Dear CoWorker

What on earth could you not live without during an 8 hour shift that you need to bring a suitcase to work?

A rolling suitcase at that...

Seriously. 

WIPs, Weather, and Work

There has been a great upheaval at work.  In case you didn't know, Becky does not handle upheaval well.  But there has been a great upheaval at work.

They've laid off all the temps and closed down some of the assembly lines.  That is normal for this time of the year, but the upheaval that affects me is that they've moved my group leader, Greg, to another line, and I have a new group leader.  Fernando is his name.

So far, I really like him.  It's so nice not to have to explain everything 3 or 4 times.  It's so nice not to have to say, "FOCUS!!"  It's so nice not to have to wonder where he is half of the day.  I want to say, "Can we keep him?"

In weather news, Isaac is inching ever closer, but The Fine Martial Household is ready.

See, I brought my plants in.

No, it's not likely they'll shut the plant down for it.  We worked all through Katrina, you know.  The only reason we closed early the next day was because the roads were so bad we couldn't get our purchased parts in. 

And now, on to the WIP update. 


 1.  Arwen Wrap:  I've attached the final ball of yarn, and am in the homestretch!

I guess I ought to take a new picture, huh?

2.  The 2010 Anniversary Mystery Shawl.   No progress this week.

3. Conwy sock:  I ripped this one.  I'll find a pattern better suited to this yarn, and cast on a new pair.  I can't say when, but it'll get done.

4. Traveling Roses Scarf: No progress

5. Fruit Of The Vine  No progress

6. Orkney Pi Shawl:  No progress

7.  Leper bandage: This is my new waiting project.  When I'm on my excruciatingly slow desktop and I'm waiting 20 years for a page to load, I pick it up and knit a row or two.

8 & 9 The two sock yarn blankies. No new squares this week.

10.  Anniversary Mystery Shawl 2012:  No progress

Well, that's it for this week.  It doesn't seem like a lot, but I've slowly cut my WIP list almost in half.  More than half if you don't count the new project I cast on.

Determination.

Iron will.

No money.  

Yep, that's how I did it.

For reals. 

Batten Down The Hatches

We're ready in this here land mass between New Orleans and Mobile.

Ooooh, awkward...

Music Monday

It's been a rough day.

I felt like my body was starting to react badly to the Tylenol, so I decided not to take any today.  It was tough at times, but I made it all day without pain meds. 

Not only that, I'm either having bad side effects from the antibiotics the dentist gave me, or I may have picked up an intestinal virus somewhere along the way.  Let's just say that if I was planning on having a colonoscopy this evening, I'd be ready-- without having to drink that stuff.

As if that weren't enough, I feel like I'm trying to pick up a cold.  Sore, scratchy throat.  Dry hacking cough.  Burning chest.  Headache.  Sweats.  The works. 

Bleh...

I need this today.

Ten Days!

Yes, I am aware that I scheduled my oral surgery on the same day as football season opens. 

Do you know why it's on a Wednesday this year, instead of its usual Thursday? 

Do a little research, and remember in November.

A Weekend To Myself

Work is slowing down for the fall, and that means no more overtime.

So, what did I do with myself today?  Well, I started getting caught up on some much needed housekeeping.

I didn't get quite as much done as I'd planned, but I got enough.

In the meantime, remember the Conwy socks I said I was considering ripping?  After thinking about it, I decided that the yarn just didn't match the pattern, so out they came.

To get the kinks out of the raveled yarn, I gave it a good soaking,

then hung it up with a clothes hanger to pull it straight.

What else I did today was to boil down the bindweed and dye the yarn I'd bought.

The website I'd looked at said it made a lovely buttery yellow, but I ended up with an olive/khaki color.

This photo is pretty true to the color I got
.

Now, I'm wondering what would happen if I overdyed it with some leftover Easter egg dye I have in the closet.  Hmmm.  Well, I did buy the yarn to experiment with...

Cody called me this afternoon to tell me he'd had to buy a new battery for his truck.  I asked him if there was anything he wanted me to send him, and he asked for Charmin toilet paper.  Of all the things in the world to ask for, he wants good toilet paper.

Maybe I'll throw in some chocolate chip cookies, too. 

You know, because that's what moms do. 

Dear CoWorker

If I wanted a man, I could find one on my own, thankyouverymuch, so please stop trying to fix me up with every knuckle-dragging mouthbreather that walks by.

Especially the ones whose mamas are younger than I am.  'Cause I'm just totally not into that whole cougar thing. 

Thank you,

That is all

Counting Down The Days

Why yes, yes I am ready to get this wisdom tooth cut out! Why do you ask? (It's not really in Jackson, by the way.  It's going to be here, but I don't feel like going back and changing it.)

