Measi's Musings

Archive for the ‘Life, Work, and all the Rest’ Category

This will be random, but I’m “claiming” my blog on Technorati, so bear with me:  JNDBTUT7DN4M  :)

It’s been about as wild, frustrating and exhausting a week as I can recall in a very, very long time.  Between horrible weather and car breakdowns (and some resulting me-breakdowns), I honestly just clung on for dear life this week.  So – yeah, if there was ever a TGIF week? This one qualifies with tons of extra bonus points.  I’ve never been so happy to be home, on my couch.  Erich’s returning with emergency chicken wing therapy, and then I’ll be living the weekend slackdom life this weekend to the fullest.

I seriously plan on stitching all weekend if I can get away with it.  I have some UFO RR stitching to do.  I have some Mira stitching to do.  I have plenty of my own WIP stitching to do.  And I may give in to a little Guilt Free January fever and start my first ever HAED design.

But first – wings.  and beer.
Beer is good.

/thud

So 2010 is gone (thankfully), and a new year has started – hopefully 2011 will be a good one.  Like so many other people, I start thinking of goals I’d like to accomplish for the year, although I am reluctant to actually voice them – because anytime I do, it seems that I’m setting myself up to doom the dreams.  But I have a few hopes for the year.

House

We’ve now lived here for over five years, and we’ve only managed to get one room in the house repainted. That needs to change.  My goal is to get our bedroom repainted and get the bathroom painted & the vanities changed out.

This spring I want to build the other two planting boxes in the garden to finish the above-ground planting bed pattern we started last year.

I want to go through all of my books and make some serious critical decisions and get rid of excess I’m never going to read again.  We just have too much stuff.

Self

I’m terrified of getting hurt when I try to lose weight and get exercise.  It happens every time.  BUT… I will try.  I’m setting a goal of 20 pounds.  It’s not a ton, but right now it looks like a terrifying mountain to me.

I want to set up a routine for blogging – not just about stitching, but reflecting on things in my life.  I’m setting a goal of twice per week – specifically for non-stitching thoughts.

Wanderlust

I have one small corner of Rhode Island still to drive.  Once the weather’s warmer, I will allow my wanderlust to go wild.

I really, really want to go to Vermont this year.  It’s the only state in New England that I’ve never been to.

I also want to go to Western Massachusetts – again, one of those strange areas I haven’t spent much time in.  I just want to get in the car, pick a road number, and see where it goes.

Stitching

Will be addressed in my next post.  :)

I’m hoping it will be a very good year.

Has it seriously been almost a month since I updated?!?  The time is flying!  I suppose this will be another huge catch-up post, then.

Announcements first:

One of my friends and fellow local stitchers (HeraChronicles) is having a Christmas Giveaway on her blog.  Go over HERE to check it out!

The Rhode Island Stitchers group now has a BLOG.  :)  We decided that while being on Facebook is great, we also want something a bit more flexible to share info about the group, what we’ve been doing, what we’re planning, and what we’ve discovered.  Stop on by, say hi – and if you’re in the area, please stop in at one of our events.  :)

Signups for a new round of the Unfinished Object (UFO) Round Robin is starting over on the yuku boards HERE.  Right now the planned start date is in late February.  So if you have a stalled project that you’d like to have help with (and in return, help others with theirs), pop on by.  :)

Random life news:

Thanksgiving weekend was fun, albeit all over the place.  We went to Erich’s dad’s house up in New Hampshire for Thanksgiving Day and had a nice, quiet day with them.  Erich had to work Friday, so it was only a single-day visit.  Friday evening we headed out to Brewster, Mass. on Cape Cod for our annual weekend with friends.  This used to be a LAN party, but along the way a lot of us got married.  We bought houses.  Kids are starting to come into the picture.  All of those events means that there isn’t the money to blow on upgrading computers anymore.  So for the last three years, it’s been a bit more free-form.  We do a full Thanksgiving dinner (I cook, because I do make the best turkey around), which is a welcome change from the weekend full of Bagel Bites, taquitos, and oreos of younger years.   This year Erich ran a weekend-long session of his Saga-edition Star Wars d20 campaign.  I take advantage of the weekend to catch up on some stitching amid the cooking.  It was a good time, although next year I’ve asked that I’m not the sole cook.  I’d like to enjoy a bit more of the weekend.

Work’s been pretty good.  I had a great yearly review, and I’m finally settled into somewhat of a routine with my workload, even if it is still a ton of work.  I’m crossing my fingers that the week between Christmas and New Years is quiet so I can do some serious file clean-out for storage and start the new year feeling like files are under control.

Erich’s also enjoying his new job so far, which is great.  I think after being stuck on a phone all day at his last job, being able to get up and go around the building on tech requests is a welcome change.  He definitely seems much happier these days (which also helps me feel better).

