mamacate

Random Newsy Yammer

Right.  Still here.  No, really.

• Since last we spoke I've been to Baltimore and back.  I love my lovely Treo, but when it started to act funny I tried to fix it and now it's completely broken.  Well, it works as a phone.  I have four moblog posts sitting on the Treo, but at this point I can't even get email.  Tech support is one of those things where you yell into the phone with some sort of voice recognition program (I always wonder if it's *real* voice recognition or just some dude in India who they've figured out is more productive when he doesn't have to chat with lonely and crazy people) and then they put you on hold for 40 minutes and, well, I don't know what happens next because I never last that long.  So that's part of why I hadn't posted.  There was this whole thing sent from a water taxi about delicious crab boil for lunch.  I dunno, it was better in the moment.  Sorry about that.
• I think I mentioned that I broke the camera at the Springdelle farm visit a couple of Saturdays ago (looking back apparently I didn't tell you, but yes, I let the kids take pictures, there was a concrete floor...distractions...you do the math).  That was just the beginning.  By Tuesday morning, I had broken the following items:
  • a blender
  • a bread machine
  • the camera of course, and
  • the car.
• Yeah, that's right, the car.  It decided it didn't need a transmission anymore and we decided that we didn't need to spend another thousand dollars on it so we sold the car to the repair shop for them to use as a loaner, and now we're a one car family.  Now I know that for many of you urban types this is no big deal, but it's a big deal for me.  There are buses here, but they come once an hour and only until 7 pm, and the route is very limited.  I live in a hilly neighborhood and dude, it's cold to bike in the winter.  I've been on the bus for the last two weeks, and it has been fine, but then again the weather has been pretty much lovely, so we'll see how I do.  My employer is offering a small incentive for me to not get a parking sticker, so that will hopefully keep me honest.  I'm hoping for the best.  Seriously, I feel like a gas-aholic who has just hopped on (off) the wagon.  It's been two weeks since my last solo commute.  At least I can knit on the bus, though it's such a short trip it hardly results in much sock.
• We had houseguests from Qatar.  Well, one of them, a friend of ours from college, used to live here, and is now living with her family as an expat in Qatar.  They were here for a conference and I got to meet her kids, and managed to turn the thirteen-year-old into a spinner.  Okay, she was already a spinner, I just taught her hands to remember how.  You know someone is over the edge when it's midnight and you have to come into the living room and say "honey, you need to remember, the wool will be here in the morning."  She was in love with some blue tussah that came home with me from KC, and then there was a Grafton Fibers spindle that hasn't seen the use it should have, and now she'll be bringing some good spinning back to Qatar.  Via camp in Minnesota.  You know, the usual sort of enabling.
• While I didn't replace the car, I did of course replace the camera (and the blender and the bread machine, what do you take me for?).  Here's proof, from the local ice cream shop.
• Yes, they have dog sundaes.  I told you this was my kind of town.
• Finally, Stephanie, have you no mercy?  I've really resisted this whole MS3 thing for weeks now, and then you have to go and make me sign up.  (I know, try to blame Julia but it's not going to work.  She just innocently linked to the thing.)  But still, I don't have to knit the thing.  There may have been stash combing and then there was this moment with some gray NH cashmere but the thing is that it hasn't been spun up yet.  I'm only on the tenth repeat of the camel/tussah shetland triangle, and it's tightly knit so I'm guessing I'll end up with 30 repeats and not have it be too big.  So I don't have time for this.  But I may have started spinning NH cashmere.  I'm not making any commitments, though.

I think I need to get back to the wheel.  There was this whole idea about finishing the 2006 holiday gift sweater, but you know, at this point what's a few more weeks?  Cashmere...

Ms. Drippy McRandomly-Snot At Your Service

It's random Wednesday!

Okay, apparently it's random drippy Wednesday because I have a cold and I am Not Happy about it.  I've done pretty well this year, and last, which I attribute to the fact that I was sick 2 weeks out of every month in the kids first 2.5 years of life through being exposed to every virus known to humanity.  The viruses appear to have mutated, however, plus I seem to have entered a new set of daily petrie dishes, I mean preschool classrooms. 