 I was able to get the three days off that I wanted. Friday wasn't open, but when I told my supervisor that I was having my wisdom tooth cut out, and that I'd just have to call in sick that day, he said, "Go ahead and put it down." He's good about working with you that way. I'm glad. I could have put in for FMLA, but it would have been a lot more paperwork. It's easier just taking vacation time.

I realized something after I'd scheduled my appointment.  That is Labor Day week.  I'll only have to go to work one day that week.  How's that for planning?

After much deliberation, I've decided to drop my Netflix DVD account.  Recently, more and more of the discs I've been receiving have been unplayable.  Seems like half of them I end up having to send back and wait for a replacement, so I went ahead and dropped them.  I still have the streaming account, though.

In it's place, I've picked up Amazon Prime.  They have instant videos, and you can borrow some Kindle books.  Plus, it's about a third of the price.  I'm going to try it for a while.

In knitting news, I'm still plugging away at the Arwen Wrap.  It won't be much longer now.

Oh, and I was texting my sister yesterday, and it's already getting down into the 20s there already.  It's still up into the 90s here, but getting down into the 60s at night.  It won't  be much longer until fall is here!

WIPs and Stuff

First things first.  I called the oral surgeon and got my tooth extraction set for September 5th.  Since I'm going to do the sedation IV thing, I had to get someone to drive me, and Beverly said she'd be able to.  So that's good.  Now comes the hard part:  getting those days off of work! 

Eh, my supervisor is pretty good about working with you on those kinds of things, so it really shouldn't be a problem.  But the bad news is, I'm probably not going to be up to going to the Fabric To Fiber Fest in Hernando that weekend.  That's a bummer, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Besides, we are going to try to work another meetup later in the year so Kat can come meet Christi.  That'll be so much fun! 

Oh, and the other good news is, we're off this Saturday!!!  I know I need the money, but boy am I tuckered out.  

And now, on to the WIP update. 



 1.  Arwen Wrap:  I've finished the first half, and started the second.

This one is worked in two halves and then grafted together.  I'd bought 8 balls of Knit Picks Swish DK and had planned on just using four balls to each half.  Well, I'd thought I was finished with the first half, because I only had 4 balls left.  So I started the second half.  Which you see above. 

Lo and behold, I found another ball.  No biggie.  I'd just knit five balls on the second half, and once they were grafted, no one would ever know. 

It didn't work out that way.  My CDO made me attach that fourth ball and finish the first half. 

Such is my life...

2.  The 2010 Anniversary Mystery Shawl.   Slowly but surely, I'm making progress.  But I'm to the point that the rounds are so big, it takes about two days to get around one.

3. Conwy sock:  I'm seriously considering ripping this one, and just making up my own pattern based on this stitch design.  I'm really not feeling the love here.

4. Traveling Roses Scarf: Got one more pattern repeat done.

5. Garter Rib Scarf: Sort of completed!

I say "sort of" because I've decided to make a matching hat.  It won't take an entire hank of yarn to do a hat, so instead of having a useless half of a hank of yarn hanging around my house, I'm going to add it on to the scarf, and just make it a little longer.  But I've got to order more yarn first, so this one is on hold.  For now.

6. Fruit Of The Vine  No progress

7. Orkney Pi Shawl:  No progress

8.  Leper bandage: This is my new waiting project.  When I'm on my excruciatingly slow desktop and I'm waiting 20 years for a page to load, I pick it up and knit a row or two. 

9 & 10 The two sock yarn blankies. No new squares this week.

11.  Anniversary Mystery Shawl 2012:  No progress

 It amazes me to think that I've only cast on one, yes one, count 'em one new project all year, and haven't had any shortage of things to knit on.  And it amazes me even further to think that the three hanks of yarn I bought last Thursday is the only yarn I've bought all year. 

And I haven't run out of anything to knit with, either. 

Blows my mind. 

Hum, now I have to go ponder the mysteries of life...

And The Fun Just Never Ends

I went to my dentist appointment this afternoon to get a referral to an oral surgeon. It didn't take but a minute to take the x-ray and decide that yes, that wisdom tooth needs to come out. He showed me the picture, and I was ... well, shocked.

See, one corner of the tooth is peeking out of my gum, back in the very back of my mouth. I'd always thought it was something like this:

Say nothing about my beautiful artwork, folks. Oh, and I do have more than one tooth. I just chose not to draw the rest, since they are irrelevant to this discussion.

Now, back to my story.  I'd always thought that my tooth looked something like the drawing above, but when he showed me the x-ray, I saw that in reality, it was sideways, like this:

So, yeah, no question it needs to come out. I'll be sure to let you know when I get it all set up.

