Sushi cures all

I'm still feeling panicked, stressed and upset about this whole stupid paycheck problem, but I think I've found a work-around. I hope anyway. Since my old (crappy) bank hasn't got branches out here, I opened an account with a new (less crappy, we hope) bank here, but due to a wire-transfer fuck up it hasn't been funded yet. They have a branch office right around the corner from the office I am at this week, so with any luck I will be able to take my paycheck there once the FedEx guy shows up and deposit the check and get enough cash to get me through the weekend. Hopefully they will be speedy about getting me things like a check card so I can deposit the other checks that are on the way and buy my books next week.

Now if they would just approve my expense reports from last week I'd be in good shape. I can't wait to close this stupid old bank account. Having money and not being able to get to it is pretty much the worst thing ever.

Anyhow, last night my hot date for the evening took me for sushi in Manhattan. Yum. Just yum. Something about salmon nigiri makes me insanely happy. After dinner, we walked around midtown, and ended up at the Empire State Building, for which there was a huge line, so we said to hell with that and went and had beer and desert at a brewery, then walked back to the hotel. It was quite a nice evening out actually, and Times Square sucks way less at night than it does during the day. It's almost fun at night actually.

This morning I'm just trying to stay focused enough to get through the day. My really and truly Last Day at Work. It's a bit sad, in some ways, and I feel like I'm not so much leaving as just fading away, which is really kind of sad, but I'm moving on to bigger and better things. And with luck I'll be able to come back here and work in the legal department someday. Hopefully as an intern over the summer, which would be just about the best thing ever.

Tomorrow Someone and I are driving back down to Virginia. I'm really looking forward to this actually. Not so much the loading up of the car, but the driving part should be fun. I get to see two new states (New Jersey and Delaware), and spend 7 + hours in the car with my sweetie just existing. Somehow, that's very appealing.

Life goes nuts when I get back though, I have to figure out all this bank stuff, and get myself together for Monday. My sad PoiS iBook is going to have to see me through classes for the time being, I can't really afford to get a real laptop at this point, which totally sucks because it hasn't got any hope of having wireless. I've got way too used to wireless networking. So now I have to get in a war with the cable company, since the cable outlet in the office doesn't work and that means I have to either get them to fix it, or run some combination of cat-5 and coax upstairs from the cable outlet that does work, but which is in the living room. Should be fixable but it's annoying.

Secretly, I just want to go sit in Bryant Park with some nice tea and knit and write for the rest of the morning.

Because the world is *that* perverse...

My contracting agency is staffed by morons. They somehow heard “I need to talk to her before she leaves” as “No, don't pay her this week” and now I am not getting my regular direct deposit or the reimbursement for my travel last week, which I desperately need for stuff like rent and food, never mind books, until god only knows when a f*ing paper check shows up. What the hell?

In and of itself, this would not be so bad, except that my bank, which also sucks, hasn't got branches out here, so I can't deposit the manual check they are mailing me into the account from which several bills and automatic payments will be coming in the next few days. Damn it. Will this shit never end?

Between loan screw-ups, time-sheet approval screw ups, outstanding travel expenses amounting to more than a weeks pay, and all the crap I need to deal with in the next week, I am royally boned and more than a little cranky. No wonder I couldn't sleep last night.

Why these agency shits would be so astonished that I actually *need* to get paid on time and in the regular way is totally beyond me.

At least I get to see Someone tonight. That always helps somehow. Not that I expect him to solve my problems for me, but somehow it doesn't seem like anything can really hurt me when he's around. Maybe drive me a little nutty, but not really hurt me.

Oh well. I guess they are snail-mailing me my regular salary, which I can, admittedly, deposit into my new bank here, but I'm not sure what the hell I'm going to do about the outstanding stuff with the old bank. Now I just want to go home and cry though.

Giant killer bugs

Things I am stressed about

1. The last 3 days of this f*ing job
2. Student loan drama
3. Money in general (see item 2)
4. Buying books
5. First day of class
6. Brothers wedding and associated West Nile related drama
7. Not much else really

This is a bit of an improvement. #1 will be gone in a few days, #2 and #4 are getting worked out, #5 is will be over on the 15th then the 22nd, and will then be replaced by finals and homework and however many hundreds of case briefs I have to do, but once I get going I think it'll all be ok. #3 I think I am kind of stuck with for awhile, being a grad student and all. This is just going to be life for the next couple years so I had better get used to it. Or something. And I find it interesting that I am not really stressed about Someone moving away, at least at the moment.

#7 is a funny story. This morning I got in to work to find an email from my mother explaining that the wedding has to be moved because there has been an outbreak of West Nile virus at the site my brother and his fiance had reserved for the wedding. Great. So if they want to have the wedding there still, every single guest has to sign a release of liability stating that they will not sue should they contract West Nile while attending the wedding. Even better. I guess they are looking at alternate sites, which is good, but seeing as the wedding is on September 30th, this is not a good thing and causing some bit of stress for everyone, in addition to the usual impending wedding drama. Doom!

Anyhow, the weekend was quite nice. I am ashamed to admit it, but I didn't get any further from my house than the mailbox (which is about 20 feet from my front door) the whole time, and it was sort of nice. Friday I did a bit of running around and had dinner with Someones mom, E, and that was it for outside activities until Sunday evening when she picked me up so she could drop me at the airport this morning. Mostly I unpacked and sorted things and cleaned. All but 3 boxes have been eliminated, my office is in an almost functional state, my bedroom is still a bit scary but I need a dressing table and small bookshelf before that's going to get much better, and my living room and kitchen are looking quite nice. I'm just glad things are getting settled.

Saturday I found a huge, massive, disgusting spider in my living room. After doing the girl-with-spider hopping dance and squealing while begging the spider to "please just die, will you!", I attempted to squash it with my shoe, which failed miserably, so I tried to call Someone. Who was in New York. What in the hell I thought he would do about this while in New York is beyond me, but I was panicking. He didn't pick up, so I got out the vacuum and eventually managed to suck the spider up. Had it politely died in the vacuum all would have been well, but I did more squealing and hopping when I tried to empty the canister only to find a still-alive giant spider crawling around. Ick. The whole episode was pathetic but probably entertaining in a sit-com style way, and Someone eventually called back and had a grand time making fun of me, though I probably deserved that.

I hate spiders.

Sunday was less exciting, as far as huge disgusting bugs go, and I managed to sit down and spin for the better part of the afternoon. I now have 4 bobbins with little one once samples of nicely plied rare breed fiber on them, waiting for me to wind off into skeins when I get home. Hurray! The wheel survived the move quite nicely. I had to re-hang the wheel and adjust the alignment a bit, but aside from some oil that was all she needed to start humming along as usual. Spinning was quite satisfying. Of course I can;t remember when I was spinning exactly at the moment, but I did one one-ounce sample thing and plied 3 other bobbins of singles that had been sitting around for ages. I was ashamed to discover that I had no clue at all which way I had spun the singles though. My wheel will do either scotch tension or double drive, and I couldn't remember which was I had set up when I did those samples, which made it had to figure out the plying direction. I have no idea why I couldn't tell Z from S twist, but there it is. My spinning fu is in a woefully depleted state at the moment I suppose. The plied yarn seems to have some out ok so I think I figured it out, but I really need to focus on the technical aspect of spinning for awhile I think.

I even got to knit! I'm working on a bead-knit purse for my brothers fiance. With any luck at all I'll actually get the stupid thing done. My progress so far is rather shameful, but I have faith in my ability to get this thing done. It's going to be pretty. And not white. The thread is a sort of salmon color and the beads are a rich champagne. It's an odd combination, but very striking and will go well with her dress. Once I get going on these things they tend to go fast, so hopefully I'll maintain focus and get some work done on it over the next couple of days.

Lust!!!

Look at all the pretty shoes!

Serious shoe-lust issues. Damn this grad student lifestyle.

Somebody to lean on...

I am very much looking forward to a quiet weekend I can devote to fixing up my apartment and knitting. Maybe I can even sit at the spinning wheel for a bit and get her tuned up again after the move. A small bobbin full of some unusual fiber would be a very satisfying thing to hold in my hands at the end of the weekend.

I don't know about any one else, but I absolutely love these little one ounce samples of interesting fibers. I have gotten a lot of them from The Bellwether, in sampler kits that come with information sheets about the animal and the fiber. This makes me very happy. The little baggies full of fiber look very enticing, and learning about new animals and new fiber preparations is a lot of fun. Besides which, an once of fiber is just about the perfect amount to tune up your wheel and give you a sense of satisfaction and completion.

For some reason I've been having a really hard time in New York this week. Staving off major panic attacks is getting to be pretty difficult, especially when I'm stuck down in the subway waiting for a train. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's the sense that I should be at home working on my house, maybe it's the stress of uncertain student loan approvals and impending financial ruin, maybe it's fear and trepidation about starting school, or some combination of all these things, but it's been a really stressful week. I feel like I hate, really and truly loath, this city, but I don't think that's so. I think the city amplifies whatever you're feeling or trying to process, and since I'm stressed and a little anxious about the rest of my life, it's that much worse being here. Thank God Someone has been here. He's about the only thing keeping me grounded at the moment. I'm so afraid this stupid panic is going to drive him away though. Which doesn't help matters at all.

I had no doubts, but he got the job with my current/former employer, but they want him out in California. So he's leaving for the other side of the country in a few weeks. I'm happy for him, and proud of him, this is a great opportunity for him and he'll do well and be happy there, but I am not doing so well with the idea of him being so far away. I don't know how it's possible but I've grown used to him being close by, being there when I need someone to lean on, and for that to get taken away so quickly, well...it just sucks. The bitter part of me that is still angry with work wonders how much more I can give them, how much more will they take from me? But part of me is satisfied knowing that I have left one thing behind me there that will make some kind of lasting impression. It just happens to be the part of me I am least willing to give up.