Colley’s slowly getting better after the bout of fatty liver disease/hepititis this autumn.  He’s now finally off the meds, and his weight has stabilized at about 10 pounds – which is a full six pounds lighter than he was in July this year.  He has to go back for a blood test to make sure his liver chemicals are back to normal, but overall he just has more energy and is more responsive than he was around Labor Day.  I’m relieved because it was so serious.  The only downside is now he’s having a heavy shed due to the stress and illness – he’s blown almost his entire undercoat, which makes him look even thinner and a bit scraggly.  A new undercoat is growing in thankfully – so I’m not concerned.   He’s going to be really cold this winter, though.  Perhaps this will be the year he finally snuggles under the covers!

Stitching:

I’m in over my head.  What else is new?  :)

I’ve been doing an insane amount of stitching in the last month.  Three ornament finishes (Yes!  Three!), one UFO RR round done, and the other is almost ready to mail home.  I still have a couple more ornaments to do for the holidays, but they’re not quite as stressful now.

So here are the ornaments: (click for a larger photo)

Left to Right, they are:

Teresa Wentzler Beginner Whitework Ornament.  I made this for the annual Teresa Wentzler Christmas Ornament Exchange (TWCOE).  It’s currently en-route to its recipient.
Square from Pocketful of Peppermints by Blue Ribbon Designs.  This was for an exchange with the Rhode Island Stitchers group.
Frosty Blue by Blackberry Lane Designs (from the 2010 Just Cross Stitch Ornie issue).  I made this for the Life’s a Stitch exchange.  It’s also currently en-route to its recipient.

Frosty Blue was a case of not reading directions well – it was supposed to be stitched over one, and by instinct I started stitching over two.  So what was originally to be a 3-inch ornie is now a 6-inch “oh, we have a big gap in the tree here, honey” ornament (blush).  I’m happy with the results, even if it came out HUGE.

I’ll talk about UFO RR stitching in my next post.  Quite a bit going on there!

Hope everyone’s having a good weekend!

- Mel.

It’s been a wild few weeks around here.  Mostly good, I think.  Although the impending holiday craziness is already starting to creep in, and that has me worried.

The really really good news: Both Erich and Matt are working. Erich has found an IT job with a metro-Boston hospital, and so far is enjoying it. He likes the atmosphere and the people he works with. The commute isn’t great, but that’s fairly normal for us. I’m now commuting most of the way with him, then jumping the subway to finish my commute. I’m not all that sure if I want to do that every day – I honestly miss the peace of the commuter rail (and the personal space), but I’ll split the time with him. It’s a long bitch of a commute alone every day, and unlike me – he has to drive his. We have some friends who currently work there, albeit in a different department, and they seem happy with it. It does really appear to be a good fit for him – so I’m hoping he enjoys it and is able to stay there for quite a while. IT work can be so iffy and out of a person’s control, though.

Matt is working for the gaming store Erich and I have frequented for years. They recently opened up a second location in Plainville, Mass. which is much, much closer to home. We’ve already been there a few times (a couple intentionally to harass the roommate, as is required). It’s a great space – nice and open and bright. I confess that I may like it more than the original. The pizza place next door is fantastic, too.

Both of them seem much happier lately – I think getting out and going to work and not feeling rejected from all of the job application denials is a huge help. I have to admit, I’m not looking forward to shouldering a good chunk of the weekend chore load again, but at the same time – I was annoyed that it really wasn’t getting done how I prefer it to be done. So… *shrug*

The good news: I’m finding a rhythm in my job, and I’m starting to really enjoy the work. I got a good yearly review, which makes me feel much better about things. The difficult part is that due to how crazy it’s been this year, I’m still finding it difficult to catch up on the volume. I’m slowly slogging through backlog, but way WAY too slow for my liking. So I convinced one of the folks I report to that, especially with the normal end-of-year pace of our industry, that I’d really like to borrow a company laptop so I can do some catch-up work on the busy work that’s behind, but honestly could be done quickly if I’m not disturbed for a while. I mean heck, if I’m on the commuter rail – I have nearly three hours of time that I could use to catch up on these little projects (updating status charts and such) that don’t require access to the databases and such.

The bad news: Colley’s been ill. Really ill. He lost a third of his bodyweight sometime between July 4th and the middle of September. He’s been diagnosed with fatty liver disease and a form of hepatitis that essentially translates to “infection and inflammation” of the liver. If left untreated, it’s fatal. Basically, at some point he stopped eating for some reason – and he wasn’t eating long enough that his liver started trying to burn fat to replace the protein he wasn’t taking in. Only problem – cats don’t process fat very well at all, and the fat was building up in his liver. Essentially, his body started eating itself to try to produce the energy he needed, but there wasn’t the protein his obligate carnivore body needed… and that caused the weight loss.

