) in stores being obnoxious and loud and rude and they have a couple dangling from their purse.

But then. I see them on the doll blogs. And I admit there is something slightly endearing about them. I look at the faces and I think "here is a creature that doesn't give one single damn what everyone thinks of her*" 

(*yes, I see them as female)

And it's that - it's almost like Little My in the Moomin books (which are very popular in their Japanese translation). That almost callousness out the outside (though I think inside, My DOES care, at least about some of the other creatures she shares her life with).

But I like that "not giving a damn." I mean, yes, it can be malignant - like the person who is rude and in everyone's face and disturbs people's peace. But there's another kind of it: being confident, and knowing your own worth, and being able to walk past people excluding you or mocking you with your head held high knowing they don't matter. And that there are people who DO, and they are the ones who care about you and wouldn't treat you like that. 

But that's something I've struggled with my whole life, and I suspect I always will to some extent. I am less that way than I once was, but I do, I admit, at times, still feel that lonely 12 year old eating in a dim corner of the lunchroom because no one wants her at their table, or who feels like everyone is laughing at her. And it would be nice to have some kind of little companion to remind you to keep grinning and keep a sardonic look in your eyes, and just keep going....

Oh no, I am not buying one. Labubus are EXPENSIVE (and surely will become more, given their status as an imported good). I could get a couple Squishamals (like the mothmen I posted the other days) for less than the price of one Labubu. 

But still....as I said there's something endearing about a creature that doesn't listen to the "haters"

(Maybe I see if there's an affordable Little My plushie. Or I already have a mini-Stitch, from Lilo and Stitch, who in his own way is similar...) 

Tuesday afternoon things

 * I had somewhat of a reaction to the vaccine - was okay until about 3:30 pm Saturday, and then started to feel tired, and achy, and cold. I think I ran a fever for a bit. I went to bed for a little while and felt better around dinner time so I made some toast and had a yogurt. I was mostly okay but tired Sunday.

I'm still tired today and do feel slightly like the aftereffects of a virus.

*It's also possible I feel like I do because I started on my "self evaluation" for the fall and also my three-year post tenure review packet (every year we have to do a "what I did last year" and a "what I'm going to do next year," every three years those of us with tenure have to do a big review of the previous three years). And I hate it. And it bums me out every time, because I feel like I never do enough, and it's never good enough (though, objectively, I've not lost my job yet). But also a lot of the stuff I do day to day that's valuable to me, and I presume to the students, is "invisible" on these things - there's no line for "treating the students with kindness" or "helping people solve minor computer problems" and so there's both that sense of "the stuff I'm really good at doesn't get recorded" which can then flip over in my mind into "the stuff I'm really good at doesn't *matter*" and I know it's what we'd call in church a "world vs. Kingdom" problem - in that what the world seems to value (ESPECIALLY now, ESPECIALLY in the US, where having a ton of money but maybe not much sense gets you heard, and being a bully lets you get ahead in a way being a kind person does not) but it's still hard. It's hard to remember that there are valuable things that no one ever "sees," but that they still count. 

And I think of this thing that I saw on a tumblr once, and I hunted it down again:

 It's from a book by Suzanne Rivecca called "Ugly, Bitter, and True." I've never read it but that thing resonates.

 I think that's also why I'm less likely to do things like try to design knitting patterns, partly because of not wanting to sink time into something that might be unsuccessful, but also, yes, the "it has to make up for the fact that it's me."

And that's also probably why I don't play piano for anyone buy myself; the fact that I can almost never play even a simple piece like that Clementi Sonatina in C that every beginning student learns without a mistake in it.  

* I need to get on the chicken for my niece's birthday, I don't know whether to get everything out and start tonight or put it off for another day or so. I admit I'm getting a little bit burnt out on chickens but it's such a perfect thing for her I should still do it. 

* I'm still working on the soil samples. I have three left but couldn't do any more than the two I did today - I stayed home a bit after lunch to practice piano, and I admit to hear what the "big announcement" was (it was dumber than advertised, but at least it wasn't some new horror)

* I watched part of "Ralph Breaks the Internet" again last night. I like it better than the first time I saw it, but I still think "Wreck-it Ralph" is better, partly because it feels more timeless - a lot of the internet stuff in the newer movie has really aged fast in a way the video game stuff did not. (I am also embarrassed to admit that I didn't get the joke being made in the title until last night - I don't think about "breaks the internet" in the Kardashian sense rather than that literal "it got unplugged" sense, but yeah, that's the bit - he briefly breaks the internet with viral videos, as he's trying to earn money to repair Vanellope's game.)

The Princesses bit is moderately cute, though the "We can't understand her, she's from the other studio" (Pixar) bit with Merida speaking in an incomprehensible brogue wasn't all that funny to me for some reason.