Baby Josie

8/26/08

Josephine Marie

9 lbs, 20.5 in.

I may be biased, but she's pretty darn cute.

And she has pretty dark hair, just like her mom!

Things have been interesting at work this week. I have a prime spot for watching them set up for the RNC. This morning we've been watching them haul equipment into the History Center for that show with Jon Stewart. There are fences with barbed wire by the freeway and helicopters have been flying around all morning. Soon there will be portable toilets in front of the Capitol (classy!). I am one of the few (the brave!) planning on coming in to work next week. It should be really interesting. I'm in a prime spot for watching the marches/parades/protests - they will be going right in front of our building. I'm not sure what it's going to be like next week - it could be really fun, it could be a huge pain in the butt and it could be a little scary (probably nothing to worry about, but we've been hearing about all the emergency plans/procedures for our building - you never know exactly what's going to happen when you've got 10,000 protesters right in front of a clearly marked government building). I just hope I'll be able to get in and out of our parking ramp and downtown!

Finished Falling Leaves Socks

What does it say about me that none of my coworkers even looked at me funny as I took these pictures at work in the middle of the day? I think they're used to me taking strange pictures at work. Or maybe they're just used to me being strange.

These fall socks should have been finished... you know, back in the fall. It didn't happen.

Pattern: Falling Leaves
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersocke, Indian Summer colorway
Needle: US 1½ / 2.5 mm
Pattern mods: Substituted a different toe, made them longer to fit my big feet. They're very comfy - they fit perfectly!

New shoes... CAT SHOES!

It seems like all I've been doing lately is shopping. But who cares how much money I've spent lately - I got the cutest shoes ever! They have cats on them! They even have tails!





I wasn't 100% sure that these shoes would be totally "work appropriate", but I wore them to work today anyway. All the ladies at work seem to like them. :)

If anyone's wondering, they're the Anarchic cat head shoes.

I walked into work yesterday and was told I was supposed to go to an all-day digital government summit thing. right now. I had to cancel all my meetings, cancel my lunch plans, and shuffle all my plans for cat feeding (I'm cat sitting) and running errands. I spent all day at the Saint Paul Hotel with 200 people in business attire while a t-shirt, wearing jeans and tennis shoes with skulls on them. (on their website the hotel describes itself as the "most elegant hotel" in St. Paul.) I was wearing a name tag that said I was the Business Planning and Development Manager (my boss couldn't go at the last minute so I was pretending to be her so the registration fee wasn't wasted). Despite the fact that I was a good ten years younger than everyone else there and I was dressed like a teenage boy, no one questioned my manager status. Vendors were really interested in talking to me - they must have been reading everyone's name tags. (I only wore the name tag because I wanted to prove to people that I really did belong there and wasn't just someone of the street trying to scam free tote bags and pens. (but I did get a very nice free tote bag. and pens.))

and in case you've been wondering, I'm still alive. I just haven't been blogging. I was busy... and then I was kind of overwhelmed by all the pictures and stuff I have to go through for the whole month of July, so I haven't done them yet.

And I found out a few weeks ago that one of my uncles is seriously ill. It just makes me so sad because these are people I really care about a lot and I don't think things are going to get any easier. I know a little of what they are dealing with because I've experienced some of it myself when my mother had lymphoma 10 years ago, but we had it easy compared to what they are dealing with now. I'm worried about them.

This has also been hard for me because my feelings are linked, like sticky spiderweb threads. I get caught on one and then there are more and more and suddenly I'm completely stuck. I like to pretend aren't really there. But they always are, waiting. and while I know it is inevitable, I don't want to go back there.

Print O' the Wave Swatch #1

A bit o' knitting...
I am being good for once and blogging about what I'm knitting so I'll have a record of it. Most of the time I just go at it and never write anything down so two years later I have no idea what I did and why it looks so different than the one pictured in the pattern. Well, either that or I leave pages and pages of cryptic notes with lots of math and no idea which version of the math I used. (For someone who never really liked math, I sure do a lot of it lately!)

Print O' the Wave Swatch #1
Pattern: Eunny Jang's Print O' the Wave stole
Yarn: Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud in Midnight (lace weight)
Needles: Size 4 Clover straights
Conclusion: Too holey! I don't know if it's the needle size or if I just blocked the crap out of it. I'm going to have to get some size 3's and see if that's better.

I couldn't really find a good description of the color of this yarn online. There was a picture, but it just looked dark on both my monitor at home and at work. I was really surprised by how green it was in real life. Since the color is called Midnight, I figured it would be black or charcoal or navy. maybe even purple. but I wouldn't have guessed green.

