Friday, November 20, 2009

I have new yarn...and probably so do you

All is right in my world. The hacking and coughing and general nastiness is gone. My job is going great, and then there is this.
That's right friends and neighbors that would be the look of new yarn in my life. Yesterday was payday, and after the usual bill paying was done Miss Carmen had some leftover coin so I stopped at my LYS and bought me some WOOL!
From left to right you are looking at 2 skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca light and 1 skein of Boomerang in White Zinfandel. And it's all for me.
And part of the fun of it was having it wound for me. Now I know that in one of my earlier posts I extolled the virtues of making your own center pull ball. But that was the broke me talking. The employed me could actually walk into said yarn establishment, leisurly pick out the yarn that I wanted and say "Why yes, I would like it wound. "
I have a few left over hanks in my stash for future knitting that I will probably wind on my own, but for now I am basking in the cuteness that is the professionally wound yarn cake.
And then...when I got home from work today, what was in my mailbox but this.
That's right. More YARN! And this package came with needles. Some of you are already familiar with the packaging, but this being my first package from Knit Picks I just had to share. That is 3 skeins of Dougherty Shamrock and 2 sets of DPN's size 7 and 9. I am making the boy a pair of fliptop mittens for Xmas and all of the fixins' came today.
I have another package coming in a few days with a different color yarn that I might use instead. The boy likes green and this yarn didn't photograph very well on the website, it looks so much better in person, so to be on the safe side I ordered another color.... and it's on it's way.
So with all of this yarny goodness I guess you can say that I have definitly got my knitting mojo back because I have finished my Coraline Scarf.

And I have been working on this Corrugator scarf for my dad.
But alas, I have run out, so tomorrow I must visit another yarn store and get
more YARN!
Oh and did I forget to mention that I started working on these.
That's right more yarn. This I purchased as a "you made it through the storm" gift for myself a couple of weeks ago. My first foray back into the land of retail after the big "U" this summer. And what's a fine upstanding yarn geek gonna do but buy herself some yarn.
And since I had been out of sock yarn since July and it was already October, it seemed only fitting.
Currently I am knitting the Peaks N Valleys Sock pattern in the new Kristin Nicholas yarn Best Foot Forward. I just love me some Kristin Nicholas. I can't wait to buy more Julia so that I can do more projects from "Kristin Knits". But I will.
So what are you knitting?

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Hacking, Booster Shots, and a Poop Song

I guess that you can tell from the title that I have had quite a week and it's not quite over yet. So without any further ado I'm going to jump in.

1) Hacking - Halloween night the Boy and I are at the movies when I start to feel this tingle in my nostril cavities. I didn't think anything of it at the time since the man sitting behind us had on some pretty noxious cologne. But low and behold the next day I start to sniffle and sneez and realize that it is indeed a sinus cold. No biggie, been there, done that before. I took my usual remedies of Alka Seltzer, some Sudafed and the occasional shot of Nyquil on the nights that I can't get to sleep.

A week later I think that I am completely over this thing until Monday afternoon when the tingling returns and by that night I am in full sneezing fit mode that even Alka Seltzer won't knock out. It got so bad that when I was still awake at 2 AM I thought about driving myself to the Urgent Care at the hospital where I work.

But I decided to go to work and tough it out and as soon as 4:30 hit, head on over to the Urgent Care then.

About 10 that morning all plans changed when I let out a sneeze so violent that I thought that my chest had cracked open. That was when I emailed my supervisor for permission to take a long lunch and go over to the UC.

While wheezing my way across the street I again thanked God, not only for the great job with benefits that I now had, but for the fact that it was at a medical facility. Can you say convenient?

As I am checking into the UC window I make sure that my employee badge is facing out, I know that it won't help me get in any faster but I figure that it can't hurt either.

Then the registration lady asks me,

"Are you really having chest pains?"

"Yes," I answer.

"Okay, but just so you know if you have chest pains they usually admit you to the ER."

"I can't do that I only have 30 minutes for lunch"

She gives me a strange look and hands me a surgical mask to put on and tells me to wait until the nurse calls my name.

And there I sit in the UC waiting room like Swine Flu Sue as the minutes tick away on my lunch half hour.

45 minutes later I am in the exam room waiting for the doctor to come in and medicate me out of my misery when the panic sets in. You see being new to the job I haven't accumulated any PTO time, not that I'm worried about losing my job or anything like that, my boss is fantastic. It's just that time of work means very low funds, and I'm not ready to go there again. So when the nurse comes in to take my paperwork I scratch off "chest pains" and tell her that I think that it's just a pulled muscle from moving chairs around in the conference room yesterday and that my chief complaint is the long term cold symptoms.

When the nurse practioner comes in he asks me the general questions about whats been going on and during the exam he asks about the chest pains. I reluctantly tell him about them and he says that its because of all of the coughing that I have been doing. Hallelujah! No ER for me.

