"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
- Barbara Bush, 3/18/03

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unemployed

general forecast: as of friday, that’s what i am, unemployed. people at work/school, kept asking me, well what’s the plan then? and i’d just grin and say nothing, nada, zip. for this first week at least, i plan to veg – get out silly movies from the library, spin like a mad woman, cook a lot, go sightseeing on the bus for hours, read a ton of books, and sleep sleep sleep.

specific forecast: today has been a jumble of ideas, feelings, pacing, exclaiming, worrying and so on – i hope the next two months aren’t this hectic. anyhow, something big is happening today, i’m holding my breath and crossing my fingers – will you do the same? i’ll explain what it’s all about tomorrow, promise, but for today, no jinxing allowed. just happy thoughts sent my way, please, and i’ll pass them on to where it’s very much needed.

ok, after all, some spinning – my first time with two new fibers: pygora and flax. the pygora was one of the quickest spins i’ve ever done, it practically spun itself. there was only an ounce of it, so at 2-ply, that means 47 yards, but still, what a dream! (oh, and the drink in that pic isn’t milk, it’s horchata – gotta love l.a., the only place i know of where they sell horchata right next to the orange juice and whole milk, yay.)

the minute flax gets spun into yarn, it’s no longer flax but linen. lovely, with 252 yards of it, made up of singles that were pretty darn balanced. it took about four hours to spin, seeing as how i have no distaff, which would have helped tremendously, and that i had to wet each strand as it went (to strengthen the fiber and smooth it down as well, give it a try). after spinning, as you can see, i boiled it for about an hour which did indeed soften it up just a tad. i absolutely love that this came from a plant, and i’m just itching to try nettles. hm.

p.s. you did hear the croc hunter died, right? :( absolutely sucks.

comment [12]

posted 5 September 06 & filed under spinning, workwork

december 9th, ack!

hi there ~ it’s been a very busy week and i still have two papers due monday and tuesday so this weekend will be busybusy too, but i still feel like a big part of the craziness is over.

of course, my knitting is wayyyy behind schedule – both christmas knitting and swap knitting. i’m totally embarassed to say i still owe my stitch ya neck out pal her scarf – not cool! i’m sorry! the recipient-to-be is cassie of autumn sweater, whose tubey in the latest knitty is generating a ton of well-earned compliments. isn’t it so cute looking! so, progress report: since the blocking incident, i had to frog almost the whole shrug so i bought some of those mini clover circulars a few days back and i’m bringing the wip with me everywhere so i can hopefully get her scarf out to her before christmas. ay!

in the biggest news of the moment, yesterday i gave my two weeks notice at work – geez, it felt so good! i’ve been feeling for a real long while that it was time for me to move on – i’ve been there almost four years! and when my boss announced to everyone that i was leaving, there was a very satisyingly audible collective gasp, yay. .. so, my last day of work is december 19th and there’s so much to do in the meantime. i didn’t realize until yesterday when i start organizing, how much stuff i’ve accumulated in my desk. i’m going to feel so FREE! after the 19th, in a somewhat scary free-fall kind of way, but mostly in an exhilirating i-can-do-anything kind of way. whee!

of course, me being me, i accepted a job already that though only ten hours a week will pay for my school tuition (yay!) plus a little extra and is a challenge i’m already enjoying – it’s as the webmaster for the california center for the book, a state literary center. i’ve already tweaked the design a bit and did some major structure overhaul, very fun. i’m thinking about setting up a little professional site with my resume, examples of web work, etc – but domain names are tricky to figure out. for a professional site, should i go with my full name? i’d rather not since i’m not crazy about my last name (sorry poppy!).. hm.

anyhow, here’s two pics of my tree – i got it the day after the funddrive when i was dead exhausted and just needed to chill out for a few hours. isn’t it purty? i still need to add some stuff, and yes, i know, it needs a little something around the bottom, cause that stand isn’t so pretty ;) but at night, oh how happy it makes me! i lovelove! the smell of christmas trees. and christmas lights?! oh, don’t get me started! gotta say that lighting is key in a home.

hey, all angelenos, don’t forget this weekend is the bazaar bizarre!

