Update, Short Form

Okay, so I've totally given up hope that I will write about all the things I've been up to lately, so I'm going to blog in outline form and call it a day.

- Knitting: working on Henry (and I do mean working.... I think the scarf will be great, but it seriously stresses me out to knit it), made some fingerless mitts with the alpaca yarn that Sarah gave me in August, started this shrug in a purple silk/wool blend. No pictures yet, but the mitts just need their ends woven in, and the shrug is 2/3 finished, so I just may wait and photograph them when they're all done. (I think this new-found obsession with things on size 10 needles is directly related to the fact that I'm knitting a scarf on size 2s.) The unbloggable knitting project has stalled in favor of these, but I'm going to try and get back to it soon-ish. (Christmas knitting? What Christmas knitting?)

- Ben and I were able to go home two weeks ago, which was wonderful - highlights were seeing both sets of parents and my youngest sister, spending time with friends, and finding my wedding dress! All around a great weekend. (Also, I found and acquired dried kiwifruit at a grocery store in Manhattan, which was not a highlight so much as a weird thing I'd never seen before. They're much better fresh, for what it's worth.)

- We also went to Regina Spektor's concert at the Hammerstein, which was fabulous. Go to her site and check out her music videos - she is just as adorable and talented in person. (And she is seriously talented: she's a one-woman show, and there were multiple points at which she was simultaneously singing, playing piano with one hand, drum pad with the other, and stomping on the stage for added percussion. It was like watching someone live inside their music.)

- Research is winding up, which means I am frantically writing two manuscripts simultaneously while endlessly hassling our statistician. I'm sure he's having just as much fun as I am. (EndNote, by the way? Rocks my world. Once it works properly.)

- Ben's parents are visiting this weekend, which is why I have given up hope of really updating the blog this weekend. (A trade I am delighted to make, by the way.) They came in last night, and I'm really looking forward to spending time with them and getting to play tourist at home. (We've already had one culinary adventure, and it's shaping up to be an action-packed weekend.)

- I made pumpkin pie this morning. While wearing a sweater. It really must be fall.

- Also, I really don't have time to do this. I really don't. But I want to - I think it would really interesting to explore the evolution of the concept of a "hospital" historically: start with Islamic medicine c. what, like, 400 AD and the spread of "hospitals" throughout the world. (Because, seriously, there are a lot of ways in which hospitals are structurally and ideologically bad for the administration of health care (and a number of ways in which they do work, of course) but it would be interesting to see how we got to this structure.) Or take a look at the relationship between religion and medicine (ancient temples of healing, hospitals run by religous orders, faith healing, etc) thoughout history. But somehow I don't think I'll be able to crib something together during my surgery rotation. Alas.