Flirt and Flounce!

I'm such a spaz.. I totally forgot to post photos of new yarnie goodness!

This shall be a quickie..

Flirt and Flounce

This is on 20 Silk, 20 Bamboo, and 60 wool






It was a custom order that I decided to cleverly name and add to one of my colorsets as it was just perfect for it.

I'm quite happy, and it's soft..

Crazy Holidays and other randomness

First I want to say, Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends. (And of course all it's territories)

Though I do not celebrate Thanksgiving, because in the US it's all about Turkey... and well... I'm allergic to Turkey. I don't do cranberry sauce, I don't do stuffing, I don't do gravy on my mashed potatoes. I don't like marshmallows on my sweet potatoes (or yams). I don't like almonds on my green beans... Yes.. I am a freak.

Oh, I'm also not a Football (US football) fan either. I don't like to go shopping at the crack of dawn for christmas pressies... Really... I'm just not big into the T-Day.

But I've still got more than a month before I have to deal with the US version of it.
Moving along.
Today is Columbus day.

Which means, once again the kids in NY are not at school. Which means I am once again having to make up time throughout next week. I'll actually be working on Saturday to make up for the pay.

Well, this weekend we got a new couch. Spent 45$ on it.. and so far, my ass does not fall asleep. My body is objecting to the new positions, but thats alright.
We are also in the process of rearranging the house completely.
The stuff currently in the dining room area is going upstairs to the loft area (which was a bitch to clear enough space for)
The stuff currently in the living room (meaning our Dining room table) was moved to the dining room. (What a concept)

Still not done yet of course. But we are getting there.

Unfortunately in the aftermath, I broke one of the Harmony size 4 needles that currently are holding my Legal Assassin socks. Luckily, we had a random size 4 around the house, not to mention 2 other sets floating around as well. So we actually have "matched" sets. Which is all good.

I have discovered that shopping on any holiday.. even if it's not a normally celebrated holiday in this state... is never a good idea.
People are freaking crazy. Seriously crazy.
Never again. I don't care if it's National Smile Day... I'm staying home.

Which thinking on that.. means I'll never leave my house as there is a holiday for every day. Shoot. There goes that idea.

Oh.. I totally forgot.

I dyed this weekend.

New colorway called "Flirt and Flounce".
No pictures as of yet as it is still drying and well.. we had an Ice Storm down here in Colorado Springs so it's cold and there is moisture in the air.

The colorway was for a custom order, which is why it got bumped up before continuing with either the Repo series, or the Moonlight series.

I guess that's all I've got for now. Gotta go make dinner. Tomorrow is going to come very early. Sigh.

Bugs and Hisses peeps!

Stupid snow.

The first actual snow happened last night.

Which meant my ass had to get out of bed 30 minutes early. Which means yes, my ass was out of bed at 4:30 in the morning. That means my first alarm went off at 4:00 am, when I took 2 caffeine pills instead of my normal 1.

Yes, I hate my life.

But wait, it gets better.
The snow stopped in the middle of the night. The roads were clear, just had to scrape off the car.
But, it didn't matter, I was still up 30 minutes early.
Not like I could go back to bed.
Drive to work, mom is going to borrow my car today so she tags along.

I'm at work by 5:20 in the morning.
I figure I could start working at 5:30 thus leaving 30 minutes early this afternoon.
None of the managers are here to ask. Damnit.
I call my manager on his cellphone to get his A-Okay.
He doesn't answer.
Goddamnit.
Now I'm stuck at work 40 minutes early twiddling my damn thumbs.
My back is seriously tweaking already from having to get up before my normal time. I've taken all the drugs I can for it, and none are working.
Every single person I've dealt with on the phone has been a cranky bitch, and I'm not in a happy mood. I've only been "working" for an hour now and have dealt with just too much crap.

