Bugs

20 October 2012, 1:50 pm by Giggles
Categories: Random

I’ve always thought it was interesting that grasshoppers would be facing you after they jumped away from you. I remember being confused by that when I was a kid. Didn’t they know it was faster to be facing the direction you wanted to go? But then some of those stupid bugs would jump into me when I’d approach, so I’m not giving them a lot of credit for brilliance.

Most bugs scurry away when you approach them. Ants do not. It’s like ants don’t really care what you’re doing. They’ve got their own stuff to worry about and they are not going to be distracted by big scary shadows that probably won’t interfere with them anyway. There’s a lesson there I think.

Can butterflies tell if a flower is empty of pollen or nectar? Do the flowers run out? I’ve watched butterflies hit the same flower over and over again over several days and I wonder if they ever show up at a flower and are disappointed that it just looks pretty and doesn’t actually have any food in it.

Mostly though, I’m wondering why not all bugs are paying attention to the sign I put on our front door.

7 Shared thoughts

Never learn?

18 October 2012, 6:09 pm by Giggles
Categories: Gospel, Politics

After finishing our alphabet nonfiction challenge, I decided my next reading challenge would be to read every book we own. And if you know us, you know I’m wise not to set a time limit on finishing. Although I might never get around to reading Brett’s chess books or his lexicons.

To start I decided to tackle the bookcase in the front of the house. This bookcase contains church books I’ve collected over the years, the majority of which I got when my Grandpa Nelson died. I love reading books he and my Grandma read. Right now I’m reading Stand ye in Holy Places by President Harold B. Lee. Today I started a chapter titled “The Abundant Life” which is based on a General Conference talk he gave in 1946. Make note of that date. Sixty-six years ago.

The talk is about the scripture John 10:10

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

What is the abundant life? President Lee talks about how politicians have been using slogans for years (already in 1946), promising abundant physical possessions. Promoting the idea that it is in the possession of things that gives you the abundant life. He gave some examples:

  • We stand for a full dinner pail.
  • We stand for a chicken in every pot.
  • Two cars in every garage.
  • Full employment for everybody in America and a pint of milk for everybody in the world.

This was him in 1946 remembering past campaign slogans. Has much changed? Politicians are still “giving more and more to an individual in return for less and less from him.”

Do we value things we don’t work for? If you’re given everything in life, do you appreciate it?

President Lee quotes an unnamed university president who said:

But the ideal of comfort which is the best we have been able to think of for ourselves will never do as an aim for a world order. Men can never be comfortable enough; we can never have enough material goods, if material goods are what we want. Any world order with this ideal will be torn to pieces by the divisions to which it leads.

Promises of material benefits, of something for nothing, has lead to the destruction of every culture and economy that has tried it. Yet politicians have been promising it probably since the beginning of politicians. How cheap is your vote for sale for?

The most amazing thing to me as I read my grandparents’ books is that the problems these books are talking about are still problems we face today. In fact, they’re worse. The other thing I’ve noticed however, is that the solutions suggested back then are still valid solutions today. I can’t implement them at a national or global level, but I can make them part of my personal life.

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When am I ever going to use this?

16 October 2012, 12:35 pm by Giggles
Categories: Science & Tech

My laptop just informed me I’m running out of space on my hard drive and suggested I get rid of old or unused files to clear space. My desktop had been running slow so I thought I’d defragment that hard drive to give it more room to move and found out I didn’t have enough free space to run the defragmenter.

Back in August I read an interesting article from the BBC about Americans’ obsessions with their crap – Have Americans lost their taste for more and more stuff? I told Brett it was an interesting commentary not just on our current economy, but also how other cultures view our countries need to hold on to everything. We can easily get our car into our garage. But earlier this summer we watched the people in the house across the street spend a week and a half cleaning the garage, have four days worth of garage sales, and they still can barely move around in their garage let alone get a car in there.

Turns out there is more than one way to hoard though – you can be a virtual hoarder. It’s easy to hide that hoard because it’s all tucked away on a hard drive or a few disks somewhere. But as both my desktop and laptop have informed me recently, it can make it hard to maneuver in your electronic world.

