Just finished a new tutu...

...the AIDS Lifecycle Reunion Party is tomorrow!

I wasn't sure if I'd go (I've pretty much been in hiding from the ALC community while trying to get this #*$! sample chapter written), but I finally decided yes, if only to get in touch with some riders I want to re-interview.

So, of course, that gave rise to the "but do I wear a tutu?", to which the answer is obviously yes--if only because, if I turned up without one, everyone would ask me where my tutu was, all afternoon long. (It would be like turning up naked.)

So that, of course, gave rise to "but do I make a NEW tutu?" --I mean, I could just go in jeans, T-shirt, and an old tutu...kind of the dress-me-down version...

...but nah. I mean, would *I* be caught dead in the same tutu twice?? dahhhhling, how could you even SUGGEST such a thing?!?

...so I decided to split the difference and turn up in T-shirt, jeans, and a brand new tutu.

This one's gonna be nice--it's a bright orange fabric heavily brocaded with gold and silver paisley designs. Very bright, visible from quite a distance. It's a fairly stiff fabric and I put it into pleats, so it stands out quite nicely on its own, with only a little help from the underskirt I "borrowed" from another tutu. It's iridescent--the gold and silver appears and disappears depending on the angle--and vaguely Asian-looking. I haven't yet decided whether to wear my nice orange-with-gold-iridescence Vietnamese silk blouse (that I had made for me in Vietnam) with it. I think the combo would look stunning, but since it's a barbeque it's probably a bit too dressy for the day. I think I'll stick with my AIDS Lifecycle T-shirt, jeans, and an orange brocade tutu. It has just the right ring of absurdity to it. :-)

I'll see if I can get photos tomorrow, and if so I'll post 'em.

Tien

yarn sale, stash

Cool sale: http://www.customyarns.com is offering a free skein of Pizzazz (which retails for $36/skein) and a free skein of Showstopper (no clue on retail price) to anyone who orders at least $20 from them.

They also have a really mouthwatering collection of custom yarns, which is worth checking out. I LOVE their colors, and unlike most shops, they offer yarns I can't spin--multistranded yarns, metallic yarns, eyelash yarns, and so on.

I went over there and checked it out, but didn't buy anything...not much point in getting a skein or two of yarn, and at the moment I can't afford enough for an entire project.

More to the point...even if I did buy it, I know I wouldn't use it, which makes it a waste of money and space. I used to accumulate stash with the best of them, but I am actively avoiding stash-building now, because I've realized two basic facts:

(1) the vast majority of items entering my stash (and, I suspect, most people's) will never get used;
(2) I don't need it. The world is full of interesting materials. Whenever I want a new project, there will be PLENTY of materials on hand to do it. If it isn't this particular material right in front of me, it'll be something else--and I'll be fine with that.

Stash is basically a power/control issue. It's "I want to be able to make THAT throw out of THAT particular red alpaca fleece, and I don't trust that an equivalent one will be available when I get around to it." It's the same instinct that makes us save up for a rainy day, gather food for the winter, and put on fat so we don't starve. But we're living in the midst of abundance; we don't need stash, any more than we need extra fat on our bodies. And I view extra stash as a burden, not as a benefit...it takes up space, it takes up money, and it takes up mental energy.

One of the things I've discovered from living in a very small space for the last year, and having nearly all of my items in storage, is that we don't need most of the things we have. 90% of the stuff I have in storage has been in storage for the past year; I can go down and get it, if I need it, but I haven't needed it. The stuff that is currently with me is the stuff that I genuinely need, and there isn't much of it. In the early days, I went down to the storage space once a month or so. These days, it's maybe every few months. But 90% of my stuff is still in storage, and I need almost none of it. Big lesson there.

The question of "what if I couldn't get X?" came with me through Southeast Asia...I was traveling with a backpack and couldn't bring more than half a shoebox's worth of craft materials. Moreover, I was traveling light--all my belongings weighed about fifty pounds--so I couldn't afford the weight of, say, a big pack of beads.