So after a round of blood tests and an ultrasound, he got the fatty liver diagnosis. Medications have included an appetite increaser pill (he’s now off those), two separate antibiotics (liquids), and a bile producer (suspension liquid) to start cleaning out his liver. He was given a few cans of a high protein cat food, although the vet really just encouraged us to get him to eat any protein he’d eat – the protein intake was the important thing. The solution to the problem is to make his liver kick-start into recognizing and burning protein again. And thankfully it seems to be working. He’s not thrilled with the meds at all, but we’re managing to get most of them down him. He’s up about 11 ounces since diagnosis, which is good – and he’s now eating without any medical intervention. So I think we’re now out of the woods with him. The only problem is that for the first two weeks, by necessity, he was being fed on demand – and it’s starting to become a habit. Sooo… yeah. We’ll have to break that out of him eventually and start toning down the extra cans. For now, I just want to know that he’s better. Once he’s finally off the antibiotics, we’ll start cutting back the volume of food a bit. I’m thinking that whatever caused his loss of appetite may have been due to something with the kibble – he used to be an exclusively kibble-interest cat. Now he refuses to touch it, which I find interesting.

Stitcher’s Hideaway is a week away now, and I can’t wait to head to Mystic. Four days of work are between me and my vacation week. And oh, I need it.

There’s some other possible big news on the horizon, but not confirmed yet. I’ll get to that when I can.

Erich, Matt and I headed to South County today for theCharlestown Seafood Festival. Lots of great seafood, some interesting raffles, a fantastic classic car and motorcycle show, and some great music. The weather was just a bit hot (due to the asphalt), but we had a great time.

Afterward, we headed a bit further down Route 1 to Quonochontaug Pond and wandered through the salt flats on the southern side of the pond for a couple hours. We saw several crabs, tons of minnows, jellyfish, and a horseshoe crab. The water was wonderful – I honestly wish I would have had my bathing suit so I could have gone deeper. At one point on our way back from a little rock shoal in the flats, we tried crossing through a cut path in the reeds – but I quickly sunk to mid-calf in some very stinky mud… so yeah, backed out of there and continued trudging through the water instead. On the mud trail, we did see lots of bubbles against the water – we’re thinking it was a well-populated clam bed. Several people were walking around with buckets and nylon bags, and I’m pretty sure I saw Quahogs in those bags (a local really, really big clam for those who are unfamiliar).

It’s a fantastic place – the water is brilliantly clear and a great temperature (not too warm, not too cold, with some neat swirling eddies of both temperatures). Great for little kids because there’s no real tide to worry about. There were plenty of people there, but it didn’t feel crowded or chaotic – just a bunch of very friendly people enjoying a gorgeous little nook of Rhode Island on a gorgeous summer afternoon. Can’t beat it!

Matt got very sunburned, and I’m a little toasty feeling – but I think both of us should be okay tomorrow. Erich is just fine – I’m envious of the native blood in him. He just tans.

***

I’m redoing some pictures for the Postcrossing of the Day cards – I wasn’t happy with how they photographed (they look very blurry to me). Once I get some done and cropped, I’ll start back up with the feature. Probably will get at least a few done this week.

***

Stitching, stitching… it’s been a wild week! On Sunday, I got together with a few fellow stitchers from Rhode Island for our first official Rhode Island Stitchers get together. We hit it off immediately and had a great time. The next meetup is scheduled for Saturday the 14th at the Warwick Public Library (open to all, so please come down… info is on the Facebook group).

I’ve been working on two projects this week – Spryntz‘s RR piece and Astrology Sampler.  I decided to restart Astrology Sampler on Thursday.  The original fabric I’d chosen just was NOT working as I’d hoped.  Even Erich looked at it and went “ugh… no, that looks bad.”  So rather than have fun with Silkweaver fabbies on this one, out came the Aida tubes.  I’ve restarted it on good old-fashioned 14 ct black Aida, which is what the sample piece is on, I think.  It already looks much better.

Spryntz’s piece is coming along slowly but steady.  I’d planned on getting some of it done tonight, but I’m too tired after being in the sun.  I’ll work on it tomorrow.

Speaking of Robins – there’s a new UFO Round Robin starting up soon, if anyone’s interested.  Go over here for the information.  Right now it’s in preliminary sign-ups.  The plan is to kick it off sometime in September (I’m guessing probably late-ish September).

That’s it for me… time for bed.  :)

It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! It’s off!!!!! ZOMG IT’S FINALLY GONE!

As of 3:30 this afternoon, the god-awful permanent retainer that had been cemented to my six front bottom teeth is finally GONE. 18 god-awful years of that thing sitting slightly crooked on the back of my teeth, just barely visible above one tooth, constantly sitting against my tongue, constantly feeling gross despite carefully brushing it…

IT HAS FINALLY BEEN REMOVED.

Here’s the thing – I didn’t know it was going to be put in there in the first place. Literally NO ONE explained this was going to happen. I went in for what I thought was a checkup on my removable retainer about a week or so after my braces came off (and to check up on the site), and suddenly I’m fitted with this god-awful thing. And the kicker – NO ONE WOULD TELL ME WHY IT WAS IN THERE. No one. I asked my orthodontist. I’ve asked three dentists – not a single person would give me an answer besides “well, it’s there for a reason.”

