Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

After long procrastination of various sorts, some ripping of rows and rows of stitches and a mistake in the heel not discovered in time to fix but in time to repeat in the other heel, I have finished my first pair of adult-sized socks. The yarn is “Walk on the Wild Tide” from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I have 2 more skeins of BMFA yarn to play with as well as a membership to the Socks That Rock club. So far I like their yarn – it has enough twist to it that it doesn’t split easily. They dying is exquisite though I’m not all that excited by this colorway. (I traded away the first color way from the sock club because it was oh so pink as well… I’m hoping for greens, blues or purples for the next shipment!)

Anyway, pair #1 done. I expect the next pair to go much faster!

My first week back at the gym has been good. I’ve survived. I hate my trainer just a little evil so far… but I suspect him of much deeper, darker, more grueling evil. 5 work-outs in 5 days. I’m taking tomorrow off. I have this faint hope my calves will not be screaming at me by tomorrow. I don’t mind the new awareness I have of my abs, but the calf pain is rather special and impedes my willingness to run around.

By the by… overnight tonight (Saturday), we get to “Spring Ahead” for Daylight Savings. I know, you’re just as excited as I am, I’m sure. Sleep robbery! But at least my purple “iMac” clock will be correct again!

daylight savings, exercise, knitting, sock

So back at the beginning January, I got a terrible, terrible cold that basically took me out for 3 weeks. I was mostly better by the last week of the month but still easily tired out, coughing, and terribly behind at work.

The last weekend of January was fabulous! We drove up to NH for my birthday dinner at the Best Mexican Restaurant Ever (Hermanos in Concord, NH). My brother, Kirsten and the fabulous Juli joined us and riotous time was had with pitchers of white sangria. Birka happened to be the same weekend, so my birthday trip included shopping and medieval fun. Saturday night we went back to Hermanos with another bunch of people, though not the full bunch we expected due to Birka deciding to that Ian should spend the rest of the weekend in a weakened and miserable state. He recovered admirably, but missed out on the best Mexican food ever. The intrepid cat wrangler, Violet, took over the felines for the weekend. It was a fabulous weekend!

Why, yes, we do go to New England for Mexican food.

February brought work and snow. Lots of snow. There are still itty bitty little snowbanks around as evidence. I had a great time shoveling, feeding the wee little electric snow blower and generally frolicking when I had time. Clearing the driveway was fun. Without a good place to put large piles of snow, I ended up packing the snow into some serious fortification walls between the driveway and the sidewalk. Unfortunately, the aforementioned January sick put me behind for work and having to spend serious time moving snow during the week took away from my time even more… which turned out to be okay because the developer is behind too (mostly due to our requests, I’ll admit) and while I could have used another week to get documentation done, it was done in time for training.

Yeah, that was pretty much February – snow and work.

Training was this past week. Monday night I was at Staples at 9 pm making copies. I was delighted to learn that particularly awesome photocopiers have the option to 3-hole punch your copies automatically for you. This saved some serious time! Tuesday we flew off to the Sales meeting in Florida, which was not as warm as anyone expected. Down right chilly! And populated with people 2-3 times my age. I delivered some training for the Sales team, and while, I would have preferred a little more focus, everyone has seen the material now, has a really detailed User’s Guide and can probably pick things up quickly once we start using the system.

Also, I could very easily get accustomed to working in a villa with a view of the ocean. The photo here I took from my iPhone from the balcony of our room. (There are more, from a better camera, but this one was handy.) I saw a dolphin one day while I was prepping for training. I love watching seabirds nose-dive into the water for fish too. Certainly beats the view of the church.

Airport security is indeed still a joke. An old, annoying, stupid joke told by someone who has drunk the kool-ade.

I have almost finished my first pair of socks for adults. (I’ve made wee baby socks before, but not adult-sized socks.) They’re far easier than I expected, despite having messed up the heel. I’m smart though! I messed up the first heel and realized it, and then messed up the heel the same way on the second sock. Perhaps I’m feeling overly clever about that but go me!