I thought about it carefully before I left and brought a careful selection of items to give me the biggest possible variety of hobbies in the smallest possible space. You should have seen what I planned to bring with me! Blackwork embroidery projects, another embroidery project with fabric, ribbons, and beads, a book on craftwork, and so on. That was what I thought of as a minimal stash for six months' travel (and I thought I was traveling light). My friend who had been on foreign backpacking trips before took one look at it and started laughing. "You're not going to use it," she said. I said, "But what if I can't get any craft stuff in Southeast Asia?"

It turned out that we were both right. There is very little conventional craft stuff available in Southeast Asia--at least for the things we think of as craft--but it didn't matter, because I wouldn't have used it. In fact, of the small collection of craft stuff that I did bring--silk for spinning, a few beads, origami paper, and a few other small crafts--the only thing I really used was the silk and the knitting needles. I wound up sending most of my craft supplies home after a month or so, as a useless burden. (My feet were hurting.) If I'd needed a craft to do, I could have found one--even if I needed to hand-spin reeled silk into yarn for knitting, or learn to braid using coconut palm fronds, or whatever was available.

So what I learned out of that experience is that, first, there is no point in carrying anything that you aren't immediately working on--the world is awash in craft materials, and as long as you have a healthy curiosity and a certain amount of creativity, the journey will be full of creative richness no matter how little you own. Second, anything you aren't immediately working on is a burden--even if it's a relatively small one.

That said, I'm not against having a small stash...it is extremely helpful to have a basic set of tools and materials. I have three boxes of fiber under my bed, basically enough to sample anything, and provide materials for a few small projects. I don't really need it, but it's nice to have; it saves me a trip to the shop when I want to test something. I don't need more than enough to sample; once I decide I want to use it, I can always get more. Even exotic stuff like guanaco is fairly readily available online. If it isn't available, I come up with another project, which takes about three seconds. So that gives me a lot of variety with relatively little drag.

The other thing I've noticed is that most things can be made with a minimum of tools. I don't feel the need to buy painted rovings, because I know how to paint my own. Granted that I won't be able to get *that* particular painted roving, but I can get a close approximation by painting my own. (Or I can order another, different-yet-just-as-nice painted roving once I want to start the project.) I can blend stuff on hand cards. For me, there's something elegant about owning the exact minimum of tools and fibers necessary to make (almost) anything--exactly enough, without anything left over. If and when I move back into my own place, I think I'll probably stay with that philosophy. 125 lbs of fiber for someone who uses maybe 8-10 ounces a year is utterly absurd. That's not a sensible stash, that's hoarding. 3-4 pounds is more than enough.

I'd like, at some point in my life, just to be able to go through life and trust thatI'll find enough along the way--because I am almost certain that that's true--but I can't quite bring myself to do it yet. I have the same instincts towards hoarding that everyone else does, having been brought up in the same society. But there was something really wise in the Lao philosophy--they tend to live in the moment, and feel sorry for people who think too hard. If a Lao farmer raises enough rice by April to feed his family, he simply stops working for the rest of the year, and enjoys the leisure time. Granted that this attitude does have its downsides--long-term planning is not a Lao forte--there is something to be said for simply enjoying life in the moment. I view stash-building as living in the future--planning for "someday"--and so am trying to avoid it.

There are, of course, other reasons for stash-building--mostly social and entertainment--but I've discovered that I can have just as much fun watching eBay for new and interesting items without actually buying them. I mean, if it's really appealing enough then I'll buy it, but I very rarely bid--it's more a source of interesting ideas than anything else. Ditto fiber festivals. As for the social aspects...these days I mostly talk about interesting discoveries/ideas (when I run into other fiber artists, which I don't often), and that seems to work fine for me.

Anyway, different people accumulate stash for different reasons, and I think the size of a "working stash" varies from spinner to spinner (mine is particularly small because I work on small, slow projects), but I think the instinct to acquire stash is something that's worth thinking about. It's rather like fat--a little bit of it is vital, a medium amount is fine, but lots and lots tends to be a drag. How much of a drag depends on your resources and circumstances--some people can better afford to acquire/store it than others. At the moment, I very much prefer to live and travel light.

