Lynah Faithful

After both Hillary and I weren't able to make the annual camp out in line for season hockey tickets, we were ecstatic to get an email saying they had a few remaining unclaimed season tickets.  We rushed to the ticket office, landed first in line at the window, and managed to buy the next-to-last season tickets.

This makes us officially "Lynah Faithful," the dedicated fans of Cornell hockey that frequent Lynah rink.  Our first game was against Dartmouth (who we whomped 5-1), and our second was the legendary Cornell-Harvard match up, our biggest rivalry.  Tickets for this game are nearly impossible to get, unless you happen to have season tickets, of course.

Hillary and I with our Lynah Faithful shirts (free with tickets), and our fish.

Fish, you say??  One of the weirdest hockey traditions is throwing fish on the ice at the Harvard game.  The history behind it is that Harvard once threw a dead chicken on the ice to make fun of Cornell's agriculture school.  The next year, we threw dead fish to mock the fishing industry in Boston (not sure why that deserves to be made fun of, but I'll go with it).  After that, Harvard tied a live chicken to the Cornell goal, but they (obviously) got in huge trouble, where as we have been throwing fish ever since.  Security is intense on the way in, patting people down for dead fish.  Most people now use swedish fish, gold fish, or paper fish as a more symbolic gesture.

A giant fish head thrown on the ice after the 2nd period-- like the fish thrown at the beginning of the game, it was picked up by designated fish-picker-upers with garbage bags.  Fun job.

The line up at the Cornell-Harvard game

The zamboni man, who is now retired but makes special appearances, always dresses up in some crazy costume.  I believe he is a Chinese emperor here.

In case you care (that's a rhetorical question, OF COURSE you care), we stomped Harvard, 6 to 3, in a very high energy game that stayed neck and neck right up to the third period.

The Knitting Craze

Come on, everybody's doing it!

Hillary knitting a scarf outside on a lovely day

Melissa knitting in some awesome footie pajamas.  This is her first practice swatch, she's now moved on to a scarf using the needles I gave her for her birthday.

Hillary starting a baby hat for her cousin's baby, and Illika working on a swatch she started last winter when she learned to knit

Hillary and I with our dueling mittens.  Her mittens are Pittsburgh Penguins mittens for a friend, mine will be flip-top mittens.

Here's the finished product for mine.  I added a cable down the center to make them go with a hat for a gift for Laura.  The project's on Ravelry.

Here's the full set.  I LOVE the hat pattern-- it's molded after Hermione's hat in the 5th Harry Potter movie.  You can find it online here as a free Ravelry download.  I used a bamboo yarn, but the yarn suggested by the pattern is heavenly.

What can I say, I'm a trend setter.  And, knitting makes a great low-stress, high-productivity break from homework.

Murder at the Speakeasy

Friday, October 30th, 2009

362 Becker House, Ithaca, NY

For halloween, our suite decided to throw a murder mystery party.  We bought a kit online for a 1920's themed mystery to take place in a speakeasy, and raided some local thrift stores for supplies to cobble our costumes together.

Hilary, playing tailor for Melissa.  A lot of our costumes were basic dresses that we decked out with fringe and other 1920's accessories.

Illika, stitching fringe to her dress.  But of course, it couldn't be just normal fringe, because that would be boring.  She went with purple.

Setting up the suite.  We stacked our coffee table on our end tables to make a bar, complete with mini-fridge hid underneath and stocked with juice, soda, and energy drinks for mixing.  What's a speakeasy without a bar, right?

The final product of our costume efforts: fringe, fun headbands, and pearls.  Hillary was Dina Diva, the singer, Tahra was Molly Moll, the prima donna, I was Rosie Marie, owner of the speakeasy, Illika was Cindy Butt, the gossipy cigarette girl, and Melissa was Kitty Cocktail, the waitress.

We had a blast, and in the final vote 3 people correctly guessed the murderer.  It was the police chief, can you believe it?

Insomnia Hat

October 29th, 2009

I call my most recent knitting accomplishment my insomnia hat.  After some difficulty falling asleep, I decided to knit a couple rows on this hat every night before going to bed.  It helped a lot, and now I have an awesome hat.  I picked the yarn to match my favorite scarf-- a plaid cashmere that my grandma gave me for Christmas.  I also modified the pattern to add a button flap on the side.  Find the super-simple pattern here, and my project on Ravelry.

