har og ra fee

I went to the eye doc yesterday for my yearly checkup, and my vision has improved (in my right eye). As usual, my left eye is a bit worse.

But I asked about lasik, saying that I would be losing my insurance soon and then would be gone for September, but how long is the process anyway? And he said I could pretty much definitely get the surgery before September. OMGYAY.

I’ve had glasses since fourth grade! I’ve worn contacts since ninth! This is so amazing. Even if I can’t get it done before September, it won’t be long now…

Is it just me or is it stupid hot today? Yeesh.

If anyone knows anyone who works for a video game company, I’m looking for a job as an associate producer or level designer.

I have three years of experience in the industry. Email me for resumé; my design portfolio is on a dead server and will be resurrected soon..

When I was carrying in the groceries on Saturday, I cut off the blood supply to my left pinky.

Pretty badly, as it turns out, as today - Tuesday, 72 hours later - my pinky is still tingly like it’s asleep.

Typing feels weird.

It’ll get better though, it has already improved. It’s rather a lot like when I got my wisdom teeth out and my bottom lip was numb/tingly for a few weeks afterward. In any case, the experience will teach me to take two trips when carrying many bags of heavy groceries.

And now, to organize my thoughts:

Work: There is little to nothing going on at work. I found a freelance web design job from a fellow dog park attendee - it should hopefully be pretty simple but she needs quite a bit of help deciding how to sell her product (she translates medical books into Spanish, or has Spanish-English books on medical topics. Vocabulary and whatnot). She wants to start selling cds instead of booklets, as it’s cheaper and then she can include pronunciation files, but I’m afraid that she will want ME to make the cds… so we’re discussing the terms of the contract and figuring out exactly what she has and can do and wants to do before things get going.

Also, I have many resumés out at many companies. Whenever I can recover my portfolio from the dead server, I’ll get that online and then start applying for Level Design jobs in addition to all the Associate Producer jobs I have applied for already.

I have a phone interview next week, and am hoping to hear back from someone I have been emailing with as well. I’ll probably contact a recruiter early next month if things are still languishing.

I’m also working with true-edges on a game mod - we’ve decided on using the WarCraft III engine for the first one, seeing how that goes. I’m looking forward to trying something that requires a bit more customization, adding models and changing textures on things, just to try something new and exciting… but to start, simple is best. We can always recreate our game with another engine in the future, and make it closer to the visions in our heads.

Crafty crafty: I’ve done a lot of spinning. I gave away four skeins of yarn to family and friends, and went through everything and did another culling of the stash. My “teaching yarn” bag is a bit bigger. I finally finished the blue-green purse made from cayswann’s handspun, hand-dyed yarn. I just need to line it, sew it up, and find handles.

I’ve also been making a Wisp from knitty.com. That picture was taken July 3; I had completed four and a half repeats, now I have 8 repeats done. I am sort of knitting this for the wedding/honeymoon in September, but I don’t really anticipate needing a light wrap (and if I do, I have plenty of cloth ones), so there’s no pressure to finish it. It’s a simple-but-not-boring pattern, and I’m enjoying it a lot.

I still have just one Elfine Sock completed, because I don’t think they will fit their intended recipient. We shall see.

Anything else going on? Yes, wedding readiness stuff. I alternate betweeen being completely terrified that all 200 people we invited will show up, and that no one will be able to come. I’m sure I’m a joy to live with.

Also, Alan is mean, cruel, and vicious.

Evidence:
[11:27] Alan: it is done, haha
[11:28] T: what?
[11:28] Alan: surprise for you
[11:29] T: ???!?!!
[11:29] T: I don’t like surprises
[11:29] T: well I do
[11:29] T: But I hate knowing about them beforehand
[11:29] T: it’s torturous
[11:29] Alan:
[11:29] T: YOU’RE SO MEAN

See what I’m saying? Evil.

I know the Yarn Harlot just covered this topic, too, but I don’t know how much overlap we have and the word MUST get out.

While I appreciate the ability to keep a knitting “to do” list (aka project queue) online, it’s SO EASY to add to it.

I have 17 knitting projects queued, and 4 works in progress. I’ve also favorited a few patterns. The danger is, as the YarnHarlot explains, that everything is connected. You click through someone’s profile, look at their wips, fos, and queue, and find something you like. Click! Added to queue. You’re surfing the internet, find a pattern you like - Click! That “add to ravelry queue” bookmarklet is a dangerous bit of text on my bookmark toolbar. I have queued more sock patterns than anything else! And I don’t really like knitting socks! What am I thinking?!