All that being said, do check out the yarn shop I mentioned at the start...it has some utterly gorgeous yarns, and some really cool ideas. I'm glad I went for a look, even though I didn't buy anything. :-)

Tien

more on bodybuilding

Just finished reading Serious Strength Training by Tudor Bompa et al, and have concluded that I'm not a serious strength trainer. ;-) That's not too surprising since they are targeting serious (for which read "competition") bodybuilders, so it's very detailed advice targeted specifically at building the largest possible muscles while keeping body fat down to 10% or less. This really does not describe me.

The principles of their method appear to be fairly straightforward, though, and involve the same periodized training that you also see in cycling manuals. There are two basic principles to it:

(1) do three weeks of progressively more intense training, then cut back to about 40% intensity for one week--the rest week allows your body time to recover and rebuild;
(2) don't just focus on doing one thing over and over, but vary your focus--have periods where you focus on building big muscles, building strong muscles, reducing bodyfat and building endurance--with different workloads for each, so you're not doing the same thing all the time. Have rest periods in between.

Cycling training is just like that too, and I suspect it's a good general principle for all physical training--(1) progressively higher loads, (2) rest periods, (3) varied training schedule.

At any rate, for what I'm doing, there are three basic phases:

(1) anatomical adaptation ("easing into it")--building muscle and tendon strength. I was going to skip this since I've been lifting for awhile, but then I realized that I'm also easing myself into a six-day-a-week exercise schedule from a 2-3 day/week exercise schedule, so easing back on the weights for awhile, to let the body get used to the new exercise schedule, makes sense. If you push your body to do/change too much at once, you get injuries, not improvement.

In this phase, you're doing about 15 reps per set and about 3 sets, with relatively light weights, and "circuit training" (doing one set on each machine, then moving on to the next) so your muscles get extra time between sets.

(2) hypertrophy, aka building big muscles. Slightly heavier weights, slightly fewer sets, work the muscles to exhaustion in almost every set, and EAT A LOT--putting on fat as well as muscle. Workouts can get pretty long, 1-2 hours of lifting.

(3) muscle definition, aka eliminating body fat. They're recommending lots of repetitions at very light weights (to focus on burning subcutaneous fat), but (a) I'm not convinced that actually takes off subcutaneous fat any better than any other kind of exercise, since fat conversion happens in the liver no matter where the fat happens to be located, and (b) since the key is lots of endurance exercise, this seems like a great excuse to go cycling. :-)

There are two other phases, maximizing strength and mixed training, but those are more for advanced bodybuilders, so I'm going to leave them out for the moment.

Given my reading thus far, I do like the idea of periodized training, and of focusing on different things in different phases. I think I will likely substitute cycling for their exercises during the muscle definition phase--I need more time on the bike, and since I'm not a competition bodybuilder, I don't need the extra 3% muscle I'd get from endurance weightlifting instead. I'm currently reading other texts on weightlifting and also on cycling, to see how I can get the most out of my time in the gym/on the bike.

But fundamentally, the main focus of my life right now is not bodybuilding, it's jobhunting and working on the book, so I'm not going to get too serious about it. I'll put together a training program and do workouts 6x/week, but I'm not going to be in the gym 3 hours a day just to get those bulging biceps. Good fitness and lower bodyfat is enough for me, at least for now.

I forgot my main objection to following the book strictly--as part of their periodized nutrition, they want to stick me on the Atkins Diet (they call it something else), and that's a major problem for me. All other concerns aside (and I have a lot of them), I was raised on a typical Chinese diet--low-protein, low-fat, high-carbohydrate. Eating that much meat/fat would gross me out completely; I wouldn't last a day on Atkins.

So I'm continuing to look through bodybuilding texts, and note down the bits that make sense with what I already know about exercise/training. I'm also starting to read books on cycling training, so I can make the most of the time I do get in on the bike. I'll get much more serious about cycling training come spring, probably sometime in February.