I never understood what that reason was – it was on the six teeth that had never needed to move. Those six teeth were the ones that were actually STRAIGHT to begin with when I was a kid!

Today Erich and I had mutual appointments to get fillings done. He went first, and when he was in the chair, he asked the dentist if she could consider taking the thing out because it annoyed me all the time. When I got into the chair, she did the filling, and then she mentions it – asks me if I want it out. Oh HELL yes. And a half-hour later, it was reality.

For the first time since I was 12 years old, I have no wires in my mouth. It feels awesome and amazing and incredibly weird. I keep running my tongue over my teeth where the wire should be (because I was constantly worrying at the thing for 18 fucking years) – and there’s nothing there.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(and why yes, my husband has HUGE points to cash in with me now at any time…)

I finished a cute little piece on the train Tuesday morning – Finish #4 for me this year… hooray!  It’s a freebie from an issue of Cross Stitch Crazy from a couple years ago (I left the mag at home today, since I’m now done with the stitching… can’t recall the issue number).  Anyway, I’ll be finishing this into an ornament sometime in the next few days.  It won’t be a particularly elegant finish.  I’m still a beginner at them and feel very clumsy with finishing work.  But hey, it’ll be mine.

It’s yet another reason why I’m very excited for the Stitchers Hideaway in October.  According to the current game plan, there will be some finishing work taught – which I desperately need.  I think I may plan on holding off on any more ornament finishing work until after the convention.  I’ll work on stitching up any ornaments I want to use for the TWCOE exchange this year.  Late October will just be spent finishing, then.  J

For the rest of this week, I’m in a bit of limbo as far as stitching goes.   This week’s been extremely busy at work with a lot of mid-year meetings for claims status and such, so I’ve been working almost exclusively in Excel to try to get all of the necessary reports ready to go.  It’s going well, and for the first week since I started the new job, I’m feeling like I’ve got my admin rhythm back.  Hopefully it continues and I’ll be able to chip away at some of the backlogged work when quite a few people are on vacation next week.

On the non-stitching front, Erich had an interview last week that seemed to go pretty well.  He told me a couple days ago that while yes, being unemployed is great in the sense that he can get some of those house projects done, he’s also ready to get back to work.  He hasn’t been out too long – about 10 weeks.  But with the mortgage to pay, I’m glad he’s itching to get a move-on.  I’ve been very stressed about it all.

Anyway… stitching… I’ve put  perhaps 2 hours of work into Garden Sampler during evening commutes this week..  My original goal was to finish it this month – and I may focus on doing that rather than rotating smaller train-ride projects as I’d originally planned to do.  I definitely could get this project finished.  It’s a more primitive piece with whole stitches only and perhaps twenty total backstitches, which is great.

I sadly will have to restart my Mira Spring Queen.  I was having some trouble keeping good tension on my scroll bars last round with her, and so I used my Qsnap clamps to hold the fabric tighter.  Well… then work got all insane, and stupid me forgot to remove the clamps.  Some sort of chemical reaction happened, and now I have very blatant blocky stripes across the top half of the fabric.  If it were on the bottom half, I probably wouldn’t have been so concerned – the huge skirt would have filled up most of the issue.   BUT… since it’s on the top, it won’t be able to be hidden by stitches and creative framing.  Grrr… so the Mira of Doom continues.  In a way, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  I think the fabric color may have been a bad choice because the skirt was blending into the fabric a bit too much.  So I’ll find a safe white or ecru fabric and restart.

There’s a new UFO Round Robin that may kick off in autumn over on the RR boards.   I’m mulling participating in it, although Erich’s job situation will play heavily into that.  I’m unsure what I’ll send out – I promised I wouldn’t send out a Teresa Wentzler piece if I were in it (since that’s what I’ve sent so  far!)  Right now I’m mulling over Walk in the Woods, which was one of Erich’s mom’s pieces that I inherited, or perhaps Autumn Queen, so I can have both queens ready to frame at the roughly the same time.

Plans, plans… plans…

It’s another Monday morning. I’m feeling a bit guilty about all of the time I’ve spent slacking off in front of the TV, so I’m getting a to-do list to get my butt moving again. To be fair, I was feeling pretty crappy over 4th of July weekend thanks to womanly issues – and the heat and humidity this week have been pretty nasty, so most of my time has been on the couch in front of the AC… simply because that’s been the only comfortable place in the house to be.