Moving along..
I'm currently reading Diane Mott Davidson's "Catering to Nobody"
Which, is set in a fictional town that vaguely resembles Evergreen, Colorado.
It's nice to see a book set in Colorado, even if it is filled with the classic Mountain town cliches. The cliches bother me, mostly because I never see them, so I sit there going "thats not what Colorado is really like."
But... thats not actually true. I just happen to live in my little world in Colorado, and I end up not seeing half the cliches that are even a block away from me.
What can I say, I live in the slightly posher area of town, I don't have farmers for neighbors, none of the people I know where fringe clothing or cowboy boots.
Yes, the town I live in is the Republican city of Colorado (seriously, if you try to register Democrat here, they actually ask you "Are you sure you want to do that? I mean are you really sure?"
This is a "military mountain town" so it's an odd mix of everything and thus does not fall into any cliches other than being the "nexus of all evil" in my opinion.
Sigh... I miss Boulder. In Boulder you got looked at funny if you were Republican. (I had a friend who was borrowing her fathers car while hers was in the shop, her father was uber republican, but did not live in Boulder. My friend was afraid to drive around town due to all the republican bumper stickers. lol)

In Evergreen, I'm pretty sure it's slightly more on the Democratic side of the spectrum, which is both in the book I'm reading, and also what I've witnessed from the town it's self.

Moving back to the book it's self, I'm just over half way done.
I'm very torn about the characters.
The Main character Goldy... is alright.
Her 11 year old son is a twit whom is making me not want to bother having kids if all 11 year old males are like that. (Suddenly.. I'm seeing Dogs in my future instead of children)
The 20 year old female that is renting a room from the main character is such a dumb ass twit that I want to scream if she is mentioned on the page.

The book is alright.. if not repetitive.
Yes, she left an abusive marriage.
Yes, she is afraid of loosing her income due to the attempted murders that happened at one of her catering events.
Yes, the cop likes her.
Yes, she needs to "calm" down (seriously every single person has said this to her at least twice)
Do we need to be reminded of this every single page? No.

I will reserve actual judgment until I have finished the book. I could just be cantankerousness in my review due to my sleepy cranky nature at this moment.
I do like some of the recipes that are in it.

Sigh. I guess I'm done for now.
I think I'm going to dye yarn tomorrow.

I hate snow.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Yes, I realize I've used that title before, but not on this blog. (I am forgetting most of my Myspace years, so if ya don't like the title repeat, just get over it.)
Disclaimer- No, do not take the title to mean that I've quit my job. I have not.

Speaking of work... this week was... slightly on the hellish side.
Monday was calm and easy and as it was a DOE holiday, but not a VOLT Holiday, I worked it. (not willing to take a non paid day off if I can avoid it)
Unlike my days on Postal... I don't get yelled at if we watch something on Youtube. (My gawd Martin the jackass used to have a hissy fit about any flash or streaming material.)
So, I spent the day watching Doctor Who season 4. Only got two episodes because I could not get a good link for Episode 3, so I spent the other time surfing. Calls were moderate and not too annoyance filled.

Monday night on the other hand, I was sick as a dog. Either I ate something that did not agree with me, or I caught whatever was floating around. (Lots of people have been elsicko at work, and it is less easy to avoid dealing with people and human contact on the new desk.)

Finally around 2 am I am no longer getting up every 20 minutes to do things that you really do not want to read about, nor do I wish to type. (I'll type it for a novel, but my blog... nah)
But, that means I've gotten no sleep. There is no way I could go into work like that. If I didn't just start getting sick again (while at work of all places... ugh) I'd end up snapping due to lack of sleep.
So, I spent Tuesday curled up in my chair (no longer the couch, though I wish the couch was downstairs again so I could have been stretched out on it), watching Season 1 of Angel and me reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Speaking of Good Omens. I highly enjoyed it. Can't tell who wrote which parts, mostly because I've never read any Pratchett novels yet.
I rather liked Crowley and his Angel counter part who's name is escaping me.
And there were a few other characters I rather enjoyed.
There was one character that annoyed me for the most part... But it wasn't his fault, he was just written that way. His name also escapes me. But he was the one in charge of the Witchfinders. He was an idiot, he bugged me.