Anyway, the poor Mafia was forced to eat dinner with me and allowed me to breathe in her general direction last night, despite the fact that most of my time was spent saying things like "di don't dow about dat, bot do do dink?" and blowing my nose (and in the most ladylike way, asking her to bring me back tissues from the bathroom).  I was a freakin' barrell of snot laughs.  If you see her, give her your sympathy and maybe some echinacea.  I didn't realize how bad it was until it was upon me.

It's one of those colds where you feel like hell, but you don't feel like sleeping it off (I'll allow as how this could be the 12-hour sudafed talking).  You feel, at least theoretically, your typical amount of energy, so the idea of hiding under the covers until it's all over, my favorite way to deal with a bad cold, is not going to fly.  It's just that your typical amount of energy is largely devoted to scraping the skin off the sides of your nose with the sand-paper like tissues available at the office (note to self, bring good ones tomorrow) and to sneezing uncontrollably and trying to pronounce "th" and "v" on the phone to people who don't need to hear about your nasal problems.  So in between nose-skin removal procedures and the efficient spreading of germs around your office environment (I did in fact hesitate to lick envelopes today), you feel somewhat less effective than usual.

I'm also pretty sure my brains are now exiting through my nose, so that doesn't make me much more effective.  Go figure.

So MIT was fun.  Marcy gets the award for first commenter to go wrong with the beaver theme.  As if I had any doubt.  Mafia pretended to be restrained but just saved the jokes for when I saw her in person.  She even took a picture of me in my full traveling knitterly business-mom regalia which you will see here when she emails it to me (no pressure).

I was supposed to stay through today but it didn't work out due to the cold and the fact that the workshop for today was not looking promising.  Instead I'm here in the office, flying under the radar and getting stuff done.  Overall, a nice bonus day, though I usually assume that I'm going to save the universe and do my expense reports on days like this, and it rarely works out that way.

This weekend is the big Festival of Birthday.  The short people will be five (FIVE!).  I still think they'll lick the plates though.  There's grown up, and then there's grown up.  Heck, I'm not grown up enough to not lick the plate if the cake is tasty enough.

I did, honestly, think that I had a list of interesting things to which to link you, but this one, thanks to Riin, is the only one I can remember (I think the rest went out in the last tissue).

A Fat Rant

Rock on girl.

While I'm sure you wish you could hear more about the contents of my nose, I've used up one box of sandpaper and must visit the supply closet for more.  Just be glad you don't have this, and if you do, be glad you don't have this AND have to try to keep up with the latest insanity perpretrated by the department of education, not to mention the latest rankings kerfuffle.  Catch up on work, my patootie.  It took me half the day to figure what the hell they're doing in Washington. 

Excuse me, I have to sneeze now.

Any Day but Wednesday

So today isn't Wednesday but who cares.  I'm just going to be Wednesdayish anyway.

First the update: we are no longer at the White Liberal Preschool.  We are taking a break from preschool.  In some sort of freaky Mary-Poppinsish turn of fate, just after the cook stormed out and I simply had to get to the bank and Rhys had to be at a suffrage rally, we found a preschool teacher looking for afternoon childcare work.  Dude, he's even a GUY, which in this House of Many Ovaries is a really good thing.  He's like a highly-educated, artistic, cool...Mary Poppins.  And my question is (well, aside from "what's the fucking catch?") if Mary was a governess, does that make J a governor?

Speaking of which, if you live in Mass, VOTE.

Right, where was I?  We'll probably try for half-day preschool in a month or two, but for now, it's a huge relief to not have a career hanging in the balance and a four-year-old who just can't be in preschool right now, for whatever reason.  And we're trying to figure out what whatever reason is, and I figure we will at some point. 

And people?  You guys?  Dudes.  I have slowly responded to all the comments and emails and personal stories and just LOVE I got when I fessed up that things were not so hot here, but you know, it's just so amazing.  I feel a little cheezy here, like Sally Field all hopped up on cashmere and red wine but you know what I mean.  THANK YOU.  Really.  I got good peeps.  Truly: thank you.

And now, let's get all Wednesday.  Because it's almost Tuesday.  And for the couple of weeks I've had, I just don't care.

WTF?

This is a box of kosher salt.  With a shrimp recipe on the back.  I ask you: what the fuck?

