How to Screw Up Two Projects in One Day

...or, Do All Pilots Sound Like Robert Stack?...

Last week brought me a world of pain, and I don't think I'm going to be let off the hook any time soon.

Monday/Tuesday was spent at work - lots of stressful hours covering for someone on vacation and getting ready for a conference in the midwest. Worked 23 hours in 2 days, only to get up at 3am on Wednesday and catch a 6am flight to Missouri by way of Atlanta (huh?). Several days of meetings, presentations, and a wee bit o' fun (it's nice working for a beer company), and then I was set to return home Friday evening.

You see, I never really mind hanging out in airports. There is plenty of knitting to do, after all. The ipod was fully charged, and I was all set to go. The trip from NY was great - gots lots of sock-knitting done - even ran into a flight attendant who was familiar with the addiction that is knitting socks. A few nights in the hotel room I was able to take care of a row or two on my shawl, and Friday evening was to be a looooooong wait at the airport - we were done with our lunch meeting around 1pm, and my flight didn't leave until 6. Primo knitting time.

I headed over to the Schlafly's Tap Room on the concourse - a lovely, quiet bar, since no flights were leaving or arriving any time soon. Had a great couple of beers (they're not really competition - they do a lot of "Pro Beer" activities with my company) and a lovely conversation with a bored barkeep. Then I headed to the waiting area (where there were ROCKING CHAIRS!) and started to work on my shawl. I was just rollin' along, enjoying myself, when I realized (oh, about 90 minutes later) that I'd done something stupid and forgot a yarnover on a previous row, but somehow I screwed up on the following row and didn't realize I'd had the wrong number of stitches. Dangit. I'll have to rip back to my lifeline, but not at that moment - it was almost time to board, and this cute little girl kept talking to me about planes, so I just chilled out with her and her dad - who, I'm sure, was on alert from Possibly Crazy Knitting Lady - you never know about people in airports.

Being that I wasn't going to arrive until LATE that night, I sprang for the "Business Class" upgrade, which equated to about $25 per hour of airtime. Sold. Leg room, free drinks, and first off the plane at midnight? No question about it. So I chilled out in the front of the plane with some wine and a great conversation with a small college football coach. The college was small. The guy was huge. Behind us was an American pilot (who had the piloty voice, even without being over an intercom), who was talking plane malfunctions (oh joy) with someone, and I kept thinking about how I picked a bad time to stop sniffing glue. No real knitting got done - I was enjoying my buzz and some eye-resting time.

The connection in Atlanta found me connecting with a friend who'd recently moved down there, so that was a fun little side-track. Then I boarded my second leg of the journey next to some weasel from Las Vegas who was definitely coming down from some odd kind of high. I scooched closer to the window and started working on my socks.

And wouldn't you know it - I screwed up the first row. Only realized after I tackled the second row. As I was unknitting back, I dropped a stitch, and it fell a few rows before I caught it. Sigh. Put knitting away. Order another wine, and crank up the ipod.

The weekend was spent recovering from the travel, and last night was spent getting yelled at by community members who evidently don't read announcements about what topics are being discussed at certain meetings. I won't go into details, and I certainly understand their issues, but shouting at our Committee members about their concerns was like yelling at a knitter for the plight of underage factory workers in China.

Thank goodness Joe was good enough to make a delicious chili for dinner, and two beers later I was in bed.

Another Weekend of Sore Muscles

Sorry I haven't posted much. My week, in a nutshell:

Monday night - the mass junk-exodus into the den (as pictured in previous post)
Tuesday night - public meeting on a local proposed development
Wednesday night - Comprehensive Plan Committee meeting
Thursday night - recover, knit a bit, retire early
Friday night - knit night, have a blast, Joe gets home, late dinner together
Saturday - wake up, finish 3rd coat in new guest bedroom, let dry, move furniture into said room, curse and make final touch-ups after bed nicks wall in same bedroom, finish clearing out old guest bedroom, curse and realize need to scrape window trim in said room, scrape (Joe and me) and sand (just Joe) until the day is almost over, swap out summer and winter clothes from the attic (just me), prime recently-scraped windows (just Joe), watch some DVRd shows, knit a bit, order pizza, limp off to bed
Sunday - wake up, knit a bit while watching TV and avoiding the inevitable tasks to be done, vacuum old guest bedroom, paint ceiling of same room, curse that we don't have enough ceiling white, pay bills (me) or do work stuff (Joe) until local hardware store opens, pick up new gallon of ceiling paint, booze, and Walk Hard, come back and paint (me) and work on work stuff (Joe) until lunch of leftover pizza...

...to be continued...

ETA: Pictures!

Joe scraping door trim:

The lovely flakes from scraping...



Dobby, looking cute as always...

The new guest room (pardon the clutter from cleaning out the OTHER room):



Old guest bedroom:

It's actually more orange-sherbet than the pictures show...

We seemed to totally go all tropical on the back of the house. I wanted "happy" colors for the treadmill room, and it certainly fits the bill.

Enough now - we're tired, high on paint fumes, and just realized that the new ceiling white is different from the old ceiling white. So a 3rd ceiling coat (and edging!) needs to go up this week. Oh, joy!

Too Much Stuff

This is what it looks like when you take everything but the furniture out of two bedrooms you rarely use and cram it all in the den...

Treadmill, boxes of photos, yarn stash, futon cushion, air mattresses...you name it, and I've probably tripped over it in the last 24 hours.

Why-oh-why do we have so much crap...?

Doin' Stuff

So.