With my desktop I set about to pull infrequently used files off it to clear up some space. I went through six years of photos, deleted the ones I didn’t care to have any more, and burned the rest to DVDs. Barely made a dent in my memory usage. Next I tackled all the videos I’d made and got those to DVD as well. I finally had just enough space to defragment the drive. But there’s still a long way to go.

I like to blame the slowness of my desktop on its age (I bought it at the very end of 2004), but the fact that it is being held back by all my files, many I will probably never look at again, more than I’d like to admit in duplicate form (between the laptop and desktop even), probably has a lot to do with it as well.

Do I need to burn them all to DVD and then have to keep track of a stack of DVDs so I can fill up my hard drive all over again? Or should I get better at determining what is worth saving and what I can electronically forget and move on from? The latter will probably be a better option both digitally and maybe even emotionally.

It’s a new form of the question “When am I ever going to use this?” The answer for algebra is a lot more often than high school students want to think about. The answer for that file tucked away in a long forgotten folder – probably never.

7 Shared thoughts

Formatting – the importance of a space

12 October 2012, 10:36 am by Giggles
Categories: Education

When I was in elementary school I was taught that “there is a lot of space between ‘a’ and ‘lot'” and I have never spelled that as a single word since.

I was looking up how to properly format my dissertation so I can start getting tables and such in the right form now rather than having to reformat everything later (which I already have to do for my 80+ pages of appendices because I did 1″ margins all around on the worksheets, forms and measures that make up those appendices) and saw this, which made me scratch my head:

4. Acknowledgements

  • Optional
  • Margins:
    • Top 1.5″
    • Bottom 1″
    • Left 1.5″
    • Right 1″
  • The heading must be centered
  • Margins: Same as Body
  • Spacing: Maybe single spaced
  • Note: One page maximum

Maybe the acknowledgements section is single spaced. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe we don’t know what we’re doing after all. Other sections are listed as “must be double spaced” or “must be single spaced.” But apparently nobody is really sure what’s going on in the acknowledgements section.

But then again, maybe not.

In other words, the word “measure” is really starting to look funny to me this week. Does it really have an A in it? Doesn’t the last e come before the r?

I’m pretty sure the phrase “statistically significant” is going to start looking real funny real soon too.

6 Shared thoughts

Lame Halloween Costumes Coming

10 October 2012, 2:52 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Family, Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting

I have had the most perfect idea for us for Halloween since 2010. It doesn’t look like its going to happen this year either. So this is a warning that this year is going to be a bit lame compared to past years.

In 2008 we didn’t coordinate our costumes, but I did convince him he needed to dress up and take me to the Institute dance.

Since Brett doesn’t spend months thinking of costumes (or Christmas presents for that matter, with the exception, that I know of, of my super awesome bathrobe), he had me go out the morning of the dance to buy him a mullet wig (he didn’t specify mullet, that’s what I could find) and name tags. He pulled his pirate costume out of the closet and we made a name tag that says “Hello! My Name Is: Inigo Montoya. (You killed my father. Prepare to die.)”

I pulled some pieces (silver shirt, corset, floor length satin skirt) from other costumes together and made a black witches hat. I don’t know that I’d ever been a witch for Halloween before. That might have been a first.

In 2009 he hadn’t thought of costumes again, but I told him to wear jeans and a black shirt (if I remember right, he’s wearing his shirt inside out to hide whatever printing was on it) and I’d handle the rest. THAT afternoon I got in a car accident on my way to get his ring engraved for our wedding. But the costumes still turned out awesome.

I got him two bandanas to choose from, normal design in black, or skulls. He went with the normal design.

My plan was to pull from previous costumes for me again but I couldn’t find my skirt since packing and moving so I ended up rushing to make up another one between getting home from the car accident, going for my then traditional Halloween evening run, and Brett picking me up.

In 2010 we missed our ward’s Halloween party because we were at my grandpa’s funeral that weekend (the party was in mid-October). And without a party there’s not really a reason to do a big costume. So I saved the costume and planned it for the next year. I wore my black-and-white stripped socks and orange Halloween shirt to teach with, but that’s all we did.