Ah, that feels good.  WTF.  Not just for Wednesdays anymore.

I'm still finishing up the old job project too (since the kid crisis wasn't enough stress).  I think I've got about one more weekend of work until I can send the damn thing off.  Man will that feel good.

Oh, speaking of finishing long, arduous jobs, it has been a LONG time since I've shown you a picture of the house.  In fact, it has been a while since I've even taken a picture of the house, but here's the latest on the camera.  This is two weeks old. 

There are now windows and a fireplace, though the fireplace doesn't actually fit in the space they framed for it.  Whoops.  Redo.  Still, things are moving along, and I keep making the project manager swear it will be done in October.  He keeps swearing.  Right, also saying that it's going to be done. But that's the living room.  It's going to be great.

I did point out to Rhys that maybe we didn't need to spend all this money on an addition, and that in fact maybe we should have just moved into three tiny rooms for three months, and then moved back into our old house.  Because right now, the simple thought of having a living room and a dinner table that seats our whole family seems like an impossible luxury. But it's going to be great.  Really great.  One more month.  Breathe.

Blah blah blah Elizabeth.  Blah blah blah knitting.  Blah blah blah photo.

As you can see, I have attained the blah stage. Soon it will be time for sleeves.  The yarn is really springy and it might end up a bit more clingy and a bit less drapey than I was hoping for, so I'm trying not to think too much about that.  I'm going to do unspeakable things with a steam iron and hope for the best.  (BTW, no idea what that white spot is--it's not there in real life--apologies for the crappy photo.)

I also made some socks.

(see, evidence that despite severe deliquency, they remain extremely cute)

Also evidence that my brain is currently inoperable.  I haven't woven in the ends (all two of them, per sock) because I couldn't for the life of me think where I might have put my darning needle.  It was hard to believe that I could think I could go months without one, but there was no obvious place and there aren't a lot of places to look in our abbreviated housing.  Until Henry asked me if I had some scissors.  And I opened my bag and got out my Emergency Sock Kit.  The one I carry in my pocketbook everywhere I go?  The one I look at every time I rummage for my car keys or buy lunch?  Yeah, that one.  Doh.  Found the needle, at least.

And sweet Lisa sent me sock yarn.  For Sanity.

The kids say, "Sanity?  Mamacate?  Don't hold your breath, but every little bit helps!  Thanks Lisa!"  (They're really saying that.  Okay, just the "thanks Lisa!" part.)

Okay, I need to sleep, but file the following under cool things found on the internets:

Knitting obsession (thanks Mafia)

Send your kids to Ceres--okay, just their names, but cool, huh? (thanks Giz)

My kind of periodic table (thanks stumbleupon)

And this.  (forgive me forgetting where I saw it, but just click on it and see what happens.)

Randomest of Wednesdays

It's actually Wednesday, and I'm posting randomness.  Imagine!

• And it has been an extra-random day for sure.  The good news: I have a desk, a computer, and a phone, all of which are functional.  The bad news: none of the other workstations in my office are functional.  Okay, none of the other workstations in my office exist.  There's no other furniture, and who knows when that will change.  At least the bottleneck in the plan, the elevator to bring the furniture to the third floor, has been resolved.  After that it's anyone's guess.   
• The other not-so-good news is that there's some sort of issue with the painting that they have to pay extra if the painters are going to paint my office, and they don't want to pay extra, and people are arguing about it behind the scenes and at this point they're painting every part of the building except my office.  I have seriously, seriously considered counting out a few twenties from my wallet and seeing how far I could take things on my own, but please, I do not need to subsidize this wealthy institution slapping a coat of paint on my office walls. (Do I?  And would it be tax deductible?  Am imagining that CPA partner might categorize such an act as less in the category of "charitable contribution" and more in the category of "bribe."  Hmm.)  Anyway.  So here I sit, a good 18" away from the walls on all sides, waiting for a coat of paint.  Could be a while.  Which is okay because I still need my files.  And also file cabinets.  And bookshelves.
• Anyway.  This construction complaining is really interesting?  You sure?  I suppose the house stuff at least has the benefit of being fun.
• On that note, here's today's picture.  It doesn't look that much different from the last picture, but it does if you look closely.  Sock yarn to the first person who correctly identifies the BIG difference in the comments (hint: you can't really see it unless you embiggen).  ETA: Another hint, it's not the studs.  LOOK WITHIN!  ETA: WE HAVE A WINNER--Melissa got it: they took the roof off inside the second floor framing.  More had changed than I thought--sorry if it was a bit of a game of "guess what I'm thinking" lol.  Thanks for playing!

