Happy Mardi Gras!

Spanish Town 2009 was a giant success. We caught tons of beads, cups, coins, and, in Jen's case, bunny ears!



The pics are up in a Flickr set, so go check 'em out. I will warn you, though, that the theme was "Bayeaux Bailout" and so some of the floats were a bit, uh, racy...a relatively clean example:




So, if that doesn't offend you, check out the pics! If it does, well, then you're better off not clicking over to the set. It's actually a family-friendly parade (none of the "traditional" bead acquisition techniques, that's part of why I love it so much) but this year the floats were somewhat scandalous. ;)

Many, many thanks to the lovely Carly for hosting us all at her house! Isn't she fab?

It's 3am I must be lonely...

What was an annoying little cough this afternoon and evening has reared its ugly head as Tuberculosis Junior (TJ) tonight.  TJ is simultaneously keeping me from sleeping and from calculating the potentials of confocal spheroids.  (Homework.  Due tomorrow.  Nowhere near finished.  Hurts brain.  Requires focus.  Can't focus and cough at the same time.)  So instead I'm sitting here drinking tea, trying not to cough up anything really gross, and catching up on some blogs.  They've been woefully ignored lately.  I blame the Ravelry Twilight groups.  I used to attack my Google Reader at mealtimes, now I chat with the ladies over there.  They are more fun.  Oh well, whatev.  Anyways.  Blogs.  I thought I'd share some recent favorites with you.

Of Course, I Didn't Have a Camera. by the amazing Dez at Mambocat's Knitting Asylum.  I go to that market every week I'm in town.  It's amazing.  She describes it well, and shares her refreshing outlook.  She also makes beautiful yarn.  I spend a lot of money at her booth, and in her newly-opened store.

I Want Gum! by Kim at Mommy Knows.  I cried I was laughing so hard at this.  NSFW.  (Not safe for work.)  I'm so grateful that digital cameras and blogs didn't exist when I was growing up.

I'm loving the new-ish blog academichic.  Basically, it's a blog by three Ph.D. students about what to wear as a female Ph.D. student.  They even have Fashion 101 modules/challenges and calls for papers!

Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye from the Official Google Blog.  I think this is fascinating.  I wish I could track what I look at like they do in the video example.

And that's it for now.  Still with the coughing, though the Vicks is starting to help a little bit.  But TJ has made my tummy hurt, too.  (Whine whine whine.)  So I'm going to curl up in bed and pretend to sleep so I can get up early and tackle the homework...ciao ciao.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

That's right, it's Mardi Gras! We've been parading in BR for a few weeks now, though I haven't been to any of them yet - I'm saving my time & energy for the big ones this weekend! But look what I discovered on campus Monday morning on the way to my office:







Beads in trees! There are a few trees like this right near the Design building, and the beads have been cut and hung nicely, so I like to think it's some type of installation art. Whatever it is, it makes me happy and even more excited for this weekend! =)

A Quick Story

So, most of y'all, my dear readers, are bloggers, and most are also avid picture takers. You know how much room pictures take up, and how important it is to backup, and thus how wonderful external hard drives are. Well, I was near a Circuit City yesterday and thought, "Ooh, they are going out of business, I wonder if they have good deals on HDs..." I walked in and couldn't find them right away, so I found the one person actually working there and the following conversation ensued:

Me: Where are your external hard drives?
Employee: Oh, they are over here. *points, as I start to walk that way* Do you know what you are looking for? There are...*starts to explain*
Me: No, I'm just looking to see if there are any good deals.
Employee: *walks over to HDs* Well, there are two basic kinds...
Me: *cuts him off, smiling* Yeah, I know.
Employee: See, there are smaller, more portable ones...
Me: *cuts him off again* Or the bigger ones you can plug in. I know. I have three at home.
Employee: *realizes I might not actually be a dumb girl* Oh, ok.
Me: Thank you. =)

It sounds a lot ruder in writing, haha, it really wasn't, I promise! He just kept trying to explain hard drives to me, and I kept trying to politely insinuate that I had a clue, and he just didn't quite get it. "I just want to look for cheap storage, sir, because I'm a technology addict!" It was kind of surprising that he was so helpful, because he really was the only employee in the store (that I could see) and so I'm sure he spends all day answering questions...so props to the nameless Circuit City employees who are helpful even though they know they'll be out of a job soon. Just please don't bother me too much when I'm trying to bargain shop. ;) Oh, and on that note, drives were only 20% off, making them still more expensive than just waiting for a sale at Staples, which happens about every other week. So I didn't buy any, but maybe I'll check back in a few weeks to see if the prices go down any more. I was with a friend who's a new grad student, and I think she was surprised when I said I didn't want to buy one that was less than 500 gigs. Um, yeah, I already have 750 gigs at home, and about 500 gigs of that full. So, yeah...

And so this is not a picture-free post, I present me testing the range on my new toy, a remote for my camera:



We were doing a knitting photoshoot on campus (yep we got some strange looks) and wanted to take a group picture at the end. There were very few places to set the camera - this is the first one we tried (it was on a trash can about 30 feet away, haha), and it worked pretty well. The next one was awesome, and a tribute to the Gorillapod...hopefully A will send me the pictures of that soon and then I'll share. =)