Today, the word of the day is BENIGN. Woohooooooooooooo!!!
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The biopsy (an ultrasound-guided core biopsy) went smoothly, and the radiologist seemed confident I didn't have much to worry about, but I'm still waiting to hear from the pathology lab for the official word.
Meanwhile, it's my birthday, and I'm going to enjoy it, darnit!
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- What is so appealing about unicorns?
They're just as fantastical as horses to someone who didn't grow up around them but desperately wanted to, only with magical powers. Not quite as fierce as dragons, less wild than gryphons. - What is the last book that you read that had a deeply satisfying ending. The sort where you felt it was
okay for it to end.
This is tough--most books, half the time I spend talking about them seems to be about how they SHOULD have ended. (Of course, my memory for books is so terrible that I can go back and re-read them over and over before the ending really sinks in, since by the time I've chose to re-read, I've forgotten most of what happened.) Anyway, I think The Last Unicorn had a good ending. The unicorns stay mysterious and free, after all. (Yes, I've actually read that recently. Peter S. Beagle stayed with us during Comic-Con this year (true story), so after he signed my copy, I felt compelled to re-read. It was even better than I remembered.) - Have you considered knitting other purse-like things in the shape of other significant organs?
I have! Of course the heart purse/pillow is the obvious one (and there's a Knitty pattern for that), but I think a knitted kidney or lung for someone with a particular association with those organs would be fun. One of these days someone will specifically ask for one, and I'll be off. - What is the best thing you have ever gotten out of a Christmas cracker?
My favorite things are always the tiny multi-piece toys that you have to assemble yourself. They don't appear very often, though--I think the last one I remember was a little car that I had to pop the axles into. - Why does it always rain on me?
Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?
At this point I'd say that if you comment, I'll ask you some questions, but I cannot overstate how neglectful of the lj I've been until yesterday. All my comments were going to my spam folder! So I don't want to leave you hanging. On the other hand, maybe I've turned a corner on my blogging habits and I'll figure out a way to squeeze it back in.
This has been happening for several years, but I've never participated in it. I was inspired to post this year because of the many tweets from my many betes homies on the subject, and of course because I haven't blogged in over six months.
Except I really don't feel like talking about diabetes. Yes, many days are a fucking trial, and November is Diabetes Awareness Month, and they're talking about the potential cures in the same way they've been doing since I was diagnosed 14 years ago (this month!), but my past three A1Cs have been under 6, so I'd like to live with the illusion that I own this beast for a little while.
There have been heavier-duty things on my mind lately.
( cut for sad )
Time has gotten away from me. It really seemed that one day I was checking in on Livejournal when I had a free moment ("I'm compiling!"), the next I was only finding time fortnightly to peek at the journals of people I (a) know in real life and have gotten email from recently (
I still read tons of blogs, but mostly via Bloglines. I have become completely obsessed with knitting--I must be subscribed to 80 knitting-related blogs now. That takes up a lot of my not-at-work reading/watching time.
I have been knitting, too. I'd like to say a post with my latest knits is forthcoming, but yeah, my blog posting suffers even more from my apparently fuller schedule than my blog keep-uppage does. Unless it's microblogging!
Like half the free world, I've mostly been using Twitter to keep up with people--and to share my own stream of inanity, of course. Find me there under the usual handle, kirinqueen.
I've also been using Flickr a bit more regularly, so that I can keep my Ravelry projects page updated. I'm more of a crafter than a writer or a photographer, it would seem.
(Wow, that photo of me is old now. Not that I look different--except my hair is longer, but geez. Maybe I can update that while I'm hanging around here.)
- Location:Casa O'Connor
Edit: I forgot the $100 Lindsay raised with her awesome beer auction on Halloween.
(I am the Queen of Awesomeness; Ted is Fraa Erasmas of the Concent of Saunt Edhar from Neal Stephenson's Anathem.)
To celebrate the book of words, I would point you to lexicographer [who we like to joke is my doppelgaenger, what with the same first name, linguisticky2 profession and enthusiasm for skirts with pockets] Erin McKean's Dictionary Evangelist blog. Her writings on words can also be found in numerous journalistic articles, as well as in a Google talk and a TED talk.
You can join me and Ted in celebrating Dictionary Day by adding the words you enjoy to Wordie. [Edited to add: Or not! Wordie won't load for me this afternoon.]
1You may notice that the same word may be spelled several different ways in the Onion sheet, which is indeed how people wrote back in the day. Good times, eh? Like I say, let us give thanks for Mr. Webster's works!