Of course, I'm probably getting a little PMS'y too, so that's not helping. My coping mechanisms are pretty maxed out as it is, and never at their best when I'm dealing with that too.

The First Week (more or less)

Wednesday was hot and humid and fairly unpleasant, just like Tuesday, but we managed to get the rest of the truck unpacked after having a nice big breakfast at someplace called “Mama Steves” where Someone explained the finer points of grits making and consumption to Dad and I. Who knew grits were that complicated? After unloading all the boxes, and unpacking as many as we could, Dad and Someone took off with the rental truck to take all the sad empty boxes to a recycling center someplace out near Yorktown. Putting my boyfriend (and a fairly new one at that) and my father in the same truck, alone, for any length of time, was a bit scary but it went off quite well. They apparently had a grand old time looking for this dump place and driving around historic Yorktown. It's good when you father spends several hours alone with your boyfriend and no one comes back in an ice chest. That's all I have to say about that.

After Dad and Someone's little adventure, we all went and had dinner with Someone's mom. Quite a day for compressed relationship milestones, but it went quite well. We stopped at Lions Bridge on the way to her house to see the James River and all the Canadian Geese. Now the James is a serious river. There are a few points where you can't actually see the other side of it. Of course it was still impossibly hot and humid and the air was kind of hazy and misty, but it was a lovely spot. It would be a great place for a romantic picnic at sunset. But possibly not in the middle of the summer heat.



Thursday we went out to the Outer Banks in North Carolina and visited Kitty Hawk and had lunch at a really good Bavarian restaurant and brewery called the Weeping Radish. I will not be suffering for lack of good beer while I am here, that's for sure. The Outer Banks were really neat. It was warm, but not too hot and miserable, we got to see and stand in the Atlantic Ocean, and learned about drive through beer stores called Brew Thrus which I have to say is about the strangest thing I have ever heard of (except for the drive through margarita stands I am told exist in New Orleans).





We got back kind of late, but still had time for a quick trip to the local CostCo for food supplies and a stop at the grocery store, where we ran into Someone's mom, the only other person in the whole state that Dad and I actually knew. Kind of funny coincidence, but it was nice to see her and to meet her boyfriend.

Dad wanted to see Colonial Williamsburg (as did I), so Friday we went dresser shopping down in Newport News or Hampton or someplace that direction, had lunch with Someones mom, huffed the dresser back to my place, and went and walked around CW. Dad seemed quite impressed. It was kind of overcast and damp that day, but it was still a lot of fun to walk down DoG street (see, I'm going native already! DoG St. is how every one refers to Duke of Gloucester Street, the main drag in CW), look at the old buildings, talk to some of the people who work there, and just absorb the place. It's pretty neat. Sort of a Ren Faire version of colonial life in some ways, but it's informative and gives you a new appreciation for how hard it was to live back then. We even got to see them muster the local militia and shot off the canons. That was quite exciting.



After our colonial adventure we all packed ourselves up and Someones mom cooked up dinner. That woman can cook. It was a very nice evening, lots of good food, a little too much wine, and a really good time. The families get along frighteningly well. I'm not really sure what that means, or what I should do with it, but it's nice, and comfortable, and I'm not going to worry about it. Why worry about something that feels so amazingly right?

Dad had an early flight out of Richmond on Saturday, so we got up early and drove to the Waffle House, a chain of rather greasy little restaurants common most of the way between Texas and Virginia. Not the worst food ever, and they make good grits (who knew I would ever become a grit connoisseur, but there it is, I have gone native), and Dad really wanted to go there so we did.

After we dropped Dad off, Someone took me over to Short Pump. Strange, ill-considered name aside, this is a fun little place. There is a big shopping center/mall thing there, with an Apple Store (which Someone loves), so we wandered around a bit and once the shops opened I was able to find some really nice business slacks and a blouse for the first day of classes. We're having pictures taken or some crap and have to show up in proper business attire. Whatever. At least I have proper business attire now. The idea of wearing it in 98 degree heat with 90 percent humidity sounds like a crappy thing to me, but I only have to keep it on till noon or so. Supposedly. The pants are really wonderful. Black with pink pinstripes, very subtle, but enough to not be boring, and they make my ass look amazing so everyone was happy.

After shopping we met up with a couple of Someones friends for lunch and coffee and some general hanging out. It was a lot of fun. S and A are marvelous people with really adorable kids, and they are moving to Yorktown this week, which is right down the road so I hang out with S and the kids when school work starts to make me insane. Nothing like baby toys to get you over insane logic problem related stress.

We eventually got back in to Williamsburg, had a light dinner, and went to the Green Leafe (or just the Leafe) for beers with another of Someone's friends. H was amazing too. This guy really has some wonderful friends, I feel a lot better about being so far away from everyone I know at this point. They have all been so warm and welcoming and genuinely kind people, I'm pretty overwhelmed actually. I'm not sure what I find more comforting, knowing people here, or knowing that Someone cares enough about me to make sure that I have good people around me here. Either way, I'm feeling pretty good about all of this.

Anyhow, Sunday we slept late, finally, and had a fairly leisurely morning just hanging out at the house and watching movies and not doing much of anything. We eventually got ourselves motivated, and Someone took me to the long promised sushi restaurant. Hurray! I am not going to die for lack of sushi. There is good salmon sashimi to be had, and I am a happy kid. No toro on the menu, but I think with some exploring I can track it down someplace. After sushi, we went and met some other friends and former co-workers at a Mexican restaurant and had beers and hung out with them. Goes without saying that these were also wonderful, kind, warm, welcoming people, and one of them came just short of offering me a testing job should I decide that I want or need one.

Being back at work after all this is a bit depressing in some ways. I want to be at home, not holed up in a cold office working on a project I have almost no interest in at this point. At least I get to spend my evenings with Someone, before he gets sent out to California. Ironic thing, that. Here I meet this amazing person who is smart and talented and sweet and kind, do him a favor early on by sending his resume to my boss, and now it looks like he'll be getting a job offer from my current employer. But on the wrong coast. And in the mean time, we get more attached to each other, things fall into place like they were never out of place, our families hit it off, and now he might be making my move in reverse. I'm sad about this, of course, but oddly unconcerned. I'm going to miss him terribly, but we'll both be pretty wrapped up in our work for the next few months so maybe it's just as well we'll be on opposite ends of the country. It'll make the time we do have together that much more precious. And no one will have to watch the other person go insane. At least not all the time.

Besides, New York kind of sucks. It's hot, it smells bad, it makes me cranky and bitchy, and my feet hurt. I honestly don't understand how anyone can deal with the subway here every day. It smells like a sewer, and I come out of there feeling like I need to be decontaminated.

Finally home

Moving Day Four: The best way to fall in love with a place is to see it at sunrise. Sunrise over the Blue Ridge Mountains was beautiful. The sky turned every color of pearl the world has ever known. I watch it go from the dark purply grey of a black pearl to the warm golden shades of white pearls as we drove through my new home state, past places Someone had told me about and promised to take me someday, and somehow I knew I was finally home.



It took most of the morning to get through the mountains, but we got to Richmond, and someplace called “Short Pump” (I ask you, does no one think about what they name places these days? Please. First Toad Suck, now this) around 10 or so, and were in Williamsburg by 11. Dad and I ditched the truck, met my new land lady, got the quick tour of town, signed the lease, and started unpacking the truck.

I love my new house. It's spacious, has tons of closets, a nice little kitchen (sadly, electric, but I can live with that), a beautiful view over a field from my living room and bedroom window, and a laundry room and dishwasher. We walked in to the place, let the cat out, and it instantly felt like home. Even Maya, who wouldn't get out of her crate for love or money anywhere along the road (except the hotel in Oklahoma), took to the place as if she'd been there her whole life.



Dad and I started getting things unloaded from the truck, and then Someone got there to help, bearing cold water and Big Gulps. I've never been so happy to see a person in my life, and not just because of the cold water. He and Dad and I worked on unloading until we couldn't take the heat any more, but had got out all of the wine and the furniture and enough of the other stuff so we could make up beds for the night before giving up on unpacking for the day and taking the best showers of our lives.

Once we were all clean, Someone drove us to a BBQ place someplace in the area for dinner. That was good. I don't generally like pork, but that was some tasty pig, that was. Dad wanted to do as much “regional” food as we could, this seemed to fit that bill pretty well.

After we all gorged ourselves on tasty meat, we went back to my place, watched a movie, drank some wine, and passed out.

Gotta love the South

Moving Day Three: Sleeping in an actual stationary bed is a good and wonderful thing. Especially when that sleep comes after spending something like 36 hours on the road. Of course, I think I only slept for about 4 hours, between FTP related rage, Dad's snoring, and just generally being unfocused and distracted sleep wasn't working out well. Oh well. We had crappy coffee in the hotel for breakfast and were on our way again.

Oklahoma is a rather pretty state. The parts we drove through all seemed to look like well-manicured (if somewhat due for a mow) golf courses. I've never seen so much open grass and rolling hills in my life.



