job with a laptop

I just started my part-time admin assistant job this week and it comes with a Compaq nx6110 laptop! I'm living my fantasy of sitting around in a coffee shop and working on a laptop. I think that I will actually get a banjo brothers bag now with a laptop sleeve as I don't really have a suitable bag for this thing yet.

I'm on my way to the 5th Congressional District DFL Debate at the Temple Israel tonight at 7:30pm. I was chatting with my new boss about this election and it wasn't even supposed to have a debate because the MN DFL wanted to put their energy behind the governor race (more important races) then a shoe-in election to replace Martin Sabo in a District that has been Democratic since time began. But some candidates didn't want to take the endorcement convension into account so here we are with a debate. I'm always up for a debate. Bring it on.

Rhodes Car finally "roaden"

I finally got to try the Rhoades Car that my dad purchased to be car-free in small town North Dakota. If you will recall, it is a 4-wheeled bike with a boat seat and a plastic case on the back for a trunk. In person it looks like a really early automobile, with only a chassis.

I rolled out of my dad's short acute angle of a driveway. As I turned out of the driveway to left, the right wheel hovered over the pavement. I tried to pick up speed, but it seemed a little sluggish, not used to trying to pull around so much bike. As I turned left again, I had more control. I tried to do a yooie and found that the turn radius was really dull.

I personally found a lot a play with the steering and the wheels. I'll investigate and see if it needs adjustment. I read the user manual and it wasn't very illuminating. It recommended to take the car into a professional to change a flat.

Slippers "just like mom used to make"

I finally managed to mail these slippers to my sister. I love the pattern. It is really simply yet durable and easy to fit any foot.

Boston and the origin of the "live long and prosper" gesture

I got back from Boston on Wednesday night. As Boston is a great city to walk in, I just assumed that it would be a great place to bike in. I was going to rent a bike and explore, but their traffic signals are crazy. Everyone jaywalks because all of the signals are red for about half a minute.

I did the Freedom Trail on Monday until the U.S.S. Constitution when I decided to jump on the ferry back to downtown. I splurged for the guided tour. It was led by a passionate pie lady with a rolling pin that she would use to punctuate her emphatic gestures. The Freedom Trail took me past the Italy-Ghana game at a little Italian cafe in the North End so I stopped. I stood, watching the last 30 minutes of the game and experienced an Italian goal. Sitting in front of me was an American soccer hooligan. He was chiseled and shaven with a shiner and a broken nose. I was slightly horrified because I didn't know that those things happened in America.

Tuesday I lounged around Harvard Square. I bought two soccer books. During the hottest part of the day I went to see "An Inconvenient Truth", that documentary with Al Gore. I'm glad that he has decided to be his dry-humored relaxed self. For supper I went to Charlie's Kitchen which turned out to be my cousin's favorite. It was down-home with a bar for random singletons like me. I struck up a conversation with an amazing woman named Karla. She was in town (by that I mean Cambridge) to lead a seminar on social justice. She was still planning her activity. She wanted to give her students (the cream of the crop from all the Ivy League schools) a list of conversation topics that they will have to go out to Harvard Square and engage specific schicks of society in. She also comes to the Twin Cities fairly often so I promised to take her to Al's Breakfast. I saw the "Dewey, Chattham, and Howe" office window. My boyfriend and I thought that it was fictious until now. I didn't see Car Talk Plaza though.

On Wednesday I raced to make it to the free Black Heritage guided tour through Beacon Hill. It was outstanding and I recommend it to anyone. We stopped at the Vilna Shul, a turn-of-the-20th-century synagogue that is under renovation and our tour guide and the rabbi gossiped about the fate of the Coburn House that should be on the walking tour, but was being torn down because it wasn't on the historic registry because it was in the interior of the block. Doh! Our tour guide recommended coming back to the Shul because they had a great exhibit on Eastern European synagogues that were destroyed during the world wars.

So I did come back afterward and found the rabbi training in his new docent-intern, a freshly bar-mitzahed (a word that they used, didn't know that it could be a verb) young man named Daniel. The rabbi showed me around the Eastern European synagogue exhibit and then on the second floor, it was the interns turn. We were standing in front of the ark and he let me examine it quietly for a few moments. Then he said,"First let me tell you about the Star Trek symbol" My eyes darted around the ark, searching for a communicator badge carved into the wood. They rested on a carving of 2 hands making the Vulcan farewell gesture with the index fingers and thumbs touching.

They explained that there are different levels of rabbis. The urban communities were able to attract the rabbis that were able to make this hand gesture themselves. The rural shtedel (sp.) attacted run-of-the-mill rabbis so they added this carving to their arks. The gesture is used to channel God to the people. The fingers are separated so that more of God will come through, not just the triangle, but also through the fingers.

