brainylady

I'm about to write about two wildly different things...

1. I'm stressed. I may even go so far as to say I'm freaking out. Let's see -- how far back should I go? When Bill and I came to Taiwan, we were going to stay for a year and a half, and I was going to start my M.A. in the fall of 2003. In January 2003, we decided to stay longer, and my school plan was shifted a year. This is still the plan: to start grad school in September 2004. Although in the back of my mind I've always considered applying to all kinds of big and fancy schools, the default plan has been to do the M.A. in Media Studies at the U. of Western Ontario. Having lived in Taipei for about twenty months, I miss all kinds of familiar things about home, but now I'm not sure that I'm necessarily ready to go back to Canada. I still like the idea of living in another country (an English-speaking one, please). So I'm thinking of applying to schools in the U.S. and maybe the U.K. Fine, so far so good. It's only October, lots of time, the deadline at Western is February 1. So I start doing a little research on the Internet about grad programs in the States, and there are several that look really interesting. Really interesting. But applicants must submit scores from something called the GRE. Hmm, what's that? It's a big test that Canadians never need to worry about unless they want to, say, go to school in the States. And the more I read about it, I realize that I may be too late. I'll try to figure it out for sure tomorrow, but for now -- because it's the weekend -- I'm freaking out and beating myself up for being such a procrastinator. When we decided at the beginning of this year to stay in Taipei, the fall 2004 semester seemed soooo far away. I've had so much time to prepare to apply for school, and I've done nothing. And now it's October 2003. Is it possible that I missed the boat?

2. Yesterday I knit about four inches of a sock with my lovely Atlantis mini-ringel. I was flying along on 3 mm needles, around and around in stocking stitch, because I wanted something fast and mindless. Today I had to accept the fact that those needles were too big and the sock would be too loosey-goosey, so I started over with 2.5 mm using the pattern for Michelle's Basic Socks. And I'm so glad! Twisting the purl stitches took some getting used to, but the cuff is looking excellent. So thanks, loosey-goosey cuff, for providing the fast and mindless knitting that I needed yesterday. Your services are no longer required.