I fell asleep at some point and woke up in Arkansas. Not a bad state, as long as you don't actually stop anyway. The signage here was strange to say the very least, and we say every stereotypical type of southerner along the way. They actually have a place called “Toad Suck Regional Park.” Toad Suck? I'm not really sure I want to know how this places ended up getting called “Toad Suck” but there it is. We also saw a large number of billboards advertising adult book and video stores with convenient truck parking. I know that San Francisco is supposed to be some sort of den of iniquity, but I have never in my life seen a huge road-side billboard for a porn shop touting the stunning trucking parking and wide selection of titles available in a convenient road-side location. But there it is. So much for the Bible Belt I guess. When we finally got to this place, it was, I kid you not, a huge massive bright red barn by the side of the highway. Scary.



We finally got to the Mississippi River and Tennessee around rush-hour. The Memphis sky-line was beautiful. I'd like to visit Memphis someday, it seems like an interesting place. The architecture is interesting anyway.



Actually crossing the Mississippi was a huge mile-stone for some reason. Up to the point, even after we had more than half the distance behind us, I felt somehow as though I was still able to go back. Once I got over that river though, I had no way back. The other side felt very Other somehow. I don't know why I work things up in my head this way sometimes, but finally crossing that river made the whole idea of starting my life over seem very real. Plus it was the first real, large river I'd seen so far. I saw the Potomac when I was in junior high, but California has nothing in the way of rivers like the Mississippi or the Potomac or the James.



I have to admit that I slept through most of Tennessee. We stopped for dinner in a town near Dixon I think, and Dad had enough coffee and sugar to keep him going through the night. I have never seen him that wired actually. It reminded me of Beavis eating too much sugar and turning into Cornholio.

What I did see of the state was beautiful though. All tree, billboards for porn, rolling hills and eventually mountains. Not like the Sierras, but still mountains. Somewhere in the night, it became Tuesday and we ended up in Virginia.

We made it!

I have a much longer post on it's way, with pictures and everything, but we made it! The cat, Dad and I got to Virginia in one piece on Tuesday morning. It was hot. Really hot. Which would not be so bad except that it is also very humid, which makes for some miserable truck unloading. Dad, Someone and I took 2 days to get the truck unloaded but it went ok. The cat did amazingly well with the whole 4 days in a box thing, and seems to be nicely adjusted to her to new home.

Anyway, a full write up of the rest of the road trip and my first few days in VA are on the way. Today, I'm working in New York. Trying to get adjusted to a new office is always entertaining. They sort of forgot I was coming, so I had to set up a workstation and spent most of the morning running around looking for keys, badges, cat-5, power strips, and the basics in office supplies. Lots of fun. Thankfully no one expects much out of me till this afternoon.

Traveling between Newport News and New York is disturbingly easy. Getting up at 5 am is not so great, but I managed to make it to the office by 9:30 this morning. Not too bad if you ask me. Tonight, Someone and I are going to do something mellow (I hope) and go check out the corporate apartment I get to stay in this week and figure out how to take the subway between there and the office. I live in fear of the New York subway system. Less the subway itself and more the ginormous fearsome rats (or R.O.U.S.s if you more the geek type) actually, but still, it's all the same.

Must get to work, I have cat-5 to poach and subway routs to figure out. I'll try to post the rest of the trip write-up tonight.

Unfortunate signs

Move Road Trip Day Two

These are all from real live billboards seen driving through New Mexico:

FIREWORKS!
Worldwide
Pyro
Headquarters

BBQ! Certified Angus!
Burgers Steaks Mexican

Vasectomy Reversal
Microsurgery guaranteed

Roadkill Apparel
Buffet - $7.99

Watching the sun rise over the Arizona desert was truly spectacular. We drove through the night, Dad and I taking turns sleeping. There was a bit of scary weather through western Arizona, driving through a lightening storm. Thank god I slept through most of it, but the forks and flashes I did see were stunning.



Most of Arizona was moon-lit desert. Even through the storm clouds, the moon lit up the sky with silver, throwing the rocks and bluffs into stark relief. The sun came up, looking at first like the light of a distant city, the turning the sky shades of turquoise and teal before becoming pink and gold. Watching the dawn put on her morning colors is rather miraculous, there are no other words for it.

In less natural wonders, Albuquerque has the most beautiful freeway interchange I have ever seen. You would think that a freeway interchange would be, in all places, hideous, but this one was actually really lovely to look at. They had made the whole thing out of sandstone colored cement and trimmed it with turquoise. The turquoise stood out against the sandstone like narrow ribbons of light almost. They had done some nice little detailing at the ends of the spans, to give the whole thing a Southwest flair. Very nice. If only cities the world over paid attention to things like having attractive freeway interchanges, the highway system here would be a much nicer experience.

The rest of New Mexico was fairly uneventful. The cat still refused to get out her box when we stopped, but seemed to be doing just fine. I fell asleep again, and woke up in Texas. A flatter place I have never seen in my life. It's beautiful though, in a huge, flat, open kind of way. Everything just seemed so big. I understand now why we Americans have such a hard time with scale. With so much open space, and 300 miles between each waypoint on this trip, it's no wonder.

Anyhow, we got hungry and stopped for some real Texas BBQ in Amarillo. Oh. My. Gawd. Yummy does not ever begin to cover it. California may have Happy Cows, but Texas has Tasty Cows. I've developed a whole new appreciation for BBQ and this sweet tea thing.

Amarillo was our first major waypoint, and since we got there in just about 24 hours and still had plenty of day light and energy left, we pushed on to Oklahoma. Here is another truly beautiful state, but it kind of looks like a giant golf course. I've never been through real grasslands before, so the gently rolling hills and greenery look like nothing more than a somewhat overgrown golf course to me. It's lovely though and quite pleasant to drive through.

We finally checked in to the AmeriSuites in Midwest City around 8 I think. Time is getting to be a very vague and confused sort of thing. I honestly have no clue what time people here think it is. The clock in the truck is set to Virginia time, my watch thinks it's still in California, and what with spotty adoption of daylight savings time, I had no idea when it was through most of Arizona. Now I'm just hopelessly confused.

At least the cat has come out of her crate and eaten something. I was starting to get a bit worried. She's been very well behaved so far, but I still worry.

Anyhow, I'm getting exhausted and am having a hell of a time uploading any of the pictures I took. Windows sucks is all I have to say about it. It would figure the one time I manage to get the camera, the cable, and a laptop all in the same place I can't get FTP to work for whatever reason. I am determined though, and will upload pictures as soon as I can. Even if it kills me.

Edited to say that I got the FTP problem worked out and am adding in pictures for the last two posts. yay! It's about time.

Keep you eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel…

Move Road Trip Day one

I’m writing from the cab on a 17 foot moving van speeding through the Mojave desert. It’s dark, it’s cool, the air smells of rain and heat, and we are our own small pocket of East Coast time in California. I can hardly wait to cross the state line, and really feel like I am underway.

Loading the truck went surprisingly well. For some reason the whole process seemed very easy, compared to my last moves. Everything was pretty well packed and ready to go by the time Dad got there with the truck, so it was all just a matter of working out an arrangement of boxes and furniture that would fit. Just like a big game of Tetris. We got it all in though, with a bit of room to spare even, and the only thing I forgot (that I know of anyway) is my bag of snacks pilfered from the office. I am mourning the loss of my chocolate covered espresso beans, but I’ll find a way to move on without them. I think.

Here you can see the heap of crap that I donated to the stupid Salvation Army.



And here is my living room just before the truck showed up:



Anyhow, we left the city at about 1 pm, after grabbing lunch at the corner taqueria and making a not-so-quick stop by the post office to pick up my package of Ubuntu Cds and fill out a change of address card. I am bribing people to help unload with beer and linux ISOs. I really am a huge geek.

Traffic sucked. I will not miss crap bay area traffic. We saw three separate accidents before getting out of Hayward. Truly sad, especially for a Saturday. Getting to I5 felt pretty good though. It’s hot in the central valley, not really humid but man was it ever warm when we got out of the truck! One of the best things to do when driving down the highway is look at other cars. Of course, it’s the only thing to do, aside from play with the iPod, in most cases. We saw a semi towing another semi cab, which was very strange. It’s vaguely unsettling to find yourself facing down the front end of a semi truck while going 70mph down a highway. Never mind the weirdness that results from a convoy of no less than 10 identical school busses in perfect convoy formation passing the strange backwards semi towing thing. Very odd. If ever the government takes to uses a fleet of school busses as a “secret” convoy, I will be very afraid. Not exactly subtle.

By the time we got to Wasco, huge thunderheads had formed over the mountains. Very huge. They looked beautiful, rising up at the end of a long stretch of road, but somewhat intimidating after we found out that there were thunderstorms and flash flood warnings for the area ahead of us when we stopped for coffee in Wasco (not even at a Starbucks, I am proud to report). Eep. By the time we got to Tehachapi, the storm was in full force. We pretty much drove through sheets of water for what could only been about 5 or 10 minutes, but feel like a small eternity. Poor Dad was freaking out. I was driving, which always seems to make him nervous, and he hates driving in the pouring rain. Not that I blame him. The first memory I have of that kind of rain was a trip he and I took to LA when I was a kid. It was dumping down rain on Sunset Blvd, and Dad lost control of the car. We spun across 3 lanes of traffic and ended up with the nose of the car stuck in a shrub. Somehow, we didn’t hit anyone and the car wasn’t damaged, but neither of us has ever dealt well with that kind of rain ever since.



After the rain, we came down in to the desert. The desert after rain is an amazing thing. Fresh, clean, and glowing. The sun was just beginning to set as we came over the mountains, casting a golden glow everything, and bringing up all of the variations of green and pink and gold. It’s a magical thing, all the colors and the smell of rain on warm air, with the sun setting in flurry of pink and gold clouds.