I have a lot of mail-related things to get done, but also projects I’ve been putting off. So… for this week:

• Get together with Erich’s dad for his birthday
• Finish sorting old clothes for donation (will do on Sunday)
• Finish addressing all postcards for personal swaps on postcrossing
• Finish addressing all cards for the July RR swap on postcrossing
• Send out Rahenna’s piece for the UFO RR
• Sort sheets & towels – match sheet sets up
• Put away all clean laundry
• Sort socks (dun.. dun… DUN!)
• Finish the little Christmas ornie for the LaS stitch-a-long
• Make pies before the ingredients go bad
• Sift through 1 month of uploaded journal entries & fix them
• Get my WoW account settled & ready to go for gaming again

And some generic tidying once the weekend comes around.

My focus to start this week is all of the mail-related things. That’s my focus for tonight. Years of penpalling and swapping still come into play and I’ll fly through them tonight!

I’m particularly proud that I’m ready to get the UFO RR on its way this week. I honestly could have sent it on last week, but I’ve been meaning to get a photo taken of it… AND… as I do every round, I do a good sticky roller over the piece to clean off any stray cat hair (in my house?!? NEVER!) before I send it off. We were out of sticky rollers – an issue now solved, so I’ll get that packaged up tonight.

Longer term projects include getting my stitching stuff completely organized, but that’s weather-dependent because my office is on the 2nd floor of our house and therefore not in the AC.  If we get a cool, rainy day by the end of the month I’ll tackle it – otherwise that’s a “early autumn” thing, as annoying as it is.  I received a fantastic excel chart from Jenn (thank you!!) to help organize my stash.  I’m looking forward to really getting in there and getting everything sorted.

Erich’s been very busy the past week cleaning out old boxes and tubs in the basement – a lot of it has been my stuff he’s been sorting, and I’m just accepting that it needs to happen. I’m so horrible about throwing stuff out that, aside from a few things this past weekend, I haven’t even dared look in the boxes of what he’s throwing out. I’m just letting him do it. I’ve kept deflecting the responsibility to go down there and clean stuff out, and he finally just started doing it – and as much as it kills me, I know I need to allow him to just do this so it’s done. I seriously doubt anything’s vital down there. To be fair, the vast majority of it has probably been in boxes down there since at least the cleaning frenzy before our wedding (in 2007) if not since we moved into the house (in 2005)… so I seriously doubt I’ll even notice it’s gone. A lot was just old bills and crap that’s been collecting forever. Hell, there were bills and other papers in there from my college apartment – they’d just gotten mixed in with junk in storage somehow.

So yes – our recycling containers have been very full the past few days. He’s doing a great job getting through stuff. Anything that’s a bill or has potentially important info on it is getting put in a specific wooden box for the “burn” pile. Two or three times per year Erich pulls out the wheeled camp grill (one of those grated metal jobbies) onto the driveway, pulls up a chair and just tosses everything into the fire. It’s a bit too hot right now – I imagine the next burn date will probably be sometime in September. But he’s got a nice, big pile to burn this time. We’ll have to invite friends over for a BBQ and bill burn at this rate!

So anyway, that’s my rambles for this morning. Time to get to work…

With things calming down a bit at work and managers back from long vacations, I decided to ask for a couple days off to get a breather.  Aside from the long weekend back in April to visit my grandmother for her 90th birthday, I really haven’t had any time off this year.  It’s been too busy with the new job and all.  So this weekend?  Oh yeah, looking forward to it.

I’m starting the weekend with a Stitch ‘n Bitch up at Michelle’s house in Boston. Apparently the interest is pretty high, so it should be a good time. I’m going to take a couple of projects with me – the UFO RR that I just received (TW’s Angel Procession) and probably something a bit easier, just in case space turns out to be limited.

Should be fun.

Erich is heading up to New Hampshire for Sunday and Monday to visit his dad for Father’s Day. I’ll be staying behind for some me-time and puttering. I do have a couple of projects that I really need to get finished. Erich rebuilt my closet last weekend after the crapalanche in early May. A good portion of my clothes are hung back up, but I still have some laundry to sort and get put away (or put in bags for donation).

I also need to do some tidying in my stitching room. Even though I spent a massive amount on floss to kit projects up, it seems that a few of them have been missing bobbins as I’ve pulled them out. Not sure what’s going on there, but I’ve decided to grab some sandwich bags for the floss. I’m going to go through all of the pieces I’ve kitted and figure out where I’m at with them. Some just need fabric. Some may still need floss. And I need to update my stash list a bit so I know what I have. I’ve been collecting TW patterns as I find them, but somehow I think I’ve managed to purchase the pattern to the 4-panel flowers wool cross at least a couple times. (whoops) Ideally, I’d like to get some sort of a tracking system (in Excel, perhaps?) for my stash. But for now, I’m just going to get things together and tidy it up a bit – get the list updated here on my blog and such.

Other than that, it’s going to be a nice, relaxing weekend. I’ll do some stitching. I’ll watch some new Doctor Who. I’m planning on doing a wanderlust drive at some point on Monday or Tuesday, depending on how the weather pans out. And at some point, I plan on sitting Midsummer ritual, although I haven’t decided where yet.

Can. Not. Wait. 5 pm can’t come fast enough!

for the 210_in_2010 group… I’ve made some progress…

List is behind the cut.