Somewhere along the snowy way, my sleep schedule has been reset. Probably the exhaustion from all the snow removal. I am now going to bed before midnight again and getting up around 8. Without an alarm. This is unheard of for me! Of course, it could be a sign of the apocalypse. I wonder if that means I’m one of the four horseman… which one of them wakes up at 8 am without an alarm?

concord, hermanos, knitting, nh, sca, sleep, travel, vero beach, weather, work

I’m apparently having one of those years that flies by. It seems like everything has gone very quickly and all the time I thought I had is also already gone. Such is life, I guess.

The Philadelphia area is threatened with promises of a harsh winter. The local news stations are adding to the hype, naturally. The Farmer’s Almanac actually has us on the border of the cold wet and the cold dry areas so who knows what we’ll actually end up with. I’d certainly prefer more snow to less snow but no one is surprised by this.

I didn’t get very far on Nanowrimo this year. I haven’t had a very productive month as it’s been whipping by. I guess the fact that we were away for the first week didn’t help. I finished a knitting project last night and played with some swatches for some lace patterns with varying degrees of success. I really would appreciate consistent terminology and notation in knitting. I’m told that’s a total pipe dream, but I dream of a day when I don’t have to decipher each knitting pattern according to author’s birth sign, region of origin, phase of the moon and account for current sunspot activity. (Hyperbole, it makes you funnier.)

I have successfully avoided malls all weekend! I did a little online gift shopping and a lot of browsing. I am taking it slowly but I expect the avalanche of the holiday season will hit me soon enough.

holidays, nanowrimo, random, winter

I do exist! Well, I do exist beyond the boundaries of Monster Cat episodes at least. I know, I know, I haven’t posted anything outside of Monster Cat in ages. Did you miss me? No, I didn’t think so. My cat is pretty darned cute, you don’t need me.

Jon was in town the end of this week and teaching a class in the city. We had dinner with him 3 nights in a row which was great fun even if it involved going into Philly so many times! Last night involved a great deal of silliness and beer as well. Merricke and Siobhan joined us Thursday night and last night which made for additional enjoyment and general spreading of the joy of beer.

My news is that I have remembered to knit. I did some scarves to remember how to follow simple instructions. I’ve been doing little hats for one of the baby charities to remember how to work with double-pointed needles. I am not a fan of metal DPNs but I happen to have a lot of them in very convenient sizes. I asked my mother for a recommendation of a book with lots of little projects in it that could keep me busy and make me try new techniques. There is now an over-stuffed flat rate box in the mail to me. I should have known this would happen, I guess, but I really did just ask expecting a book recommendation! I’m working my way up to bigger projects, I guess, but I really enjoy doing the quick little stuff. Instant gratification is pretty darned awesome.

In other news, I am still a slacker employee of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, otherwise known as unemployed. I have a lead or two but the market is more than a little dismal right now so I’m not stressing about the lack of opportunities. I look at a couple job sites, laugh that employers want people with 10 years of highly specialized and/or technical experience but only want to pay as if the person is fresh out of school, and move on.

I think my writing class this term is going pretty well. It’s a bit small – just 3 students – which is both good and bad. I’ve gone through a phase of “oh no, I can’t actually write anything good at all” and I’m coming out the other side now, which is, as you might imagine, a huge relief. I’m renegotiating my use of adjectives as well as learning a lot about the conscious structure and intermingling of stories and characters. The class is over in 3 weeks and I’m starting to look around for another writing class to take me into the summer. UARTS is great – 3 hour classes, great instructors, credit – but expensive.

I also started twittering recently… it’s rather random and disjointed, but you can now follow me on Twitter if you really want to. It’s more of an experiment… again. I tried Twitter ages ago when it first came out and was not interested enough in it to remember my login/password.

By the way… we saw “Knowing” today. It’s a horrible movie barely worthy of my words. There was some horrible acting, terrible dialogue, a completely pathetic plot and an un-compelling resolution… all crowned with bizarre religious overtones and other crap. There are a lot of forced and illogical jumps not to mention a failed attempt to imbue a sense of urgency by having the characters run around like chicken with their heads cut off. No spoilers here, but there are 2 major aspects of this movie that should have ensured I enjoyed it. Alas, I now add it to the list with The Spirit… the title of that list is “Movies I wish I’d skipped – 2009.”

knitting, knowing, movies, twitter, work, writing