I had scheduled Thursday and Friday as days off, but due to personal circumstances that my boss was dealing with I couldn't really take Thursday off with a clear conscience. Fortunately, however, I was able to take Friday. Otherwise I would've been one fussy, petulant dorkwad.

I slept late. I knitted. Joe and I ran errands (he had the day off too - after he got back from New Jersey). We had lunch where friends work, and we sampled a whipass new menu item - the jalapeno popper chicken sandwich (couldn't find a link - it's from TGIF, though). Hint - it's super-good, but only if you have half. Once you're on the second half, you start to get sick of it. Or so says Joe.

I took pictures of the sunset from the porch, and of Ghetto Kitty in Joe's shop...





We bought paint. We closed on a new equity line rate. We took catnaps before walking to a neighbor's house and losing about 10 bucks in an all-night poker game, where I accused a coworker of f*#king me. I meant that he was f*#king with me, but after a few shots of tequila (thanks, Sam), I don't know whether or not that message was conveyed properly.

We got in around 2am (thanks Jason - and many thanks for not holding that you're f*#king me comment against me), and we slept mighty late. On Saturday!

Painting a ceiling with a mixed-alcohol-hangover is not recommended. Lots of spots before the eyes. But I held it together, and thanks to Joe's run to BK for some greasy recovery food, all was well with the world. We painted the bastard room, so-named for its lack of purpose. Treadmill, yarn, boxes, occasional mattress...this was basically a glorified closet. Now we're making it the official guest room, and the former guest room will house the treadmill, weight machine, and other oddities. Seemed like a good time to paint and get it to where we wanted it, so...here you go.


Yes, it's very sea-foamy, but it's meant to be. We have a lot of goodies from family beach trips, and every house we've been in (well, we've only had 2 so far) has had a "beach" guest bedroom, where our beach pictures and seashells can hang out comfortably. So there you go. A seafoam green (well, technically, it's Florida Aqua) bedroom. Don't mind the DVD/TV in the corner - that's just so we could watch The Big Lebowski while painting. It's important, you know.

Jacquie and Paul - you'll recognize this as the closet you slept in. It's actually quite large when you remove everything from the room... Tomorrow we tackle the trim, then we put the new bedroom together. Woohoooo!

So there you go. Not much going on, but enough to make my arms sore. Painting a ceiling sucks! ;)

I'm So Happy I Could Cry...

Today was supposed to be a day off. Due to issues I won't mention here, it wasn't.

Tomorrow was supposed to be a day off. It will be.

I cannot express to you how important this will be.

A day off. A day to sleep in. A day to knit, to paint a room, to walk to the post office and pay my stupid state taxes...

Yes. Finally.

Knitting...or Taxes?

Two things I've been really not doing a lot of lately...one because I've been busy, and the other because I've been avoiding it.

And thus my dilemma for tonight. Kind of like Cake or Death...

A Delightful Day

About 2.5 weeks ago, our wonderful friends, Tim & Cambria, had a beautiful baby boy. His name is Calder, and he looks like the sweetest little thing - which is to be expected, naturally, because his parents are just lovely to the core. Belated congratulations to this new family - I can't wait to snorggle that little cutie-pie. :)

I found out this afternoon that they got the present referenced here, so now I can post a picture...

Rav details are here. The pattern is a variation on a design from Hanks - the January is for Karen scarf. It's a really fun pattern - enough to keep you interested, but not complicated enough to make major mistakes. Unless you're me. So, due to a few colossal blunders, it was a bit late getting to Young Master Calder. Thanks to Amy's advice, I made it a larger size - almost shawl-ish - so it can be wrapped around, folded over, tucked into - just about anything. I hope you enjoy it and use the heck out of it - at least for these last couple of days of chilly weather!

Having two friends with babies born rather close together put me in major blanket-knitting mode. Now that there's a little lull (for now), I'm cutting loose and starting on our Newburgh Knits knitalong...

Although it looks like an odd-colored bikini line, I assure you it's just the Blue Jeans Lace Leaf Shawl, knit up in Brooks Farm Primero, a gorgeous gift from Lorena at the Great Yarn Orgy of 2007. It's fun so far, but kid mohair takes some getting used to after worsted blends. I'm just sayin'.

Of course, I just HAD to swing by Cornwall Yarn Shop to pick up needles for the shawl project. My interchangeable needles weren't liking the mohair all that much. Honest! I haven't been to that shop since...oh...wow - August...? I feel like such a bad customer. So of course I had to help relieve their sock yarn inventory. Just a bit. To make up for the post-Rhinebeck drought.

I still continue to work on my Monkey Socks, but I have to rip back to redo the heel (it's a bit small), and that will take a night in front of the TV, which I haven't had yet. Maybe tomorrow. Then again, maybe I should do my taxes tomorrow. Hrrrmmm....

Finally, a lovely little package was waiting by the front door:

A book on how to preserve fruits and vegetables. I did a search on "how-to" books, and lo-and-behold what popped up but a publication from the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service, where my father worked for years. A contributor to the book was actually one of my "bosses" at my first summer job with the 4-H Office. Very nice twist of fate, that. So of course I had to buy it. Hopefully, knowing what hit us last year, we'll be a little more prepared this time around with our local CSA.

That's about it with my belated update documenting my delightful, wonderful day. And now, I must go to a public meeting where I'm sure people will yell at me. Or towards me, at least. I wish I could bring my knitting...

Oh - and have I thanked you enough, Jacquie, for helping me in the fight against MS? You're awesome, you knitting rock star, you!