librarygrrrl.net

L stands for many things in my world; libraries, love, laughter, lefse, and left-handedness in hockey all come to mind.  But when I read the Yarn Harlot’s blog today, and she linked to the Knitting Olympics Team Wales page, I was hooked.  And trust me when I say that L truly is for LUNACY.

I’m moving next weekend.  My yarn is packed.  My needles are packed.  We don’t have cable in the new place yet, and I gave away the bunny-ears attenae when I sold my television.  Rest assured that Amy doesn’t own any of those antiquated things.

And February 10?  Well, that’s just a few short days after I move into a new place, after Amy and I pack up our houses and move 350+ miles to a new city where we will put the bulk of our possessions into a storage unit and will try to figure out how to merge the rest of our stuff into a 7-month rental in a city I’ve never lived in before.  And then just 3 days after the Knitting Olympics begin, I will start that new job I wrote about earlier and trust me when I say that I will be brain-dead at the end of each day and how on EARTH do I think that I’m going to be able to knit up 400 yards of heathery navy blue and heathery purple corriedale wool into a multidirectional diagonal scarf?  In 16 days?

That, my friends, is lunacy. 

So Team Wales, you get me, whether you want me or not.

KNITTING.

Which is really hard to do when all your stash, needles, and WIPs are packed away in boxes.   Soon, though, I’ll be able to get back into it.  I’ve decided my next project is going to be the multidirectional diagonal scarf my mom was making when she so graciously and helpfully flew into town last weekend to pack up my kitchen and office.  I’ve got yarn in mind, and a recipient in mind too.  I had planned to make a scarf for this person for Christmas ‘05, to no avail.  Maybe if I start in February ‘06 it’ll get done in time for next Christmas!

Eric says it better than I ever could, in his post Specter, you kumquat, regarding Arlen Specter’s supposed pro-choice stance, and his betrayal of his word to his constituents over Alito’s nomination and confirmation.

Specter is one of the few pro-choice Republicans around, and the only Republican senator I’d ever considered voting for.  He really lost my respect, and a huge chunk of his supporters, over this one.

Specter, you kumquat indeed.

It’s been a long time on the alphabet update, I know.  The letter J had me stumped for a while, and then I was out of town, and just now - really, NOW - I realized that J stands for Job.

My job for ten years has been variations on the term "librarian."  I’ve worked at Louisiana State University, a state school in Iowa (neither of the 2 you probably can name), and Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia.  And for a long time, I thought I’d be at Swarthmore for a long time - like ten or more years.  But one thing happens, and then another happens, and then life decisions get made, and then all of a sudden Amy and the dogs and I find ourselves driving up to Boston on Wednesday night so we can look for an apartment within 30 driving minutes of Wellesley College, where I will start working at my new job in mid-February.  

I’m very excited about this change, for a whole slew of reasons.  And I’m equally saddened by leaving Swarthmore and Philadelphia.  I like my life here, a LOT.  My co-workers are wonderful, the campus community - while imprefect - is familiar and comfortable, I’ve got wonderful friends I met through knitting and hockey and work, and Amy and I both have our first purchased homes here.  And yet, yet.  Boston.  90 minutes to family.  Friends from college (Amy) and grad school (me).  And a job that’s going to challenge me in all the right sorts of ways, with people who I very much liked at my interview, on a beautiful campus in a lovely suburb outside of an amazing city in a state that will legally recognize a committed relationship between my love and me.

So we were in town for a couple of days and found a dog-friendly apartment in a part of Boston that we both like.  Our lease runs till the end of summer, by which point we want to have sold both our houses and found a house to buy somewhere nearer to campus.  And I leave soon - in 3 weeks - to start my new job.  Amy comes a couple of weeks later, after she’s done with her next spate of classes.  I can’t wait!

My first two years of undergrad were spent on-campus, in the dorms.  My brother had gone on a study abroad program his junior year, and I decided I was going to do the same.  Silly me, not only did I go to the same college he went to (well, as close as I could considering that he went to a men’s college and I went to a women’s college…), but I also went on the same study abroad program he did, the Greco-Roman program.  We spent the first two months of fall semester in Athens, Greece, two weeks in Istanbul, and two more months in Rome, Italy. 

I loved Athens in a somewhat distant way - she was a little gritty for me, and she scared me a bit.  It probably didn’t help that our hotel was in the middle of the red-light district, and was two blocks away from the city square that was home to a couple of hundred homeless Albanian refugee men.  But Rome, oh Rome.  Italy, ma bella Italia!  How I love Rome, and by extension, Italy….

My first memory of Rome came after two horrendous flights - Istanbul to Athens and Athens to Rome.  While in Istanbul, several of us got food poisoning, me among them.  I’d never taken a final while in the throes of being sick before, but I took one in Istanbul that way.  The flight to Rome saw several of us rotating throughout the bathroom.  So anyway, that first memory was of our group - all 28 of us - waiting for a bus to come pick us up and take us to our hostel.  Two of our number had been detained on their way in to the country, and they showed up shortly before the too-small bus did.  I had taken an air sickness bag from the plane when I was disembarking - which turned out to be a wise choice.  As we careened through the outskirts of the city, and slowly made our way in, I remember taking out the bag, looking off to the left, seeing a pyramid (which turned out to be in the Protestant Cemetary [halfway down the page]), and using said bag.  The girl sitting next to me, Teresa, looked at me with surprise, saying, "Wow!  You threw up really quietly.  I’m impressed!"

Nice first memory.  Fortunately, they got better after that.  We stayed in a hostel run by some Irish Dominican nuns, and they put up with exactly NO nonsense.  S. Katie ran the joint, and no one crossed her.  (Except Teresa and Ru.  But that’s their story to tell, not mine.)  There was a nun who sold us all stamps so we could send postcards and letters to our friends and family back in the states.  (This was in 1991, pre-widespread-email days.)  She did all the math longhand, and let me tell you that adding up all the zeroes in the lira took her forever!  

One of my favorite solo jaunts was to go to the Roseto Comunale, the community rose garden, that was a five-minute walk from the hostel.  The roses were gorgeous, and the feral cats who lived there had wonderful personalities.  I have many photographs of those cats amidst the foliage.

In later years, I’ve been back to Italy a few times.  Every time I’ve spent time in Rome, but the last time I went was with my parents and brother and his family.  We spent a week in a villa in Tuscany.  There was this one meal we ate, in the tiny walled town of Monteriggioni, at a restaurant called Il Pozzo.  I had the most amazing truffle ravioli - they were cooked and served in parchment paper.  And the wine we had with the meal was stunning too - it was a Fonteruttoli 1998 Chianti Classico Riserva. 

I fully intend to go back to Italy someday, and will bring Amy with me when I go.  I only hope she loves it half as much as I do.