Time for your monthly dose of Beta

So much news to report! But I can't imagine it's news that any of you haven't heard yet.

Regardless....

1. We're moving to Boston! E* got a residency at Mass General cuz he's wicked smaht and it starts in mid-June so things are moving quickly. Thanks to craigslist and some VERY helpful friends, we managed to secure an apartment in 5 days. Although it doesn't have any outdoor space, it IS in a very cool neighborhood, has an updated kitchen, 2 BRs, and a W/D in the unit. Estimated moving time - early 20s of May.
   
   
2. We're going to Europe!!! Of course apartment hunting, graduating, packing, and moving wasn't enough activity for us so we decided to take off for 18 days (!!!) to visit folks in Austria and Germany as well as some straight-up touristing in Paris. E*'s skills with sidestep and cheaptickets cut our ticket prices in half from what we first found a couple of weeks ago. We're also contemplating a stop in Amsterdam.
   
   
3. Busy weekends - now that our time in DC is coming to a close, we're filling up our weekends trying to fit everything in. Last weekend included cherry blossoms (at 8am), Sticky Fingers breakfast, biking around the city, and sunday evening at Adams Mill (a tradition I will definitely miss). Next weekend might hold brunch at Red Derby.
   
4. Pasta - I had been monitoring my rss feed for "pasta roller" for about a month when a mint-condition, all-metal, Imperia pasta roller first popped up.  For $20, I was soon the proud owner of a barely used, still in the box w/ manual, heavy pasta roller. I LOVE it. The thing is intuitive, sturdy, and rolls out sheets of thin pasta with very little fuss. The funny thing is, we rarely eat pasta. I've had the same boxes of whole wheat penne, spagetti, and other noodles in our cupboard for nearly a year. But when I tried to make ravioli from scratch over the winter -  ravioli is my most favorite pasta indulgence - I was extremely frustrated with the rolling process. I wasn't able to get it thin enough and the raviolis were too bulky. While I haven't yet used my new toy to make ravioli sheets, I have made a batch of regular egg fettucini and this past weekend I made a large batch of spinach fettucini. I have discovered that I enjoy snacking on the ribbon at every stage: dough, fresh noodles, during drying, completely dried, and cooked. I don't think there's any hope of more restraint, so I'll just have to make some more regular trips to the gym.
   
   
5. Mundane closing: Yes, I'm still reading Blindness. The seedlings I planted a couple of weeks ago are looking weak (basil, chile peppers, cilantro, spinach, etc). We watched Slumdog Millionaire on Sat. and loved it - sort of a given, right? At the urging of a couple of friends, we filled our TV show-via website void with Arrested Development. They were right - it is much better if you start from the beginning and watch in order. We had previously filled that void with Flight of the Conchords and were so into it that we watched all of the episodes that were available in 2 weekends. This void exists because shows like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Weeds, Big Love, etc don't have any new episodes available for us to watch. Knitting: I finished a pair of socks for me that I love. Also crocheting a big secret project for the next several months. And yesterday I finished baby booties for one of Erich's mentors/residents that are apparently very cute judging by the squeals of the women next to us.
   

Forgive Me

For I have comitted a knitting sin.

I ripped out my first pair of socks.

And I feel great about it!!

See, I didn't really know what I was doing when I started these back in 2006. I got the pattern right, but the yarn and needle combination was horrible. The resulting fabric was so dense - I've always hated the feel of it. Plus I bound-off one of the socks rather tightly making it extremely difficult to pull over my heel. I nearly break the yarn every time I try. All this means that I almost never feel like wearing these socks even though I still like the colorway. I fell asleep last night happily day-dreaming about giving the yarn a chance to redeem itself by knitting new socks with size 2 or 3 needles (instead of the 0's I used back then).

This morning over a cup of coffee, I ripped out both socks right onto the ballwinder. Go ahead and judge. 

R.I.P First Socks. See you again soon...sort of.

Employee Free Choice Act

I have a lot to say about this actually but for now I'll just post this amusing video.

