"break" goals

First quarter of grad school done! I turned in my last assignments today and found out that I passed my most stressful class! Since I'm not totally finished with fellowship apps at the start my Christmas break, I'm not sure how much of a 'break' the next three weeks will be. I want to get them all done early, like next week, but I am always better with hard deadlines than softer self-imposed deadlines.....

regardless, I do have a few non-school-related goals for the break, we'll see if any of them actually get done.

• get at least halfway through my newest sweater project. The stress halfway through last quarter got to me and I ran to JoAnn's, buying some inexpensive wool to make this fun sweater: 

I love cabling and knitting is more portable than sewing, so I can work on this sweater in the car, watching TV, at Bible study, or just while chatting with my family. Or, even, while attempting to sit by the pool in Palm Springs, as that is where my family has decided to travel for a few days this break. I'm not a huge fan of going warm places during the Christmas season (not sure I could ever live in the southern hemisphere...) but I am a fan the sun! Strange side note - knitting is about the only thing I can do while riding in a car without getting motion sick. I can't read, watch movies, or even type emails :(

other things to do:

• start reading Right Stuff, Wrong Sex. (dealing with women in science/first female astronaut cannidates)
• start reading The Design of Everyday Things
• start reading Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (it just came in the mail! so exciting!)
• watch Objectified
• watch When we Left Earth
• starting learning to code again. probably in python, but I'm open to suggestions!

MatLab may be more useful, but I can't get a free copy and am not currently willing to fork over $100 for it... I'm not going to work in DOS again (like I did in 8th grade), but let me tell you - if you need something password protected, want to play a game of hangman, or see 8-bit style cat drawings, let me know :) (if this kid can program in three languages by the age of 12 and speak so well in front of lots of people, I figure I can (re)learn to program)

I also want to knit some new mittens for myself that my friend Hannah designed, but I've got to either find appropriate weight yarn or convince my dear sister that she should spin me some for Christmas. But I also want her to spin me some conductive fiber yarn (I know - so cool!) so I'm debating what I should persuade her to spin first :) conductive yarn = iPhone compatible gloves!

• finish a long winter coat I started 4 years ago. Yes, it still fits. I was just too lazy to get the snaps for the closure from the store....
• paint a large piece (or two!) of art for the MSE grad student 'lounge'. 

best part about this art - it's subtly MSE-geeky! The pattern is from the pattern used to define quasi-crystals in x-ray crystallography. The man who first discovered and published his discovery of quasi-crystals just won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry! Click the link to read his story, it was a long uphill battle convincing people that he was correct. (my advisor is/was a crystallographer, so he was very excited...)

Right now, the area inspires no creativity and is just one blah rose beige color. (the furniture is also atrocious, but I'm not going to deal with that yet. well, I may take the couch covers home to wash them, not sure when they were last washed...) I also need to bring some color/life into my personal half cubicle, but I'm kind of stuck with what to do with my space. Suggestions?

In reality, I'm pretty sure the next week is going to be filled with lingering paperwork I need to finish for research, so I'm not too hopeful about getting too many things done...but at least I'll be in a place with sun!

one goal achieved [twice]

Remember my list of goals for the quarter? I'm checking one off my list!

-Find a new coffee shop-

I've actually completed this one twice, as I've now gone to both Bustle on Queen Anne and Star Life on the Oasis in the University district.

Bustle was a very fresh feeling cafe and stocked the wonderful Harney and Sons tea! I love how they package their tea in silk sachets, which allows for the tea to fully unfurl when it is steeping and there is no paper-y taste in your drink. They also have sweet flavors like pomegranate oolong, which will always remind me of Christmas. (Christmas break my freshman year, my dad bought me like 48 bags of that tea which I subsequently drank before Winter Quarter was done and I'll forever associate with that time of year). They also have sweet mosaic tile tables and other ginormous wooden tables - excellent for studying.

Delicious Harney and Sons Tea

The other new shop I traveled to was the Star Life on the Oasis - thanks Nate for prompting me to go there! I actually biked there from SPU, it was only about 4 miles each way, but the going there had a decent hill up through the university district. As much as I love biking, I hate hills!

This is a picture from Star Life - forgive the yellow-ness of the photo, the lighting was really warm in there! But the tea was really good and the atmosphere very cosy with a few wing back chairs and converted-seattle-home feel!

The interior of the cafe. Apparently, they have the best vegan chocolate chip cookies. The bite I had was pretty good!

I wonder - are they many cities in the US that have as many coffee shops (and shops in general) in converted homes as Seattle does? I love the character that each home gives to a shop!