Here's an interesting -- or not so interesting-- bit of trivia for you.  For the last several months, I've been taking melatonin supplements to help me sleep.  Well, one of the supposed side effects of melatonin is vivid or strange dreams.

When you've stopped laughing...

Since vivid and strange dreams are the story of my life, I didn't think too much of this.   However, it seems to have the opposite effect on me.  Since I started taking it, I seldom dream any more, and when I do, they are anything but vivid or strange. 

The last couple of nights, I figured the Lorcet the dentist gave me would make me drowsy enough that I didn't need to take the melatonin, so I didn't.  And I dreamed.

Vividly.

Strangely.

In other words, normal -- for me at least.

It felt good.  I think after this bottle of melatonin is used up, I'm going to find some other type of sleep aid to use.  Speaking of, they are now marketing benadryl as a sleep aid. 

Yep, it's true.   Have you seen the new Nyquil product called Zquil?  When you read the ingredients label, what does it say?  Dyphenhydramine hydrochloride. 

Do you know what dyphenhydramine hydrochloride is?  Yep, Benadryl. 

I'll pass on the Zquil, thank you very much and just buy some generic.  It's a lot cheaper. 

Music Monday

Bad news on the dental front.  My wisdom tooth started acting up again over the weekend, so today, I called the dentist.

He gave me some antibiotics and I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.  At least the antibiotics will get it settled down until I can get in to the oral surgeon and get it cut out.

Yeah, I'd wanted to take a vacation, but not like this.  Oh, well.  You gotta do what you gotta do.

In the mean time, here is my new favorite song.

This Is Me

Today Cody left for college.

This is harder than I thought it'd be.  

Yarn Crawl!

A couple of weeks ago, my buddy Christi sent me a text.

"We need to get together", she said.

After much planning, and coordinating, and shuffling of schedules, and a little bit of nail biting finally the day came.  We weren't sure for a bit if Christi could make it, because her mother was in the hospital.  She sent me a text, though, saying, "My mother is making me." And she was able to come. 

We met up at our usual haunt, Hank of Yarn in Southaven.



There was Amy



And Christi

 

And me, but I was holding the camera, so you won't see me.  But you can see the yarn I bought.  This is JoJoLand Fantasia. 



And some undyed yarn.



I said, "Boy, I need a nap."  Hank said, "You need a nap?  Are you going to die?"

"No," I said.  "I'm tired, but I don't think I'm going to die."

And Hank gave me The look and said, "Are you going to DYE the yarn?"

Oh.....Yes, I'm going to dye the yarn.  All that stuff I have growing on the trellis in my back yard is called bindweed.  Someone posted a link to instructions on dying it.  Said it makes a lovely buttery yellow, so I'm going to try it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I got there first, and almost as soon as I walked in, Christi was right behind me.  Soon Amy arrived and the party was on!

We knit, and we talked, and we laughed



And we petted yarns

 

And Christi said, "This is MINE!!!"



And we knit, and we talked, and we laughed some more, and Christi said, "Let's go eat, already!" 



She's a bossy one, that Christi.

And we ate some really, really good hamburgers.

Then we came back to Hank's, and we knit and we talked, and we laughed, and we petted yarn, and we tossed balls of yarn into the air and said, "Whee!" and blamed sleep deprivation.

 

And we showed each other dog and cow pictures, and talked about ex-husbands-- except for Amy because she doesn't have one.

And we talked, and we laughed, and we petted more yarns



Oh, look!  There I am.



And there is Hank, on the right, helping another customer.



When I got there, I was the only one in the store.  By the time we left, it was pretty crowded.  Hank's is the happening place, it is.

All too soon, it was time to come home.  And we hugged, and we clung to each other, and many bitter tears were shed at our parting.

Well, OK, not so much on that last bit.  But we did have a great time, and I can't wait to do it again.  September 8 is the target date.  

You know, one thing I hate is waiting. Those few minutes when it's not time to leave, but there's not enough time to really do anything. Yeah. So I left a little early. While waiting for Hank's to open, I went to Petco and got Snow a new water bowl that's big enough for her to soak in.

 

And a new hide:

 

The old one is a little small. It looks like a half log, so I"m going to take it out and put it into my flower bed. It will look natural --sort of-- and might attract toads. Maybe not this year, but next year. I hope.

And that was my day off.  This post is already photo heavy,  so I didn't post all the pictures I took.  The rest, including yarn shots, can be found here:

Yarn Crawl

Rumors And Stuff

They say that this Saturday will be our last one to work for a while.  I'm kinda glad.  I know I need the money, but boy am I tired.

I think they might have laid off some people yesterday, but I'm not sure of that. 