• So the other lousy thing about today was that I woke up with a wicked migraine.  Though I'm swamped at work, I was going to take a sick day because, you know, it's all very well and good to show up but if you're sitting in a darkened room moaning faintly, it's not the most productive kind of thing, plus with the dust and the paint fumes (from the hallway, not from my office) and all, well.  However, when I hunkered down to see if the Aleve would kick in (answer: not willing to stay in stomach long enough), they started demolishing concrete in the basement.  Next, the nail guns on the roof.  I swear there was some sort of rhythm section.  I crawled to my car and decided a hot and smelly office was better than a loud and, well, LOUD house.  Happily for me, the electricity went out around 9:30 and didn't come back on until well after 11, so at least I had an excuse to sit in a darkened room.
• Also, the bat (or another of his friends and relations) came back last night.  I was dashing off an email to the Mafia, just before leaving for the day, and in my peripheral vision, there's this black thing.  I made the mistake of looking up and of course I see a bat flying all around my outer office.  I slammed my inner office door, and after making a call to public safety (hey, physical plant was closed!  That's who they said to call!) and thoroughly embarrassing myself, the bat took a break from flying maniacally around, and I was able to sneak out.  I left a note for the second shift painters (the ones not painting my office) to watch out for the bat, and apparently someone else (code name: Farmer Joe) "took care of it," or so said an addendum to my note when I arrived this morning.  Farmer Joe, whoever you are, thank you.  And don't tell me what "took care of it" means, because I'm not sure I can handle it.
• Despite all this, I do knit.  Elizabeth is about to get armholes.  Look.

• I have moments of thinking that the yarn might pill, in which case I will fling myself from something or other, but I think the silk will prevent that (I hope I hope), and so far it's holding up well.  If it doesn't pill, well, man, this stuff is insanely soft and wonderful.  I can't wait to wear it, and my desire is keeping me monogamous for the moment.  No promises.
• That's it from the loony bin.  I'll let you know if I ever get painted.  Or if I discover new information about the deductibility of bribes. Or if you won sock yarn.  Heh.

An Accretion of Randomness

You know, the whole Random Wednesday thing came up because I had all this random crap stuff rattling around in my brain to blog about, and I finally just decided to stop trying to come up with a reasonable blog post about any of them, but put them down in no particular order and let everyone else try to figure out what the hell I'm on about.  I spend enough time trying to wrestle with my brain already, right? 

Anyway, now that I have carte blanche to be random at least one day a week (and you know, it's randomer if it's not on Wednesday, right?), I cannot remember even the Random Wednesday blog items for more than five minutes at a time.  Yes, it has come to this.  I think of this thing I've been meaning to tell you in the shower (no, I mean I thought of it in the shower...oh never mind), and then it's gone by the time I'm putting my socks on.  Or, you know, rinsing my hair.  I don't know.  Anyway.  I'm just going to keep this post in draft form, and then when I remember things, assuming I'm not in the shower at the time, I'll put them here.  And then at some point I'll post it.  Which, if you're reading this now, already happened.  Yah.  Anyway.

1. One thing I've been meaning to blog about is the Netflix "friends" doohickey.  Kat with a K added me as a Netflix friend when I blogged about having signed up for Netflix, and I love it.  We can recommend movies to each other and see each other's ratings.  It's pretty cool.  Despite the fact that I emailed Netflix asking them for a blogthing for inviting friends via the blog (and no, I don't want to be an affiliate, I was more thinking of doing free advertising for them), they haven't come up with a button or anything.  So anyway, if you have Netflix and you want to share movie recommendations, you can add me as mama at mamacate dot com, or email me at that address and tell me to add you.  And that would be cool. 