Leonard Nimoy grew up in the West End of Boston in a synagogue established by a community from the rural part of Eastern Europe. So when they asked him to come up with a Vulcan hand gesture, he used this. The orthodox urban Jewish community was alarmed because they were never supposed to see this symbol, as they heads are always bowed when it is made by their rabbi.

blogging must not be my forte

I'm impressed that I stayed on OIFS blogroll and I'm a little sad that one kid stopped blogging about bicycles and bathrooms. It is my last week at CCLC. It is a sad one, but I'm ready to move on. I've downloaded as much of my knowledge as possible into our new student worker. We even had beinah telepathic experience. And they hired a resourceful new web person.

I've been trying not to freak out too much about my prospects. I managed to completely finish my B.A. in Linguistics this May. So now I'm a little closer to actually being a linguist. I will post the final draft of the page-turner senior project "Nominalization in Dene Suline" later. I've been applying to different places at the U. A large percentage actually made it through Donhowe. So far I have had one call for an interview. I don't know why I won't get this because they seem really harried and busy. I hope that I fall in with a bunch of kooks, like I normally do. It is possible that I draw the kookiness out of people, so in that case, no worries.

I get to go to Boston on Friday for a few days for my volunteering thing. That should be fun.

running a 5K this weekend

I'm running my first 5K on Sunday. It is the Race for Justice, put on by the U of M Law School to help lawyer do more pro bono work and still stay current on their student loan payments.

I'm thinking about getting rid of my Ross Compact. It was fun during the summer but now it is just big and heavy and I think that I can do better.

I finally started on the straps for the Oskar Werner bag. I also found out that my friend at Augsburg is doing film studies now, which sounds super cool. Another friend is in Budapest doing a masters in public policy, specifically software patent law.

running a lot

I have been running a lot lately. I can hardly believe that I have run 49.2 miles this year. I haven't been biking much. I put the old drop-downs on the Ross Compact. Somehow it wasn't as fun as riding on the Schwinn in the summer. I can't wait to get the Schwinn down from my bike rack.

Last Saturday I was at the Bike/Travel/Fitness expo in the bowels of the Minneapolis Convention Center. I was volunteering at the Minnesota Ironman booth. I was able to sneak away and I got to ride my first fixie. Edina Cycle had a bunch of recumbants and then they had a 52cm Redline fixie hidden behind their big Minnehahaesque quadcycle. I was drawn to it. The sales guy told me that he had better flip the hub and I said, no that is what I want to try. Apparently I was braver than he. The only anxious part was taking off on the cement floor. Once I was going it was smooth and fun. I backpedaled a lot because I was riding around a very short track. This hurt my knee.

I visited Hiawatha Cyclery last Sunday with the boyfriend. It is a really cute little store. We chatted about a lot of the products and the background on the stuff. The boyfriend had never seen an Xtracycle so that was fun. Jim also had a Redline fixie for me to check out. It goes for $500. I got my back Reelight (which he was sweet enough to sell me separately) and a water bottle. After we left the store, the boyfriend turned to me and said, "Wow, you ARE a bike nerd". I forgot the difference between a geek and a nerd, but I think that I'm more of the one that know everything about a category of thing, as opposed to knowing everything about one specific thing.

back from Ireland

I went to Ireland with my dad for 3 weeks. It was the longest time we had spent together since I moved to the Twin Cities nearly 9.5 years ago. Holy crap, I have been here for 9.5 years.

I learned alot. I learned how to drive a stick shift down a very narrow road that looks like there is only room for one car anyway so I didn't have to worry about which side of the road to be on. I learned to veer towards the left when I met another car and to smile and wave. I learned to check to make sure that I have a jack when I drive off with my rental car. I learned alot of other stuff that is not car related as well.

I rode my bike to work and back for the first time in months. It was good. Windy. The Midtown Greenway is one of the most depressing places in Minneapolis in this muddy goopy time.

I'm starting to train hardcore (well, hardcore for me) for this Leukemia/Lymphoma Society marathon this summer. I'm going to 2 group runs every week and then I run on my own 2 times a week. I ran 4 miles on Wednesday. It was the farthest I have ever run in my entire life. I like the fact that I'm being introduced to distances around the Twin Cities. I had no idea that it was only 2 miles from Lock and Dam #1 to Lake Street along the river. Our coach seems to enjoy the Minnehaha Falls/Creek/Lake Nokomis area, so I'm looking forward to becoming intimately acquainted with those areas. I was really worried about injuring myself with the mileage that was assigned this week, but I believe that if I run any distance slowly enough, I'll never get hurt.

off to Ireland in a few days; new word for snow

Until today, as a former-North-Dakotan Minnesotan, I thought that I had experienced almost every kind of snow.