I took today off to go up to Southaven and hang out with Christi and Amy.  Going to write a post about that, but for some reason, I thought it'd be faster to upload all my photos to Flickr and hotlink them, instead of editing them and uploading them to blogger.

I was wrong. 

It's late, and I'm tired, and the pictures are still uploading, so, you'll have to wait until tomorrow.  My dogs woke me up at 5:30 anyway.  I thought about going back to sleep, but didn't want to oversleep and miss my trip.

The "S" key on my laptop is sticking or something.  That is totally irrelevant, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

On the way up there, I noticed that the trees were starting to turn.  Football is on the TV, and school has started. 

It's almost Fall all right. 

The Best Laid Plans

I'd planned on doing quite a bit this afternoon, including bringing you a WIP update.

Buuuuut, 

When I left work, I noticed one of my truck tires was about half flat.  I'd noticed yesterday that it looked a little low.  Well, today it looked way low.  I took it in to Wal-mart to get it fixed.

I left the plant and went straight there, without passing Go, without collecting $200.

I got there about 3:30, and at 5:00 PM, they finally pulled Jimmy into the bay to begin working on him.

I'd wandered around the store a while, but decided I was tired, so I went and sat down in the waiting area.  They had this one car in there, and the guy fixing her tire came in and said, "That tire is beyond repair."

They paged the lady.  She didn't come.  They paged her again.  She still didn't come.  Four times in all they paged, and she didn't come.  They even tried to call her cell phone, but no answer.  (In all fairness, that Wal-mart is full of dead spots.)  All the while, the mechanic was saying, "I don't know what to do."

Finally, the cashier told him to just put the old tire back on and back the car out of the bay because there were other customers waiting.  It only took them 30 minute to figure this out.

It was 5:45 when I finally got home.  Good thing I have a Kindle App on my phone.  There was also a very chatty old man in there.  He'd been everywhere.  He'd done everything.  He had a lot to talk about.

That's a roundabout way of saying that all the stuff I'd planned on doing after work today didn't get done.

The good news is, I saw this in the store:

The bad news is, I saw this in the store, too:

I thought big hair went out in the 80's.  I guess not in Wal-mart.

Ten On Tuesday

I got a good one this time!

I was in the shower, thinking up my own topic for Ten on Tuesday, which was going to be

Ten Things Normal People Do That I've Never Done

But when I checked my blogroll, I found that today's real topic was just as good.  It is

Ten Of My Favorite Childhood TV Shows

Yeah, bud...

OK, here we go.

1.  Scooby Doo -- the old ones, back when they made it obvious that the monster was just a guy wearing a mask.  When they started implying that the ghosts/monstors/etc were real, it stopped being so good.  Oh, and before Scrappy Doo.  He was just annoying.

2.  Johnny Quest-- I never missed it.

3.  Planet Of The Apes-- the TV series, with Virdon and Burke, and Galen.  I never missed it.

4.  The Carol Burnett Show-- It was a Saturday night staple in our house.  And we kids got to stay up to watch it.

5.  Magnum P.I. -- OK, I was a teenager, but technically that's still childhood because I was under 18.  Right?

6.  The Incredible Hulk-- Please don't make me angry.  You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

7.  The Six Million Dollar Man & The Bionic Woman-- We spent hours running in slow motion, making that sound effect.

8.  Star Trek: The Original Series-- Yes, I used to play Star Trek as a child.  I even had a little tricorder, communicator, and phaser.

9.  The Waltons-- it's still a favorite.

10.  Little House On The Prairie-- Laura Ingalls was my hero.  I wanted to be her so badly that I wore my hair in two long, brown braids for years and years.  I even tried calling my parents Ma and Pa.  My mother didn't appreciate that at all.  

So, there you have it.  Ten of my favorite childhood shows.  

Making this list was harder than I thought.  I had to go back and change the topic from "My Ten"  To "Ten Of My".  There were so many more I could have added:  Bugs Bunny, Knight Rider, Simon & Simon, The Facts of Life, Happy Days and so on. 

A few years back, Cody and I were watching some old 80's shows, when out of the blue, he said, "Boy, I really missed out." 

"What do you mean," I asked?

"Y'all had some good shows back then.  Not like the garbage they put out today." 

When a 14 year old boy says something like that, it means something.

Music Monday

One year ago today, the volunteers at the local animal shelter held an adoption drive at the pet store.  I got up and went down there-- just to see what they had.

As I walked down the cages and carriers of dogs and puppies, there was one that jumped out at me.

He was dull.
He was brown.
He was skinny.
He was sick.
He was sad.

As soon as I saw him, I knew he was mine. 

One year later, he is fat, healthy, and happy, and my life is better for having him in it.

Jesse, this one is for you.

At The Same Time, No Less!