Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

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?

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