Tien

Book, workouts, and fiber stuff

So, I signed up for a class in storywriting (I think I mentioned it earlier) and it has gotten me out of the "dry spell". I'm glad I signed up for the class, because writing the first three pages was so difficult I doubt I'd have managed it otherwise. it's good to know that others are reading your writing--otherwise, it feels like there's no point. The class itself isn't giving me a whole lot, but having readers is. Yay!

At any rate, I have the first three pages written, and am working on the next vignette, which is going up Quadbuster (the steepest hill on the ride). It's surprisingly difficult, primarily because writing is all about detail and I remember relatively few of the details--I have to reconstruct things from what I remember and from interviews. You try remembering the exact scenery from every moment of a 585-mile ride, especially when you've been concentrating on not hitting cyclists. Yeah, exactly.

It's also taking a surprisingly long time to write up the interviewed parts, because it takes about four hours of transcription per page. This is temporary, and it basically has to do with my own laziness. I have probably about 100 hours of interviews, and maybe four hours are transcribed. Most of them are still on the original audiotape. So, to get a quote from someone, I first have to rerecord the conversation in digital audio format (1.5 hours on average), taking short notes on the content of the conversation, and then find the passage where the interesting topic was discussed and transcribe it (usually another 2 hours). As an example, I typed up 13 pages of transcript from two audiotapes to get the first 2.5 pages. But the good news is that once I type up a segment, I don't have to do it again. The bad news is, I have a LOT of interviews.

But the biggest problem is that I wasn't physically there for most of it, which makes it really hard. How do you dramatize something when you can't make up details? I can write that someone got their knee examined, but if he doesn't remember who did it, I can't make up a description of the physical therapist who did the examination. I can't write the conversation because it isn't remembered. And so on. I'm really debating the limits of how much detail I can make up/extrapolate, since this is narrative nonfiction. I'm reading some narrative nonfiction to see if I can help with that. My inspiration at the moment is John McPhee's Looking for a Ship, which is all about the U.S. Merchant Marine--John McPhee being modestly described as "the best nonfiction writer living". I actually don't see why he's regarded in such total awe (though he does write very, very good nonfiction and I would like to be that good someday), but the point is that Looking for a Ship is almost exactly the style and format that I think would be best for the book, so I am reading and re-reading it, analyzing its structure.

The alternative is something more like Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (an account of climbing Mt. Everest), although I'm not sure I can duplicate that, either. Krakauer had the advantage of being present in, and participating in, every inch of the ride. I'm trying to write vignettes of the ride of a whole. Two other interesting works of narrative nonfiction are The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe), which is about the space program, and The Perfect Storm (can't recall the author), but I think neither of them has the style I want. I've been voraciously reading various books of narrative nonfiction, looking for a style/tone that will work for this ride. I'm concentrating on those that are written in the third person, and are about a journey of some sort--if you have suggestions, let me know.

My other big project at the moment is mostly happening at the gym: I've decided to get moderately serious about weightlifting and am working on a more concerted program. The trouble is that bodybuilding and cycling are just about mutually exclusive--lots of cardio exercise tends to prevent you from putting on muscle, which is of course the whole point of bodybuilding. I was going to spend the winter focusing on bodybuilding and rebuild cycling endurance in the spring (since the winter season is the "rest season" anyway), but I've decided that I do want to keep a little bit of endurance cycling up. It's easier to *stay* in cardio condition than to get there in the first place--once you've been in good condition for a year or more your body tends to stay that way even if you're inactive for a few months. But if you're a couch potato for too long, you get to start from ground zero.

I've been off the bike for a good eight months due to the knee injury, and really it's been more like 14 months since I was in really good shape. I'm in much better condition still than when I started cycling, but I don't want to go all the way back there. So I do want to do enough cycling to keep myself in the game.

So I'm compromising by spending four days in the gym weightlifting and two days a week on the road cycling. Weightlifting workouts are ideally supposed to be an hour or less (although for pro bodybuilders it can apparently be longer), basically because you start running out of glycogen after an hour of intensive weightlifting, and your brain shuts down, strength dramatically decreases, and so on. I find that happens to me at just about 1 hour.

