So the "100 things about me" meme has come and gone, I know, but I'm doing it now because I have no real knitting progress to report, and because I'm a rebel, dammit.
1. I already know I'm going to have trouble making it to 100
2. Unless I split things up.
3. Like this.
4. Just kidding.
5. No, really.
6. Or not.
7. Okay, plunging in. I'm not a morning person. I don't know why morning people think this is funny. I never torment them when I'm wide awake in the late evening. And I'm perfectly pleasant if left alone.
8. I'm not a "crowd" person either. Last time I went out for
Fall Crawl I got groped like four times before we even got into the first venue. So I don't go anymore.
9. I live alone. I like it. I have two sisters. I did a lot of sharing. I'm taking a break from that. It's nice.
10. I don't like to knit for charity. I'll give my time, my money, my voice, my vote, whatever, but not my knitting.
11. That said, I learned to knit as part of a Hats for the Homeless project.
12. I knit so tight that my hat was just the right size for a homeless baby. Which is so freaking sad. The homeless baby, not the amateurish knitting.
13. I had cast on 20 extra stitches, too, because I have a big head and one-size-fits-all hats really don't.
14. I have since loosened up. But not much.
15. I used to be an archaeologist. I'm taking a break from that too. Which is also nice.
16. I used to live in hotels approximately three weeks out of the month. I had no social life except sitting around my coworker's hotel rooms drinking. That got old.
17. I also got tired of being the physically weakest member of the crew. I don't mind being the only woman, unless
they mind. Which some of them did.
18. I'm not the kind of woman to slam a door in a man's face after he's opened it for me, but I am the kind to get angry when you lift heavy things for me, when lifting heavy things is
part of my job.
19. I have a serious punctuality problem. My theory is, it's my passive-aggressive way of lashing out at the world's high expectations of me.
20. Oh yeah, and I overanalyze things. See for example #19.
21. My favorite colors are red and green.
22. I kind of like to wear them together.
23. I don't mind looking Christmassy because I love Christmas. Also Thanksgiving. And Halloween.
24. But I hate New Year's.
25. Again with the crowds. Also the drunken drivers, the pressure to make it the Best! Night! of the Year!, the emphasis on time passing, and the whole "kiss somebody at midnight" thing. I'll kiss somebody when I feel like kissing, thanks.
26. I don't usually do swaps or KALs. I'm not much of a joiner.
27. Except for the occasional meme.
28. I like to make people stuff. But I want to do it when the mood strikes me, or when I think they need something in particular, even if it's just a treat. So deadlines and themes and me? We don't mesh well together.
29.
Things like this make me miss the East Coast.
30. I'm from Pennsylvania.
31. Yes, that's still East Coast.
32. My town has like 2000 residents. And it still has more of a city feel in some respects than Albuquerque does.
31. People don't make small talk with you, for one thing.
32. I always get weirded out when strangers talk to me in public. In fact, kind of annoyed.
33. Also, you can flip people off in traffic. It's no big deal. It's kind of like waving hello. But in a "screw you, jerk" kind of way.
34. After I moved to ABQ I flipped somebody off and got a talking-to by a cop.
35. Another time, the lady followed me to my destination, parked her car so that it blocked my exit, and screamed at me as I walked away.
36. Her skin looked like
Victor Yuschenko's. I'm pretty sure she was on meth.
37. I don't flip people off in traffic anymore.
38. My middle name is Ann.
39. My mom and sisters have the same middle name.
40. My family is super-creative on this whole middle-name thing.
41. But at least I'm not named Madison. Or Addison. Or any of those "we want you to be a tough girl so we named you, our
daughter, something that ends with
son as if the only way to be strong is to be masculine" names.
42. Carl Sagan's daughter is also named Cari.
43. I get called Carl sometimes. It happened a lot more in the days of the dot-matrix printer. The i runs together, or people just assume.
44. I have a big thing about people just assuming.
45. Like when you spell your name for someone and they write it down wrong anyway.
46. What's up with that?
47. My last name is Polish. It's only been pronounced right on the first try 4 times in my life.
48. Three of those times were by people who have difficult Eastern European names themselves. So.
48. The last time it happened I squealed with delight. Yes, out loud. Yes, at work. Yes, I saved the phone message.
49. My favorite season is winter.
50. I love cold weather, cloudy skies, and wearing sweaters.
52. Yes, I know I'm in the wrong state.
53. I also love snowboarding. I've seriously considered moving to a teeny-tiny mountain town and making it the core of my existence.
54. Which would actually be great, since my existence doesn't have much of a core these days.
55. (Because I'm done with my field archaeology career and not ready to move on to... whatever's next... yet.)