5 Things

Stolen SHAMELESSLY from a friend's blog (not sure if she wants to be blog-outed just yet)

5 Computery Things That I Think You Should Know*
Or I am a Huge Dork, the Abridged Version

1. Alt+Tab - Used to switch between open programs without using the mouse. I probably use this more than any shortcut keys besides CTRL+C and V. I tried to take a screenshot of what this looks like but it doesn't work - the screenshot key seems to override the Alt+Tab function so the little window isn't saved in the screenshot. So I decided to poach the image from another site - U of Alaska Southeast. My blog doesn't get many hits anyway.
   
   
   
   
2. F2 - I use this mainly in excel to be able to type in/edit a cell without clicking the mouse. Saves a TON of time. Personally, I think that any time you can replace a mouse movement with  key strokes, it's a time-saver but I don't think everyone agrees. But F2 is awesome.


3. Google Reader - If you still keep up with blogs, online news, and other types of sites by manually clicking on them every day (or several times a day?) then STOP IT! Seriously feed readers such as the awesome Google version can track everything for you and by going to that one site (the google reader page) you can instantly see which of your many time-wasty sites have been updated. I use mine to follow friends' blogs, icanhascheezburger, post secret (etc, etc), craigslist searches of things on my wish list, press sites for work, and even ravelry updates. Look for the little orange RSS button on any site you like or simply paste the site's URL into the "Add Subscription" bar on the left in Google Reader. It will then hunt for the RSS feed for you.
   
   


4. Specialized google searches such as "site:.gov" or "filetype:xls" - found under the advanced search section of google.com, I use these two right in the search bar all the time. Like, "zip codes site:.gov" would only return results found on pages that end in .gov, ie. only info on government sites. Other handy ones are .edu, or [state].us. It's also useful for sites that don't have their own search bar. So you could do "knitting site:.bloggingbeta.blogspot.com" (ignoring for a moment that this site actually does have a search bar).
   
   
5. Text-to-columns and concatenate: (Advanced warning that this is an extremely dry topic to explain in writing...read on at your own risk)
   I often use the first one in conjunction with find/replace. Example: I pull a bunch of data off a website and paste it into excel. Except it doesn't paste as a table, it crams everything into 1 cell. If the information is a list of locations such that each one has common labels like "phone: asljdf", "address: dkfj, AK", etc, then I might use find/replace to change all the "phone:" to an * and all the "address:" to some other symbol like ~ or [.  Once that's done, I could use text-to-columns to break out the contents of that cell using the symbols (found under the 'delimited' option, not 'fixed width'. So at the end, all of those numbers and addresses would be separated out in their own cells. I use text-to-columns mostly for when I receive data that has city, state all in one cell and I need separate city and state columns. I tell text-to-columns to break it up at the comma. Concatenate is just the reverse of text-to-columns except it's a formula rather than a tool in the menu. If you have house numbers in 1 column and street names in the other, you can use a 3rd column that is a mash-up of the first 2: =1stcolumn&2ndcolumn...but really you'd need a space in the middle of the numbers and names so it'd be =1stcolumn&" "&2ndcolumn to yield "1 Main St." You can also use =concatenate(1stcolumn," ",2ndcolumn). 

I think a lot of computer tips are things you would have never thought about if you didn't know that such a trick existed - it's like, you don't know what you don't know. I'm sure there are a ton of really easy tricks out there that I don't know and I blissfully go about my business doing some things manually, having no idea that there's a much better way to do it. I spend a lot of time in Excel and think it's a perfect example of that pitfall. Until you've seen something in action (or get so frustrated trying to achieve something that you magically discover the tip during a furious session of googling) you don't even know what capabilities are out there.

* Unlike many of my coworkers, I bet friends that read this already know these things.  But I was inspired to draft this list after a week of a surprising number of relevations on their part during various collaborations with them on the computer. "Wait...what did you just do there? How did you jump from Word to Excel like that!?"

I didn't post just to get attention

And it worked! It's like the silent treatment for blogs!
(but secretly we all know I just got lazy...)

Is your life low on bullet points? Then you've come to the right place...