2. I've finally gotten some discipline and started biking to work instead of driving.  Walking takes about 40 minutes (it's about 2.5 miles), so biking is really the best plan.  The problem is that it's a bit of a hilly route, so there's one place where I have to walk my bike, and I don't like that.  I'm no Claudia when it comes to hills (actually when it comes to a lot of things, sigh).  But I'm proud of myself, and I'm hoping to keep it going.  I have a coworker I'm biking with, and that will hopefully keep me motivated.  My other motivation is that if I bike to work, I can eat whatever the hell I want.  I realize the math here doesn't exactly work (hey, it's a hilly 5 miles; both ways, okay?), but it works for me.

3. This is hilarious. Make your own "On Notice" list.  I'm here at work on Saturday, so you'll notice a rather work-focused theme.  Sorry.  Anyway, here's mine.  Thanks, Stephen.

Honestly?  The SAT will be "dead to me" as soon as I'm done with this project.  Hear that Gaston?  No chance of rehabilitation.  But then, y'all have bigger problems.

4. While we're on the topic of Things I Watch On TV, did you know about 30 Days?  I had just heard about it when the last season was over; the new one just started up, and dude, it's wicked awesome.  Funny, interesting, thoughtful.  A little stunt-like, but so far both of the ones I watched left me understanding both sides better.  Thumbs-up baby. Anyone for a little Reality TV Sociology? (Oh dear, just realized it's on at the same time as Project Runway.  More reason to get Tivo.)

5. About Project Runway, if you don't have enough Tim Gunn in your life (and who could possibly, really?), you can read his blog on the show site.  Oh wow, a podcast too.  Carry on, Tim!  But could you do something about the design of the bravo show site?  What *is* that?

6. I found yarn for Elizabeth!  I'm not sure I mentioned that I gave up on trying to resize the triangle design in the front while knitting it in DK instead of sport-weight yarn.  My row gauge (right on) and my stitch gauge (way off) were in completely different proportions to the original gauges, so, had I just recalculated for stitch gauge I would have wound up with a very short and squat triangle.  I'm sure the recalculation would be possible for someone who thinks in geometry, but that's not going to be me.  In the end, I wound up finding a yarn that is basically what I was looking for all along: Taj Mahal.  It even comes in my color, a dark red (scroll down).  Now to get focused and actually *knit* the thing.

7. Well, this is a two-part accretion; I guess I'll post it today.  I'll be moving the last of the furniture out of the living room this weekend; Monday they come and put plywood up so that we can't get into the upstairs or living room in our house.  That's before they come with the concrete cutters and the backhoes and pull the front half of our house off.  Fun!  Excitement!  Despite the abject chaos my life is in, I'm feeling optimistic.  There's nothing like grinding drudgery to make one realize that when one has a) 1 (one) job, b) a house with more rooms than people (total rooms, not bedrooms), c) kids in a new and closer-by school that doesn't add nearly two hours to the daily schleppage, one might actually have a good time.  So I just keep thinking about this winter (see how I'm being non-specific with the timeline) when all this will be behind us and we'll be reaping the benefits, and I will sit, knitting, in front of a new fireplace, enjoying ample leisure time.  That is, once we've cleaned up from the blegger I'll be having to celebrate. 

Anyway, it's all good.  Carry on!

Wednesday's Random Crapitude

Okay, here is your warning.  This is one whiny post.  This is like the exact opposite of such soul-renewing, life-affirming memes as "Monday Positives" or "Happiness is..." or even balanced approaches like "Good, Bad, and Ugly."  This is just ugly.  Run away now.

So there's all kinds of crap I could complain about.  PLENTY.  But all I have to say is this: I struggled all day with a complicated piece of writing in which I had to summarize a complex and controversial topic using unweildy data in, you know, five pages or less.  I was on page four and a half, minding my own business, finally having wrangled the damn thing into submission, and feeling pretty damn good about myself, or at least feeling like I might survive The Summer of Two Jobs Plus Construction, when some fucking thing happened to the fucking network and the fucking file got corrupted and I lost three of my four-and-a-half pages of single spaced prose (as well as the restructuring and reformatting I did to the first page and a half).

And you know that annoying thing that Word does when you shut down without saving (or, you know, sneeze) and when you re-start word it retrieves the most recent copy of your document and asks you if you want to save it in a separate file?  Yeah, it didn't do that.  And all the hidden word files, the ones that start with a tilde and shit?  None of those have any of my lost pages either.

