Me Meme

Rachel tagged me for my first meme; I went to her blog and read the rules, and decided to blow most of them off, except the obvious one: tell seven random things about myself. All that "post the rules" and "tag seven other people" crap is right out the window as far as I'm concerned. So...seven random things.

1. I am terrified to the point of phobia of ascending spiral staircases. I had a taste of this in York going up the cathedral tower six years ago, but I'd forgotten about it until this trip to Oregon and the Yaquina Head Lighthouse tour. Oy. Oddly, I have no problem going down; it has something to do (I suspect) with the implied centrifugal leaning - in toward that really long drop on the way up, and out toward the stable wall on the way down.

2. I used to dye my hair red on a regular basis. Not Orphan Annie red, but I was often compared to Clare Danes during her redhead phase, and I was runner-up in the "Most Irish-looking" contest at our church's annual meeting one year. Not bad for a German.

3. My maiden name is Funkhouser. The best thing about a last name like Funkhouser is that there's not a ton you can do with it to make it any more interesting. I was sad to see it go when I got married - no way I was going to hyphenate that sucker.

4. I haven't had a full-time job since July 2002 (more than four years before the Doodle made part-time a necessity). I negotiated with my temp assignment that I'd stay on with them longer if they'd let me work four 8's, and I've never looked back. Why work more than I have to? There are naps to be had!

5. Even though I'm on the lazy side (see #4), I have a deep streak of farming/gardening/tending in me - wheat and cattle farmers on both sides of the gene pool have contributed to this. A life thus far of apartment and townhouse dwelling has not encouraged it. However, it's probably for the best, since I think I probably like the idea of a huge garden more than I would really like the reality. I'll pore over Burpee seed catalogs and estimate how many alpacas we could buy with our savings (answer: one-third), but really when it comes down to it, I like sleeping. A lot.

6. I ran cross-country one season in high school. To this day, I am mystified by my decision to run cross-country (again, see #4). I do not enjoy running in the least. I've started running recently because I need to do something to get in shape and it works fast, but all I can think about while I'm out at 6:30 a.m. is, "Oh, look how pretty the sky is - how much longer do I have to this???"

7. Almost every day, something I do, see or think about reminds me of something that happened during college - and I graduated almost ten years ago. Simply put, college was the best experience of my life (although marriage is beginning to edge it out occasionally) and if I could figure out a way to go back and do it all again, I totally would. Not grad school, not continuing ed, but the whole undergrad shebang - dorm life, staying up until 4 a.m. debating the existence of original sin (love ya, Bible majors!), staying up until 8 a.m. bitching about the administration (love ya, Record staff!), doing homework in the cafeteria in between breakfast and lunch - the whole thing was fabulous, and I have four more majors and a whole slew of extracurricular activities that I didn't get to take care of the first time around.

Whew!

Knitting content posted sometime in the next week, hopefully.

On Adjectives

So this is about a Christmas gift I received from My Hero. I'll say right here that this is the first year anyone has taken my knitting seriously enough to buy me presents that have to do with yarn, or the storage/maintenance/knitting thereof, so I would like to publicly thank those individuals (My Hero and my mom and mother-in-law) who have supported/enabled me during the holiday and birthday season. Finally! :)


Anyways. My Hero bravely went to a yarn store all by himself and bought a swift, which, after I received a bigger, wooden version from my mom, I returned for a ball winder:


Behold, the Almighty Handy Reeling Machine. There is really very little that I enjoy more than English translations performed by those who have 85% fluency in the language. I once had a balsa wood airplane kit that bragged that it could "be circular three times in the air!" While I'm somewhat bemused at how they arrive at the vocabulary they choose, you have to hand it to these translators for infusing their English with a certain enthusiasm that is missing from the usage of us jaded native speakers. I don't think it would ever occur to me to pair Almighty and Handy as descriptors for the same object. Unless, I suppose, I was describing the accessibility of God?

I'm a Fibertarian

The Panopticon has come up with a political party that I just might be able to fully support.

Knitters, unite!