PolarGrrlPurls

Hello! I'm Still Here

Between the biz, work, and school life got a little unmanageable for a few weeks. Sorry! The company that is my work-job has been sold to a multi-national conglomerate (no, not exaggerating all, actually). This may be a good thing.....or not. It remains to be seen how this will effect my world.

In knitting news (because I realize that most people reading this really only care about that) Nina is 98% complete. Yay!! I've finished the steeking and am half-way through installing the zipper. After that will be the collar and then I can wear it. :) Just in time for the temps to drop, actually. New England has had unseasonably warm weather for the past month and so I haven't needed many sweaters yet this fall, let alone winter coats.

Fall's Fall Sweater has been deigned too small. I'm very frustrated at the prospect of having to frog it down to the raglan shaping and re-kint most of the body. Sigh. I'll get to it, but I needed a little fortification in the form of a mismatched pair of gloves and so have been focused on that for the past week.

My digicam is well and truly DEAD. Which really bums me out. I'm working on procuring a new one, but it will be a boring blog for a few weeks. I've been in denial about the upcoming holiday season, but maybe I should wake up about it enough to keep my eye on the sales. I'm thinking about this camera. It receives positive reviews, has a good resolution, and fairly quick shutter speed. Good for the price, anyway, and a respectable camera overall. I'd love an SLR and a tripod, but that will have to wait until I'm a grown-up with real money.

And since blogs are boring without pictures, have a picture!

Back and Rested, With News

I am back from my mini-vacation. Actually, I've been back for a few days, but I've been savoring the moment. Even with the arrival of an impressive downpour on the second day, I had a great time. We did a little shopping and I picked up some very cool postcards that we may use as the RSVP cards when we get hitched next year. (Oh yeah, did I mention I'm getting hitched to Marikal next year?) I also found a t-shirt that I just had to special order in my size (they were low on stock when we were there). In Northampton, there is a very cool store called Cornucopia selling organic foods and natural products. We stopped in to browse and I picked up a couple bags of Baji's Papadum Chips. I'd never had them before, but they are delicious! I will definitely be hunting them down locally. There was another store there that sells discounted name brand stuff...a little like a Big Lots, but a local business. I found a very cute pair of black Birkenstock sandals with rhinestone buckles and Marikal got a pair of Dr. Marten slides, both for a steal. In fact, the next time we heaad out that way (hopefully in the next month or so) I plan to bring extra $$ for shoe shopping, as they had really great brands there (Ecco, Naturalizer, Dr. Marten, Earth Shoes, Dansko, Birkenstock, etc.) and a reasonable selection of sizes. Lastly, I paid a visit to WEBS, where Marikal sat in a comfy arm chair and read her trashy tabloid magazines and I wandered around petting yarn to my heart's content. I spent a gift certificate that I've been saving for three years and bought enough superwash wool for a sweater for my friend Fall, and two yummy skeins of Trekking XXL for socks for me.

And now onto the news of the land.

I had a nice luncheon yesterday with my friend SongBird who was up from Atlanta to visit her mom and I had the opportunity to meet her charming and wonderful partner. I also spoke to my dad in the afternoon, who had some upsetting news....my grandmother who is 88 and a very tough bird had a heart valve replaced about 10 years ago. Long story short, the valve is starting to wear out and my grandmother has decided not to get it replaced again. This means that she has a weak heart and it will only get weaker as time passes. The docs have given her about two years, but as with anything health-related, that's only the grossest of estimates. I respect her decision, but the news still makes me sad. We are planning a full family visit around Labor Day weekend...a bit of a reunion, if you will.

In biz news, I have picked up another client (Yay!!). This means even less free time (*sigh*) and more money for expansion and marketing (yay!). Scool is also going well for this second session of the summer, though it has been even tougher to find time to stufy this month than it was last month. Urgh.

I've also decided that I should stockpile some prepped meals in our large freezer for when school starts and work picks up so that we are not eating take-away every day, like we did a few months ago when life got ridiculous. To that end, Marikal and I made three meatloaves and a huge batch of meatballs and red sauce for the freezer yesterday afternoon. I also plan on shopping the sales on TV dinners to have easy work lunches. After all, we have a ton of freezer space, may as well use it, no?

I Don't Get It

Just a tiny little work gripe. This morning, I hauled my carcass out of bed at the dawn cracking hour of 7:00 to arrive at work by 10:00 for some department-manager-approved overtime. I arrive in work, knitting bag in one hand and coffee cup in the other to open my email and find that the scheduling department (an entirely different arm of the bureaucracy) has refused to approve the overtime. Apparently, there has been a communication breakdown between the Department Manager (DP) and the Scheduling Dept. (SD). All righty....I forward approval email from DM to SD and get no response. I forward email from SD to DM and get no response. So here I sit, eating a breakfast of blueberry yogurt and sourdough pretzels from the vending machine in the break room, waiting for the bureaucracy to catch up with itself.

And lets not get me started about the so-called promotion.