This is the second time this happened at exactly 6 pm (why yes, after a full day of work with lunch eaten at my desk writing this damn thing).  But tech support doesn't answer the phone at 6 pm.  I guess they're too busy playing with the buttons on the network servers.

If anyone gives me advice about the value of frequent saving, well, I'm just saying...don't.  Mkay?  I know you wouldn't but, in case you would?  Don't.

And you missed the part where I broke down sobbing in front of someone I supervise.  Because it's really all about the professionalism here.  Yup.  That's me.

It's all made especially fine by the fact that I'm PMSing and was up all night last night worrying about how I'm going to get all my "summer projects" done.  Oh, and the fact that when Rhys pulled one carseat and a box of travel toys out of the car to take her sister and nephews to the airport this morning, someone stole them out of our fucking driveway in the middle of the morning.  We have to hope they thought they were free.  But we don't exactly live on the highway, and they weren't on the side of the road; they were halfway down our driveway, between the fence and the dumpster.  Who does that?  Who says "hey, look at that carseat sitting in that driveway, think I'll take it!"  The fuck?

Have I said fuck enough for you yet?  No? 

Fuck. 

There.  At least I feel better.  Now go look at something cute.

Random Vacation Report

What I've been up to lately:

-helping Henry learn to spin (he didn't let me help much)

-Looking after Henry's first yarn, which has been stowed safely away in a tiny bag that formerly housed a tiny pony (this makes sense only to the parents of young children among us; suffice it to say it's a place of honor).

-Riding the Flying Horses.

-Reading stories

-Going to scenic lookouts in pea soup fog (dude, good lobster rolls).

-Spying on the neighbors

-Supervising (porta-) potty use

-Preparing for the future

-And playing backgammon with my sweetie by candlelight.

Oh yes, and finishing two pairs of socks.

(STR Fire on the Mountain chevron sock from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch; short row heel and toe.  Despite the pooling, I am madly in love with this yarn.  If they made it self-striping I'd buy them out.  Wait... ;)  But seriously, can anyone tell me which of the new weights is the same as the old single weights?  I searched the website and got nuthin.  I'm guessing medium, but I want to be sure.)

(Opal dreamcatcher won in Sandy's blogiversary contest, knit in Claudia's picot stockinette virus recipe, short row heel, regular toe with the kitchener thing to preserve striping--the things I do for fashion!  These are crazy socks but I love them and they were fun to knit.  I'm easily amused.)

Anyway, can you tell it was a good week?

But now it's back to reality.  It's Tuesday night and I feel like I've already worked a week.  I'm not done with the thing I thought I'd get done by the end of June.  I think I have a better plan than I did before (that whole clear-headed thing), but it means more juggling, longer.  I may be scarce (or at least intermittent) on the blog, in email and comments for a while.  I hope to be back to fibery normalcy soon, though I have no idea when (this is the black hole phase).  And I hope to make some fun escapes whenever possible.

Next up, the entire front of my house gets torn off, and instead of getting mad about it, I give people money to do it.  Go figure.  Plus my AA wheel is going to live with Marcy while we're living in 2 rooms.  I'm trying to be optimistic about her giving it back.  Bets?

=Weekday(38882)*Rand()

Props to my fellow excel geeks who can read the title.  Y'all need to get out more.

I'm just getting cooler here by the day, huh?

So a big piece of the latest work insanity has abated.  Having mostly work stuff going on means that most of what's going on is stuff I can't blog about.  And that makes for a riveting blog, I know.  So the thing happened, and then they wanted me to do something, and I wasn't sure, but we worked it out, and I got what I asked for and so did they, and I'm happy.

Trust me, the short version is much...shorter.  And anyone who has heard the long version can tell you that's a good thing.

Despite the complexities of my work life, I do still knit.  Oh, and in fact I have a coworker who's an expert knitter, and we're talking lace, and she has LOTS of books.  She left this giant pile of German lace books on my desk one morning.  I found it rather difficult to focus on work that morning, I'm just saying.  Today she came back and took the lace books back and left a bunch of books with German twisted stitch patterns.  I need to build in a knitting book break during my work day.

