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I’ve been feeling better much but still tired almost all the time. But tired is a million times better than spinning.

I watched the first three parts of an 11 part nature documentary on the Discovery Channel on Sunday evening called Planet Earth. It was spectacular. Super high definition photography from far enough away that the animals were not disturbed or aware of the filming. As one review I read described it, it looks so real, it’s hard to believe it isn’t fake. They got all kinds of “first time such and such has been filmed in the wild” and it is good stuff. It’s brutal at times but always beautiful. I spent most of the three hours with my jaw dropped and every now and then I laughed hysterically. (The babboons in Africa awkwardly walking on their hind legs in the seasonal flood waters because they are bad swimmers while the elephants manage to look graceful doing the doggy paddle was particularly entertaining to me). In any case, if you missed the first three parts, I’m sorry but it’ll be out on DVD. Tune in Sunday night for the next two parts.

Okay, knitting news: I finally took some pictures of the finished slipper socks:

See what I mean about Chenille being bad for socks? There’s no stretch to them at all but at least they fit pretty well:

I made myself some fingerless gloves with the Alpaca I got. I used my Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns and modified it for nice long cuffs and no fingertips. I held two strands of different colors together to make them nice and thick and it gave a nice color effect too. One was a natural/tan color and the other is a muted forest greenish color:

The first one I made was perfect. And the second one was a little bit bigger and baggier although it’s not all that noticeable. They fit well enough and they’re nice and warm to wear when I’m on the computer:

The right one is bigger. Around the time I finished these up, I realized that this was a trend: my knitting starting out one gauge and getting looser and looser and ending up a different gauge by the time I finish the project. This is what happened with the Yellowstone socks that I ripped out and started over. And then with my camo sweater, I got to the point where I bound off some stitches on either end of the body and set it aside to start on the sleeves that would be all joined together eventually. When I put the live stitches on holders to admire my work I realized it was gargantuan. I mean really, way, way bigger than it was supposed to be. I did some measurements and sure enough, what started out at 5 stitches an inch morphed into 4 stitches an inch. That’s the difference between a finished bust measurement of 40″ (will fit comfortably) and 48″ (will not necessarily be recognizable as a sweater on me).

Isn’t the waist shaping nice and subtle? And aren’t the colors gorgeous?

Well, I thought so. And I decided I really want this thing to be for me and I want it to fit me. So I frogged the whole freakin thing and started over with 160 stitches instead of 200. And now I’ve been obsessively checking to make sure I’m on track with my measurements and all seems to be going well.

Of course, the question is what the heck is going on with my gauge? I have two possible ideas and it could be either one or a combination of the two. One is that as I knit, I relax. When I hit mindless knitting mode, I get in a good rhythm and my fingers fly and I think things just end up looser. Another thing is that I changed the way I hold my yarn slightly. I hold my yarn in my left hand, using my index finger to hold the yarn up and taut and my pinkie to control the tension. In the past, I wrapped the yarn around my pinkie to give myself more control. Now that I’ve gotten used to the left handed style, I’ve stopped wrapping around my pinkie and just drape it over. The tension is a bit looser and I can knit faster. So I suspect that a combination of these factors is why my gauge has morphed in the midst of a project. The whole pinkie yarn wrap thing won’t be an issue because now I’m doing it the new way so it can’t cause any variation. And I guess the only other solution for the other is to knit nice big swatches and then check my gauge often as I go. In the future, hopefully these swatches will not be 15″ long and 48″ around!

In any case, I’m well on my way to getting back to where I was and I’m happy I decided to frog the whole thing. I’m doing a ribbed edging since the picot was rather tedious to actually do and doing a weird curly thing I didn’t like when it was done. So ribbing it is. And that’s the knitting news.

Tags: Knitting, Meniere's by Annie
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Good news: the vertigo appears to be under control although I’m still druggy and dragging and just not myself. I made it to work every day this week and made it through the whole day each day which feels so good. However, I also napped a couple hours after work pretty much every day to recover. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for much else and the stress in my life hit an intolerable level.

I’ve realized that stress is almost certainly making the Meniere’s worse and with some help from a wise soul I took a hard look at all of the things in my life that take up my time and energy. This wise soul pointed out that I need to cut back to the point where I can accomplish every thing that is on my plate even when I’m not feeling well. Then when I am feeling well, any extra stuff I can get done is bonus. I also need to not feel guilty about taking time to read and knit because those are my calming things. Knitting is almost meditation to me.

So, the things in my life that entail some sort of obligation and which cause me to feel guilty if I neglect them are: work, class on flash animation, approaching comprehensive exams, my podcast, my blog, a website I run for my family, and LibriVox. And here’s the plan…

Work is my priority. I enjoy my job and I’m blessed to work with people who are understanding about my illness. Even if I didn’t need the money, I’d want to work because several years of not being able to work made me realize how essential it is for me mentally to feel useful and appreciated.