and that’s it for me – i’m going to do a wip-show-of-shame in a few days so that i will feel the whole public pressure thing to get. stuff. done. also, i got a great knitting gift from a friend, plus some packages are waiting for me at the post office. for now, i’m happy ~ hope you are too ~

comment [10]

posted 9 December 05 & filed under busy bee, workwork

library re-cap

hi there ~ it’s already late, my feet are aching, i have to be up at 6 am to go volunteer at the library booth, but i’m determined to write a little bit about today.. it went great. i was all jittery last night, getting nervous for today’s presentation, this morning i just got more blabbery-nervous, then it started and… i loved it. so fun. i could’ve talked about it for hours!

a little background, i presented with three other women, susan rosenblatt, from the bay area, of retrofitted librarian, susan fisher, a jail librarian, of inside, and sarah houghton, from marin county, of librarian in black. none of us had ever met until we presented this afternoon and it was so nice to meet each one, each really fascinating women.

so there i was all nervous, just realizing one of my shoes had this giant stain on it, seeing my name, along with the others, all splashed up on the screen “Andrea Hull – Mellow Trouble”, and it just felt very surreal. happily surreal, but still wow-inducing. susan f. began and then i felt only excitement – could. not. wait. to present. it was just so exciting to be talking about something that i’ve largely studied and learnt about on my own, in my head, and then there i was in a room with three other women who are also crazy bloggers and not only that, we’re facing probably 50-some people who want to know all about blogs too. !

so, yup, it rocked, i loved it, and a big thank you to all three women who presented with me, especially sarah for proposing and organizing the whole panel. after such a great experience, i know i want to do this kind of thing again, and it definitely strengthens the whole tech-librarian leaning in me.

[for those that want to see the actual presentation, here it is.]

it was interesting that the whole private/public, what not to/to blog, etc was brought up during the q&a – again, no answers from me, besides that for now, i’m fairly open about my life, good and bad. no real specifics, but moods are noted, politics are presented, cats and family are photographed ;), and silliness is everywhere. but all that could very well change and i very much understand others’ reluctance about posting personal stuff online.

on a totally random note, one other thing i noticed is the different titles a library can have.. a while back, i wrote about the cerritos library here in southern california, which is calling itself an “experience library”. i’ve also heard “knowledge center” used instead of ‘library’ – as before, i’m not crazy about that term either. what’s so bad about library?

i’m all for expanding terms to indicate new content, but i can’t help feel like it’s some wanna-be-slick attempt at branding and all that other p.r. annoyance. also, the emphasis on libraries as vital community centers and public spaces is great and true, but with these new terms, it’s like they’re trying to say a single entity, the library, can replace the numerous spaces and institutions that used to be publicly available and which helped form a real sense of community… and that’s a problem. for one, that puts too much on libraries, and believe me, they’re already wayyy too busy. i’m a little rambling here, but i guess i’m wary of re-naming things that are fine with the name they already have – on one poster board at the conference, i saw “name-of-town free library”. hm, “free library”. now that’s a term i’d love to hear more of.

[i love the free library of philadelphia’s motto: “Free Books for All”. simple and sweet, awesome.]

comment [3]

posted 6 November 05 & filed under libraries, workwork

annual shmamual

hello. so today is the big thank-god-it’s-once-a-year fund drive at work ~ that’s why it’s 7 am and i’m up. most people arrived at work this morning at 5:30. me? i’m sleeping in and not getting there till 8:30. and then we’ll all be there probably till 7 tonight when the thirteen hour marathon ends. (it actually is called a marathon. huh, never thought i’d participate in a marathon.) my job has been the website so please check out my hard work, it’ll make me very happy: supportpra.org.

i’d been racking my brain for days trying to find a not dumpy but sleek thermometer-goal-reaching bit of code online, you know, to show graphically how much money we’re raising, how close we are to our goal. well, everything i found looked horrible, all pixelated and cheesy, and just not in keeping with the pretty clean look of the website. sometime yesterday afternoon a little lightbulb went off and i thought ‘aha! what about that bar-percentage-thingamajig all those knitting blogs?’ so, i went off in search of it.