But anyway, I never told you: I finished Rogue memorial day weekend.  Well, mostly finished it, because I need to re-sew the zipper.  I kept running around doing a happy dance that I had sewn in the zipper, but it turns out it was off by about 1/2 inch, so I need to re-sew one side.  Ah well.  I modeled it unzipped, which still looks okay.

The photo could be better.  Sorry about that.  I'll try to post another once I fix the zipper thing.  Right now I'm not super motivated to get my aran-weight wool-alpaca hoodie ready to wear in the 80+ degree heat (NOT COMPLAINING).

So what else?

• Oh, good news!  Ms. Absinthe is going to be Ab-staining from the green stuff because a wee baby Absinthe has taken up residence in her Ab-domen.  Tee.  Congrats Absinthe family!
• Doctor Who.  I heart Doctor Who.  I hate being a year behind the UK in episodes.  Rumor has it the new Doctor is just as wonderful.  It's going to take me a little while to get over Christopher Eccleston.  Not to mention Captain Jack.  (Kiss!  On the lips!  Of course Time Lords are omnisexual.  Duh.)  I need assurances that we'll be getting Captain Jack's spin off show here in the colonies.  Source of most current and complete Doctor Who information: Kat with a K.
• Note to self: discussion of 1970s sci-fi revival in no way detracts from image as major geek established by writing ones blog post title as an excel formula.  Work on pretending to be cooler.
• Next week is my blogiversary.  Two years.  Go figure.  I'll be on vacation in a spot with no phone, electricity, or internet access, but because I'm still not done with my project at my old job, I'll be working at the library during part of the vacation, so you might hear from me.  If not, well, happy blogiversary to me.
• We won't be totally roughing it, even though it sounds like it.  The house has indoor plumbing and even a propane-powered refrigerator.  It's really quite civilized.  And beautiful, right on Chilmark pond on Martha's Vineyard.  I just wish I wasn't bringing work along.  Because I could really use the break.
• God, I am just bereft of anything to say.  Turned the heel on the chevron sock.  Does that help?  I suppose there's nowhere to go but up for the third year of this whole blog thingy, huh?
• Time to turn in.  Good night, Gracie.  Happy weekday(38882).  Well, +1 now.  Obviously.

Random, um, Monday night.

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.  It's just that I made the mistake of going to a conference in the middle of May.  May is the time of the year when academic administrativa reaches a fever pitch, and I take off for four days of the week before graduation (me and about a thousand others who had their conference moved up two weeks and from New Orleans to Chicago after Katrina).  Smaaaart.  You can just imagine what I came back to.  I think that was last week.  But it's really hard to tell at this point.  I have two big deadlines to get through and then it's just a matter of packing up 15 years worth of my predecessor's random clutter files and office supplies for a move to summer temporary office digs.  Because we figure that what fun is it if just your house is being torn to pieces, but why not have your office gutted too?  Right.

So anyway, the conference, despite being at a terribly inconvenient time, was a ton of fun.  Chicago is a fab city, and it was just surreal to go to a professional conference and hang out with my best friend and my favorite colleague and my former secret pal.  Having Sara make a career change to the same field I'm in was a wicked good plan.  There were no pictures, but we did make a trip to Loopy, at Ruth's most excellent suggestion.

There was a lot of Lorna's Laces there.  There's less now.  I have no further comment.

If you happen to go to Loopy, and you're hungry, seriously, Hackney's is around the corner on the architectural hidden gem called Printer's Row, and it's a fabulous bargain lunch with great service.  The Loopy/Hackney's combo is a good reason to go back to Chicago in my book.

So the trip was great fun, really wonderful, and then there was this work stuff too--Minh made our poster look not-lame (no thanks to me), and good sessions, meeting, that sort of thing.  That and the yummy food.  And the wine and the knitting.  But it was highly educational and professionally enriching.  That's my story.