I'll have to see if I can find a yarn store open after 6 sometime this week.* I think I'm going to try to find the Adi lace needles - I'm looking for something pointy and slightly grippy. They sound like they might be it. I thought about swatching on some size 2 Addi Turbos I have, but I really don't like them - they're so slippery and so dull I have a hard time just getting the tip of the needle in the right loop. I'm not even sure I could do a k3tog with them.


*why are yarn stores only open after 6 one night per week? I don't get it. It's expensive to shop there, but they're not actually open when most working people are not at work. So, you can work and make money to buy yarn, but they won't let you in the shop. grrr.


A bit o' work...
I found this in the document I'm editing today (all 62 pages of it!):

These facts, while impressive, could not be accomplished without your diligence and hard work.

This sentence is just wrong on so many levels. It just doesn't work. It doesn't even make sense! Since when are facts accomplished by hard work? They're facts - they just are. And don't you expect something negative after "These facts, while impressive..."? It's like saying "These facts are impressive, but..."

DC072 Computer Ops reunion

I met up with a bunch of the guys I used to work with last night. It was fun. I talk to some of them online all the time (even though it's been at least three and a half years since we worked together! can you believe it's been that long?!?) but I rarely see any of them. Last night everyone was there. Well, a few of them were missing, but all of the guys I worked with - the ones I think of when I remember working there - were there. Doug even came all the way up from Georgia just to see us. ;)

I miss working with all of you guys!

Click to see more from last night!

I am so cold today. I am starting to hate summer because you have to have two wardrobes to wear - one for the freezing cold office and one for the sweltering oven that your car has become while you've been shivering in the office.

Would my Wallace in The Wrong Trousers suction cup action figure look out of place stuck to the windshield of a Buick?

I got really frustrated yesterday trying to figure out what I spend all my money on. I am trying to come up with a budget but I can't figure out how much money I need to allocate to certain things, like food and necessary household stuff (toothpaste, clorox wipes, toilet paper, cat food, etc.). I could categorize a lot of my spending just by looking at my bank statement. $22 at Kwik Trip = a tank of gas. $50 at Kohl's = new walking shoes. $4.15 at Caribou Coffee = well... you know. But I buy almost everything else at Target. $32.67 at Target could be almost anything. milk. minutes for my cell phone. clothes. Captain Jack action figures. my prescription copay. season 2 of The Office. cat food. cat treats. coffee filters. eyeglasses. peanut butter. a pair of cute cat mugs. oil for my car. crackers to stash in my desk at work so I don't starve. a copy of In Style magazine. a box fan. giant plastic tubs to organize yarn in. heck, I've even gotten yarn at Target. It's really hard 3 months later to look at one number and figure out how much of that charge was for cheese and grapefruit and English muffins and how much of it went towards the electronic sudoku game (love it!). I may have to resort to keeping all my receipts and sorting through them at the end of the month to see just how much money I spent on groceries this month. And the chances that I could actually do that for a whole month is pretty slim. I'm starting to think I'm never going to figure this out.

When I get stressed out or really frustrated I tend to get obsessed about things. other things, like not the stuff I'm really worried about or the things I should be thinking about. And this time I'm obsessed with this - the Print o' the Wave Stole. While mine won't be quite as delicate as hers (I'm using tiny lace weight yarn instead of the so-small-it's-almost-invisible cobweb weight yarn she used), it will be a long, extremely involved project. And since I chose to do it in some almost-black yarn I know I will be really glad I have one of those lovely OTT lights. I rolled one of the hanks of yarn into a ball last night. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about (which is probably all of you) rolling yarn into a ball is kind of like winding up an extension cord. Except we're talking about 440 yards of yarn that tangles and knots easily and is really hard to unknot if you pull the knot tight by mistake. Plus it's alpaca yarn so it kind of sticks to itself. and I wind it into a ball on my thumb, which means I cannot set the half-completed ball down so I can use both hands to untangle knots. And of course Spike had to be right in the middle of the action. He kept walking back and forth over my lap - and on/in/through my loose hank of yarn - and butting his head against my hands trying to get me to pet him. Knitting this is going to be an adventure for me. and for Spike because I am rarely able to do anything without him (literally) sticking his nose in.


Maybe I can have the stole done before next summer so I can use it to keep warm while I sit here at work.

Can you tell I have no one to talk to here at work?

So this blog post # 324 today or something.

OMG Did you guys see The Office last night? Did you see who got the job at the end there? lol And also ER - Ray! oh no! (I hope this doesn't mean they're writing him out of the show. I like him. and I like Neela. and it's not Neela's fault! so there.)