I left to go on my training run-walk this evening (if you, addressing ,of course, the legions of souls who patronize this here site have not noticed, I'm raising money to cure leukemia and lymphoma, see sidebar at right). I didn't believe the forecasts for snow. It was warmish (34 degrees fahrenheit) and dry (my hands were really dry at least). I started my 4th run time (12 minutes left of the run-walk) and I noticed tiny snow flake. They got bigger. I started inhaling them. It was a good kind of inhale, fresh and clean. After my last run period, I was walking down 25th Street and I heard the snow fall. I had never heard it before. The snow was icy-ish and frequent. It made a sound like paper being rippled. A few people commented on my lack of winter clothing and pitied me for getting caught in the snow fall, until they saw from my expression how much I was enjoying it. I can only explain my recent acquaintance with this sound with a) avoiding the snow fall by watching Star Trek episodes one after the other. b) being in a car or on a bike during this kind of snowfall c) global warming introduced me to the paper crackle snow.

I recently became fascinated with the idea of reintroducing the classical education to the young people in K-12. Not in the home schooled christian sorta way though. It just seems sensible to incite debate during junior high, instead of continuing to force students to memorize shit. If you let the younger kids know that the memorization part of their lives will be over at some point, they might get into more it. They might find songs to memorize stuff. I'm all for the trivium. I might even make a t-shirt that says trivium on it.

"You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older, and now you're even older. You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older, and now you're older still."
--They Might Be Giants

Erik's is ok if you are looking for something obsure

O.K. I have had a personal grudge against Erik's Bike shop ever since one of their stores opened in Dinkytown right next to the Varsity Bike shop, the bike shop that always had my back as a student at the U. This weekend we were looking for a race for an axle for a Giant road bike from the 1980's. We went to Freewheel, the Hub, Penn Cycles. We tried to go to Grand Performance and Express Bikes (they are closed on Sunday!). We tracked down Rice Street Bikes, where the bike was purchased originally. Now it is a frisbee golf store.

We finally gave in and went to the Erik's bike shop in Dinkytown. There was a young man manning the store, all alone. "If you like pina coladas" was cheerfully playing the Muzak and I felt a pang of sympathy for the guy. He found the races! In like 4 minutes. Pretty impressive.

A friend and I spent the afternoon yesterday being vulture-like at a yarn store that is going out of business on 58th Street and Nicollet. I snagged 10 skeins of 100% mercerized cotton for $20, some little circular needles and sock yarn that actually makes making wool socks cheaper than buying them. I'm looking for US #19 circulars that are 40 inches long to make t-shirt rugs. I think that I should be able to make Tubey with the cotton. I hope that it is springy enough. I made the swatch last night and it was beautiful.

knitting crazy, free beethoven cd's

Last week I actually did a really very "Office Space"-ish thing. I was manning the front desk at my office and I actually started to knit to pass the time because there was nothing going on. No students, no emails, no phone calls (a couple days earlier a young man called who seemed unfamiliar with voice messages. Kati: You called the Center for Writing? Guy: Yah, but no one answered. Kati: You didn't even get a voice message? Guy: Oh, well someone answered, I just couldn't talk to them.)

So, I added a little knitting progress thing in the sidebar. Pretty cool.

I've started on a hat for my roommate. He has a yellow winter jacket with gray accents so I'm making him a gray hat with dark blue accents. I like that he will remind people of the new Guthrie or IKEA. Will it make people realize that the new Guthrie looks like IKEA? At Christmas my boyfriend's mom served scrambled eggs in a beautiful dark blue bowl. I immediately thought of IKEA.

If you go to the Orchestra on your way to work this morning, they are giving out pastries and Beethoven CD's.

My transmission is toast. Luckily I have rainy day money. Money for that weird rainy day on Tuesday when I took my car into be looked at.

tea cozy for my twin

Here is a picture of a tea cozy that my sister found in her stocking yesterday. I finished in during the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when all of the Christmasy magic is supposed to happen. I knitted it while watching the new Doctor Who series so when I look at it. I think of Doctor Who. My sister thinks of Fraggles.

My prematurely arthritic car

I bought a 2000 Hyundai Sonata this spring. It has been privy to the love and affection of my boyfriend, his dad, and I through multiple tune-ups, adjustments and painting the back fender (I bought it that way) over the summer. Now its computer codes are telling us that its torque converter is malfuncting. This basicly means that when it is cold and/or irritable it refuses to remember how to shift gears. I was brought up on a VW Rabbit so I know how to shift gears. If only it would let me help it! After an afternoon in a parking garage, it shifts like it always did.