Wednesday I was back at work, Thursday too... oh, and today... what a concept.
None of the days were fun. Not at all.
Oh, and somewhere in those days I finished reading Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs.
Highly enjoyed this one. All the uncanny coincidences were missing from this one. There was really only 1 coincidence, but it worked and didn't actually feel forced. There was actually reason behind it, and plot was setup in the third book.
The plot of this one was focused around an Airplane crash, and everything that goes into dealing with the aftermath, then a horrible twist added in. Once again I did not see the "Whodunit" until it was actually revealed.
It's honestly that aspect which made me forgive all the "uncanny coincidences" from the first 3 books. Kathy keeps me guessing right till the end. Generally when I watch a movie or read a book, I can figure out who the "killer" is in the first 10 minutes. Half way through at the latest. But so far, I'm along for the ride right along with Tempe. Lets hope the latter books remain that way.

Today at work, I was dealing with the official aspects of "Oh my god this place is killing me" and had a sit down with Manager R.
Convo went as such:
Me: "Doode, something's not right with the priorities you've got me at. It's killing me. We'll have 14 avail, I'll be on a call, as soon as I hang up the call I get another one even though we still have 14 people sitting there waiting for a call. Please tell me why."
Him: "Thats impossible. You are set to being in the slow queue."
Me: "Pull the data. I'm getting more calls than anyone around me."
Him: (pulls the data) "WOW. You weren't kidding."
We pull up the individual data, he's right though. I'm in the "slow" queue.
We've got 3 queues.
My highest priority is in the Outlook queue.
My middle priority is the Primary queue (which is also known as "every thing").
My lowest priority is the password reset queue.

Password resets and Primary gets the most amount of calls per day.
But, I am so kick ass at my job, that I end up taking on 3 times more calls than everyone else because I'm just so quick.
My stats from yesterday.
48 calls.
6 minute average on those calls.
ACW (After call Work) - less than 30 seconds

Yup, I had the highest amount of calls for the entire DESK. Not just my team, but the entire desk.
Lowest call time average as well.
And rocking ACW. (They want you to keep it under a minute)

Manager R was quite in shock about my stats. He was impressed.
In his words "your cooking."
In my words "but I'm also burning...out."

He is now aware of just what I'm dealing with. He knows I can't purposefully slow down my work, and this is killing me.
And if I need to take a break, I can tell my team lead that Manager R needs to see me, go into a special aux code. Walk over and tell him I need a break and just take a few minutes for myself.
He knows I will use it sparingly, and only if I'm about to go postal on someone. He knows I am trying to avoid loosing my temper, and to keep my attitude "cheery".

So at least he knows now what is going on. And he says he's going to bring it up in the next meeting and push to get me on the equivalent of Backlogs.
And once again, I have proven to myself that as long as I don't snap and tell some principle to shove it where the sun don't shine, I'm not going to get let go any time soon. This should be comforting. Why is it not?

Today I stop at Sunflower Market on the way home. So brain dead I pick a few things up, but nothing that actually will constitute a meal for the evening.
I am craving Sushi.
The sushi at Sunflower doesn't look that appealing.
Head home with my few wares.
Talk to Mother of Mine about sushi for dinner. Can't really afford it, but Sushi is comfort food for me, and generally saves the world from mass destruction at by the will of me.

We decide to go to a place we've never tried before. It was near the fabric store mother of mine needed to go to.

It is not one we shall ever go to again.
How hard is this?
Cucumber roll (which is really what i was craving)
Tuna roll
Salmon Skin hand roll
2 pieces of Mackerel
2 pieces of Salmon

Simple right?
They were out of Mackerel.
The were out of Salmon skin.
So we replaced the Salmon skin hand roll, simply for salmon
We replaced the Mackerel with shrimp
We also decided we wanted some little Roe (the name I'm forgetting right now)

Here is what we got.
No cucumber roll
2 rolls that we honestly couldn't tell if it was tuna or salmon.
2 pieces of Shrimp
2 pieces of very salty salmon
2 pieces of little Roe
1 very salty and weird salmon handroll. (we had been expecting our salmon roll to just be a regular salmon roll instead of a hand roll.. cause that was just... weird. Should have gone with tuna instead.)