And because you guys know I like free stuff and food and, especially, free food:
Free Caribou Cooler day is June 21st 2 - 3. (you don't need to bring a coupon - they'll give you one when you get there. and you may want to get there a few minutes before 2 - the line was super long last year!)

crud. Someone just dropped off another an updated draft of a 45 page document. It's 2:15 on a Friday afternoon and she wants to meet Monday at 9 to review it. I think I'm going to be bringing my red pen home with me. I snapped the little clip thing off of my red pen in a meeting today. It was really loud. I never really noticed this before, but I must do it all the time - look what I found in my drawer.

I feel like I have a ton of stuff to talk about here - so I'm probably going to do a couple different posts. Because it sounds like fun. :)

I'm a little hyper this morning. I got up really early this morning. About 5:30. I was awake so I got up. Really unusual for me lately, especially since the whole radio/car stereo disaster*. I got all the normal stuff out of the way (shower, dry hair, de-cat/de-wrinkle shirt, etc.) and I think I did all of the extra stuff I needed to do this morning. I'm going to spend the night at my parents', so I needed to pack a bag and make sure the cat would be ok (extra food and water, clean litter, pulling the blinds up high enough for him to be able to watch the birds, etc.). I even had time to pack up my knitting and hunt down the battery chargers.

I even made it to work on time! and by that I mean I made it to my desk on time, even after stopping in the cafeteria for coffee. (impressive, huh?)

My mood became somewhat dampened after my 8:30 meeting though. I spent a half an hour listening to people tell me that what I do is a waste of time. I've been hearing this a lot lately and it's starting to get old. It's hard to be motivated to do your job when everyone tells you there's no point to it. :P

I'm still in a good mood though - I've decided I'm going to take my cute new Captain Jack action figure on an adventure in my building. There's a sea of cubicles here, he should feel right at home.

and OMG - did anyone watch The Office last night? I loved it. (water cooler talk here is more likely to be complaining about how Lawrence Welk is no longer on the air. *sigh* I really do feel like I have no one to talk to here sometimes! (although I could actually talk about LW. It's just kind of boring!))

* The radio/car stereo situation: The CD player on my car stereo has been slowly dying all winter. Well, a few weeks ago it finally gave up. I listen to a lot of CDs in the car, so I was pretty disappointed. I started listening to the radio. There are about 4 stations I listen to (I change stations almost every time an ad comes on) but I mostly listened to Drive 105. Well, they changed Drive 105 into Love 105 - love songs from the 60's through the 80's. No thank you.

This severely limits my options. I want to listen to my mp3 player in the car, but my car stereo is 7 years old. I remember asking Sig the Saturn salesman if they had any radios that had a line in port. He hadn't even heard of a line in port. Everyone kept telling me to get one of those FM transmitter things. I kept saying "I had one ten years ago - it was crap!" They kept saying "I have one, it's great!" So I bought one. It's crap. Everyone owes me $20. It works pretty well if I hold the short cable between the transmitter and my mp3 player in my fist all the time. Which makes driving kind of awkward (and forget about eating a gas station doughnut as I drive to work...).

So - my options are: get a FM transmitter thing that connects directly to the wires going in to the back of my car stereo ($70); buy a used Saturn factory radio to replace my old one and hope the CD player still works in it ($100); or buy a new car stereo with radio, CD, and line in port ($100+). I don't actually want a new car stereo because they are all so ugly. (well, they are!)
This radio station problem is also causing me to be late for work. I had to set my clock radio to a different station. But when my alarm goes off at 6:30 instead of getting the station I want I get some faint version of CBS radio news. Which I sleep right through because it's boring. Cities 97 usually comes in full strength about 10 minutes later, but half the time I sleep through that too (they talk sooo much! I want some music! and something besides Paul Simon's Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes! (and I actually really like the Graceland album)).

Really the solution to all my problems is to get the 30g MP3 player I want ($200), a new car stereo with a line in port ($100+) and a docking clock radio/mp3 player thing ($100+). Unfortunately my budget is about $20 - $50. If you know of a better/cheaper solution please let me know!

Really exciting stuff happens here at work

Yesterday someone was firing a cannon every hour on the lawn in front of the capitol building. No one here seems to know why and I couldn't find anything about it online. It happened last year too, so it's got to be to commemorate something. (I'm assuming they don't just let you set off cannons in front of highly visible government buildings on a whim.) Want to see some crummy video of it? You know you do.

The plant is gone!