I'm knitting franticly. Unfortunately I still don't have the hedgehog pictures.

hedgehog sweater

The last week I was commissioned to knit and felt a sweater for my friend's hedgehog. I completed it over the weekend and am anxiously awaiting the reception of the sweater by the hedgehog. Most people think that it will tear it to bits. I'm still optimistic that everything will be fine. Once the sweater is determined a success, I will post my pattern here.

new bike computer, new reasons to go fixie

Thank you, aflowercallednowhere for the bike computer! I haven't hooked it up yet, but I am admiring its analogue clock face intermixed with the blocky digital text fonts.

On Thursday I didn't exactly bike in. I drove to Stadium Village where I can park all day for free and I rode my folding bike to my East Bank office. It was really slick. Now I'm thinking about just storing the bike in the trunk. I did wear a surprisingly warm combination. Finding nothing especially clean in my room to wear, I pulled on some pantyhose that I had forgotten about. I put on the Columbia fleece pants over them. The ride was a cosy warm one. Granted I wasn't going really fast and I wasn't in the Midtown Greenwindtunnel, but I might try that combo again.

Ever since the ride on Wednesday night, I have been seriously thinking about converting my Ross Compact into a fixed gear. I was riding up Nicollet and my chain dropped down to the granny gear. Then I was trying to stop for a car who decided that we had a telepathic link because he proceeded to turn right into Quang's without a signal. The person in front of him was also turning and signalled so I was already slowing, but I had not yet come to a complete stop because I thought that I could slowly go until the car passed. I wasn't going that fast so it wasn't too dangerous, but I didn't stop with the help of my brakes. Backpedalling then would have been nice. My brakes were all gunked up with snow.

I believe that I just have to switch the bottom bracket and get rid of the extra gears. If anyone has any advice, I would really appreciated it. This Ross is from the seventies, has a fixed wheel in the rear and a BB that takes care of the freewheel function. I don't know if the gears are detachable from the rear hub, I sorta suspect they are not.

Hostelling National Meeting update

I was just rereading some old posts and I thought that I should say that the National Meeting for Hostelling Int'l was great, sans Garrison Keillor. We ended up getting Catherine Watson, the recently retired travel writer for the Star Tribune. We had a lot in common and I chatted her up after the talk. Mr. Keillor would not have been as good as Watson; she gave the perfect talk about her ADHD nephew who is bouncing around Europe right now. There were about 115 people there and I personally met 60. I basically lived at the Hilton that weekend. There was a Canadian sex convention at the convention center at the same time. And a CPA convention.

I need wind pants

I'm pretty comfy riding now with my socks and a system for the top that includes wicking, insulation, and wind resistance. Now I have to figure out the bottom half. Having done some winter running and skiing I thought that I could use those techniques. For the most part that is ok; my insulating fat on my legs keep me pretty warm. Only right behind my knees, I have been experiencing ice crystalization. Perhaps the wind pants are the answer. I bought a pair of deeply discounted fleece pants from REI this week and I'll try them tomorrow to see how it works.

rite of passage; eureka moment too late in life

So, my rite of passage is that I took the plunge and bought some SmartWool Adrenaline socks. They fit my feet perfectly. Just so you know, I have tiny feet for an adult (5.5 or 6 US) and I don't think that I have ever had socks that fit exactly. The oversized socks that I've lived with up to this moment have always made my Achilles tendon look like it was preggers.

I know that this sounds really stupid, but this morning I realized that Mr. Fahrenheit, the guy behind putting the 0 degree at the freezing point of sea water, was on to something. I also thought that it was a really sailor-centric system. It is also a system that is really useful for anyone who is wondering if their tears will freeze when they are waiting for the bus.

Winter bike ride; new folding bike

I think that I just recovered from Thanksgiving about a half an hour ago. My ride home was filled with adrenaline. Before the holiday I put my gangly winter bike in my U of M bike locker to get it out of the way so that I could cram more friends and relatives into my apartment. So yesterday I thought that I would rescue the bike from being locked up for a record amount of time, but the lock was frozen.

Today, really itching to ride, I slammed up against the door a number of times and it worked. The hobbit-sized door opened like butter. The adrenaline started rushing when I found that there were spots along the Greenway-Hiawatha route that were sheets of ice. I refuse to get studded tires for me $20 department store junk bike.

My da gave me at folding Dahon Boardwalk bike over Thanksgiving. It feels a little strange, mostly because the handling is so sketchy on the snow and ice, but it is pretty fun and it is really quick to fold down. It is cool. I might actually invest in studded tires for that puppy.

New obsession

I'm beginning to be obsessed with the Pedersen Bicycle. I hope that I can ride one this year when I'm in Europe.