56. I don't mind slacking off right now because I went straight from college to grad school, and never had a job that wasn't archaeological, except an outlet store I worked at one summer in high school. So I've never had much time to explore my other interests.
57. My lack of direction only bothers me when people who don't know me well start pestering me about it.
58. One guy at work has actually set a deadline by which time I must "change my life."
59. It's January 2007, if you care.
60. I don't.
61. He also called me a "lone wolf" once. In response, I howled.
62. I was a total tomboy. Still am, really.
63. I did have a pedicure this morning though. My second ever. I dig 'em. 64. I used to keep track of how many scars I have. If you're really nice to me, maybe sometime I'll show you my x-rays.
65. I talk to myself.
66. I sometimes crack jokes. To myself. And then I laugh, and people are like, "There she goes again. [shudder] Hide the knives."
67. My apartment is a constant mess. I like it that way.
68. Except when I can't find stuff, like my DVD remote.
69. Which is preventing me from watching my current Netflix,
Goodbye Lenin.
70. I took three semesters of German in grad school. I was surprisingly good at it.
71. I meant to keep studying it on my own. But it's hard, when you've got so little self-discipline.
72. So I watch a lot of German films (but with subtitles!) and sometimes listen to
Deutsche Welle's German-for-dummies podcasts.
73. I'm listening to one right now. Apparently there's something going on with
drei Soldaten in Lebanon.
74. I'm much better at reading German than listening to it. It sort of reminds me of Shakespearean English.
75. I once starred in a German-class skit in which I had to yell
"Ja, ich bin einen Mann!" (Yes, I am a man.) I played a drug-addicted transsexual thief. My friend played a cop.
76. My current top 5 most played songs on itunes are "Evil" by Interpol, "Goodnight and Go" by Imogen Heap, "Disposable Parts" by Enon, "I Hear the Bells" by Mike Doughty, and "I Think I Need a New Heart" by the Magnetic Fields.
77. Enon was at the
Launchpad a couple years ago.
78. My friend
Amy wanted to go.
79. We didn't for some reason. I wish we had.
80. My best friend's name is Jessa. She lives in DFW.
81. The first time I saw her, she was wearing light blue pants with red lobsters embroidered on them.
82. I knew we would be friends.
83. I mean,
lobster pants. Come on.
84. The smell of the self-tanner I used earlier today is really getting to me.
85. There's a pool at my apartment complex. I've never used it.
86. I love to swim.
87. But I don't like having to talk to my neighbors fully dressed. In a swimsuit? Forget it.
88. If only I had a waterproof ipod.
89. Science needs to stop looking for a cure for cancer and get on that.
90. Oh wait, apparently you can buy a
waterproof case.
91. Eh. I don't trust it. These newfangled inventions, I tell ya. The more parts they have, the more parts there are to break.
92. That's why I like driving a stick, hand-knitting, etc. So that when the end times come, yes, I'll stay down here on earth with the rest of the heathens, but at least I'll have something to wear and drive when the antichrist destroys automatic transmissions and the ready-to-wear garment industry.
93. My favorite colors are... oh, I already said that.
94. I have two orange backpacks and two yellow backpacks. Graduated sizes. Two with hydration systems. Archaeologists need a lot of backpacks.
95. So what the hell am I supposed to do with them now, I ask you.
96. Save them for the end times, obviously.
97. When the antichrist will also destroy purses, messenger bags, rucksacks, briefcases, and totes.
98. And we'll have to carry everything in our bare hands.
99. Thank God this is almost done.
100. Because I'm rambling on about backpacks, ferantichrissakes.
Okay, I'm exaggerating, but my mom broke her foot yesterday. She and my dad had driven out from PA to St. Louis the day after Christmas for my dad's best friend's dad's funeral, and then to Chicago to visit her sister, as long as they were in the neighborhood (the entire length of the state of Illinois being a "neighborhood" when you're already that far from home), and on the way my mom tripped over some uneven pavement in a gas station parking lot and skinned her hands and knees. She didn't even realize she had hurt her foot until they got to my aunt's house in Chicago and she tried to get out of the car. So now she has a temporary cast on her foot and is at a Chicago orthopedist's office for a follow-up as I type. My poor mom, who's very independent and dignified and hates asking for help, is hobbling around on crutches nine hundred miles from home. I know my dad's taking good care of her, but I wish I were there to help.
Can I just take a minute to rave about Andean Silk once again? It feels thicker than it is, if that makes sense, it's so soft, and just look at that drape. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be sumptuous--accurate, but also, a word you don't get to use all that often. And if I had to use only one word to describe the picture below, it would be... spectacular.
I probably just jinxed myself, but my dad's Log Cabin Socks (from 