I heard of Ravelry because of the Lime’n'Violet message board, so I when I got my login I posted there - I have many friends now (plus I added Miss Lime and Miss Violet and Brenda Dayne and the Yarn Harlot and Eunny Jang and Amy Singer.. my knitting heroines). One of the other LnVers is living in my hometown! Small world, huh?

See? It gets you into its web and it doesn’t let go. Ravelry made me take pictures of my current knitting and spinning projects this morning. Ravelry is going to make me catalogue my yarn and needles (and books). Ravelry is going to take over the world.

I got my invite for Ravelry today. Is anyone else on there yet?

I’m theresab. I can’t wait to get some free time to inventory my yarn and needles.

(I am such a geek!)

Ah, one of my favorite books of poems (this ed. translated by Cola Franzen). When I was in college, I had checked a book out of the library that had a lot of the poems in Arabic, Spanish, and English. It was fantastic.

Anyway I’m reading this hoping to find something suitable for a wedding, but alas they’re all about battles, or lost loves, or drinking.

Today, I liked this poem:

SPLIT MY HEART

How I wish I could split my heart
with a knife
put you inside
then close up my chest

so that you would be in my heart
and not in another’s
until the resurrection
and the day of judgment.

There you would stay while I lived
and after my death
you would remain buried deep in my heart
in the darkness of the tomb.

-Ibn Hazm (994-1063, Cordoba)

It reminds me of Dead Can Dance’s “I am stretched on your grave”.

Someday, I am going to buy my parents and my brother and myself copies of this print.

The genus of that tree (and others in Africa) is the same as my last name. “The genus name Boscia honours a French professor of agriculture, Louis A.G. Bosc (1777-1850).”

As far as my own history goes, it’s a bit of a mystery. My ancestors are Albanian-Italians from the Avellino province of Italy. We’ve got some pretty rabid internet groups devoted to our common ancestry and roots in Greci.

My Arabic professor in college thought that we probably emigrated to Italy during the Ottoman invasion in the 1400s, and “Boscia” is an Italianization of the Turkish/Arabic title “pasha”. Who knows? I should try to convince an SCA herald to try to find a date for it. So far we’ve got it back to about 1740 in Italy, with Carlo Boscia, my great(x5)-grandfather.

I always thought it was related to woods or forest because it’s similar to the Spanish word “Bosque” - which is apparently actually Germanic in origin (“bosque= forest, woods: from Catalan of Provençal of Old French bosc, from Germanic (*)busk- “brush, underbrush, thicket” (source of Old High German busc).”)

And then of course there’s the pronunciation - my family says Bahshah. Other Boscias say Bohshah or Bohskah or Bohskeeya or Bahskeeya. There aren’t a lot of Boscias in the world but those that are directly related agree on how their family says their name.

The Boshahs may be proper - there’s a MLB player named Mike Scioscia and his last name is Shohshah.

Currently, Boscia is also a line of Japanese skin care products (they’re pretty good).

Look what you started, Mau!

First of all, my biggest beef with this WP layout was that paragraphs weren’t spaced.

I finally fixed that! I rd CSS gud.

Also, thanks to my friend (I was trying to think of a better term, and that led me to the book Sisters, Long Ago which I LOVED as a kid [ANCIENT EGYPT!!!!], but anyway) cavalaxis emailed me that her comment was spam-filtered! I took care of that, so people should be able to comment on the wordpress blog properly.

Haven’t seen a way to fix what she was really emailing me about, which was:

Sorry, but your comment has been flagged by the spam filter running on this blog: this might be an error, in which case all apologies. Your comment will be presented to the blog admin who will be able to restore it immediately. You may want to contact the blog admin via e-mail to notify him.

The nerve. And I can’t find the way to change that! Must.. hunt.. through.. php.. files!

So as usual I think about all sorts of things to blog about, but then never actually write them down.. but work is slow and I just checked my RSS feeds, and CRAFT magazine posted another pattern from burdastyle.com and OH MY GOD I think I’ve hated every single thing I’ve seen posted.

First of all, they all look terrible in my eyes and require a lot of gathering and just drape about some stick-figure’s body like a freakin’ burka. I’m not a huge person - I am properly shaped, just with some added padding - but I seriously doubt that I could wear any of the designs on that website without some pretty significant alteration. Curves, people! Curves!

Okay, I take that back. I’d wear this coat, but in red. And without the shoulder things. And smaller pockets (or maybe ones that aren’t placed directly on my ample hips?), yes, let’s add huge square pockets on the outside of the coat at the widest part of our bodies, hmmm?

hmmph.