Unfortunately, that's not long enough to get a full upper and lower body workout, so I'm splitting my workouts and doing lower body one day, upper body the next. Each set of muscles gets a day of rest in between workouts (which is important), and I never get totally exhausted on any given day. Four days of that, a day off, and then two days of cycling. (The day off is really important--that's the day your body rebuilds. I don't know of any form of training that involves serious workouts seven days a week--that's a sure route to overtraining.)

Anyway, I'm reading up on weightlifting methods and tactics, partly because I do want a good musclebuilding program, but mostly because I'm curious about how it works. Thus far I've discovered mostly that no one agrees on exactly what works. But I'm sifting through three or four books trying to understand how to design a workout schedule in phases (adaptation, muscle-building, fat-cutting) and how to avoid overtraining.

Cycling-wise, I'm just putting in miles and rebuilding my "base". I'm in awful shape at the moment; my longest ride has been about 20 miles, and I can't even do that consistently. (20 miles is the endurance cycler's equivalent of a nice stroll in the park.) But I haven't lost much speed, which is a good sign--I just need to work up to longer rides.

So at the moment the schedule is:

Monday: lower body
Tuesday: upper body
Wednesday: lower body
Thursday: upper body
Friday: rest
Saturday: cycling
Sunday: cycling

If I were really gung-ho about it, I'd go to a nine-day training schedule (six weightlifting workouts, day of rest, two days cycling, repeat), but this will be easier to manage once I'm working again. Long-distance cycling takes a lot of time, which is hard to get in except on weekends. Unless you're unemployed, of course. But I hope not to be!!

I'm still not in good enough shape to follow this schedule--the last week or so I've had to do two weightlifting workouts and then take a day off--but I'm rapidly getting to that point. It's amazing how fast your body adapts when you give it something to do. Even in a few months of not-terribly-serious weightlifting, I've put on a bunch of muscle--my arms are nicely shaped, I have much bigger triceps, nice shoulder and trapezius muscles, and real back muscle. Not only that, but I've dropped an equivalent amount of fat, since my weight hasn't changed a bit. :-) If I start a more serious program, I suspect I'll do pretty well.

But I also have to lose about fifteen pounds of fat to get rid of the roll around my midsection.

The funny part is that I still don't think of myself as particularly athletic--there are plenty of more muscular people in the gym, and most cyclists with equivalent training can ride me into the ground. (At 5'0" and 150 lbs, I'm both a short and a heavy cyclist--which means most people are going to be faster.) Admittedly, six workouts a week puts me on the high end for most Americans, but it's still not serious--there are plenty of people bigger and faster than me, and so forth.

Or maybe it's just that I spent the first twenty-odd years of my life as a couch potato, and have only been seriously working out for the past three years. But I'm amazed by how much better I feel, even though I'm not super-skinny (28-30% body fat) or a competition athlete.

I think that if you're thinking of starting an exercise program, the answer isn't to pick a program to make you lose weight or anything like that--set yourself a goal with a sport you like (try different sports until you find one!), and go for it. It's really hard to motivate yourself to do something that you can't stand, and I think that's why most people's exercise programs don't work. If you don't like aerobics, don't do it! Go walking or running or something.

Sign up for a marathon! It's much more fun to be training towards a positive goal ("I'm going to run the AIDS Marathon, and get a free trip to Hawaii") than to train for a negative one ("I should really get into shape").

Moving along...I've gotten started on the latest fiber project, though I haven't had much time to work on it yet. It's the "Grief" shawl, and it's starting out with black, coarse fiber in the center, and moving out to fine white fiber on the outside. I may add beads, too. I was having some trouble finding a black, harsh fiber (most fiber shops sell next to the skin stuff for obvious reasons), but a friend of mine gave me some Black Welsh Mountain Sheep roving (from Oogie) and it turns out to be perfect. I've been deliberately overspinning it to make it harsher, and mixing it with a little bit of human hair ("pulling your hair out in grief"), and it makes the perfect tight, prickly yarn. I'm now at the point where I start changing the color from black to a dark grey (by mixing it with a little bit of grey wool) and start toning down the harshness, by spinning it softer and also mixing in a lot of a softer wool, probably Romney lamb.