(wahoo, just got a call from work, already raised $9000! 8% of our goal reached. phew, it’s going to be a long day. at least i get the fun part of upping that precentage bar every hour.. ;)

anyhow, so i couldn’t find the original source for the percentage bar thing, i looked all over the place. i know, i could’ve just taken it off a site that used it (like the excellent passioknit – such pretty pictures!) but i wanted the original, sure to work. however, the woman who originally put it out, her blog ‘Anna Knits’ was nowhere to be found. and then, another aha (this is really engrossing to you, i know.. ;P ) and off i went to the internet archive. score! from feb. 2004, here’s the page.

so, to save others that run around, here’s my copying and pasting of that same info:

“You might find something completely different to use it for, but I use it to display the percentage of a project done.

There are only 2 variables to set, and you can integrate it easily into more complex code, like I have here, or update it manually very simply. You can set the color and percentage to anything you want.

To put it on your site:

~ First download the Flash file. (Right-click and “Save Target As…”) Copy it to your own server. Make a note of where you put it!

~ Wherever you want to put the percent bar, paste this code:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="102" height="17">
<param name="movie" value="(path)/percentbar.swf?percentage=100&colorout=25BFE0">
<param name="quality" value="high">
<embed src="(path)/percentbar.swf?percentage=100&colorout=25BFE0" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="102" height="17"></embed>
</object>

~ Edit the colored parts of the code, changing the “100” to whatever percentage you would like to display. Change the "25BFE0" to the hex code of whatever color you would like to use for the progress bar. Finally, if you didn’t put the Flash File in your root directory, replace "(path)" with the path to the swf file. If it is in your root directory, omit "(path)" altogether.

~ You’re done!”

update: the anna knits is back up—seems it was only down those few days i desperately needed it ;)—so go there for better, prettier, and the original information.

comment [3]

posted 2 December 04 & filed under web-talk, workwork

catch up (on rice, yum)

new york was a lot of fun ~ i got back tuesday morning and, thankfully since tuesday’s are my day off, spend the whole day relaxing and having fun. although i spent three full days in boston and only one in new york, i saw a whole lot more of new york in that one day. the saa conference was great but really a working conference.

monday night i had dinner with my friend jennie which was so much fun. i remember a few years ago, sitting across from her and hearing her talk about this and that, and i all of a sudden realized, wow, this girl had such a strong influence on my life. i mean, until i was about twelve, we were constantly at each other’s homes, we’d go on family vacations together, every birthday and slumber party, etc ~ eventually, the fence between our two yards sagged over to one side from so much climibing over and over to see each other. i still remember her phone number, too, even though it’s been over ten years at least since i dialed it, and in fact, her family’s moved from the old house and so i guess, sigh, the number belongs to someone else..

knitting-wise, i got zip accomplished. i went to a couple of stores but just too expensive! i spent my money instead at the bluestocking bookstore and the strand in new york, and at a book sale at the boston public library. yay, books! though my bag broke under the strain. geez. ..anyhow, today, i rectified the yarn-gap by heading out to this new store in hollywood called ‘black sheep knittery’ (my favorite yarn store, tied with unwind in burbank) where i got supplies and really pretty yarn for two yes two projects. i probably won’t start till i go to italy since that’s just days from now (monday night!) ..

~ andrea

p.s. this whole title-thing is fun but a little pressuring : a sum-up to my rambling posts? impossible. here, the idea is catching up with what i’ve been up to, but then that reminded me that jennie and i talked about how we both love ketchup on rice. it’s a bolivian thing, i think. don’t say ‘gross’, say ‘yay!’

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posted 11 August 04 & filed under knitting, workwork

last night in boston

well, this boston trip is ending on such a high note that, since i’m still not in my hotel, getting ready for sleep, i really feel i should find some wood to knock on before i jinx myself too much (note to self: must get wooden necklace, bracelet, whatever)..

for a while i’ve been looking forward to a walking tour of anarchist-related sites in boston and it was today, at 3:30. it’s almost 10:30 and i just left the group at the hotel as all were going back to their respective hotels and homes, but i just had such a great time. usually, i’m not that social, not really comfortable in general with chatting with folks, especially when i have to introduce myself, get over being shy, etc. (when is it not like that though, right?) but every once in a while i just click with folks and tonight i felt like that. yay!

that kind of social-connection is in no way anything i can ever plan for or count on but i’m so glad it kicked in tonight ~ i met so many incredible people, very laid-back but all fascinating and encouraging. plus i got some really valuable advice career-wise that i need to do some serious thinking about.. yay, i’m still in a bit of shock it happened, but i also still have enough wine in me(boy, archivists with wine are like fish in water) to wonder, well since the night is going so well, although it’s 10:30 and i’m by myself now, maybe i should walk to the longfellow bridge (which connects cambridge to boston) and see the view of the charles river? ..