The miso soup was luke warm... like everywhere.
The edamame was amazing. Honestly the best I've ever had.
The price was.... well shockingly less than I was expecting.
But the old adage is true... You get what you pay for.
Oh, and there was lots and lots of waiting.

We have crossed the place off from our lists of sushi places around town.
I can't even recall the name of it right now. It is on the corner of Austin Bluffs and Academy on the East side, north of the intersection. (In the same place with the Underwater Connection)

The last time I blogged about Sushi saving the world from destruction, I was living in Denver. Still working at Transfirst. That place was good.

I have started reading Digital Fortress, which I've already seen the formula. Honestly, Dan Brown has 1 formula, and so far it only generally works for his character of Robert Langdon. Mother of Mine and I discussed that while at dinner, it's because Robert Langdon is a character we can like.
Personally, he's a character that I've always looked at as what I like in the male species if I could find one. - What can I say, I've academia in my blood. Though my specific generation of the family tree has been unable to attend the ivy covered walls, "Professor" was always on the list of acceptable professions of my non existent future husband. The one caveat being of course that I don't care how sweet the little coeds are, there is no way in hell that he'd get away with any dalliance. Which I'm going to stop that paragraph right there, because my views are quite different than any of the normal views when it comes to that discussion.
I digress, Robert Langdon is a character I like. So I look forward to reading the next book. Won't buy it. Nope I'd rather Diana Gabaldon get higher on the list than him. But Katte already has the book, has finished the book, and it will most likely be coming home with Mother of Mine at the end of this weekend, which it will take her 2 nights at most to read it, then she'll pass it to me.
Where was I?
Oh yes, Digital Fortress. I'm reading it. Most likely won't like it, as I can already see flaws in the actual guts of the theory. (which is sad, since I'm no where near proficient in mathematics to ever actually work with crpyto at all. Even though it fascinates me, and always has. But if I can already see the flaws, that is sayin' something.)

The plans for the weekend as of right now: start organizing the house to be able to clean the carpets.
Possibly dye yarn. My dyes arrived today. I've got yarn.

Last night I was once again inspired to dye some Avalanche inspired socks.
I think I have decided that my sports team yarns shall be self striping. We'll see how it goes.
The reason for the Avalanche inspiration, was because the 1st game of the season was last night, and I caught the first 5 minutes.
It was also the Farewell tribute to Joe Sakic, who retired. *sniff sniff*
By the way, the Avs won against the San Jose Sharks. It's cute because one of my Ravelry friends is a huge Sharks fan. She's the one who actually reminded me that the game was last night.
I hadn't planned on catching the game at all, because I never actually do. I generally miss it for various reasons. But I finished watching a recording of Cyrano De Bergerac with Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner (and Eric Sarandon..) whom all were fabulous. But I just happened to flip channels right and landed on the hockey channel. (No I don't actually have the hockey channel, but last night was hockey night so whatever sports channel I was on was hockey-centric. Saw the last few minutes of the Toronto game before the start of the Avs game. I will admit it revved my inner hockey gal for the season.)

Last night while watching Cyrano, I got a bunch knitted on my Legal Assassin sock. I'm happy with it so far. Don't think it needs any tweaking at all. So we'll see what people think of the finished product.

Wow. Look at all this rambling. Didn'tcha miss me?
I won't say I'm "back" yet. But it looks like I'm starting to get there.
Just gotta survive October at this point.

Alright, I'm done. The tummy is not happy with all the lack luster sushi (prolly all the salt from the salmon.. seriously... I've never had salmon that salty and there was a lot of salmon)

Oh one last thing. Absolutely adorable. It got cold enough last night that Pan was huddled against me right from the start, and almost even crawled under the covers at one point. It would have been even more adorable if he hadn't been waking me up for the petting that was him nearly crawling under the covers.

Thats it. I'm done.
Night folks.