But between the two other projects, haven't had a whole lot of time to work on it. What time is not spent writing or at the gym has pretty much been spent on resumes; I'm now reworking my resume for each individual application. I'm sending out far fewer resumes (not bothering for ones that aren't a good match) and doing individual rewrites and cover letters for the good ones. I'm sending out about one resume a day, which takes an hour or so.

That's it for the moment...more in a couple days.

Tien

created a second blog...

Just a quick note to let y'all know that I've created a second blog. This one consists of pieces I've written either for mailing lists or in correspondence of various sorts. I don't expect everyone will be interested in all of them, as they're on widely varied topics--so feel free to pick and choose.

this blog will continue to be about stuff going on in my life...I'll post a new update soon, I promise!

(and thanks for letting me know that people are reading it...I was starting to wonder!)

Here's the URL for my new blog: http://www.travelingtiger.com/writings/blog/blog.html

I haven't linked it to my main website yet, but I will soon.

Tien

book update

In case you were wondering what happened to the book...it went on hold for a few weeks during the whole NexTag debacle (they almost offered me a position but stuck it on hold at the very last moment), but I'm back at work on it now. I was suffering pretty badly from being blocked on it, and it really didn't help that none of my friends are writers. My mom suggested that I try taking a class just to have someone to talk the book over with--so I signed up for a story writing class that meets on Mondays, up in the city. First class was last night--nothing too novel out of it, but I did get a chance to brainstorm some solutions to my book's structural problems.

I have the feeling I might have intimidated some of the other people in the class without meaning to--perhaps because there's a certain ambience to saying "I am researching and writing a book" that makes people think you actually know what you're talking about. (Hah!) The honest truth is that I got up in front of about 1500 people and announced I was writing this thing, without having the FOGGIEST idea what I was doing. The upside of this otherwise eminent stupidity is that having made that commitment publicly, I HAVE to write this book--whereas if I hadn't announced to a bazillion people that I was going to do it, I might very well have given up by now. There's something to be said for making your stupidities public--if nothing else, it raises the stakes.

The funny part is that most of my classmates seem to be as good if not better at writing than I am, so it's really got nothing to do with talent.

Meanwhile, I volunteered to be one of the first people to have their writing samples critiqued, because (a) I actually have the time to write seven pages between now and Friday, (b) it will *force* me to create a sample chapter, no matter how bad, and (c) it means I get to be critiqued twice, once at the beginning of the class and once at the end. Getting more critiques is really important to me, I think it will help my writing.

Of course, that means I have what, three days to write my sample chapter? Oh well, I'd been putting it off way too long anyway.

Tien

Duck tongues, red dominatrix halter top

Well, my mom was in town for a couple of days, so we went off for lunch with a friend of hers, up near Berkeley, in this new restaurant called Orchid Bowl Cafe (in English). My mom took one glance at the dual-language sign, and said, "Hmm--the Chinese version says 'Macau Street'."

(I always wondered if Chinese restaurant signs say what I think they do--aha! Now I know. )

Anyway, in addition to an odd assortment of Asian and Portuguese dishes (Macau is/was a Portuguese colony), they had some of the weirdest dishes I've seen. My personal favorite was "Ostrich gizzards with XO fresh lily flowers", but they also had a dish called "Mixed Mushrooms with House Special Steamed Chicken", which my mom promptly corrected to "In Cage, Mixed Mushrooms with Steamed Yellow-Feather Chicken" (from the Chinese version).

(Yeah. We were both wondering about the yellow-feathered part (not to mention the cage). But not enough to order it...)

At any rate, I was flipping through this bonanza of culinary riches, when I came across an appetizer: Marinated Duck Tongues with Peanuts.