Bold = completed
Italics = in progress

Completed:  10

Read the rest of this entry »

So the big news I hinted at earlier this week…

Friday was my last day in the admin cube – on Monday, I move into my own cube at the company and take on a whole new workload. Technically, it’s a lateral move. But the focus is so different and the actual projects much more involved on my end – title be damned, it’s a promotion. Instead of being a general admin for all sorts of busywork jobs for the entire company, I’ll instead be focused on work from four specific managers (and their support teams) – one Executive VP, two Senior VPs, and an Assistant VP (who’s in charge of our claims dept). I will be VERY busy. I’ve already been told that a lot of the work is self-directed (i.e. I’ll just be given the work and trusted to get it done). I’ll be dealing with a very large client as well as learning lots of new things on the claims side.

I’m seriously excited. I’m a bit nervous – but it’s a good nervous. Nervousness like this makes me energized to do a good job, to learn all I can, etc.

It will be a good move – I really like the company I work for, but the job I was doing needed to change. A lot of my base frustrations get solved immediately. Can’t beat it.

Erich has also received a lateral-style promotion (the same week as I got mine, actually!). He’ll now be the sole Level II support for a product line in his company. He’s been working Level II support at his company for quite a while, and the Level II folks had taken on some of the work that was forcing the Level I folks underwater. As the workload/needs have shifted, they now can take the responsibilities on again – and Erich will now be the higher-level fixer on his own. I’ve teased him that in a way, he now has minions.

He kind of likes that.

It’s been an amazingly strange week in the Krueger household – quite a bit focused on jobs. Erich’s job is changing to something where he’ll have a lot more responsibility (and minions… minions are good). He’s going to be the only lvl 2 tech support person for a product line, essentially handing all of the complex items on software that the lvl 1 folks can’t handle. He may have to do some traveling soon to help train/support some of the folks he’ll be working with.

I’ve applied for a lateral transfer at my company into another administrative job that’s opening up which would give ME a lot more responsibility and challenge. I had a good interview for it, I’m psyched about the possibilities, and I’m very hopeful, but of course “it ain’t over ’till it’s over” and I see an official offer letter on company letterhead.

*crosses fingers*

And Matt seems to be working through some of his depression and is coming around.

So a good week. I’d be lying if I denied my head was spinning a bit!

Aside from work-related things, it’s been a good week socially. On Thursday, Erich and I attended Bye Bye Birdie at Fontbonne Academy . Our best man, Tone, directs two productions per school year there, and we attend primarily to support him. The school has a good drama department, though – and it seems like the plays are generally well attended. It was an adorable production – the kids looked like they were having a blast. Lots of talent on that stage (and I’m a bit envious of all of the poodle skirts, which I think is one of those things I’ll never quite grow out of).

We’ve put out invites for a big St. Patrick’s dinner at our house next weekend. A few replies so far. I make a very good corned beef dinner (it takes Polish boiling methods to perfect on Irish ones *grin*). I’ll probably head out to grab the beef this weekend since it’s going to be cheap.

And tomorrow morning we’ll do our brunch ‘n bowl with Tone, his wife Robin, his brother Smallz, and whoever else shows up. I’m planning on checking out the pro shop at the alley for bowling shoes – we’re going often enough that it’s worth buying my own. Nothing too crazy, but I can justify $30-$40 for a pair that won’t be worn by strangers. I’m tempted to buy rental-style shoes, but there are a couple other styles that I really like, too.

It’s supposed to be a miserably rainy weekend, so other than bowling, I’m planning on spending a good portion of it stitching. My Hush Hush piece for LifesAStitch is due to be done this weekend. All of my stitches are done. I’ve backed it with some of the leftover evenweave, but it still felt a bit thin as a “mug rug”, so I’m adding an additional backing fabric. I just need to do some running stitches on it, so it won’t take long to attach.

Other than that, I’m not quite sure what I want to do. I have two small pieces that are very close to being done – Spirit Dragon only needs backstitching, although I think it’s probably about 2-3 hours worth based on my stitching speed. Home is Where the Cat Is has probably about the same amount. It would be nice to have three finishes in a weekend, but… I also wonder whether I should bring those small pieces on the train with me this week and just work on a larger piece that doesn’t transport as well.

I’m not sure. But I’ll definitely get a good amount of stitching done. I have two DVDs of West Wing to watch, a DVD and an episode of DS9 to watch, and probably a couple shows on the DVR as well.

It’s been an oddly great week.

No wonder my head is spinning!

It’s been a beautiful few days here in Providence – sunny, low to mid 50s. Any leftover snow is now long-gone, and spring is just starting to creep up through the ground. It’s been nice to leave the hat and scarf at home the last three days. At lunch I don’t even need to zip up my jacket. Hooray!

So I figured I’d go a bit springy on the layout.

