Dusting off the blog...

It took Ravelry to resurrect my interest in keeping up this little journal, and after my little ravel-ation, I'm looking forward to posting more information about my knitting projects here. Stay tuned for new info and updates!

A different type of fast food

Continuing the theme of completely random and sporadic posts on this blog, I figured I'd write about my latest food find: Roli Roti. I picked up a rotisserie chicken from the enormous rotisserie-on-wheels on Wednesday night, and I've actually been too busy to eat it until now. You're supposed to squeeze lime juice over the bird and reheat it in the oven, which imparts a degree of crispness and flavor unheard of in run-of-the-mill rotisserie chickens. Heading home now to try it out...

An excerpt from an local newsletter article about the owner of Roli Roti:

A year ago Thomas was invited to sell his whirling chickens at the grand opening of Santana Row in San Jose. A great opportunity for a new business for sure. A week before the event his chicken truck was stolen. It is a little hard to hide a truck with a giant, roasted chicken bolted to the roof and so the truck was recovered just hours before the opening. The thieves must have become frustrated by their own stupidity in stealing such a high profile vehicle because they heavily vandalized the truck. The rotisserie components still worked, but the engine did not. Undaunted and incredibly optimistic by nature, Thomas and his helper pulled the Roli Roti truck, with a rope, into position. The inconvenience became a publicity opportunity, and Thomas says he had the longest line of customers he can remember that fateful day.

SpongeBob Saturation!

You mean I could actually spend an entire day eating nothing but SpongeBob Squarepants*-shaped foods? It's true! There is an ENTIRE PAGE of SpongeBob-related vittles at this website--check it out! I've already had the Cheez-its, and they're fantastic. Decidedly better than the normal Cheez-its.

*or, as my dad prefers to call him, SquareBob Spongepants.

Back again!

No posts for almost two weeks...yikes. I've been busy trying to get ready for a group meeting talk that's been postponed for nearly a month, but I've also had time to work on a new knitting project that's going quickly on size 17 circulars. It's in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky (color Wild Oak), a soft wool and mohair blend, and I'm doubling the strands, so this project is flying off the needles. As Drew said, "You're knitting at a ferocious velocity." Ah, but I've pulled the wool over his eyes by using those gargantuan needles and fat yarn! :) The finished item is going to be a gift, so I can't reveal its nature right now, but suffice it to say that for this knitted item, size doesn't matter.

Funny link of the day: Spider-Man Reviews Crayons

Popular Science

It's amazing how context makes all the difference in appreciating and understanding science. I was trying to catch up on some journal reading yesterday, and in my quick scan of the table of contents of Science, I completely passed over an article entitled "Local Nanomechanical Motion of the Cell Wall of Saccharomyces cerevisiae". However, after hearing a piece on NPR later that day about how scientists at UCLA used a "diving board" to "listen" to yeast cells vibrating and "screaming" when they were exposed to alcohol, I had to go back and check out the Science article, an summary of which can be found at the NPR website. Finding a good analogy seems to be key in making science accessible and interesting to a mainstream audience.

CNN.com routinely does the same sort of popularization of recent scientific studies. Yesterday I read a fascinating article on Nature Science Update about a tribe in the Amazon whose language has no words for numbers beyond "one", "two", and "many". Tribe members were apparently unable to keep track of objects that were greater in number than three. The selfsame study showed up on the CNN website later that afternoon with the headline "Tribe has great excuse for poor math skills". Hey, if it gets people interested in science, I'm all for it.

At the same time, I have to admit that my other favorite CNN.com article of the day was "Bear guzzles 36 beers and passes out".

Why string theory?

If you were expecting modern physics, look elsewhere. I've been mulling over the idea of having a blog for quite some time now; I have a beautiful old-fashioned journal sitting on my bookshelf with a whopping two entries written since I received it for my birthday two years ago...rather shameful. Blogging has a lower activation barrier than getting out pen and paper (when was the last time you sent a handwritten letter to someone?), and this way I can at least attempt to try to keep in better touch with friends scattered far and wide.*

The name of this blog struck me as I was biking across campus a couple of days ago, and I was tickled by the thought of having my own little space on the web with such a multipurpose title. I'm a violinist and, more recently, an avid knitter, and I often have days where I feel that my life is a giant web of tasks, with loose ends waiting to be tied up and neatened. I'm no physicist, just a chemist-in-training, and I fight a daily battle against disorder. Stay tuned for updates!

*In fact, a friend of mine once remarked that she wrote in her journal as though it might someday be read by someone else...as a memoir of her more memorable experiences, perhaps. Blogging simply skips the waiting period and allows us to share those memories while they're still fresh. Sounds like a good idea to me.

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