After work, the next priority is finishing my Master’s degree in Library Science. This is the last semester and the last class. I’m doing well in my class. In fact, that mini project I posted about a while back got named “best overall” out of 30 something odd students in the class. Which is nice but also drove home just how much of a perfectionist I am. I don’t have to become a flash genius, I just need to pass the class, and I need to keep my standards I set for myself reasonable. The other component of finishing the Master’s is comps. A week of writing four papers each 4-6 pages in length. I could be preparing more than I am but that’s not my style. I’m a last minute writer. That week will come and I’ll get the papers done and it will be fine. I can’t let it hang over my head until then.

So then there are my various online projects. My blog is more something for myself that I enjoy than an obligation, as is my podcast. My family’s website is really minimal maintenance although I do need to upgrade the phpBB software. I’d like to devote more time to my blog eventually and my podcast has been terribly neglected recently. I never record because whenever I have time to do that, I realize how much LibriVox stuff I need to catch up on and my own project gets put on the back burner, sometimes for a month at a time.

As much as I love LV, it has become an obligation instead of a fun thing. I want it to be fun again. I want to record my chapters without feeling guilty. I want to go a week without logging in. So the biggest thing I’m doing to adjust my life is I’m taking a break from coordinating projects on LV. This is hard. I love LV and I hate feeling like I’m putting more pressure on others. But at the same time, as soon as I made this decision and spoke up to the other coordinators, I knew I’d done the right thing. Everyone jumped in with help and support and I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I want to come back to coordinating, especially poetry, when my life is more normal. But for now, LV is going on the back burner.

I know this may be dull to anyone who has read this far but I’m writing this as much to clarify my own thoughts and plan as anything else. And I feel better about things. I feel like life is manageable again.

Tomorrow I will record a chapter and post a knitting update and not feel a bit of guilt for doing so.

Tags: Knitting, LibriVox, Meniere's, School, Work by Annie
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Yup. Tuesday and Friday last week, off and on Sunday. Yesterday I made it through work and then was in bed the rest of the afternoon and evening. Today I made it through work and have been much better this afternoon/evening but still feel right on the edge. I saw the doc on Thursday and we’re increasing my meds quite a bit so I’m significantly groggy in addition to the Meniere’s symptoms. The earaches have been pretty bad as well.

I don’t mean to complain, it’s just scary. Terrifying really, to think of being that sick again as I was before. If the increased meds don’t get it under control the next step will be Gentamicin injections to attempt to partially deaden my inner ear. It would be the first destructive treatment I’d receive and carries a significant risk of hearing loss. Obviously, I don’t want to get to that point.

Here’s a link to a nice graph that shows various treatments for Meniere’s Disease: http://www.meniett.com/images/treatment_ladder_large.jpg courtesy of the Meniett website. They have “treatment with local overpressure” highlighted because that is what the device they are selling does. Anyway, I think it is interesting because it shows the general progression of treatment for patients with Meniere’s Disease. I’ve been using my Meniett for about four years now and I had endolymphatic sac decompression/shunt surgery in August of 2003. So if continued use of the Meniett and the medications I’m on (Diuretic, Valium, Antivert) can’t control my symptoms, the next step up the treatment ladder is Gentamicin.

I keep thinking, why now when I have so many good things going for me and so many even better and more exciting things coming up soon? But really, is there ever a good time for vertigo? I guess better now when I have so many good things in my life to motivate me to keep going and fight it with everything I’ve got. For five years of my life Meniere’s Disease has been a presence. For the first two years I was pretty much in bed. I’ve been blessed that the last three years have consisted of mainly controlling mild symptoms and putting it out of my mind. It’s always there but the thought of the havoc it has the potential to wreak on my life is too horrible to truly acknowledge very often. Last night, laying in bed, I found myself face to face with it for the first time in a while and it scared the crap out of me.

But today has been a decent day and I feel a bit less dopey. It’s time to think positive thoughts, take advantage of the times when I feel good and have energy, yet be realistic about my limitations until I’ve ridden out this flare up. It’s the nature of the disease.  It’s always there and it always will be.

Tags: Meniere's by Annie
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So, the past week I’ve been driving myself nuts working on a “Mini Project” for my Flash class. We were given a JPG file of the school mascot and instructed to include a variety of animation elements we have learned so far in the class. I submitted my project at 11:30 pm last night, 15 minutes before the deadline. Check it out and admire at your leisure.