In further random news:

• I ordered a zipper for Rogue.  There's all that sewing upping that has to get done, so it could be, oh, 6-7 months until it's actually wearable, but you know, the major combat operations knitting part is over.
• I'm kinda chicken about the zipper, truth be told.  I might need a stiff drink before I actually sew it in.  And do I hafta use a sewing machine?  They hate me.
• Minh's participant observation study of knitbloggers in the wild seems to be paying off.  He was overheard commenting that he couldn't believe I was knitting socks on triple-zeros, but he did like the magic loop method.  Look out, because you might end up in some sociology journal someday if you're not careful.  Scary thought.
• The Tudor Roses KAL starts today.  I did some bellyaching about which yarn to use, but decided that I HAD TO HAVE a sweater's worth of DK Zephyr. Dude, I didn't even know such a thing existed, and if there was even a chance it would work for Elizabeth I, well then.  Well, it's gorgeous.  And way too thick for Elizabeth (yeah, that swatch is supposed to be 4"/10cm.  I could recaclulate.  I might recalculate.  But first I have to try dyeing some Silk & Ivory and see how that works out.  Remember that yarn diet?  Yeah, ha ha.
• Oddly, after all my concern about a hand-dyed yarn (Silk & Ivory only comes in white, and I was hesitant to pay someone to dye it, worrying it would not strike perfectly evenly--most solid-color yarns are dyed as wool or roving and then spun), the Zephyr turned out  to be dyed in the yarn too, and it shows.  I still love it.  The color is copper, which I can only think of as Claudia-colored.  Maybe off-Cassie.  I still haven't decided what color to dye the Silk & Ivory.  There's a madder pot in my near future, and though I know there's no chance of an even strike with a natural dye pot, I have to confess I'm tempted.  Further updates as events warrant.
• Despite the madness of my work-life, I'm anticipating that things will calm down in a couple of days (on the other side of the major mountain of work I'm climbing now).  The family is taking off for a visit to the in-laws in a red state, and I'm, rather blissfully, staying home (I'll miss the kids, but I can do without the red state in-laws).  Hence the madder pot.  And rumor has it that the wool is coming my way.  Most excellent.
• So if you happen to be passing by my way on Saturday night, on your way east from Cummington, drop me a line.  My impending middle-age (shut up, I like to think of it as impending) is making me want to regress in the absence of the short people, so I plan to act, well, half my age (which a friend recently pointed out is the same age as a first-year college student, goddess help me).  Email me at mama at mamacate dot com if you'd like to partake.
• About that last one?  It might take me a few days to get back to you.  Don't worry.  I will.  Just slowly.
• Oh, and this one's for Juno.   
  Let them eat cake!

Lee Ann called me a tensioned Cate tonight.  I resemble that comment.  But I aspire to become a lazy Cate as soon as possible.  It's good to have goals.

That's it from here.  See you Saturday!

To Do

Done:

• Dump giant piles of money from my bank account into the IRS bank account for 2005.
• Dump more giant piles of money from my bank account into the IRS bank account for 2006.
• Fill out forms to get back money from my health care savings account.
• Remind myself not to resent paying taxes, as I believe in my responsibility to contribute to the public and social good.
• Remember who's in charge of the money I just sent away.
• Try hard to preserve positive attitude.
• Wrangle my way through incredibly complicated professional situation.
• Continue to wait to determine final outcome.
• Hope for best, whatever that is.
• Try to figure out what I think that is, knowing that my opinion about that tends to change every 30 seconds or so.
• Finally send out broken computer now that taxes are done.
• Lose 10 pounds through regular walking, eating less junk at night, and swapping a spoonful of peanut butter for a morning muffin or bagel.
• Stay sane by knitting Rogue.
• And socks.  Socks for Sanity.
• Try to spin Cashgora for Justine but realize short-stapled slippery fibers spun fine and high-twist makes for high blood pressure in a stressed-out spinner.
• Keep at it anyway, a little at a time (sorry Justine!).
• Try to keep up with emails that are no longer automatically filed into Outlook folders, but instead are stuck in a big, flat web interface with no address book.
• Try to get ancient computer to work with backup hard drive (success), mp3 player (failure), digital camera (not yet tried), wireless (occasionally).
• Repeatedly curse ancient computer's 4GB C: drive and that adorable "windows cleanup" balloon that haunts me every 15 minutes.  Low!  Very Low!  CRITICALLY LOW!  Shut up, dude, windows alone takes up practically 90% of the hard drive, I *get* it.
• Try not to have a complete nervous breakdown.

Not done:

• Keep up with blog.

Better times will be soon, one way or the other.  We shall see.  Wish me luck.  Whatever that is.