One More

Remember the other day when I told you to hold on to your butts because things are about to get rough?  Yeah, I wasn't joking about that.  

Today we had a big meeting at work, and The Big Man Up Front laid it all out for us.  He said our warehouse -- our massive warehouse -- is full of product, so full they've had to rent a second warehouse, and it is now full.  They're currently looking for a third warehouse to rent so we can store even more product.  

So, why do we have so much product being stored?  Because nobody is buying it.  Sales for January through March are much lower than expected, so to correct for that...I almost hesitate to mention this, because I know some of my readers are so fragile, this might make them cry...they are giving us all of next week off. 

He chose next week specifically because it is spring break here, and parents want to do stuff with their kids.  Besides, with it being spring break, quite a few people have already got vacation time scheduled.  

TBMUF said that sales are going to pick up in April, so he's hopeful we won't have to do any more shutdowns like this.  The good news is, we can file for unemployment benefits, and this will satisfy the 5 day waiting period required by state law.  That way, if we do have to shut down again, we'll get paid unemployment benefits straight away.  Even if we use our vacation days next week, it'll still count towards the waiting period.   More good news, our parent company Lennox International is going to absorb the cost of our health insurance and stuff for the week we're off, so we won't have to pay double the week after.  The HR guy said he'd never heard of a company doing that, but ours is.  

I've got plenty of vacation time I can use.  I'll just have to re-arrange a few days I already had scheduled.  I also went ahead and changed my contributions to my retirement account back down to 10%.  Now, I'll have to spent the next however long listening to them nag me that I'm not saving enough.    

I'm still debating on cutting off my internet and just using my phone data, but I still have a few weeks until the end of the current billing cycle, so I have a minute to decide on that yet.  I'm trying to find more information on my hotspot -- as in if it will handle how much streaming I do.  I might also try to get a set of rabbit ears to see what channels I can get here.  Back before I got cable, I could get PBS and NBC, but after they switched to all digital, I couldn't get any channels, not even with the converter. That's part of why I got cable in the first place.  

Eh, I should probably less and read more anyway.  

Let's talk about something more pleasant, shall we?  I finished my pink headband Saturday,  

and this hat yesterday.  

 Right now, I haven't cast on anything else, because I still have one more gigantic headband to redo.   Yeah, I know I said I'd redone them all.    Well, turns out I hadn't. 

I was talking to the coworker who'd gotten the headband I'd put in the box of stuff I took in to work a few weeks ago, and she said she loved it, but it's just so big.  I mentioned that I'd reworked the pattern to make them smaller, and said if she brought it back to me, I'd re-knit it in a smaller size.  

You can see here how huge it is compared to the one I made with a 92 stitch cast on.  

So that'll be my next project.  

In other news, my effort to clean up my office area continues.  This afternoon, I dug this folder out of my file cabinet. 

It contains a lot of owner's manuals I need to sort through.  My guess is that I don't even have what most of them went to any more.  We shall see.  

And finally, 187 years ago today, the brave men at the Alamo gave their last full measure of devotion to the cause of liberty.  We would be remiss if we didn't take a moment to remember them.