• World of Goo (plus Sonic, Donkey Kong, and Wild West) - we finally started using some gifted wii points (thanks princess sara) and purchased these 4 games. World of Goo is AWESOME! Highly recommend. It's good enough to make E* completely ignore the Wild West game (which is saying something cuz he loves shoot 'em up games).
  
  
• Rank list and where to live - anyone who reads this is probably aware that E* graduates from med school in May and begins residency in July. We won't find out WHERE that residency will be until March 19th. Our last shred of control over this process comes to an end tonight which is the deadline for submitting The Rank List. This list is part of the whole weird Match process whereby each residency program (in a given specialty) ranks the applicants they interviewed while the applicants make a rank list of the programs they would want to attend. All of the lists are fed into a computer and it magically calculates the best possible match based on both parties' preferences. On March 19th, the students each open 1 envelope which contains 1 program's name - so there aren't a collection of acceptances to choose between and it is a binding contract. Items on that list are Boston, Philly, New Haven, DC, Worcester, and NY. It's going to be an agonizing 3 weeks. But probably not as agonizing as the last week has been for E* since the rank list submittal process forces so much self-analysis and goal-assessing...makes for sleepless nights.
  
  
• Knits in 09 - it's been a stash-busting frenzy for the last several weeks and there's no end in sight. I cranked out a hat for me (even though I *never* wore hats), a reusable cotton swiffer cover, a one-skein cowl that I LURVE, and 3 squares as part of a gifted blanket project. I'm also working on a first sock using birthday gift yarn from last year (love it!).
  
  
• Restaurant Week: we had lunch at Oyamel last weekend. Our favorite dish was the Pastel de tres leches con piña. I also really enjoyed the seared scallops with pumpkinseed sauce and the black bean soup.
  
  
• Real reasons for not blogging: twitter, ravelry, flickr, and facebook. They are killing my blogger motivation even though I don't spend much time on any one of them.
  
  
• 2 photos from our recent day-trip to Baltimore - we just spent a few hours there walking around the inner harbor and Fells Point. Here we are enjoying some wicked oysters and crab cake.

Blerg.

Edited: Oh well, it was worth a shot.
You all (both?) know how it can get with a blog....a little time gets away from you and the task of updating becomes über-intimidating.

More than a month

Even when things are busy, I try to make sure I post at least once in a 30 day period. Well, blog fail. (D'oh, I promised not to use that word again cuz it's so overused. oh well.)

Throughout the day today, I will periodically add to this post with short updates or tidbits until it becomes worth posting. So don't expect transitions or good prose or anything (ha, like you were anyway?)

• I won 2 tickets through my work to the Inaugural Concert at the Lincoln Memorial called We Are One. Performances by Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Bono, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Renee Fleming, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, Heather Headley, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles, John Mellencamp, Usher Raymond IV, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, will.i.am, and Stevie Wonder.  Among those reading historical passages will be Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah and Denzel Washington. It will also be like 10 degrees out so I'm not 100% sure we'll be going. Oh, and the tickets get us into the front-most section near the stage. Otherwise the event is free and open to the public.
  
  
• On inauguration day itself, I think we're planning to stay home and enjoy whatever food and drinks we please, surrounded by lots of large bags..and heat.
  
  
• In the end, I gave 11 knitted/crocheted gifts as Christmas presents: 5 scarves, 2 hats, 2 snowflakes, 1 bag, and 1 pair of socks (though one of those scarves was orig. knit 2 yrs ago, I did some tweaking and wrapped it up). It was fun but totally exhausting. I'm now reveling in January as it is the month of knitting for me. A pair of socks for my feet will be finished shortly :)
  
  
• E* went on his last residency interview today!!!! Congrats babe! Now he has about a month to finalize his rank list to submit to the Central Computer. And March 19th will be a glorious day at the end of a long journey when we'll find out where he'll be doctoring for the next 4 years.

I intended to have more updates here but the day was busier than I expected. Partially due to some serious ticket swapping negotiations when we almost had the opportunity to get 2 "silver standing" tickets to the swearing in ceremony. Unfortunately, that fell through but not without some serious bribe offers on my part.