This post does have to do with knitting, as you'll find out in a moment.

I'm at the point in my medical transcriptionist training where I have to transcribe hundreds and hundreds of practice reports. I also joined an MT forum where I've gotten tons of tips on working more productively. One of the best recommendations so far has been to install and start using a text expanding program. This is software that allows you to automate commonly-used words and phrases with simple keystrokes—a common one is to type "tp" and have the words "the patient" appear on the screen.

I purchased TextExpander for the Mac and installed it Thursday afternoon. In two days I have added hundreds of "snippets" to my library. I can type "pexn" and have the phrase "Physical examination" (a common heading) appear on my screen. The trick is to make the abbreviation something weird that you wouldn't normally type; otherwise, you might be typing along and hit a particular set of keystrokes and get an unintended result.

I am having great fun with TextExpander in my MT homework, but it also occurred to me how useful it could be in writing knitting patterns. I have a whole library of stock phrases I use in my patterns:

"or size to obtain gauge"
"wash and block according to yarn manufacturer's instructions"
"or to desired length"
"sts evenly across last row of ribbing"

and so on. I can make up abbreviations for all of those and simply type the abbreviation when I want to use a particular phrase. Not only does it save typing time, it helps to make sure that verbiage is consistent within a pattern. I really wish I had started using something like TextExpander when I began publishing the newsletter. It's useful and it's fun.

Obviously, I am easily amused.

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I'm going to do a post soon about this new sweater project I am working on, because it's really fascinating from a construction standpoint. I want to draw you some pictures, though, and I just haven't had time to sit down and do that. Next Thursday I am driving to Billings (about an 8-hour trip) to teach at Wild Purls. I am hoping the weather cooperates. The last thing I want to do is drive over two mountain passes in a snowstorm. I am looking forward to the drive, though. I love to drive and I love to drive through Montana. And I am teaching three of my favorite classes (Arans, finishing, and bizarre cables), so that makes it even better.

The husband and I were about 1/4 mile from pulling into our driveway last night on the way home from a fire department event when the car in front of us (thankfully, a ways in front of us) lost control, spun around in the road, bounced off the large snowbank on the side of the road, and came to rest going in the opposite direction. We stopped and the husband got out to check on the driver—it was our next-door-neighbor. She was shaken up a bit and the plastic pieces on the front of her car were all trashed, but otherwise she was okay. I always keep a roll of heavy-duty duct tape in my truck, so the husband taped up her car enough for her to get down the road to her house. I am not sure if she was going too fast or what. The county—which has never done a great job of keeping the roads out here cleaned off—seems to have decided that it's almost spring and time for them to stop plowing. We got two solid days of heavy, wet, slushy snow this week and our road is really crummy. I am ready for spring. This is what it looks like when I open the kitchen door to go out:

This winter isn't quite as bad as the winter of 1996-97 (that year, the snow bank outside the kitchen door went all the way to the roof line and blocked us in completely; this year it's only about half that high), but it's still awful and we're all getting tired of it. Alas, the long-range forecasts are calling for it to be cold and wet through May. Our minister has already planted tomato seedlings. He was telling anyone who would listen this week that they've come up already. His wife said to him, "You do realize it's going to be 3-1/2 months yet before you can put them outside, don't you?" The husband is not much better—this week he e-mailed me pictures of greenhouse frames for sale at one of the local nurseries (they were listed on Craigslist, which he likes to troll). I would love to have a greenhouse, but I have to think on that a bit to figure out how to make it work.

Okay. It's time to play with exploding text for a while and then go knit. I really like Saturdays.