A conversation that was not actually about prelims

Conny: So, what's particle board, then?
Me: Well, you take wood dust, and small wood chunks, and you mix them with a lot of glue, and you pour this mixture into a wooden-plank-shaped mold, kind of like a paper mold, and then you apply a LOT of pressure to it, and when the glue dries, you have this wood-shaped piece of, well, glue, mainly, with a bit of wood thrown in. The best thing about it is that you can make it from all the detritus of a lumber mill, because it's just wood dust and odd-sized chips.
Conny: So particle board is like the sausage of the woodworking world.
Me: ...Yes. Except with fewer calories.

So my sister, who is of course awesome (how could she not be? She's related to me), has started an awesome new blog about weddings, or, more specifically, her wedding, which she is trying to put together with the minimum of insanity and the maximum of common sense. The fact that this is complicated enough to write a blog about tells you a lot about weddings, I'm afraid.

And while her blog is certainly amusing, and I'm looking forward to doing my part to help her keep insanity and costs down, all this talk of weddings is making me more and more inclined to swear off boys for ever and ever. Especially because I'm facing the weddings not only of my sister but of Lise, Katie, and Becca/Adam in the next year and a half, which, with Didi already married, leaves only me, Alanna, and Z in the blessed state of not-yet-bound-to-another-person-for-life. (And I'm not sure how close Alanna and Z are to this.) In case you had not picked this up yet, commitment terrifies me. I have trouble just committing to the "getting to the point where you call each other 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend'" part of a relationship. So despite the fact that I really should be thinking about kids in the next four to five years, I still think 24 is WAY TO YOUNG TO GET MARRIED. *twitches*

*goes off and sits in her I'M NOT READY YET corner. alone.*

Not that I habitually walk into Home Depot just to stare at the power tools.

All I want in life is a 14" band saw.

Actually, that's a blatant lie. I want a lot more things in life than a 14" band saw, like passing my prelims, and finally getting production of my SK3 mutant in cells. But a 14" band saw would be a nice addition, as long as it came along with the space to put a 14" band saw.

In good news, though, I can pick up all the hand tools I need for ~$150, including a collapsible work bench, so if I can get Home Depot to cut wood to the proper size for me, I won't need a 14" band saw (and the space to put it in) to get back to woodworking. Of course, now all I have to do is come up with a spare $150 that isn't earmarked towards food, rent, or my bookbinding supplies.

What is woman that you would forsake her

Right, so the written part of my prelim is turned in. Now all I need to do is take my orals. No stress, or anything.

But I'm taking the day off, as I don't defend until the 15th, so I thought I'd upload the pictures I took from the last big project I did before the hell of prelims started. Essentially, I've started to decorate my walls, but since I don't have money for artwork and I can't draw worth a damn, and because, to be honest, I don't really like paintings, I've decided to put calligraphy up on my wall. Poems, to be precise. Unusual, probably, but a) I like words, and I don't really like pictures; and b) I can do calligraphy, so it's cheap. Comparatively.

My first project, on the wall above my couch, was to write out Kipling's poem Harp Song of the Dane Woman, which is one of my favorite poems, so that each verse was on a separate sheet of "vellum". This isn't real vellum, of course, it's the plastic paper called vellum because it is somewhat translucent, as real vellum is. It takes ink well, as long as the ink isn't too wet, because it really is plastic so the ink doesn't feather. But it does buckle when wet, so I had to use my fountain pen rather than a dip pen, because fountain pen ink contains much less liquid. Then I mounted each verse on an 8"x11" sheet of blue paper, usually cut down from a large sheet of decorative paper from Hollander's, so that there was a gradation of blue from dark blue under the first verse and very light blue under the last. The result:


So you probably can't see the words in this picture (actually, if you click it it turns out to be pretty big), but you get the general idea. (And look, I didn't choose that couch, ok? It came with the place.) So I've taken pictures of each individual verse so you can revel in the glory of my calligraphy.

I was going to cut-tag this so it wouldn't be horrendously long, but apparently that is almost impossible to do on a blog.spot blog. I think I like LJ better.


Pretty awesome, yes?

It's that time of life.

Lise just got engaged.

Lise. My Lisa! Engaged! And planning on getting married this summer! *flips out in a very contained way*

Grad School, thy name is stress

Have received my prelim assignment.

Will be buried in PubMed for the next 26 days. Wish me luck.

Common sense, people.

Reducing income tax? THEN WHERE IS THE GOVERNMENT GOING TO GET THE MONEY TO BAIL YOU OUT OF DEBT, YOU MORON?


Edit: *puts head in hands* No, we can't "let the banks pay for their mistakes by going under". You know why? Because they're banks. They're not your local deli. They own people's money. When they go under, they TAKE THAT MONEY WITH THEM. So letting banks "go under" means lots and lots of people's money disappears. Like, you know, in 1929? Remember that? That is why the government is bailing out banks. Not because of some vast, nebulous government conspiracy that is devoted to helping the super-rich get richer.

Also: One thing that has never, ever made sense to me is why food prices are not counted in a measure of inflation. Isn't food the one thing that everyone is absolutely guaranteed to buy? So isn't that a better gauge of spending power than, say, extraneous electronics?