We’re planning to push on through the night so we get through most of the desert when it’s cool. Probably a good plan, seeing as it’s July and all, but part of me regrets not being able to watch as the desert changes and passes by. We just got through the horrible stink field before Barstow, I can only imagine how awful that smell would be during the heat of the day. So really, it’s all for the best.

So far, the cat is doing very well. She was not at all happy when we tried to give her her Xanax, I’ve never seen a cat produce that much drool in my life. She must have gotten some into her system though, I was able to put her in the crate with no trouble at all about 20 minutes latter. She meowed a few times, but settled down quickly, and has been quite since. I did try to let her out when we stopped in Mojave, but she refused to come out of the crate. She took a few steps out, tried to go under the truck (thank god we have her on a leash), then bolted right back into the crate where she arranged herself like the Queen of Sheba and seems perfectly content to stay. Probably this is all a very good thing.

The further East I get, the calmer I feel. I still have a lot to do to get through this move, but the end is finally in site, and getting closer by the minute (of course, we just passed a sign that said “Washing DC 2553 miles”, which seems a bit daunting), and so much opportunity is waiting for me. I know it won’t be without its struggles, but there is so much hope there, so much promise.

Here we have Dad doing his impression of a long-haul truck driver:

Another fiber-free day

Why do I never seem to have my camera and my camera cable in the same place at the same time? I found the damned cable, it was in work laptop bag, but now I have left the camera someplace amid the rubbish heap that I will no longer call home as of some time no latter than noon tomorrow.

[Insert imaginary photos of a huge pile of boxes and a heap of rubbish waiting for the *$&%! Salvation Army pick-up jerk]

Anyway...as I have not had any time to knit in the last week, this post will be all about moving and my crazy head. Fiber content will have to wait a bit. Though I am very much looking forward to getting my wheel and loom set up again once I move.

My project team, well, most of it anyway, took me out to lunch yesterday. We went to a really amazingly good Indian buffet someplace in Palo Alto. Yum. I haven't had good, or even decent, curry in a really long time. I'm hoping that I can either find a really good (and cheap) Indian restaurant someplace in Williamsburg or an Indian grocery. If not, it's going to be a lot of trips to New York and calls to spice pushers in other states to get things shipped out. A life without good curry is a life half lived (to grossly misappropriate a Baz Lerhmann movie tag line). Lunch was nice, and it was good to see everyone at the same table, but I flat out refused to give a speech. I would have burst into tears and blurted out all kinds of inane “I really love you guys” sorts of drivel, and that just won't do. The truth is, I really *do* love these guys, and I really will miss them, and that I am leaving my project team behind is about the only thing I think I would cry over at this point.

After lunch, I completely failed to get back to work. Someone was having his interview, and I was too exhausted and too nervous on his behalf to focus on anything, except playing with the doggies. So once he got done making a (hopefully) stunning impression on everyone, we left. We ended up falling asleep back at the hotel, and didn't get up to the city until almost 9, but it was ok. Dinner was amazingly good, we got to sit in The Boss Guys private booth, Someone thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, and after a bit of a walk around Northbeach and a very chaste (read: purchase free) visit to City Lites, we went back to my place.

All I have to say about that is, thank god the cat liked him, and thank god he didn't run screaming from the massive heap that I sleep in these days.

It really was the perfect last night out in the city, the moon was full and huge, and having in the sky just along side the Trans America building when we pulled in to a parking spot on the very same block as the restaurant. It wasn't too cold, the fog was away bothering some other part of the city, the real freaks and weirdos were someplace else, and everything was perfect. Except that Someone had to go back to NY this morning, even that was perfect. I'll see him again in a few days, on the other side of the country, when I get home.

Somehow, thinking of a house I have never seem as Home doesn't seem strange or scary to me anymore. Being a bit actor in my own life does though, and that's kind how I've felt these last few weeks. Of course, it's not my life anymore. My life is out there, not here. Why I am so concerned about things here and how I leave them is beyond me.

And I don't understand why I'm feeling so sad today. I'm tired and didn't get enough sleep that last couple nights, but that's not enough to make me so sad. I had two lovely nights, that kind that leave you feeling like you can fly, so I shouldn't be so sad today. But I am. Somehow, I feel profoundly neglected, like nothing I have done here has really mattered. I am going home tonight, and I'm doing laundry alone, and sleeping on the futon, and that's it. No good-bye parties, no night out, just one person who may stop by latter in the evening. So much for going out with a bang.

A day like no other

What a lovely evening! It was not without it bumps, and involved a lot of cursing and general annoyance with airports and air travel in general, but in the end everything worked out swimmingly well.

I worked from home yesterday, partly because I knew I would be too jumpy to sit still at the office for more then 5 minutes at a time, but mostly to wait for the salvation army pick up people to come take away my heap of junk I don't want. Now there are several things that I find annoying about how this thing worked itself out. 1 – My neighbors/passers-by took about half the stuff that was left out. Which means that they not only took stuff from a charity, but also that I can't claim it as a tax write off. 2 – they wouldn't take my dresser. My mom has been hassling me about this dresser for the last two months. She says it is crap and I should chuck it and get a new one. She has a bit of a point, but considering that I'm now $40k in the hole for just one year of school, buying a new one is not that practical a thing. Anyway, long story short I finally convinced myself to chuck the damned thing, and the Salvation Army won't take it. That's right, it's too big a piece of crap for even them to take. Nice. Since when does the Salvation Army fancy itself the Antiques Roadshow?

So after I got done with work, I went and had a lovely farewell dinner with some OES and Rainbow friends. It was so nice to see them all once more before I left. Dinner was fantastic too. I couldn't have asked for a better send-off from a better group of friends. Family really. A family I am really going to miss in a very profound way.

After dinner, the Great Wednesday Event took place. Ohmygod. I've been having a hard time deciding how much, if anything, I should post about this for quite awhile. I guess the short version is that I met someone on-line awhile ago, and last night, I Met that Someone in real life. I haven't felt like this is a very long time...if I ever did. And he's on the right coast. Not only did I get my first, real, physical contact with my new life, but I think I found something really special. For the first time, last night I wasn't even the least bit nervous about this move or being all alone.

It's funny, after I met with my knitting group for the last time on Sunday, this guy who does tarot readings at the bookstore we meet at gave me a reading as a going away gift. It was fairly tremendous, and really dead-on accurate about all the things that currently are. As far as those things to come, he said my life was out there, waiting for me, and that Someone was there, waiting for me, too. There were a lot of specific details about that Someone. This person would be instrumental in my efforts to make a home for myself, a real home, there, and would help me build my life there. And now, Someone really is there waiting for me, and it feels more right and comfortable than I can find words to explain.

Serious butterflies

I am jumping out of my skin. So nervous. Or maybe excited, I'm not exactly anxious about tonight, somehow I know it'll be ok, wonderful even, but I'm still practically jumping out of my skin and the butterflies in my stomach have gone into overdrive. At least I'm able to work from home today, that helps with the inability to sit still.

Anyway, the pile of crap for goodwill is sitting outside, waiting for them to show up, and my stupid neighbors are slowly stealing everything. Very annoying. Not that I mind the stuff going away, I don't care where it ends up really, but I was kind of looking forward to getting the tax write-off for the pile of stuff. Oh well. At least I tried. If only the IRS gave you credit for that.

No luck on the knitting last night. I figure I should be able to knit while I'm on the road at least, that's something.

And very little progress on Harry Potter. I can't quite believe that I am really too excited/nervous/jumpy to read Harry Potter. This is a shameful thing.

Queen of the Geek People

I'm feeling very stressed out this week. Work is tense and strange, they are pushing things into our production environment without consulting me and the wondering why there are huge bugs in production, the moving plans are looming, and tomorrow promises to be exciting but I'm getting nervous about that too.

And I am waiting for my life to start. It's there, waiting for me to get there, and I'm stuck here wondering. The more time I have to think, the more distance there is between me and the future, the harder it is to not slip into an insane thought spiral and start to panic. I keep chanting “I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer, fear is the little death that brings total obliteration...” like some kind of super-geek but it helps. As someone told me recently, good insight is good insight. I am apparently the Queen of the Geek People, or at the very least some sort of high geek-priestess. Oh well. Whatever helps get you through the day, right?

So the plan for tonight is to work. Lots and lots of work, and some rooting through the basement to get everything ready for good will to pick up in the morning. Tomorrow is the great Wednesday Event, Thursday I am having a nice evening out and going to Cafe Coppola, and Friday I do the last bits of washing up, put tape on the last boxes, sleep on the futon, and then I go.

If I am lucky, I will be able to indulge in some therapeutic knitting tonight. I think I'm going to need it. Or at the very least, I can read some Harry Potter. It's a sad testament to how woefully distracted I have been that I have had this book since Sunday and am only on page 179.

5 days and counting

I still have not uploaded pictures of the alpacas from the 4th of July weekend. At least now I have the very good excuse that I've packed almost everything, and can't figure out what I did with the camera cable again. I think I know where it is though. With any luck, I'll have things to upload soon.

I did manage to figure out the wedding gift knitting dilemma though. I've gone back to the original plan, which was to make a nice bead-knit purse for my future sister-in-law. Her dress is not white, and is all lace, so the ivory wool lace shawl was just not going to work. The lace itself is more of a champagne color and the silk under is almost taupe. So the bad I'm knitting has really neat taupe beads with a salmon sort of colored thread. It sounds strange, but it's very pretty and will look really nice with the dress and with the colors she's picked out for the wedding decorations. Plus it should go fast. I only have to knit 16 stitches a row, the rest of it's all beads. Hurray!