Although it really wasn’t that bad of a winter here – since New England apparently is now the warm, calm-weather spot of the United States for winter weather – I’m relieved to see spring arriving. I’m getting an itch about planting and prepping the garden for the summer. The official date for the URI Spring Fair hasn’t been announced on the university website yet, although I’m seeing May 8th on other sites. I cannot wait for the fair – I plan on raiding the heirloom tomato varieties this year to experiment with tastes and colors.

Nevermind… I just found the actual website. May 9th. I will be there, hopefully with some sort of a wagon in tow. We’re planning on putting in a real garden this year (as opposed to my Earthbox garden from last spring), and tomatoes are primary on my list so I can make lots of sauce and lots of salsa.

This past weekend I started the spring cleaning in the house. I’ve been meaning to tackle our bedroom for a while, and finally got to it on Sunday. With six cats and two thickly-haired humans, the dust behind the bed and side tables was… scary. But it has all been scrubbed, and already there’s a dramatic improvement in my morning allergies and Erich’s snoring. Needless to say… I’m going to be making sure I keep up on the heavy cleaning up there now, and not just do a quick tidy.

I’ve decided to just do the big cleaning room by room – pick one a week so I can still enjoy my weekend. This weekend I’m focusing on my office. It’ll be a warm but rainy weekend, so it’s good cleaning weather.

Tomorrow night we’re going to one of the local Catholic high schools for a production of “Bye Bye Birdie.” Our best man is directing it, so it’s the whole show of support thing. We’ve been to a few of the productions over the past couple years – the drama club is strong at the school. I’ve been impressed!

Off to bed… stitching and other updates sometime this weekend.

Where the HECK did February go?!?

(oh yeah… I spent them in front of the TV watching the Olympics and stitching…)

Ready for a long post? I haven’t done one of these in a LONG time. It feels good, actually.

I started this post on March 2nd, by the way, but saved it before heading to lunch and forgot about it.  Since I’m still not as familiar with how WordPress will post things, I’m curious whether it will show up before or after the photo I just posted.

Anyway…

Crazy, crazy month. It flew by entirely too fast. BUT – it was productive, in many ways. I’ll talk about stitching in a sec – but I’ll start with the general life stuff.

Erich and I have *gasp* finally gone bowling. It’s a bit of an in-joke, really. I mean, we’ve been together for nine years this May, and we’d never gone bowling. We’d talked about it – and we live within a mile of three separate bowling alleys (although one’s duck pin only, so that may not count), but we’d never gone.

Our best man and his wife thankfully changed that when they invited us to the Sunday morning bowling hangout they’re doing up in Brockton. So… 9:30 on Sunday morning, we’re now hanging out with them at the lanes, bowling a few games since there’s a special to rent lanes by the hour and bowl as many games as you can. Cheap morning – gets us up and moving (and getting some slight exercise, at least!)

We’ve also decided to start doing one other night of bowling per week down by us – the lane in Cranston just down Rt. 1 from us does dollar per game nights on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after 8 p.m., which works perfectly for us. So tonight we’ll go after we eat dinner at home and bowl 4 or 5 games.

I’m still playing pretty badly – the last time I’d been bowling was at the end of high school, and 17 years and about 140 pounds more weight (yeah… seriously *hangs head in shame) have completely thrown off my approach in every way. I’m rebuilding it from basics – right now focusing on the swing itself to get my accuracy, and then I’ll add steps into it. Right now if I do a step-approach, my swing gets thrown off because of the width of my hip, and I swing my arm diagonally across my body just as I do while walking. If I do a stand and swing, I have far better accuracy.

The plan next paycheck is to buy our own bowling shoes – just a few times at the lanes will pay them off (and they’ll be ours, not the worn out rental ones that god knows who has used). I’m seriously debating buying a pair of tri-color bowling shoes… because they’re bowling shoes - it seems like it’s a requirement! I’ve honestly always thought the rental shoes at the lanes were cute in a ugly rebellious sort of way.

So… hooray for hobbies as a couple!

Other stuff… Doctor Who is back on air in the UK on Easter weekend, staring here in the States on Apr. 17th. So my weekends will now be full of geekery again. I’m nervous but excited about the new Doctor. I will miss Tennant a lot in the role, but hopefully Matt Smith is fantastic, too. Steven Moffat is amazing, so if nothing else – I know I’ll enjoy the storylines.

Work’s been busy – quite a bit of overtime lately. Some parts of it are still annoying as hell, but meh, that’s work.  I have a job and for the most part, I enjoy it.  I work for a good company.  The things I do in my job are enjoyable, and most of the people I work with are, too.

Oh… and since I’m in New England, I saw no snow in February. No. Really. All of that crap that dumped on the Mid-Atlantic? Never saw it. We had a decent amount of rain, but that’s all. The first storm that gave Washington almost 30 inches or whatever? The weather forecasters up here actually apologized on air for their bad forecasts because they wound up being absolute duds. Everyone called off school and declared snow emergencies, and we barely got anything that day. Boston even offered to reimburse fines and towing fees for cars that had parked on the street – THAT was how badly off they were!