(i’m mostly joking about the wine’s effect on me. as my typing shows, i’m fine and sober ~ though mildy buzzed. mostly it’s the ego-boost speaking.)

i didn’t get to go to more than one yarn store (nice but too expensive and small) and not at all to any bookstore, much less the lucy parson center/infoshop i wanted to see. and new york is looking just as busy. i’m definitely meeting up with my oldest friend in the world, but i don’t know what else i can do. the tour itself today started right near the hotel, in the boston commons (garder? park?) and wound its way up to the north end, super-italian part of boston ~ the focus was mostly on sacco & vanzetti and was great and really thorough. .. best of all, i finally got to see boston a bit, not just the ugly ritzy area around the hotel, but so much more.

people in boston are so brassy. i really like that. i can’t help but immediately be aware of all the differences between boston and l.a. ~ really, it’s so different, with l.a. mostly paling in comparison. i hope it rains tonight; then i’ll be truly truly happy ~ cross your fingers for me.

~ andrea

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posted 7 August 04 & filed under workwork

off to boston, tra la la

yay, i’m off! the last few days have passed in a blur ~ but a beautiful blur. i have a list of good places to go to, including bookstores and yarn stores, and i’m taking my ipod, lots of yarn, great books, and a comfy p.j. or two ~ i plan on doing a lot of relaxing and sleeping. it’s a working trip but i’ll be in nice hotels, with soft sheets and cable tv. oh ho, a life of luxury for me!

plus there’s all the exciting saa workshops and panel discussions, such as:

too bad i have no power suits to wear (ha). now, if only my hair will be obedient for once in its life ~ then i’ll be fine. if not, ay, lots of stares as i have pretty BIG hair and with east coast humidity added ~ sigh. i better pack a lot of hair gel.

so, in other news, i installed textpattern! for now, to see past posts, at least the last ten, see the drop-down menu on the left or click on the ‘older’ tag below to go through each post one at a time. i know, i know, not the tidiest. but i already feel kinda insane for doing this big switcheroo literally two days ago. i still got to add the comments from before and most of the pictures. also, i’m trying to get up a calendar like i had before but i’ve run into some snags. more info on textpattern soon ~ but so far, very exciting and definitely challenging.

comment [2]

posted 4 August 04 & filed under web-talk, workwork

busy busy

hi. yesterday was a good day, albeit pretty frustrating.. at work, we’re going a little crazy since not only are the national conventions quickly approaching (i.e. a lot of work for us preparing for special broadcasts of past convention coverage), but there’s also a major site redesign that we’re hoping to unveil tuesday next week. yikes! .. so, very busy at work.

but i love this one boy, mmmm. and in general i feel pretty happy and good about my life. so busy is o.k.

in three weeks, i’m off to boston for the saa conference and then italy two weeks later, hip hip hooray. and i just found out that the sister of my first boyfriend, this great girl, she’s getting married in april ~ auguri marica!

more later, promise (and i am determined to finish my scarf tonight though i’m a tad nervous about binding off in pattern)

~ andrea

posted 14 July 04 & filed under workwork

screaming by

hello!

first of july and the year is just screaming by (i’m a poet didn’t know it my feet showed it they’re longfellows). i’m getting pretty sick of this whole full time job thing and am a little worried about the fall with ucla and a full time job but i know it will be great. am missing my family a lot—thank goodness i have vacya and my sweet kittens here in la-la-land to remind me i am loved alot here too. found out i was categorized as a nonresident for ucla which means more money so argh i gotta fight that and i have yet to get dsl (a month after ordering it argh) and my car has yet to be alarmed. i just re-read anne mccaffrey’s decision at doona and loved it and am now reading neil gaiman’s stardust which is good, though i don’t like his sandman stuff that much. i’m in bad with the la public library and if i could just buy a bike then i could drop off my books real easy like. a beachcruiser with a basket in the front. i need to get a computer too, for the fall, and i’ve decided on a notebook but what kind i’m not sure.

bye, andrea

speak

posted 1 July 03 & filed under workwork

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