Packing is going quite well. All my cloths and costumes are ready to get put in wardrobe boxes when those show up, and pretty much all I have left to pack is stuff I need for the rest of the week. It's a bit sad, to have a life reduced to a box pile, but there it is. The nice Salvation Army folks are coming out on Wednesday to pick up a bunch of stuff, so I have to spend the next two evenings re-packing up all the stuff I'm getting rid of. What fun.

Wednesday...yeah that's going to be an interesting day. I've it worked out so I can work from home to deal with the pick up people, then I'm having dinner with a bunch of people and after that...well...more about that latter. I'm sorry to mysterious, but there it is.

Sno Cone anyone?

My god. I feel like I work in a circus. Literally. We had the annual company picnic today and they had set up, and I kid you not, an entire carnival in the park next to the campus. Rides, a ferris wheel, a contortionist, 2 bands, food, the works. Even carnival games and prizes and a jail you could get your picture taken in. It's days like this that make me wonder if I'm living in a dream. Very surreal. To say the least.

They even had a tricycle race course and a water balloon launching area where you could get into huge water balloon fights with large sling-shots. I don't think I've had that much fun in a long time. Of course, I got back to my desk totally dripping wet and looking like a drowned rat, but oh well. It was fun, and I think the whole team needed to blow off some serious steam.

Of course, it's the one day I haven't got my camera...the whole thing was just too unreal, even walking through it all.

Now, I am tired. But M doesn't want to leave for this weird dinner thing until 7, so I am trying to stay awake long enough to actually leave whenever he's ready and be reasonably witting and charming in the car after hopefully appropriating some empty boxes I can use for the last bits of packing.

In spite of the carnival/circus like day, I managed to get a lot of work done. I got on to some kind of roll with the writing up of current processes and test environments last night and this morning, and just had to reformat everything and get it up on to the right web sites. I'm trying really hard to get as much done this week as I can so I will have as much free time next week as possible. A friend of mine from back east has an interview out here and I want to be able to spend as much time with him as I can, between the work and the packing and the mad round of farewell social engagements. It's going to be an exhausting week next week...

Someplace really special?

Still feeling rather a dull girl... Between work and packing, I sort of have no life these days and very little time for knitting or any sort of fiber content. All I’ve managed to carve out time for is making the really and truly last hideous dress for a rainbow client. I’m just glad to finally put that phase of life behind me. Of course, who knows, I may end up doing piece work for Civil or Revolutionary war re-enactors when I get to Virginia. Who knows? At least it will be something a little bit different (and less ugly!).

I’m feeling a bit strange about leaving work. Things are tense right now, to say the least. I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed by all I have to get done and my boss is getting a little hysterical and the engineers are getting worried, so it’s not helping much. Oh well. If I can just get through next week with a reasonable list of things to do, I should be able to get it all knocked out while I’m in New York.

Of course, the good thing about all of this is that I have not really had time to start panicking or worrying about the move itself. I’m actually looking forward to it. It seems like a relaxing prospect compared to the last few weeks.

The laptop issue has raises its ugly head again though. Since I won’t be doing any work for work during the semester, I’m going to have give George (I had to call it something after all) back, leaving me with the sad POiS iBook. Going back to having no wireless and such a damn slow machine sounds pretty unbearable. But I’ll figure something out. These things always seem to work themselves out.

Tomorrow night I’m supposed to have dinner in the city with M. I haven’t really spent any time with him since he chucked me. He said to pick “someplace really special” for tomorrow. What the hell? First he dumps me, then he starts bringing me sweet little presents, now I’m supposed to select “someplace really special” for out last dinner together and he’s bringing me moving boxes? I do not get this guy at all. Oh well. No point in wasting precious brain cycles trying to figure it out.

Such a dull girl

I've been having a hard time thinking up things to post about. Between packing and work, I haven't been doing much of anything actually interesting. I did find an interesting link about Saint Blaise, poor guy. But what on earth do goiters have to do with wool combing I would like to know?

I did manage to finish the cart for the Orenburg shawl I was planning to give to my brothers fiance. But I saw her dress over the holiday weekend and I really don't think this shawl is going to work with it at all. Now I'm torn. Do I finish the shawl, knowing it won't get used for the wedding, or start a new project? I had originally thought I would make her a bead-knit purse. This idea is sounding better and better the more I think about it. Better yet, I haven't packed up all the beads and pearl cotton I have for bead=knit bags, so I should be able to find something in the stash that will work for the color of her dress.

Someday I promise I will post pictures. Work has been so busy, and I've been so focused on packing otherwise I just haven't have found a spare moment to download them from my camera.

Finally home!

I am ever so glad to be home after the long weekend. Visiting my parents is usually a good thing, and this was, in it’s way, but everyone at home seems to be in a mad panic about my move and none of them are willing to talk about it. As if it’s not hard enough as it is without this weird unspoken angst thing going on. I’m not dying for crapsake. Just going to law school. And it’s not like I’d see them much more if I were going to school here.

Anyhow, it is a fairly uneventful trip home. I got to visit my new alpaca fleeces, which are huge and lovely! I have enough fleece there to make several large projects. No idea yet what I’m going to do with it all though. It’s got a nice long staple, so I should be able to make a real worsted yarn, assuming I get this wool combing business figured out. I’ve tried carding alpaca and llama in the past and it was a huge mess. Fiber flying all over the place, VM and little noils getting impossibly stuck in the cards. So I visited my favorite spinning supplier, Village Spinning and Weaving (www.villagespinweave.com) and picked up some big scary wool combs to make proper sliver out of the alpaca with.

Holy crap, these are truly frightening looking things. You could down a bear with these things. It turns out there was an early bishop martyred with wool combs, who is now the patron saint or what have you of the wool combers guild. Go figure. These buggers are seriously lethal. I live in terror of actually trying to use them, but I’m sure if I can get over the giant meat hook I use to doff batts off the drum carder I can get over these monster claw things. Once I have a better understanding of how to use them that is. It’s all a bit mystifying. Given the high likelihood of sustaining a major injury of you make a mistake, it’s also a little intimidating. Any tips? I did pick up on the one book in print on wool combing and worsted spinning, but it doesn’t really address the style of combs I have (I got 2-row valkry hand combs with a holder thing that can be attached to a work bench).

Wireless is sucking on the bus this morning too. Too many dipshits trying to access yahoo or some other crappy ad intensive site hogging the meager bandwidth to let of us with actual work to do make use of the system. Not that I’m bitter, just generally opposed to the worthless masses of humanity who keep getting in my way. Hmmm…if only I had my new wool combs to wave around…

Pictures of cute alpacas and my scary wool combs are coming as soon as I can find the cable for my camera. Eep.

Insanity reigns supreme

Why must the week after a relaxing mini-break always be one of stress-inducing madness? It seems somehow wrong. But there it is.

Work has been nuts this week. So much to do, not enough time to do it in, and everyone else has finally developed a sense of urgency as far as my leaving goes. Nice timing. But oh well. At least they finally got me a laptop so I can work from home and on the shuttle bus. Hurray for more productive hours! Of course, this means my sad workaholic geek tendencies are being enable in the extreme but whatever, at least the work will get done.

Anyway, I’ve been working in bits and pieces on the new orenburg shawl. I got the bottom boarder done over the weekend, and had to rip back the first few rows of the body because I had made a mistake in charting on another on the corner section which was driving me nuts. No huge deal though, I only ripped a few rows and things are already looking better.

The next step it to make a nice tidy chart of the whole thing. I did it in excel for the last one, which worked out pretty well, so I need to work on that some tonight on my break today (if I take one, blegh). It much easier to copy and paste the repeating elements to figure out what my final row count needs to be than doing it all by hand on graph paper and erasing everything 47 times. Hurray for efficiency!

Madness!

What an insane day, marathon meetings and annoyances pretty much non-stop. Right now I want to curl up someplace warm and cry. But I will remain strong, keep it together for another half hour, and get out of here at 8 and go home and pass out and start again tomorrow even more behind than I am now. Lovely.

The weekend was nice though. Harbin is a great place. Kind of a lot of hippies in not a lot of clothing, but it was peaceful and quiet and relaxing and I got a wonderful massage and feel so much more at peace with the world and with what I'm doing with my life. Hopefully I can hang on to that feeling long enough to get me through the move.

I spent most of the weekend lounging around, soaking in mineral pools, and knitting. I manged to design and start knitting the orenburg shawl for my brothers finance. Hurray! So far, so good. I really love this lace technique. It's so simple yet so elegant! And very easy to memorize. Which is a good thing.

And in even more exciting news, I found an apartment in Virginia! It's a little over 2 miles from campus, 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, townhouse that looks out over a nice meadow thing. It's very cute, and I'm very excited. I'm already deciding which rooms need cable and which rooms I can just run wireless from. Very sad geek type behavior, I know, but it's fun.

All I ask...

is for a warm home and someone to buy me a laptop. Why is this so difficult? The financial aid people are lovely, they really are, but would I be asking for a computer loan if I had the wherewithal to buy a computer and then submit a receipt? I don't think so. Someone out there must think I'm cute enough to get a laptop for me. One with wireless, and a big hard drive preferably.

And I won't even press the issue and ask for a car on top of it.

It's been a long day. I was stuck at the office working on a hellish test schedule, and all the engineers went off to do some fun off-site thing. Which wouldn't be so bad really, except that the PM who went with them started hounding me for status reports 15 minutes after I got in and then took off for the happy fun time event before dealing with my problems. feh. It's a gross miscarriage of justice is what it is.

Maybe if I weren't so ticked about the whole stupid laptop situation...