Which brings me to #2 - I bet this is where you thought the poop song was but it's not.

2) Booster Shots -I was so happy to not having a new strain of the Swine Flu I completely glossed over him telling me that he was going to prescribe me a couple of shots that would make me instantly feel better in addition to the medication that he was prescribing me.

And then the nurse came back in with these two big needles and asked me what side do I usually sleep on because this was going to hurt.

Hold on Nurse Ratchet, I haven't had a booster shot since I was 3 years old and my mom is mad at me right now so I'm pretty sure that she's not going to come over here and hold my hand like she did then.

But since I had already been off the clock for almost 2 hours at this point there was nothing that I could do but drop trou, get my prescriptions and go back to work.

However, I have to say that at least she was right the shots did hurt a lot but they did make me feel a whole lot better pretty quickly.

3) So I am sitting here tonight in with my constantly clearing head, thanking God for Flonase, Amoxicillan and Allegra and I decide to pop in my newest Netflix DVD.

OMG, where have I been the last couple of years that I hadn't discovered the genius that is "The Sarah Silverman Show".

Let's just say that after the year that I have had, I really needed this 5th grade brand of humour. I have been unashamedly rewinding and (nasaly) singing along with this song at the top of my lungs for the last 45 minutes. I am going to download this song so that I can play it in my car and on my MP3.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you The Poop Song. Enjoy!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U3e0-RHlfc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U3e0-RHlfc

Seriously I think my favorite part is the gusto that the little girl in the bathtub puts into this song.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Time is not on my side

So here I am knee deep into week three of new corporate job and it is 4:26 and I am counting down the minutes until I can clock out, go home and nurse my cold. When suddenly an email appears in my entitled "My time", and my next thought is SH&T!
You see one of my many duties is time and attendance, and it is the duty that makes my skin crawl. Because to put it bluntly, I am the time police or as my boyfriend calls me "time narc". I am the person that has to look in the electronic time keeper and notate who's late, on time, taking PTO, sick time, bereavement time, OT....time, time, time! And it's not on my side.
But by far the worst part is at the end of the payperiod wherein I have to go over everysingle persons time card and make sure that everything is documented and added up before sending to payroll so that all God's children in my department get paid.
Well this past Monday was my first day to fly solo before sending it all off to my supervisor for final sign off. And I was having a lot of trouble with one of my coworkers time detail. Some how I was adding days to the week and nothing was saving correctly so in a fit of frustration I went to my supervisor to help me correct it, and she did in a flash. Except that I had forgotten to add in 6 1/2 hours of sick time and of course it wasn't caught until today at 4:26!
So that's it folks. One of my biggest nightmares about this job has now come true. I screwed up someone's paycheck!
As soon as I realized what I had done I immediately went to my supervisor, told her what I did and asked her how to fix it. Then I went to my coworker and confessed my mess and told her that I would rectify the situation tomorrow. Which will happen first thing!
Now all I have to do is tell my manager, who will either be really understanding or rip me a new one. I can't quite get a read on how she will react to situations as yet. So we shall see.
On the knitting front, I haven't been in the mood. I treated myself to new sock yarn last Friday, but so far it's just sat on my coffee table. It's probably just this killer cold and new job anxiety. I don't know. I haven't been in much of a dancing mood either.
Oh well. On the bright side 2 episodes of Glee are coming on tonight!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Where have you been ?

I know that it's been awhile since I have blogged in. Funny how you start a project and then life decides to throw you a bit of a curve ball. A little something that I shall call "downtime". Unexpected, unhappy, un-financial downtime. And that's all I shall say about it. Because it is over.
And I am happy to say that I have come out of it all a bit humbler, a lot more grateful, a bit fatter and a whole lot smarter about my finances.
I have a new real job now, fulltime not temp, and so far so good. I started it 3 weeks ago and today marks my first day of being insured! Yes world for the first time in four years since I left big corporate insurance company to strike out on my own again as a self supporting artist, I have insurance.
The first order of business will be to get my eyes checked. I can't wait to get new glasses!
Also this week I signed up for my 403B. As I said before I have come out of this whole mess a whole lot wiser about my finances. In the past I have read and reread just about every book and article about how to manage your money. I have even set up Roth IRA's and opened CD's that I have cashed in and used for various emergencies. A couple of them I could have put off, but this summer saw the last of my emergency money, and then I was broke.
So I decided that before I received my second paycheck, I would immediately think in terms of retirement and savings. That way before I even think about buying new and fabulous yarns and planning a much needed vacay, and of course finally finishing paying off all of my credit card bills, I would have money taken out pretax for the future.
See I told you I learned something.
So now that I am back, it's back to knitting and tap dancing. And of course losing the 20 or so pounds of stress weight that I gained during this whole ordeal. I shall write more about that later.