that is so buffalo

i know there aren't that many readers out there, but anyone who is reading this should give the tv show confessions of a matchmaker a try. Patti Novak is so absolutely buffalo (from the perspective of a non-buffalonian) and the people on this show are unreal. at times i cringe so much at the way people act that i have to leave the room. and for those who wonder what buffalo really looks like, there are all sorts of shots of the city in between scenes.

pinkish stuff

during the last week or so i've had my eye on these prickly pears by my parents' house in tucson. there are a bunch of ripe fruit on them in the street median near their house and i figured the county won't mind if i go and pick some of them. so i did. i made sure to leave enough for the animals by picking only a few from each cactus. here's what the last few looked like in my trusty bucket.



(forgive the date stamp on the photo - i'm using my parents' camera and i forgot to get rid of that thing!)

then i peeled them and cut them in half in preparation for the blender.



after that i put them in the blender, blended them and strained them.



tomorrow morning i will turn this into a sauce to put on top of the mesquite flour crepes that i will make. yum.

more of myself

i've been known, on occasion, to watch the oprah show. i hadn't watched it since some time back in april and instead of finishing up some schoolwork i decided to tune in to oprah today. while watching the show today, i finally put it together that something that drives me nuts about oprah is a particular discourse style that she has adopted (most likely within the last 10 years or so). what i'm referring to is the way she talks in this psuedo-therapeutic way. for instance, the general theme for today's repeat show was 'becoming more of yourself', featuring celebrities confessing pivotal moments in their lives that allowed them to find out who they really were. guests even used these technology-based metaphors to talk about their minds - for instance, saying that they had tracks laid when they were young of the relationships in their lives and she figured out how to lay knew tracks to change the pattern of the relationships she was having, i think there was also a comment by Diane Sawyer about reprogramming yourself. this isn't the best example of what i'm trying to say, but i think that oprah has adopted certain metaphors which she uses to describe her life-philosophy and spiritual beliefs which most likely stem from the self-help realm or from psychologists (and her guests seem to follow suit). i also read on wikipedia's entry for oprah that the wall street journal has even coined a term after her style of confessing personal matters publicly as a form of therapy - "Oprahfication".
my big wonder is, has anybody done a linguistic study on the kind of language oprah (or other talk show hosts for that matter) uses, especially the metaphors she uses when she is focusing on topics of "spirit and self"????

back in the u.s.

well, i made it back to the u.s. last week and am slowly getting back to work. i was pretty exhausted after my ten week fieldwork trip. lots of data collection and lots of work and that's on top of the daily stress that comes with living in a remote community, of which you are not a member. my flickr family and friends can see some pics from the trip. i haven't uploaded them all, but they will be coming in time.

for now, here is a sock that i was working on before i left. i just picked it up again this last week. it's socks that rock in the downpour colorway.



the photo is kind of crap since it's from my parents' camera and i was too lazy to figure out how to chop off the date stamp in an eloquent way...

on a side note, it's not like anyone is reading this blog, but in case you are i want to give props to a blog of some friends - between tuesdays.

i'm away

ok, just a quick update that i'm in mexico doing fieldwork for my dissertation and will be away until august.

right now the weather is pretty nice here - much better than in tucson. at night it is even a bit chilly. but by august, things will change. july is going to be tough. i've done it before and can do it again, so i'm confident i can make it work.

no knitting for now, but i have a sock in progress back in tucson. it's socks that rock in a really pretty colorway that i can't remember, maybe it's called 'downpour'. it has greys and browns and other pretty neutral colors.

that's it for now. more in august.

my favorite sock yarn (sort of)

finally a post about the hand-dyed sock yarn.
let me give you a recap on the vitals:
bare merino wool in fingering weight from knitpicks
procion dye from dharma trading company
i used two colors to make this: turquoise and some crazy red color (i think it was jungle red)



this is half of the yarn cake of this stuff. (the other half is in the sock!)



and above is the first sock.

i used ann norling's adult basic socks pattern. it's my old faithful for socks. i prefer this kind of heel than a short-row heel.



i really like the subtle striping that is happening in this yarn.

i have one more skein of this yarn and i think i should come up with a boyish colorway and knit steve another pair of socks.

puerto libertad is not liberty cove

ok, maybe the title of this post does not make sense, but just give me a minute to explain. while writing out my budget for this summer's fieldwork trip, i wanted to find the mileage between tucson and puerto libertad. at first, i came across this site from wildsonora. this site talks about issues that are considered threatening to the attempts at keeping sonora "wild". ok, that's cool with me. i was particularly interested in the articles about development in puerto libertad and the coastal highway project. in the past, i have heard so many rumors about the coastal highway project, but wasn't sure how much of it was serious. the link from the wildsonora website to this site made me cringe. liberty cove seems to be some investor's wet dream of how to sell even more vacation property along the coast of the sea of cortez (because, let's face it, rocky point is just too full). the intro page to the liberty cove website is a joke. the liberty cove developers are sneakily hiding one little thing.
--> check out the photo on the wildsonora page or look at the similar one here. is that what you want in your backyard? the smoke trail from those smokestacks goes on forever. puerto libertad is a sleepy little fishing community with the exception of the natural gas operation they have going on there.