kmkat and her kneedles

Life is random, why not me?

1. Baked :: Alaska.
2. Excited :: to go.
3. Print :: out of,
4. Obstruct :: -ionist.
5. Bladder :: full.
6. Matrimony :: wedding.
7. Car :: many.
8. Reconstruct :: Civil War.
9. Lenses :: contact.
10. Best for last :: save it.

* * * * *

I got to thinking about John Sandford and his Virgil Flowers novels because I noticed a new one had come out, Mad River. Love John Sandford, love Virgil Flowers. Maybe not quite as much as I love Lucas Davenport of the Prey series, but close. Couldn't remember which of the books I had already read so I requested all of them (five plus the newest one) from the library. Have been reading them one after the other, kinda like 350-page potato chips. Just started #4 AND got the email that the newest one is waiting for me at my local library.

Heaven.

Edited to add: the reason I like Sandford's novels and characters so much is that they are the most intelligent but down-to-earth ones I have read, amen.

* * * * *

Speaking of books.

I sit on the board of trustees of the regional library system, which is currently embarking on its [latest] long-range planning process. Members of the board were tasked with visiting all the libraries in their respective counties and chatting with the directors about the services they get from the regional system. On Friday the other board member from our county and I visited four municipal libraries and had four wildly varying discussions. Wildly varying in a good way, mind you -- their experience in the library system ranged from 1 to 29 years and their education/library size/community demographic varied almost as much.

It was an interesting and informative and fun way to spend a day. Which is good because next Wednesday we are going to do it again with four different libraries.

* * * * *

I liked the yarn I knitted the fingerless gloves out of so much (it's been sitting in my stash since 2007, why haven't I used it before?) that I decided to make myself a hat from it, the Twisted Toque from 60 Quick Knits. 

Fail.

Sorry, I should have taken a photo to show how terrible it looked. If you scan the projects in Ravelry you may notice that on some, the non-stockinette portion of the hat sort of... sticks out. Mine looked like the one in the link but much, much worse.

Ribbit.

In hindsight, I think the problem was that the pattern was written for Cascade 220, which is a light worsted, and I knitted it from a plump worsted. Perhaps if I had gone up a needle size all would have been well. 

But we shall never know because I am NOT knitting that pattern again.

So there.

Not that I am bitter or anything...

 * * * * *

(something I commented on another blog that seemed so revolutionary and astoundingly awesome that I had to include it here)

The possible long-term effects of global warming have been endlessly reported upon, but the day-to-day effects have been downplayed. I have concluded what the latter means for us in the northern latitudes is that our weather will change more quickly than we are used to. The past few weeks, with fronts blowing through seemingly every other day, are what have convinced me of this. Makes sense meteorologically, too -- globala warming is basically just more energy in the atmosphere = more volatile weather.

Kinda fun, actually. Every morning is a new surprise. Can I go into town minus hat/scarf/boots or will I need long underwear and three pairs of socks? 

* * * * *

Have any of you been watching House of Cards on Netflix? I started last night, got annoyed in the first 30 seconds*, so annoyed in the next three minutes* that I stopped watching. I eventually went back and am now ready to start episode 2.

But it is not nearly as good as the British original with Ian Richardson, imnsho. I blogged about that once twice before. When Kevin Spacey delivered that line -- You might very well think that. I could not possibly comment -- I actually groaned. He is a great actor, don't get me wrong, but this whole thing seems kinda flat compared to the original.

I will continue to suffer through it, though ;-)

* They broke a primary law of good writing/movie-making: show me, don't tell me. When FU kills the dog, that is showing; when he expounds to the camera to give every bit of background information we may need, that's telling.

 

Ten on Tuesday: the Alfred Hitchcock edition.

Ten Favorite Alfred Hitchcock Movies. 

1. The Birds. I saw this when it first came out in theaters and had nightmares that night. This is the only movie that has ever given me nightmares. 
   
   
   
    
2. North by Northwest. Cary Grant = good, James Mason = evil. The crop-duster scene, the nighttime pursuit across Mt. Rushmore. A classic.
   
   
   
    
3. Rear Window.
   
   
    
4. Psycho. Of course.
   
   
    
5. To Catch a Thief. I read the book, too. Anything about a cat burglar fascinates me.
    
6. Vertigo.
   
   
    
7. Strangers on a Train. Did you know that was based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith?
   
   
    
8. The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956 version.
   
   Not movies, but Alfred Hitchcock productions that stick in my memory 50+ years later...
    