Well, of course I *had* to try it. Anything *that* bizarre needs to be ordered. (Besides, my mom said they were OK--at the very least, she ate them and was still alive.)

It arrived as a dish of, well, duck tongues. They were about an inch and a half to two inches long, looked like, um, little duck tongues, and tasted sweet and salty, as you'd expect from anything in a sweet soy marinade. The texture was a bit odd--sort of crunchy and meaty, much like pig ears (hey, you grow up in a Chinese household, you get blase about odd organ meats)--and there was a little bone in the center, but overall I thought it was quite tasty, and certainly better than either rats or scorpions.

I ate most of them, but I have to admit I was suppressing bizarre images of buckets of duck tongues and flocks of poor tongueless ducks. It seems very strange to eat duck meat without any particular compunctions but get worked up over duck tongues--perhaps it's because you can eat duck meat without feeling guilt over more than one duck, but twenty duck tongues means twenty ducks. Of course, plenty of ducks get slaughtered and if no one ate the duck tongues, they'd just be wasted, but try explaining that to your subconscious. There's still something sort of guilty about the experience of eating an entire flock's worth of duck tongues, even if no one else in the world could possibly be interested in eating them.

Afterwards, we went to Oakland Chinatown and looked in at a bunch of the shops...we went to a Chinese apothecary, where my mom pointed out dried sea cucumber skins and deer tendons to me, and stopped by a Chinese butcher, where they had live water (sea?) turtles and live tortoises for sale. I was pointing at one and asking my mom what on earth they did with them (chop them up and put them in soup apparently) when a guy came out with a cleaver, thinking we wanted one of them. I'm personally rather fond of tortoises, and would just as soon not kill turtles (some of my best friends are reptiles!), so we passed and moved on.

I am still tempted by that deer tendon...I have the feeling that if I soaked it and shaved it, I'd have the makings of great lashings for that, umm, set of deerskin moccasins I'll never get around to making. But still, haven't you always wanted deer sinew to sew things with?

(Actually I'm not sure--is the sinew usually used tendons or muscle? "Sinew" is technically muscle fiber, but I think tendons would be a lot stronger. They're also only marginally edible, so sewing with them would be much less wasteful.)

Speaking of tendon, hide, and so on, I just bought some beautiful red suede from http://www.theshamanstore.com (Premalaya Bookstore), which I plan to cut and sew into a leather bikini/harness for next year's AIDS Ride. I'm envisioning a red studded bikini top with studded collar, a red "skirt" made of dangly red suede rags, and of course a red whip to go with it all.

Day 5 of AIDS Lifecycle is "Dress in Red Day", and of course the boys all take the chance to get into their most fabulous red dresses that day. Since they're all going femme, and putting on their best frilly regalia, I figured I'd go the other direction, and go butch for the day. But I'm using red suede because it's easier on the skin than straight-up leather, and this particular red suede is a beautiful brilliant red, that's not too easy to find in regular leather. (If you know of a good place to find a thin-yet-durable, soft, conventional leather in bright red, lemme know--I want some!)

In other words, I'm going butch, but in a femme-y sort of way. :-)

So anyway, having gotten the leather, and the underwire cups, I'm now looking for fake studs to put on the leather. If you know where I can find that, let me know--for now, I'm going down to my local Jo-Ann's just to see if they've got it. I'm betting not; after that, I'll try looking up leatherworkers's supply stores. There's got to be at least one of them in the Bay Area.

Oh yeah...if anyone knows where I can get good red leather suitable for whip-making, and directions for how to make one, let me know. I have no idea where I'd find a decorative *red* whip, and I've always wanted to try making one, SO.... :-)

Tien

Okay, I'm amused.

Conversation last night, at a friend's place:

Friend: "So, I was invited to a fundraiser play party last week, for charity..."
[A play party is a sex party, usually involving BDSM. For this friend, it's usually all-female.]

Me: "A play party for CHARITY?!? What charity?"

"AIDS Lifecycle."

"They're having a women-only sex party to benefit AIDS LIFECYCLE?!?"