In 2011 we found out one of our favorite TV shows, Chuck,  was in its final season. And I was feeling swamped with graduate school and life. So our 2010 idea got postponed again and replaced with a surprisingly easy equally awesome idea. I made Brett a black tie (easier than it sounds), printed him a name badge (speaking of, why do Brett’s costumes frequently require a name badge) and made me a calf knife holster (same fabric as the skirt two years previous). I turned one of his not-quite-long-enough shirts into a short-sleeved shirt too. Everything else we needed we already had at home.

The bishop said he wanted to see “plenty of adult costumes” at the ward trunk or treat this year. I pointed out that he probably meant “adults in costume” instead. This year I’d planned to finally get that 2010 idea finished. But instead it’s looking like we’re going to go as “frazzled graduate student” and “supportive husband” if we go anywhere at all.

I definitely need to stock up on candy though, specifically chocolate and Smarties (what is it about Smarties that makes them so much fun to eat?). It’s part of my costume, really.

2 Shared thoughts

Knitting Projects

8 October 2012, 8:29 am by Giggles
Categories: How To, Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting

This weekend I did a lot of knitting. No more can I say that knitting something larger than a small toy takes too long. Of course I was using big needles (size 13) and big yarn (super bulky – Lion Brand Hometown and Wool-Ease Thick & Quick), so that helped. but maybe I’m actually getting the hang of this knitting thing.

My final count for the weekend:

I finished the last stripe on the lap blanket I started September 9th. I still need to weave in ends and make the straps to hold it all rolled up. For the most part I was using up yarn I’d bought a year ago for other small projects. Yarn sitting around the house in blanket form is easier to justify storing than yarn sitting around the house in skein form. Or maybe it’s just easier to fold and tuck away.

I knit a red and white striped ear-flap hat. I need to weave in all those ends too (what was I thinking with all those stripes?!), crochet an edge on it, and do the braids down the ends of the ear flaps. It’s a silly hat I’m planning on wearing caroling here in Arizona where the whole point is the look not the warmth. As it’s only one layer of thickness (no folded up band), so the wind can get through the stitches to my ears. I hate cold ears.

I had to adjust the pattern because we have larger than average heads here in our household apparently and while an 18 inch hat might stretch to fit a range of sizes, stretching it to fit my 22.5 inch head wouldn’t be comfortable.

  • For the ear flaps I did one more increase row for a total of 11 stitches for each ear flap.
  • I cast on 11 stitches between the ear flaps in the back for a total of 33 stitches for those four rows.
  • I cast on 15 stitches in the front for a total of 48 stitches in the round.
  • For the decreases I did a (K4, k2tog) round, a knit round, and then picked up with the decreases as directed in the pattern.

Skills learned with this project: casting on stitches in the middle of my work, and I think I’m getting the hang of the increase where you pick up the horizontal bar between two stitches. I’ll learn how to do a crochet edge on it too when I get an appropriately sized needle. It fits my head. It’d fit Brett’s head too, but I doubt we’ll see him wearing it.

I started and finished knitting a brown headband that is basically just 7 inches of k2, p2 ribbing knit in the round and then folded in half. It looks good. And it’s going to be warm. I had to figure out provisional cast-on for that so I could finish it with a kitchener stitch. I will not be using that cast-on very often because it was very not intuitive for my brain and fingers. This one I cast on 44 stitches for. I think if I were to do it again I’d cast on 40 so it would fit a little snugger. I did two rounds of a red stripe in the middle for a design element.


Two years ago I picked up double-pointed needles for the first time so I could make Brett a wool hat for our first anniversary (we had trips planned to Utah and Indiana that year and so he’d need it then). Once I got over the feeling that I was going to stab the needles through my hand and thought it would probably be easier to knit with them if I was any good at chopsticks, I got the hang of it and I use double-pointed needles a lot now. I especially love the feel and sound of bamboo ones. I’ve been needing my own thick wool hat though (for when we travel in the winter, not necessarily for here). So this weekend I knit one in a dark charcoal grey. Again because of my large head I did a bit of adjusting of the pattern and it fits great.

  • Cast on 44 stitches.
  • After knitting the 5.5 inches of ribbing, k10, k in front and back, repeat four times, total of 48 stitches.
  • For the decreases – k6, k2tog, repeat 6 times, 42 stitches at the end of that round. Knit the next round. Continue with the decreases as written in the pattern.