9. The TV episode with the serial killer disguised as the other nurse.
    
10. The TV episode where the wife kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, then puts it in the oven and cooks it while the police are investigating.
     

photo credit: Stewf via photopin cc
photo credit: mark sebastian via photopin cc
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photo credit: Steve Rhodes via photopin cc
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A quiz for Sunday.

Quiz is here; can you find 50 movie titles hidden in the picture there? Above is a portion of the picture. I got 33 correct, 6 wrong, and 11 that I couldn't name at all.

The United States as mapped by movies.

Click to embiggify.

Cheerfully captured from blameitonthevoices, via The Morning News.

Vacation, part 2: Bears.

First of all, we did not see bears in the campground or roaming the heights in the mountains. To make up for this shocking lack of ursine visibility, we went to this place just a couple of miles from our campground near West Glacier, MT:

Yeah, it was a roadside attraction but Damn! we wanted to see bears. So we paid our $8 each and drove in.

The bears roam throughout a couple acres of wooded land; visitors drive though -- with windows closed -- on narrow paved trails. In the distance we could see some concrete bunkers that were probably the bears winter *dens*. I cannot testify to the bears' treatment, but I saw no obvious evidence of neglect or abuse.

Except for the rain.

Bears seem to have such a thick coat that the rain did not bother them.

We stayed in the van, of course, but I did roll my window down a few times to get a better photo. This shot, taken out of my open window, gives you a pretty good idea of how far away -- alternatively, how close! -- the bear was.

Using the magic of a 6X zoom and iPhoto cropping, let me show you that bear up close and personal.

Bear looking fierce.

That was about as fierce as any of the bear looked while we were there.

That was quite fierce enough for me.

One of the employees was working in the enclosure; not sure what she was doing, but I suspect it was NOT distributing bear chow. That is a job where the distributor should be well out of reach of the distributee. No matter; it was not a job I would want. Even if the wires visible in the photo were electrified, given how dense a bear's coat is, an ordinary electric fence would not slow it down much.

 

Bear Our Senior Dog never saw any of her namesakes; she is too old to climb up onto a seat or the bed to look out the window. She may have smelled them, as her sense of smell is undiminished, but mostly she slept through the whole adventure.

Lucy The Junior Dog was pretty excited by the bear park, though. I neglected to get a photo of her dancing in her seat and whining excitedly for us to let her out so she could play with her New Best (Bear) Friend!

Suffice to say, she did not resemble this photo in any way.

The park was small, there were only a few bears, and it didn't take us long to see everything and everyone there several times over. And so we took our leave.

Bye, bye, bears! We may come back to see you again someday!

Coraline movie.

The marketing for the Coraline movie is so damned creative it makes my head hurt.

First, there were the 50 boxes that went out to the creative team's favorite bloggers. Wendy and Amy each got one.

There were the button faces you could make at the movie's website.

There were Coraline keys hanging on the outside of an abandoned building in Chicago.

Then there was this:

which I found on Neil Gaiman's blog.

What will they do next?

* * * * *

ETA: I just came across this at disapprovingrabbits.com:

 
Caption: You kept the receipt, right?

Separated at birth? and med school.

 

Inara Serra (actress Morena Baccarin from Firefly) and the cover model from the latest Knitty (Olivia Foppiano).

Discuss.

* * * *

Cathy-Cate asked how Andrew did in his first semester at medical school. I am happy to report that he passed all three subjects:

• biochemistry (barely);
• epidemiology (with a high score; he studied for the final by tutoring others. He liked epi a lot);
• anatomy (painfully).

Happily for him, the first two years of med school are recorded in the transcript as pass-fail, so his struggles with biochem and anatomy are recorded nowhere but in his brain. He says his problem with anatomy was was it was 100% memorization and that the course was essentially self-study. Pure memorization with no logical associations -- like there would have been if anatomy were combined with physiology, the study of the functions of the anatomical parts; some med schools do that but not Mt. Sinai -- he found to be boring. But after having his confidence shaken severely by failing the anatomy midterm*, he worked very, very hard to be sure he passed the final.

* I haven't checked this factoid with him, but I think this is the first time in his life he has ever failed anything academic. He phoned home in the depths of despair after he found out his below-passing grade, sometime in October, I think. I told him that failure was inevitable at some point -- no one wins forever -- and I don't think he wanted to hear that. But dealing with failure is a lesson we all must learn. Better he first learns it now in a school course than with a patient in the field (although that is inevitable, too).

* * * * *

Go read Heather's knitter's Christmas poem -- it is most excellent!

A merry Christmas to all -- may the Christmas faeries watch over y'all and your knitting!