Stitching Stuff

I’ll get my final Stitching Olympics photos up late this week once I know what our weekend schedule is. The final tally, however – 10 projects worked. I managed to put stitches into all but two of my UFO projects (which I define as anything that has sat untouched for 6 months or more), plus a couple WIPs, plus started a piece for an exchange for the Life’s A Stitch board called “Hush Hush.” That’s due to be mailed out on the 15th, so I’ll be focusing on that piece until it’s done and ready to go.

Two projects are now within a couple hours of finishing – Home is Where the Cat Is (finally!) and Elemental Dragon:Spirit. Both essentially have maybe 90 minutes to two hours of backstitching each. They’re both on my radar for March.

So I’m very pleased… even if my goal list for February went extremely askew:

For February, my goals were

1) Rotate through all of my WIPs and UFOs at least once  No.  I was a few projects short.  But I DID get through 10 projects last month, so I’m very happy with the progress I made.
2) Finish Home is Where the Cat Is  So close – I just ran out of time at the end of the month.  I’m 4 hours away from finishing, max.
3) Finish Spirit  All but the backstitching.  So I’m about 90 minuts max on this one from finishing.
4) Put together the individual progress pages on my website  One of these months, maybe I’ll get to this.  But it hasn’t happened for 3 now.  So… yeah.  I’ll just focus on some stitching and call a mulligan on this.
5) Finalize my rotation that will start in March  Yep.
6) Remember to photograph the TUSAL this month.  OMG I finished one of my goals this month!

Seriously though, I’m pleased with what I did this month, even if it didn’t match the goals.

For March, I want to…

1) Finish Home is Where the Cat Is
2) Finish Spirit
3) Get my Hush Hush exchange out on time
4) Get my UFO RR mailing out on time
5) Rotate through my new rotation once by the end of March

Rotation for this month will be:

Hush Hush project (finish and mail by 3/15)
Cats on a Staircase (for Yoyo’s Christmas SAL)
Elemental Dragons: Spirit (will finish)
Egyptian Sampler
Apache Wedding Blessing
Home is Where the Cat is (will finish)
Legends of the Dragons (for the TW board SAL)
UFO Round Robin – Round #1

Ah yes… the UFO Round Robin. I’m seriously excited. Our first mailing date is on March 15th, and it’s looking like it’ll be a fantastic robin. Lots of diverse projects that are going around. We’re stitching as one group of eight, and the robin will take nearly a year before it’s over.

And I’m modding this shindig. Heh. I never thought experience with modding friendship book and slam swaps would come in handy!

I’m sending my Magical Night piece, which I adopted from (I believe) Annette back in 2005 or 2006. Due to the proximity to my wedding, it didn’t get the work hours I’d hoped it would. And since I have a glut of Teresa Wentzler pieces (being insane as I am), I decided sending one of them around was probably the best choice. This one’s probably the least far along – so sending it for a robin will give it a very nice push.

Here’s where it currently stands:

Like I said… it’s not far along. But next year, hopefully it will return with a nice amount of forward progress!

Until next time…

- Mel.

The boys are off at BJ’s to do the every-other-month run, and I opted to stay home to get a few things done. The kitchen’s now scrubbed, so I’m taking a few minutes before tackling the bathroom. We have a few people coming over for the Super Bowl tonight. I’m pretty sure everyone’s rooting for the Saints in this household. Rooting for Indy as a Pats fan? May honestly be illegal. Plus, hey – New Orleans needs all the good vibes right now. Indy’s won one recently.

So far, it’s been a good weekend all around. I did a bunch of stitching yesterday – working through three projects on my rotation for 2 hrs each. Spring Queen continues to be the very doomed piece – I had to give it a preliminary bath already for some dirt on the stitches. I must have had a loose pencil in my backpack, and on very light yellow… yeah, instant dinge. Ick. Thankfully all came out. The piece is dry, and I can start stitching on it again next time it comes up in the rotation. I’ll get photos up when I update for the Olympics tomorrow evening.

On other news that I’ve been chomping on all week (and panicking about) – it’s probably one of the few times in my life that I was very, very happy to see my period arrive. Erich and I had a bit too much fun about 2 weeks ago, and yes – while married, no… we’re not in a situation where we really are set for kids. That night, however – well… yeah. So anyway, my brain the next day started doing some math, and then I started swearing profusely. It’s not been a good couple weeks of worry. I’m very relieved that we’re not looking at a baby in 9 months. SO GLAD.

Not that the biological clock isn’t still ticking, mind – but Erich and I need to take care of a couple of things right now that really, really would cause problems had we been pregnant. And I sure as hell was not thrilled with the idea of handling a pregnancy whilst this obese.

I could do without the cramps today, though. ;P

Anyway… break over. Off to get some more work done.