It’s a fine looking hat and will keep me very warm.

It was a very productive knitting weekend. I’m going to keep my end-weaving-in projects and end-weaving-in supplies (I keep my set of blunt needles and folding scissors (which are AWESOME!) in an old prescription bottle that is the perfect pocket size) with me and see if I can’t get those finished up while waiting for various meetings and appointments.

11 Shared thoughts

The announcement

6 October 2012, 11:46 am by Giggles
Categories: Gospel, Happy Things

This morning before Conference started, Brett headed out for a run. He told me to take good notes because he’d miss the first of it. I told him there would be several hymns and President Monson would talk about how the Church is moving forward. Brett said he only cared if they announced a temple in Tucson, but we both dismissed the idea as crazy. Neither of us felt Tucson was near that point.

Brett went for his run and came back during the middle of the opening hymn. He was sitting in the other room when President Monson was speaking. He spoke of the temples that were dedicated this past year and how many temples were now in use or planned and under construction. Then he said he was going to announce two new temples. Before he had finished announcing the location of the first I had loudly gasped, “WHAAA?!?!?!” causing Brett to miss what was said. He came in and, through misty eyes, I told Brett we were getting a temple here in Tucson. Within ten minutes one of his sisters and one of our friends had emailed us.

This last week I have been thinking a lot about the young women in our ward and their experiences with the temple. The mutual theme for next year is:

Stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord.
Doctrine & Covenants 87:8

How can we help the youth have more experiences with the temple and make where they stand a holy place? Our ward is assigned one day to take our youth to the Mesa temple each year. With a temple only two hours away, is once a year really enough? But the temple is too busy to allow us more scheduled time. Our hope was that with the dedication of the Gilbert and Phoenix temples that it might open it up for us to go to Mesa more often.

This past week, my adviser and I took two of our three Laurels to the Mesa temple on a week day afternoon. They had two weeks off for fall break so we were able to attend on a week day when the temple is not so busy. All told it was a seven hour trip. We drove for two hours each way. We spent an hour serving in the temple, an hour visiting the visitor’s center, and then time to eat before coming home. That trip is one of my favorite activities from this year. I thought of what a difference it would make in the homes here if the youth were at the temple more, the influence they would have on their friends and parents. Even with the time involved, we needed to find a way to make that happen.

And now we know there will soon be a day when we can take them to the temple in the afternoon after school. It will be a few years still for construction. In the mean time we will make the effort to get to Mesa as often as possible with them.

While the rest of the world is standing in awe of the announcement that followed that worthy young men who have graduated from high school can now serve missions at 18 and worthy young women who desire to serve can serve at 19, that was not as earth moving in our home as the announcement of the temple in Tucson was. Mexico is one of those countries President Monson talked about that have allowed missionary service at 18 for some time and I know young men serving at that age. It makes sense that if young men are given the Melchizedek priesthood at the age of 18 that they also be given the responsibility of that priesthood.

One of the reasons people have guessed for an older age for sister missionaries is that time needed to be given for them to get married if that was their wish, before they served. However we are not getting married as young as before, and sisters who have served as missionaries have a unique ability to raise a new generation of missionaries. My own preparation for a mission and following service, that began 13 years ago today, has affected my life and my ability to serve others now.

Temples and missionary service have gone together since the restoration.

And we ask thee, Holy Father, that thy servants [the missionaries among them] may go forth from this house [the temple] armed with thy power, and that thy name may be upon them, and thy glory be round about them, and thine angels have charge over them;

And from this place they may bear exceedingly great and glorious tidings, in truth, unto the ends of the earth, that they may know that this is thy work, and that thou hast put forth thy hand, to fulfil that which thou hast spoken by the mouths of the prophets, concerning the last days.
Doctrine & Covenants 109:22-23

The temple is a source of strength, hope, and morality in an ever degrading world. I welcome the announcement of any new temple on this earth. But I especially welcome the changes that will come to our town as a result of a temple in its midst.

Edit: This post was featured in the Bloggernacle at Deseret News.

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