"Yep. I sent them an email back saying they should invite you--'If you don't know Tien now, you will by the end of the ride--she's the one in the tutu.'"

"And did you get an answer?"

"Yep--'Oh! Tien! I know Tien!'"

So it appears I'll probably be invited to a lesbian BDSM orgy to benefit AIDS Lifecycle. In November, I'm told.

(Yeah, I'm going. Of course I'm going. How could I possibly MISS something like that?!?"

Meanwhile, I've signed off Spin-List, am TRYING (not too successfully) to focus on the book, and have stuck the peacock shawl on hold for the moment. I'm working on another piece, called "Grief", which is too complex to explain here but which should be pretty cool once it's done.

I've decided (for whatever reason) to spin this one on the Akha spindle that the Akha weaver's son made for me. It is handmade with "primitive" tools: the whorl was hacked out of a piece of hardwood with an Akha knife/machete, "drilled" using a red-hot nail, and mounted on a shaft of carved bamboo. Technically, it's not the best spindle around--it is a bit wobbly and the whorl is slightly off-center--but considering the tools and how quickly he made it, it's a lovely thing. It was sweet of him to make it for me, and I treasure it.

Aside from the sentimental value, I use it as a reminder not to be too fussy about tools--focus and skill are more important--and of resourcefulness. It's hard to spin on a spindle like this one without being intensely aware that one *could* do many things, with very few tools...just let go of perfectionism and you can do the most amazing things. I couldn't make a *perfect* spindle with a machete. But this one *works*, and I don't need a lathe. Or a drill.

I *did* buy an Akha knife...but not sure where it is now.

Tien

Finished some cool new socks...

Well, the position with NexTag went ka-boom (and so did my temper)...after two weeks of stringing me along, telling me that I was their top candidate, passed all the reference checks, etc....the position is "on hold". It's incredibly frustrating--I really thought I had this position, and if it hadn't been put on hold, well, I WOULD have...

...but it may still re-open, though I'm not holding my breath. Too bad--I REALLY liked the company, I thought the hiring manager was a great match, and culturally and skill-wise it was the perfect fit. So I have spent the last three days banging my fist on the table and screaming, but I am (mostly) back to being a rational human being again. A few interesting project management positions got posted yesterday, so I'm busily sending out resumes and cover letters again. (If y'all hear of anything in the way of project management, let me know.)

Meanwhile, I hear that a reality show is scouting out my former student house at Caltech as the possible location for a reality show. The mind reels. I'm sure they would LOVE to cover the explosions, weird stuff, students breaking into places for various pranks, going through the steam tunnels, wandering barefoot and occasionally naked around campus, and so on...I'm equally certain the Caltech administration would NEVER let them do it. But dang, that would be funny.

However, that's not the big news: I finished a very cool pair of ikat socks! It's a fun application of space dyeing techniques, and I put it up on my website here: http://www.travelingtiger.com/crafts/socks.htm .

I think they make great rainbow socks--I'm thinking of making a pair for a gay friend o'mine, whose mother insists on sending him nice, conservative socks every Christmas (no, REALLY) but who has never quite accepted that he's gay. "Socks to scandalize your mom..." (I'd send him rainbow underwear--yes, she does that too--except it might be a little too much for his delicate taste and refinement. *grin* Every guy needs a rainbow G-string, but not all of them recognize that. Guys also all need glow-in-the-dark sex sheep, but for some reason even *fewer* of them realize that. I do my humble best, but definitely it's an uphill battle. (Men can be SO clueless sometimes. ;-) )

And I'm FINALLY seeing results from my weightlifting: I've put on a bunch of muscle, lost an equal amount of fat, and have dropped one size on bottom (butt flab) and gained one size on top (shoulder muscle). I actually *look* muscular in the upper body, and when I flex my back muscles, stuff moves. Wow. I had no idea this would be so cool. :-) Friend of mine is planning a photo shoot to celebrate.

I still want to drop another 15 lbs of fat, but the muscle's definitely improving.

Now, about that job thing...

Tien