In other news my Meniere’s had continued to be problematic and then last week my ear started to feel funny. As in I could tell something was wrong with the opening in my ear drum. The reason why I have an opening in my ear drum is related to a device called the Meniett which I’ll let you investigate on your own if you choose. In any case, I’ve had tubes, I’ve had problems with tubes, they’ve been in and out and the last time my doctor (who is wonderful by the way) ended up having to take the tube out, he was sure that the opening would stay open. But last week on Wednesday night my ear felt funny and Thursday I woke up and was pretty much sure it was closed. Yesterday I saw the doctor and sure enough, it sealed itself back up again. Rather than have outpatient surgery to put in a fancy T-shaped tube as we’ve done the last two times, we opted for a “temporary” tube done right then and there in the office as we did with the first tube. My doctor’s theory was that since the T-tubes haven’t lasted any longer than the temporary ones, might as well git ‘er done so to speak. Well, it wasn’t fun but at least it is done and I can use my Meniett again starting tonight.

Of course I then had one heck of an earache and didn’t sleep well last night so I had to miss work today. It was nice though to sleep in and get caught up on some miscellaneous stuff. The most recent poetry collection at LibriVox filled up and just as I was about to start cataloging, I read a post from Chris, one of our brilliant programmers, that he had implemented a feature I requested that allows people cataloging collections to input a variety of fields at one time. For instance, in a collection of 20 poems, I previously had to enter manually the title, author, and source for each one into a special area called the compilation table. This makes the title and author of individual poems searchable by the catalog. And the source is important to document Public Domain status. I keep track of all this stuff on a spreadsheet and then, by my calculations, would copy and paste from Excel to Firefox 60 times. Yup, 60. And that’s just for the compilation data, similar stuff has to be copied and pasted other places for regular cataloging. Well, Chris made us a brilliant feature that allows us to copy and paste from excel and enter every single bit of compilation data in one go. It made my day. It makes cataloging poetry so much more pleasant! So, if you’ll excuse me, I have a collection to finish cataloging.

Knitting pictures coming later…

Tags: LibriVox, Meniere's, School, Tech by Annie
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Ack, it’s been a while as Kara and Kristin reminded me. I’ve been quite busy with work and school lately. At work I wrote a grant last year for my library which we were awarded to redesign our website. My boss and I decided on a company to do the redesign and met with them two weeks ago to start the process and I can tell it’s going to be a lot of fun! I need to start rewriting some content and new stuff to fill in the design work that our contractor is doing.

Thank goodness this is my last semester of school as the burnout has reached an all time high. Thank goodness also that I only have one class and it is FUN! Library school in the 21st century is pretty awesome. I’ve learned everything I know about web design from graduate coursework and right now I’m taking a course on Flash. It’s a pretty fun way to finish out the Masters. (I’m trying not to think about the Comprehensive Exams I have coming up in April.) Flash is fun but it’s challenging too. I have tremendous respect now for some of the fancy stuff that is out there.

So, when work and school are taken care of, there is LibriVox to tend to and I found myself feeling swamped in poetry collections and barely able to keep up, let alone record something. So I reached out to some of my fellow metacoordinators for help and the wonderful Kristin (Wisconsin Kristin, not New Hampshire Kristin) stepped up to the plate and we will now alternate short poetry collections. It’ll be like a tag team and give me some breathing room which is much needed. As soon as I’m done posting this I plan on recording a chapter or two of Anne which has gone sadly neglected for weeks now as many of you have reminded me!

I’ve been feeling fried lately. My Meniere’s Disease is flaring up and I tend to try to pretend it isn’t and push through it which of course only makes it worse. It’s so frustrating to be slowed down and held back when I have so many things I want to do. Granted, one of the main things is sitting on the couch with my man and watching tv or Six Feet Under on DVD and knitting but we all need our down time.

Knitting is my new obsession. I have been having fun with all my beautiful new yarn but I got sidetracked when a coworker and friend added a baby girl to their family two weeks ago. I went to my awesome local yarn store and picked out some pretty pink cotton and knit this up in a few nights:

It’s a pretty pink Sara Hat! The decorations were sort of accidental. I knit two rows of ribbing at the recommendation of a book I was using as a guide to control the roll. Only the roll controlled itself quite nicely and the ribbing just looked silly so I threaded some ribbon through it. The little roses I just found in my random craft stash and used them to mask some decreases that were more obvious than I would have liked. I’m quite happy with how it turned out and I can’t wait to see it on the sweet baby’s head, although I’m told it is too big. And to think I was worried it was too small! But babies in my family tend to have ginormous heads so maybe I let that factor in too much.

But now I’m happily on to my other projects again. I’ve learned some fun new stuff and will post pictures soon. And there’s your Annie update.

Tags: Knitting, LibriVox, Meniere's, School, Work by Annie
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