Anyway, I'm taking tomorrow off work to take the kitty to the vet. I need to get her regular check up and get anti-anxiety meds for her for the road trip back east. That should be interesting. After that, I'm going to a hot springs retreat up north of Calistoga for a couple of days to regroup and rest. I'm really excited about this, it'll be nice to just get out of here for a little awhile and be away from all the mad boxes in my house. I'm bringing knitting, a couple of books, a spindle or two, and my iPod. Should be a good time. Who knows, maybe I'll find some naked hippie benefactor who will buy me a laptop!

The cat will not like this

Some pictures of my new cube-mate

Holy crap, I'm tired.

Just flat out exhausted really. It's absurd. I have no idea why I'm this tired, I slept in this morning and took a latter shuttle, figuring that I could use the sleep after staying up past midnight chatting on line with a boy. Hopefully this is just post-lunch coma and I will revive a bit in an hour or so.

The good news is that I only have one more dress project to do for other people before I go. Hurray! It's a somewhat scary one, but once that's finished I free of commissioned sewing for a very very long time. Which is am very very happy about. Having to sew specific things for other people, especially things I find hideous and scary, make the whole sewing thing more of a chore than an enjoyable way to relax.

Anyway, I'm having a terrible time motivating myself to get much done at work at the moment. Apart from the whole sort-timers disease/senioritys I seem to have developed, one of my testers brought in his 2 month old shitzu puppy. This is the cutest little doggies I have ever seen. He looks like a baby ewok. Very distracting, but in a good and cuddly kind of puppy way. this little dog is 1/3rd the size of my cat though, it's kind of ridiculous.

Not much knitting content just now, I've been working on the interminable green lace weight shawl on the shuttle. It seems to not be getting any bigger, but I know this is just an illusion. I want this thing done. The current plan is to bring that and the orenburg to the hot springs this weekend and work on it on a deck someplace while relaxing in between dips in the hot tubs. Once I get going, the knitting is fairly mindless, so it should be a good project for relaxing and being quiet and mellow.

Virginia or bust

The moving plans have shifted in over-drive. I have a month, plus 3 days (I leave July 23rd), before I load up a truck and start driving back east, like some sort of wagon trail or pioneer in reverse. The better part of the weekend was spent packing and sorting and repacking, but I am glad to say that all the nooks and cabinets in my living room have been unloaded and packed, and I have a massive heap of cloths, books, fabrics, and other stuff to get rid of. Hurray! Getting my fabric collection down to 2 25 gallon bins was quite an accomplishment. Now if only I had been able to reduced the yarn and fiber stash some, oh well. At least that will all get put to good use. Knitting and spinning keep me sane, I'm going to need that while in school.

The people I've been talking to to find apartments back there have been so freakishly nice! I don't get it. Of course, the whole world isn't like it is here, but these people have been so genuinely caring and helpful, I'm not quite sure what to do what myself. I have a lead on a good sounding townhouse, and a complex that's trying to find me a one bedroom that will work with my move schedule and budget.

I finished my pink sweater thing from White Lies. The crochet edge was sort of intimidating, and not made any better when I realized the written out pattern was missing a row, and I couldn't decipher the last row on the graphed version. Never mind that it doesn't really flow and ripple down the front like in the picture. Oh well. I figured it out, and it looks really cute. I just need to find something to wear it with. A little black dress or something would be very cute. The whole thing is more cropped in front that I thought it would be, possibly because my boobs are larger than the pattern models (which seems to be the case most of the time), but it should still be ok with jeans and a tank top.

I've made very little progress on the actual charting for the new orenburg shawl project. I do have some ideas, so that's a step in a direction anyway. The theoretical part of the design process always takes me the longest. Once I've worked out what I'm trying to do, it goes pretty fast. So far, I think I'm going to do a double border palatine with an all over design in the middle section. I'll use interlocking hearts and a snowflake pattern for the boarders, and then something open and airy for the middle. I just need to chart out the borders so I know what kind of stitch counts I'm working with in the middle section.

Do I get a lollipop with that?

So, last night at about 5:30 the job offer finally came through. Nothing like timeliness, eh?

A bigger joke I have never seen in my life. Bad enough that they offer me, in real terms, less than I made right out of college, bad enough that I couldn't rent a decent apartment close to work on that sort of salary, but the job title! It's actually offensive. They expect me to take a job as "quality analyst level 1" which amounts to some bone-headed recent graduate who couldn't test a paper bag. Currently, I lead (more like manage) a team on one of the highest priority project going, manage a test case management system used to ensure compliant testing methodology, and train people on what compliant testing methodology means. In the nine months I have been here, I have spearheaded changes that are being felt across the company. I have built testing organizations from the ground up in past jobs. And they think I belong with a pile of useless recent grads? Please. Give me some credit.

The offer is sad. It would have been less sad had they handed me a lollipop to go along with it. It's hardly any wonder they can't find people to work in testing around here, with crap offers like that. Any self respecting, well qualified professional tester would happily take fewer lunches in exchange for an adult salary at a company willing to treat them like the professional adult they are.

Not that I'm pissed off or anything, it's actually very funny.

In some ways, I am actually thankful they came up with such a stunningly bad offer. It made rejecting it very easy, and remarkably guilt free. I am sorry that my teammates are getting screwed by their employer, but there isn't much I can do about that. Not if they are going to make offers like this one.

As far as knitting goes, I accomplished nothing last night so I threw a lace shawl I've been avoiding for months into my work bag and will be carrying that around on the bus to work until I get my pink sweater sewn together. Hopefully I'll get that done this evening, or at least this week.

It's so Pink!

I've decided that my main difficulty with this whole work mess is that they have yet to give me an offer to reject. So I still have this tiny little out if I chicken out on the whole school thing, and I am worried that I'm going to wuss out at the last second. Not good, but at least I'm getting some clarity into my current state of mind. I just want everything to be settled and all the doubt and running around here is not really helping with that.

Anyway, lack of progress as far as this whole work debacle goes aside, I've been managing to get stuff done. A truck has been reserved, my dad has time off to help me move, I'm collecting leads on apartments, and trying to nail down the last bits of financial aid and hopefully get some more so I can pay for a new laptop.

I finished all the knitted parts of my pink sweater on the way in to work this morning, so tonight I will try to sew it together and get going on the crochet bits. I'm very excited about doing this part. Crochet patterns kind of freak me out for some reason, so actually following one should be an interesting challenge. Not that I think it'll be hard. It will just be one of those overcoming mental blocks things.

huh

I've been having a hard time posting the last few days. I try to start, and can't get the words out in any sort of order...

Work never did come through with an actual offer. I am told one is forthcoming, I am told they want to hire me, but I still have no letter. Wednesday came and went, and I have begun to move on. The funny thing is that everyone is now in absolute hysterics. But what am I to do? I have already delayed too long, I cannot delay any more. They have known this was coming for months, and chose not to act until now. And it's just too late.

Somehow I feel lighter. It's a strange thing, but I feel finally free of the hideous weight of this decision. I am free. Free to move on with my life, leave this state, and begin a new and wonderful adventure. But I am so very tired. The last few weeks have been so draining, so much work just to keep myself going. I am deeply and profoundly exhausted.

Dad and I are going to drive across the country at the end of July. I'm actually really looking forward to this. I have not seen much of this country, taking the chance to do it now seems like an exciting thing. It'll me, my dad, and the cat in a bag driving across the country with all my worldly possessions in the back of a truck. And I am excited about this! For all my exhaustion, I have just enough energy left to get excited about this.

Still nothing

...at least as far as the job situation goes. Today was my deadline. Which I guess means that I'm heading for Virginia. Unless something amazing occurs this afternoon and they have a very large number in the salary slot on the offer letter anyway...

I find the whole situation really depressing, but oh well. At least I've got a direction, I can set an end date (hopefully), make truck reservations, and find an apartment. I'll start getting excited about this soon I hope, in the mean time I'm just sad and sort of demoralized.

In knitting news, I've finished the body of my scary pink sweater and am on to the sleeves. The sleeves are kind of short, so this should be fast. I got half of one done on the way in to work today, so I don't anticipate the knitting take much beyond this week. Then I get to start on the crochet part. that's going to be harder to do on the bus I think, but once I get going it should be fast. I'm looking forward to being able to wear this thing, and starting on the next project of course!

How much more can I really take?

The latest news from the job front is that I can't expect an answer of any kind until the 14th at least. Even if they tell me something by then, which isn't likely given their pattern of dragging things out, it's just too late. I'm not sure I can defer at all at this point, 8 weeks before the semester starts is just too late. So I told them I needed to know by Wednesday.

I've essentially quit my job. I just don't know when my last day will be at this point. If they follow their usual pattern, I may have two weeks left, but I seriously doubt it'll be much more than that. After being out of work for so long, walking away from a good job I actually like it pretty unbearable. I've felt physically ill since Friday. And I am terrified. The fear is nearly paralytic.

In spite of the disaster that was last week, at least as far as my work life goes, I had a pretty good time yesterday in Napa. We went wine tasting, had a picnic at Viansa, and then had dinner at Brannan's in Calistoga. Brannan's is a wonderful restaurant, very good food, nice atmosphere, and in a very romantic setting.

I'm making good progress on the pink sweater. I have the back and one front section done. I'm really looking forward to doing the crochet collar/peplum thing, that should be fun and interesting. I also picked up the Loop-d-Loop book on Friday. This is a great book, and not just because one of my knitting group friends did one of the samples! Some of the designs are a little strange and the hair styles scare me, but the ideas are great, the photograph is really quite nice, and it's very inspiring. I think I have a handspun wool I can use for one of the jackets, and I'm shopping for wool to do a couple of the other designs. I figure that some good sweaters will be an important thing to have back east, it's not as cold in Virginia as it is in, say, Boston, but they colder winters I am used to and than my wardrobe is equipped for.