Remember how I was talking about the plant at work last week? Well, on Friday there was more plant drama. The plant guy showed up and he was not happy about the rouge plant waterer. There was some heated discussion (including threats of litigation!), some foot stomping, a little swearing (!) and after all that - some plant removal. I find this totally hilarious.

It feels kind of empty here now though.

I'm not surprised by this anymore. I'm just curious.

Sometimes I'm just baffled by the people I work with. Today I noticed something was odd about this plant. Do you see it?

It's a post-it note stuck to the plant. Why? I'm sure someone had a good reason for it. (Also take note of the lovely generic office decor - a bland painting and a recycling container.)

I'm just wondering now if they're going to put a new post-it on the plant every time they water it. Pretty soon it will be covered in pale yellow notes fluttering in the draft from the air conditioning. That might actually be pretty interesting.

Last night's sunset over the Target parking lot.

Snow report

This is for Todd inside at work, Doug down there in GA and my parents on vacation in FL!

I left work early today because this is what it's like outside!

I know - this isn't the best picture. But I had to shovel my driveway just to get my car in the garage so I'm not willing to go back out there and get a decent photo. so there. That white lump in the bottom right corner of the picture is a bench - the snow in the ground is almost high enough to cover the seat of the bench!

Spike and I are cold.

I should have stayed home today

The weather people were all predicting a lot of snow last night. I didn't think much of their warnings - I mean, this is Minnesota, we're used to it. We get out and drive in just about anything. well. I should have stayed home today.















This is the best picture I could get. It's from a traffic cam. That's the building I work in on the left! (exciting, huh?)

The drive in wasn't too bad. I never went more than 30 miles an hour, but at least I was moving. (Thinking about it now, I've realized traffic wasn't bad because everyone with half a brain used today's weather as an excuse to stay home and build a snowman or something) I was the first person in my department to get to work, which is pretty amazing since some of them get here before seven in the morning and I never ever get here early. (never!) As the morning went on, more and more people called in to say they weren't coming. Meetings were canceled and the big java programming class that was supposed to be held in the conference room right behind me was postponed (and I was so looking forward to eavesdropping on that too! I end up listening to every meeting and presentation they have in that conference room and I was so excited that they were finally going to talk about something I actually want to hear!).

I spent the morning trying not to think about yarn (because I'm supposed to be working, you know). I finally decided to run out at lunch and buy some so I could quit thinking about it. I checked traffic from the window and the highway didn't look bad at all, so all systems were go.

Ha!

I could barely get out of the parking ramp because the street hadn't been plowed and there was a foot high pile of snow I had to drive through. None of the city streets had been plowed recently - there were no visible lanes or even tracks where other people had gone. None of the stoplights had power. I gave up and turned around to come back. I just hope that things are better in a couple of hours when I go home. Especially since I'm going to be sitting here thinking about yarn all afternoon now too.

Except now I'm distracted by something else. I have wanted one of these for a while now. It's tiny and cute and blue and I can carry my music everywhere with me! It's just what I need! I told myself that I'd wait and see what my money situation was like in a few weeks. I thought that this would be a good reward for loosing 50 pounds. I just noticed that the price on this has dropped again. The price has now dropped $50 from when I first decided I wanted one of these things. This is way too amazing to be just a coincidence. It's a sign! *sigh* be still my credit card...

grey days

This morning I couldn't even see the capital!

The women at work were laughing at my post it notes.

I had to add a second one - this first one didn't work.
Neither did the second, unfortunately.

Such a hard life, huh?

A Red Letter Day at Work

Today has been a good day at work. I finally risked going to the movie at the Science Museum at lunch time. Los of underwater swimming with the fishes type shots. I kept my eyes open through almost the whole thing and there was a lot of shark video too! The only things I really couldn't handle were the shots from the flying helicopter (:P) and this part where you were under water underneath this really gross looking dead whale with all kinds of happy hungry sharks. I felt like I was being squashed by a dead whale. and that's just not a pleasant feeling. (and don't worry - the movie's only 45 minutes long, so it's lunch time friendly!)

But the best thing about work today - I got a new chair! It's got everything - I can make the seat higher and move the armrests up and down. It's awesome. I spent five minutes getting my chair all set up and then I had to spend five minutes making all the worktops in my cube five inches higher. and then I spent 5 minutes spinning in circles in my fancy new chair. I don't know if you understand how cool this actually is. This has totally made my day!

I'm feeling lucky so maybe today will be the day I find the belt I'm looking for at Kohl's. It's shiny/reflective and green and it has the silhouette of guys with guitars on it. I guess every one else thinks it's cool too since I've been to two different stores and I only found size small green rock star belts. I'm going to try a third store tonight. I have to have one!