2 Here is where I remind you that language is far more than a bag of words. If it were, then we could communicate with each other by random throwing there out words ordering no to regard with them. Our Dictionary Evangelist knows this, of course, but I couldn't figure out where else to say this without getting into a side discussion, so here we are. Linguistics is about words and their meanings, sounds and their meanings, how words combine with each other to comprise larger units of meaning and communication, how the brain works with different linguisticky tasks, etc. etc. etc.
- joining me in walking,
- donating to the JDRF, or even
- forming your own team,
please visit this link. (Actually, I think you have to create a new account and sign yourself up as a team captain to form your own team.)
In the days leading up to the walk I would like to do a series of posts where I talk a little about my day-to-day with diabetes, tell my big Diabetes Stories, and answer any questions you may have.
Thanks for reading!
Even so, I'm very happy with this project. The yarn (Lion Brand Organic Cotton) is super soft, and I love the color. The openness of the sweater makes it comfortable in the summertime despite the bulkiness of the yarn, as long as I'm not running around in 80F+ temps and 90%+ humidity. :)
My expression is one of skepticism that Ted is photographing the sweater and not my face. :p
(12:04:00 PM) kirinqueen: (that's what she said)
(12:04:18 PM) kirinqueen: the vent will need to be cleaned of a bit of chocolate
(12:04:27 PM) kirinqueen: but only a little
Is there a way to convert Excel highlighting to a value so that when I save an Excel document as a comma-separated value file, the information conveyed by the highlighting is preserved? I have this file where I'm only supposed to look at the rows with the first field of the row highlighted in purple, and those rows are only 30 of about 600, but I haven't found a way to sort by highlighting, or otherwise make the highlighting actually useful. Do you have any tips?
Thank you,
EO'C
Edit: I get this when I attempt a sort on the column I added with "P" for purple highlighting "This operation requires the merged cells to be identically sized." WTFFFFFF. (Which merged cells? Why are they merged?)
- Mood:die microsoft die
Another song that I find upbeat sounding as long as I don't pay attention to the lyrics is MGMT's "Time to Pretend", which is about life as a rockstar on drugs, including the dying of an overdose.
I guess conversely are the songs that sound really unhappy, but whose lyrics are actually joyful, but that's like half the tradtional Irish love songs out there.
Full disclosure: I'd mostly use Miracle Whip and mayonnaise interchangeably, but I would never tell anyone that they are interchangeable if they'd only tasted one or the other. Also homemade mayonnaise is like 1000% better than the kind that comes in a jar. And it's pretty easy to make.
- Location:92121
- Music:The Black Velvet Band - Best of WROL's Irish Hit Parade
Hey linguist friends, did you know that there was a literary contest that directed competitors to form a story making Chomsky's famous nonsensical sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" sensical? This was the winner:
Thus Adam's Eden-plot in far-off time:
Colour-rampant fowers, trees a myriad green;
Helped by God-bless'd wind and temp'rate clime.
The path to primate knowledge unforseen,
He sleeps in peace at eve with Eve.
One apple later, he looks curiously
At the gardens of dichromates, in whom
colourless green ideas sleep furiously
then rage for birth each morning, until doom
Brings rainbows they at last perceive.
-- D. A. H. Byatt
I wonder if there are "horse raced past the barn fell" or "kicked the bucket" jokes out there, too ...
You know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you *should* already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.
Please copy mine below, erase my answers putting yours in their place then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration! One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out :)
( some general me stuff )

I recently lost my external pancreas, which held all the diabetic supplies I keep on me at all times: a bottle of insulin, vials of unused and used test strips, a glucose meter, batteries for my pump, an infusion set, antiseptic wipes, lancets. Since I knit it on a lark and in a dearth of materials, I'd been meaning for a while to make a new one that looked more pancreas-like. Plus it's an excuse to knit what amounts to a toy, even if its contents are more serious.
So re-inspired by some knitted anatomy images after Kerri linked to them a while back, I picked up a skein of a nice buttery yellow 100% cotton yarn, took a look in my Aran stitch dictionary, and got to work.
The new pancreas has approximately the same volume as the old one, but I worked it from the bottom of the fatter end up so that I could run the flap along the long edge. The long flap makes it a little more likely to spill its contents than the old one. I wanted to add a little interior pocket to hold syringes, and I thought that was the best way to do it. It's made with box stitch, which is basically 2x2 seed stitch, and which I thought looked the most like the pancreas in the knitted anatomy. It still doesn't entirely have the right shape, but it is definitely more pancreas-like than Pancreas 1.0. The two buttons on the flap give the pancreas something of a face, which made some friends think it needed a name--of course something beginning with a "P". I was originally thinking something like "Percy" or "Panky", until Game 6 of the Stanley Cup on Wednesday, where I saw the name Pierre and knew that had to be it.

- Mood:
amused