Serious funk

Still no news about the job. This is annoying. If I am going to go to VA, I need to be ready to go in 6 weeks. So do I just say to hell with this and go? Or hold out for another week and see? Part of me feels like I'd be running from something if I were go now. I just which I had some idea which set of wrong reasons was the best one. Or least wrong, or whatever. I hardly understand my own thinking on any of this right now, how can I hope to explain it to anyone else?

I miss M. More than I am really willing admit to myself too. There are things about my life I really want for him to understand, I don't know why it matters to me at this point, but it does. He seems to have little or no interest in making time to know these things, unless he's just busy or something. He seemed really nervous and uncomfortable the other day when we were talking (after he gave me a pair of boxer shorts, which is just a strange thing to give a woman after you dump her if you ask me). I have no idea what that's all about, but I'm really trying to not think about it. Thinking about it won't get me anywhere.

Anyway...tomorrow I'm off to Napa with a new friend for wine tasting and a nice dinner. It should be fun. I'm actually quite looking forward to it. I love it up there, and I always feel much better about life when I come back, even if I was only gone for the day. Sunday I'm supposed to drink beer and play Grand Theft Auto with some of the guys from work, which should be a good time. I love GTA. Nothing like it for getting the aggression issues worked out.

I've decided to make my future sister-in-law and Orenburg shawl as a wedding gift. I did one for my mom last year, which she loves, so it should be a good gift. Plus she can use it at the wedding if she wants to. I've ordered yarn from Handpaintedyarn.com. One of the women in my knitting group was working with some of their lace weight wool, and it's really lovely. I got it in natural, and ordered the Damask Rose for something for myself. Probably the rose will turn into a lace shrug I can wear at the wedding myself. Once the yarn gets here, I can start swatching. In the mean time, I'm working on my silly pink cardigan from White Lies (pictures soon) and coming up with design ideas for the shawl. I know I want to use a linked hearts border, but aside from that I have no idea what stitch patterns I'm going to use. Maybe something with large diamonds like I did for my mom, or a bunch of nested border sections...

Because yesterday wasn't bad enough

At least as far as technical problems go, today I find I have been locked out of documentation site once again. Pages I wrote, I can no longer read. Gotta love it. Is this a subtle hint that my job prospects are not looking so good? And people wonder why I am paranoid...I swear something like this happens at lest once a week. I get locked out of some area of the network I need access to do my job, spend half the day running around like a lunatic trying to get it fixed, or find a work-around, only to be told that my non-personhood is the root of all evil, and there's nothing much to do. Grr. The gremlins of access control are out to get me!

Anyway...I finished my sweater! I have buttons, I have pictures, I am happy.



According to mom, the new alpaca fleeces are about 2.3 pounds each, one is ivory with a bit of grey, and one is a creamy brown. Yay!

Workstation purgatory

Very bad start to the day...within 10 minutes of attempting to log into my workstation, I had crashed the X server, mozilla had freaked out and sucked up all my CPU cycles, and I had rebooted. Nice way to start the day. I'm not sure what sin I committed against my workstation, but I have been suitably punished. I hope.

As if freakish technical problems aren't enough, I have a whole army of people coming after me personally for application support questions. We have a support email address these questions are supposed to be routed to. I freely admit that 90% of the time, I answer these mails, but also filter my mail so that I find these support questions. If people don't send the question to the address, it gets lost in between rrandom bug reports, Venezuelan spam, and strange messages from my mother. How friggin' hard is it to follow a simple instruction? Really? You people are in testing, how can you be that illiterate?

Anyway...I have fiber news! Wonderful, beautiful, fiber news! All I lack are pictures and sewn on buttons, but the Lacy alpaca cardigan is done, assembled and blocked. And it is lovely. Really really lovely. I love this sweater, it's soft and light and luminous and fits beautifully, and did I mention how lovely it is? Tonight I will sew on the buttons and take some pictures.

And it gets better! What can be better than a truly triumphant FO? How about enough yarn left over for a second truly triumphant FO? I have enough to do another sweater or even a shawl, which I think is what will becomes of the rest of the yarn. I'm planning out a modified Shetland shawl and should get started on that as soon as I'm done with the pink cotton sweater I'm working on. To add to all this fiber related joy, I got a message from my mom last night telling me that a friend of hers just sheered her 2 alpacas (or maybe llamas) and wants to give me the fleeces. Two whole fleeces! All for me! Hurray! One is white and one is some sort of tan color. Cleaning and carding 2 whole llama (or maybe alpaca) fleeces should be an interesting task, but I think it should be ok. I have a drum carder, and this might be a good excuse to get some good combs.

Now if I can just get though this week...the latest news is that the hiring gods are waiting on feedback from some recalcitrant person who remains unknown to me, but this person is being pestered, and if the universe is kind I *might* have some kind of news tomorrow or Friday. Hurray! My new boss is amazing, she's taking the whole leaving for school problem very seriously, and seems to have convinced other people that this is a problem as well. So I'm keeping all the fingers and toes crossed and trying not to panic while I plow through this week.

Small victories

6.6 pounds of me gone! Woo! I know that's a huge loss for one week, but given that I've been off plan for awhile and was recovering from monthly bloat, I'm not worried about it. So I'm not crazy, my brand new pants really *are* fitting better! Hurray!

Since I got to my first 5 pound goal, I got to get a present for myself. I wasn't feeling up for a pedicure, and couldn't find a broach I liked, so I ended up getting a really cute sterling silver heart necklace. It's got pale pink stones in it, which I really like. Plus it was half off. Shiny things are good.

In other news, it turns out I have a new boss, which might explain the sudden and unexplained delay in my hiring situation. The whole thing was very strange, I got a call Friday after lunch from some lady I'd never heard of before and she started going on about how she was taking over my project and we should meet to talk about it, blagh blagh blagh. So I kind of freaked out, and thought I must have been sacked, and how can you be sacked before you actually get hired anyway? As it turns out, I have not been sacked, but am now reporting to a director rather than a manager. This is a good thing, I think, it's all rather unclear. After talking to her, I basically got a soft promotion, am officialy doing the job I've been doing for this whole time, and should hopefully have some answers about my hiring status next week. Hurray!

M. was behaving somewhat oddly on Friday during the social too. He kept running up to me (more of a scamper really), and attempting to engage me in conversation. My two testers were both trying to figure out who the guy putting the moves on me was, one of them knew about the whole thing, so the two of them stood there trying to figure it all out and then analyzing it all like a couple of women afterwards. It was quite funny actually. But whatever, I don't really have the time or energy to question every thing he does that is inconsistent with what he says. That way madness lies.

In knitting and fiber news, I put together 2 skirts for a client yesterday, finished the first sleeve of my alpaca sweater, and got halfway through the second sleeve yesterday. Today I am going to go sew with J, and trying to get my 1901 corset done, finally, start on a Regency corset, and work on the bindings for the cheongsam which is still not finished. A and I are going to an opera in a couple of weeks, so I figured it would be a good thing to wear for that.

I've discovered that I really don't know what to do with guys hitting on me. The last week has been interesting in that regard. I haven't gone from getting lots of attention, to be taken, to being available again since I lost all the weight, and this is a strange thing. Suddenly these vulture people are coming out of the woodwork and I'm not sure that I like it. I feel pretty bruised and beat up, I'm not sure if I'm really ready for all of this. But then again, I probably need to figure this out and learn how to deal with it. There are, after all, worse problems to have.

Yet another 180

This morning the sky was clear, but for a thin haze in the air that ever so slightly blurred everything, taking away all the sharp edges and jarring colors of my morning walk to MUNI. The fog is on it's way back. I love the morning fog, especially when it's low enough that you can see it swirling around you, winding up your legs. Everything seems very mysterious and quiet with the fog wrapping itself around you like a blanket. If only the day stayed the peaceful...

I can be glad that I at least got status. It's crap status, but it's something I suppose. No news on the real offer for another 2 weeks. WTF? It's just my life that's on hold here, people. The same life that's been on hold, changing directions 180 degrees every 2 or 3 weeks for the last I don't even want to think how long.

I need something stable, that isn't going anywhere, that isn't filled with bad memories. I need to feel *safe,* like the bottom isn't about to drop out on me again. I need to stop spinning around in a 100 different directions.

This all sounds absurdly dramatic...it just seems like everything has been in flux for so long, I don't think I remember what stable and solid ground feels like. Every time I feel like I finally have my feet back under me, that I know where I'm going and what I'm doing, something comes along and *WHAM* I'm spinning around again. I want off this crappy ride!

Deflector shields at maximum power

I know it's the silliest thing in the world, but I've gotten a couple of really nice and flattering comments today from my okcupid profile, and it's made me really happy. Having random people tell me I'm pretty and elegant makes me feel much better about my relative desirability.

Of course, it's also reminded me exactly how much being single sucks. There are a lot of vultures out there, just waiting for some fresh bit of roadkill to show up someplace. It's enough work trying to convince myself that I won't die fat and alone, and be found weeks latter half eaten by my 35 cats, without having to beat off smarmy lechers and creeps too.

And I keep wondering if he misses me at all...

Things are work are muddling along. Kind of slow so far this week actually, which is good, I'm not feeling up for serious chaos and excitement. No real news on the final offer, other than feedback is being gathered. I told them I need to hire movers next week if I'm going, so hopefully that will hurry things a bit.