Book Doctor

If there's one thing my new job has taught me, it's that you really can judge a book by its cover.  I work in the basement of Olin Library repairing books that come in damaged from circulation.  In this workshop, all the restoration of rare manuscripts and obscure texts takes place, but not by a new student employee like me-- I'm working up to it.

So far, my work has included taking books after they go through the "cleaning" process, which is basically where the covers and spines are separated.  It's my job to reinforce the "text block" (the chunk of pages without the covers and spine) by drilling and stitching it, then gluing on a spine liner.

As I add the covers back on, using linens to secure them to the text block, the book starts to come back together.

Next I choose a color of buckrum (the thick durable sheets we use to reinforce the spine) and apply it to the outside.  Finally, I trim what's left of the spine label and glue it on top of the buckrum.  The reconstructed book looks something like this:

This is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the thickest book I have repaired to date.  I've also repaired such well-known titles as the Jungle Book and such obscure things as math texts in some unrecognizable script and fine arts books on gardens western Europe in the 18th century.  The amazing part about the obscure books is that since all the books I repair come out of circulation, someone has actually just checked out every book I get.

I've come to identify books based on the type of wear and tear they get.  Because the spine label is the last step of the process, I can go through almost the whole repair without knowing the title of the book.  I've discovered that I can tell the genre before reading the title based on the "shoulders" of the book (the place where the covers open out).  Books read cover to cover (novels) have deep shoulders at the front and back, while non-fiction books tend to have a deep shoulder in the front and almost no shoulder in the back, indicating that they are opened most often near the front.  I thought I had found a flaw in this theory once when I worked on a book that had a deep shoulder only in the back.  As it turned out, this was a math text book with an answer key at the back, so of course it made perfect sense that people often opened it to the back.  Ah, what you can learn from books.

Urban/Rural Camping Adventure

October 10th-11th, 2009

Buttermilk Falls, Ithaca, NY

With no good form of transportation, Illika and I decided to camp at Buttermilk Falls as a little getaway.  After much hassling and irritated looks, we managed to get there by bus with all our 

Illika, laden with stuff at the bus stop

baggage.  A further hike brought us from the base of the falls to the actual campsites, which we grossly overpaid for (ah well, what can you do).

The waterfall is really quite pretty, especially with all the fall color peeking out.

The hike within the park was quite pretty, full of little streams and views of the colorful foliage.

The one not-so-pretty part of the walk: we were disappointingly close to civilization.  Hello, Home Depot.

We built a lovely fire and roasted some surprisingly delicious hotdogs, as well as the obligatory marshmallows.  Then, very well bundled up, we crawled in to hammocks to brave out the night's 35 degree low.  I ended up amazingly comfortable and toasty all night long, and Illika's only complaint was cold toes-- the perpetual problem in chilly weather.

Our view waking up.  So refreshing.

Illika all cocooned in her sleeping bag

My very useful hat!

The next day, after a bit of an adventure navigating our way back with the unreliable buses, we returned home safe and sound.

The rural half of the trek back...

...and the urban half.  Much less pretty.

Fall Garba

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Ithaca, NY

Illika took Tahra, Hillary, Melissa and I out for Fall Garba, a Hindi festival celebrating harvest season.  Although, when Illika was asked to explain the exact reasons for this dance celebration, she mostly responded that Indians just really like their festivals, and that at any given time of the year there's some sort of celebration happening that warrants a large dance party.

Illika, of course, was far more decked out than we were in a full traditional outfit, while we just borrowed shirts.

So, once Illika had provided the proper attire, we set out to learn some hindi dance moves.  For this event, the dances were large group dances, not partners.  There were some dances where each person had a pair of sticks and clacked them together, or on someone else's, or on the floor as part of each dance move.  There were also a lot of dances of large groups of people doing the same jump, skip, or spin steps around in a circle.  One dance was remarkably similar to the electric slide.

In spite of us being in an extreme minority of non-Indian people, it was a really fun and interesting experience.  Plus, they provided some awesome Indian food.