Thursday, May 13, 2010

Science fight!

I was 75% kidding when in my last post I asserted that this collaboration in Tennessee might blow up in our faces...but it only took 3 days for the proverbial excrement to hit some spinning blades. So! I'll still visit Oak Ridge to work with other equipment, but for this particular technique we're finally breaking the cycle of abuse and taking our business elsewhere. Every field has some sort of politics; I think it's just an inescapable part of being human. I'm sure even knitting has a dark side, where knitters make shady deals with sheep farms and yarn companies in dim, smoke-filled rooms. Well, maybe not smoke-filled rooms--that's hell on yarn. Maybe they're just sipping scotch on the rocks from low-ball glasses. We'll go with that.

The silver lining is that I got to do a LOT of knitting while working in the wee hours of the morning. I made huge progress on the sleeveless sweater that I'm test knitting:


But I had to stop as soon as I got to anything even remotely requiring thought. I'm not a night person. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a morning person either--more of a middle of the day, right before my afternoon nap type of person. So I moved on to Mystery Wedding Project (go go garter stitch!). And last night...I log-cabined for the first time. I also spent way too much time trying to come up with a way to make that into some kind of innuendo, and the only thing I could come up with equated 'log' to poop. And classy ladies don't talk about poop. In fact, we don't even do such an unsavory thing ourselves, we've just heard about it. What I'm saying is, I finished a block, turned it, and picked up stitches for the next block. Whew.

Another bright spot in the trip was that I got to eat here (repeatedly):

No, it's not a homeless person eatery.


I have to specify every time I try to explain it to people: no, it's not a traditional soup kitchen, no, I am not stealing resources from the homeless. It's a local soup and sandwich joint, where they have about ten homemade soups available every day. I'm a soup fiend; it's nice to get a daily fix.

What is it about TN (and especially a burg like Oak Ridge) that makes it not only acceptable, but practically necessary to listen to country music? Yesterday I found myself cruising along with the windows down, flanked by a Ford F150 to the left and an F250 to the right, listening to some guy croon and twang about how awesome water was, especially when applied to busty women wearing white T-shirts (I'm not making this up). It seemed completely appropriate. And, via the same station, I learned that Hootie (sans Blowfish) is still around, country-ing it up. Who knew?

6 comments:

  1. Ladies are like unicorns...when we do poop, we poop marshmallows. ;-)

    The Soup Kitchen sounds like an awesome restaurant.

    I actually am familiar with the song that was being sung although the name of it escapes me right now.

    And, yes, Darius Rucker has had quite the sucessful country singing career for the past year or so. It's my understanding that Hootie still sings with the rest of the Blowfish, though. Not that I'm a country music fan or anything ;-)

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  2. Oak Ridge, as in the Oak Ridge Boys? As in "Elvira"? :) Hehe.

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  3. You post was pretty amusing today!!

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  4. LOL I do like that yarn :-)My Mum had the Oakridge Boys ....on vinyl :-)

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  5. I think it might be worthwhile to dress up(down) as a homeless person and demand free soup from the soup kitchen. I've also found that many technicians/operators in the materials world are very touchy about their equipment, if you let them believe they know more than you it works best. You can do whatever you want when they leave the room. They obviously got their cush job by their overwhelming intelligence, not because thier only useful abilites are pushing buttons and turning dials.

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  6. I'm glad that someone can back me up that this song exists! ;)

    Burb - It actually wasn't the tech, who is like a sweet little puppy, it was the big cheese of the instrument. I let him believe he was the shiznit for going on three years now...I couldn't take the abuse any more. Give me a ring and I'll fill you in on the details...also glad to see you are blogging again!

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