Positive Reinforcement

I'm feeling pretty good about the whole WW thing today. I did well yesterday eating within my points, and am track to do well today. I got a pair of pants on Saturday and I'm probably insane but they feel like they fit better already. Whatever, I'll take it. I can use anything self-affirming right now, even if it the product of a delusional mind. Anything I can be positive about and feel successful at is a good thing right now.

For every 5 pounds you lose, WW gives you a little award. I've decided to back that up with something more. Here is my reward plan for myself:

5 pounds - pedicure or silly pin for a blazer
10 pounds - new shoes
15 pounds - L'Occitane shopping spree
20 pounds - new underwear
25 pounds - new outfit

10% of me gone - more shoes
Goal weight - spa afternoon
Lifetime - another new outfit

Hopefully if I limit my shopping to these events, I will save some money too. I must not replace food with shoes or bath products. There are worse things, but still, both have their destructive sides.

At least I look cute

Feeling rather better about life than I thought I would today. I've resolved to look fabulous all week, carry on with life as planned, and not worry too much. Maybe go to back to wretched courtesan-style dating-for-fun-and-profit. I keep thinking of the line from Dangerous Beauty, "Love love, but do not love the man." It's as good a rule to live by as any other I suppose, and probably leads to less heartbreak.

Anyway, I indulged in rather more retail therapy this weekend than was perhaps good for the bank account, but I feel much better having new pants and cute new skirt and some fabulous shoes. Shoes always help matter. Better yet is getting to work and having the engineers notice that I have new shoes, and even be suitably appreciative of them. Hurray! They even noticed the snappy new outfit. Another guy actually noticed the nicely co-ordinated accessories, but he's not an engineer exactly and has a wife, so he's better trained. At least I have hope for mankind still.

I finally made it to a BAWDies meeting on Sunday. I had no idea how much I had missed these women. It was so nice to be back, wrapped in fiber and love, and feel supported and cared for after my awful Saturday. It's good to have girl friends, and it is truly amazing how knitting and fiber arts in general has brought this group together. Not going to go on with obvious "knitting different lives together" line of crap, it's overdone and sentimental, but there really is a wonderfully supportive and caring community of fiber geeks out there, and I proud and honored to count myself a part of it.

Now what?

I am frail and small and people should be more careful with me, there won't be anything left if I keep getting broken.

Turns out he was avoiding me...

It's sad really, but so typical of how these things work out for me. The ones I like, maybe even love a little, they don't want me. And I never understand why...

To make it worse, I went back to WW today. I was prepared for things to be slightly worse than they were but it was still depressing to see how far I had slid back. Oh well. I guess now I'll have a little more time to focus on that and get things back where they should be.

It was nice to not be all alone, even if it was just for a little while...

Fun with automatic translators

When testers get board, testers start playing with random web applications. I don't know why, but these are phrases we've been having fun translating badly into other languages this week while waiting for builds;

My cat has a fluffy white tail.
Now I am going to kick you in the head.
My llama/pants/hair/etc. is on fire.
I am a crazy white chick.

For added fun, try varying the grammar. "Shall" for "am going," "in flames" for "on fire," you get the idea.

We have a very multi-lingual staff here. It's lots of fun to pop up from the cube and call out some random phrase (such as "Ich bin ein verrücktes weißes Küken" or "Je suis un poussin blanc fou. Mes cheveux brûlent.") and see how people react.

PMS sucks

I've completely lost all perspective.

I feel like crap, probably have a UTI again, my back hurts, I'm crampy and bloated and feel like a hippo, it's all cold and crappy and overcast outside but still oddly warm which is just unpleasant, my housemates are driving me crazy, I feel like boy is avoiding/has no time for me, I still can't sleep and it's all ridiculous but I just want to curl up someplace safe and warm and cry but there is no place safe and warm for me curl up in.

Still no offer with numbers, but I was assured that "the recruiter is working on it" whatever the hell that means. Hiring around here is so convoluted and wrapped in mystery, it's amazing anything ever gets done. If they don't get something to me on paper by the end of the week, or maybe early next, I have no choice but to start calling apartments and movers again, but how in the hell am I going to pay for all that? As if I have several grand just lying around at this point. Please. I guess I'll figure something out, I always do, but still.

I got a really sweet card in the mail from one of the women in my OES chapter, telling me how excited she was for me and my new endeavors, and I feel more like crap about that whole mess than I did before. Like I'm letting them all down as well as myself if I stay. What the hell is that about? Waiting a year is not giving up, in some ways it's being pragmatic about things. Why am I so plagued by self-doubt?!

Stupid PMS.

Lack of focus is a problem

Ugh. I really need to get back on the WW wagon. Without weekly meetings and accountability, I really have been letting myself go to pot. I feel worse about my body than I have in a long time. At least I can still get in to my pants, that's something. They are not a nice-fitting as I would like, but they zip. This weekend I am determined to start going to meetings again. I am not that thrilled with the center near my house, but it's within walking distance and they have meetings at times that work for me on the weekend, so that will have to do.

That center is actually one of the big reasons I stopped going to meetings in the first place. I didn't realize what a difference the group you met with made, but I just lost focus after switching. I never felt like I had anything in common with the people in the meetings I was at, and the leader drove me nuts. But really, at some level, all that is just an excuse. The focus and drive has to come from within myself. As long as the meeting experience isn't flat-out unpleasant or irrelevant to me, it should be successful. Besides, I know I'll be moving to a new center at some point in the near future anyway, so I should be able to put up with this one for a month or two.

Anyway, not much else is going on. I'm training another new person at work this week. It's actually much easier now that I have one person up to speed already. He's been a huge help with the new guy already. Hurray! No news yet on the offer with numbers, which is annoying, but not wholly unexpected. I need to ping my manager about that this afternoon. I'm doing far more release planning that I really should be doing, but in a way having more responsibility is probably a good thing right now.

I'm feeling kind of tired and glum today. Probably partly due to PMS and crappy weather, but still. All the stress and uncertainty is really starting to takes it's toll on me. I think once I know what's going on with my life, I need to take a vacation. Go someplace quiet and relaxing, maybe sit in a hot tub, or a spa weekend in Napa. That sounds really lovely about now.

Shoe-shopping cures all

All of this waiting around business is rather exhausting. After talking things over with my mom and a particularly trusted girl-friend, I am feeling much better about my current state of mind. If work comes through with the cash, I can stay. Otherwise, I go. I really have no reason to go right now aside from having nothing better to do with myself at the moment, so there it is. With a good job, sufficient income, and time to save money and settle a few personal questions, I have every reason to stick around here (but further south) for a year.

The weekend was quiet, but just what I needed. Friday night I went to dinner and shoe shopping with the trusted girl-friend, which was quite pleasant and relaxing. Saturday I spent most of the day doing housework and a few errands, then went to another girl-friends to sew for the afternoon, which was also great fun. We ended up eating pizza, drinking wine, and watching Monty Python until rather late. Sunday I had a friend/client by for a preliminary dress fitting, which went pretty well, then I ran off to Sunnyvale to make fondue and watch Star Wars movies with M.

Overall, it was a good weekend. I have to say, taking CalTrain with a bunch of obnoxious Bay to Breakers staggerers wasn 't much fun, but once I got on the train and got my iPod cranked up, it was fine. Making fondue turned out to be surprisingly easy. For never having done it before, it turned out quite well, and M. liked it, so I count that as a food success.

Good work continues on the Laci alpaca sweater. I'm about half way done with the second side front, leaving me with just sleeves and finish work. Hurray! I'm looking forward to being able to wear it. It's so soft and light. Almost like a cloud. And I have enough yarn left to make another sweater! I;m going to be a little short-sleeved top I think, something very classic and vintage looking.

Not much else to report...all of this waiting for people to do things has me feeling rather stuck. At least I have plenty of work and things to do to keep me occupied. People keep asking me how I can stand the uncerainty...after the last couple of years actually having two viable options to choose from is a luxury. As much as it stresses me out at times, I can't help but luxuriate in it a bit. Either way, I will be doing something good and worthwhile with myself come August. I just don't know which coast I will be doing it on is all.

Actual knitting content too!

Strange week so far...I have at least worked out a strategy for dealing with the Job Offer of Doom. After getting sleep, talking to lots of different people, and parsing their suggestions, I have a plan. More on the specifics when I get some more information from them, but I'm sleeping better knowing that I have worked out my decision making process when the time comes for that.

Boy seemed to be worried that I'm entertaining the offer because of him and no other real "valid" reasons. First of all, why isn't he a good reason? I'm almost 30. this is probably the healthiest, most positive relationship I've ever been in. Not wanting to walk away from that without knowing if it could really work in the long term seems like a silly idea to me. It's comforting to know he's looking out for my best interests, but really. I think I managed to convince him that there are other good reasons to wait a bit, especially if the money is right.

I've been making slow but steady progress on the alpaca cardigan. The back and right front are done. I'm almost finished with the bottom lace section for the left front. That should go fairly quickly, the I just have to do the sleeves and finish work. Hurray for progress! Hopefully I'll have this done in a few weeks. It's unbearably cold on my part of the office when the AC is running.

I'm looking forward to starting another sweater project too. In a moment of weakness, I picked up this Whites Lies kit but in pink with raspberry trim. Should be very cute and I'm very excited about starting it. Everyone needs a pink cotton sweater thing. It should be good for the summer, if it ever warms up.

I desperately want to take a short vacation and do nothing but sit by the side of a pool in the shade and knit while someone brings me iced tea between massage and facial appointments. It is sweet to dream...