Small, Grumbly Rant; More Knitting; and so on

I was quite irritated yesterday afternoon when I went to leave the house and found that:

• the postal delivery person had been confused by all the random doors this building has*, and instead of bringing the mail in through the one always-unlocked door to the mailboxes in the hall, he/she left it outside another door, where it got soaked through in the rain, and
• the UPS delivery person had dropped off a box and didn't even ring the doorbell to let me know, so I had a box that was also soaked through.

*Granted, it's confusing. Maybe if we always had the same person, he or she would be used to it, and could get it right? I was already ticked at them, as recently (on a day when I was home all day) I got a card announcing that I had a package requiring a signature, which I could pick up at the PO or get redelivered at some future day... It must have taken longer to fill out the card than it would have to knock and ask me to sign for the package.

Humph! The mail was very wet, including my copy of the local weekly paper, several bundles of the grocery ads, a magazine ... only the core of the bundle wasn't soaked. As for the box, well, fortunately, though the paper packing material inside the box was very wet, the actual contents of the box were in plastic, and therefore undamaged. But how hard would it have been to hit the bell? He/she didn't even have to wait for me; just let me know he/she was there.

I've talked before about looking on the bright side of unemployment, and you'd think this would be one of those things: I'm home more during the day, so I can be there to get a delivery! But the other half of that equation is not cooperating.

(Another misfire in the bright side of unemployment happened today, in fact, when I called to make an appointment, and was thinking to myself, I can go any time! Then the first time she offered me was a Saturday morning. Um, sure, that's fine; but, open-schedule win thwarted.)

I did a little shopping the other day, and I ran into something unexpected in the greeting-card aisle:
Great-grandmother greeting cards. More than one, even! Thank you, the grandmother options will suffice for my needs.

This was in discount mecca Ocean State Job Lot, and I was delighted there to find hot cocoa, of the not New and Improved kind! I've been trying different options for my coffee, none being quite satisfying, so finding a stash of the old stuff was a big relief. The thing with OSJL is that you can never count on anything specific being in stock from one visit to the next ("get it when you see it" should be their motto), so I stocked up. One box is ten packets, so three boxes will last a month. I got nine boxes, or three months, and to be honest I'm thinking of going back and getting more. I probably won't though ... probably.

In knitting news, I finished the second Wingspan. Better pictures to come, but here's a teaser, showing the difference in the two yarns pretty clearly:
It's funny to me how in some lights, they look identical.

I also cast on something last night, because what, I hardly have anything going! It's a perfect storm of needles, yarn, and pattern, so far anyway.

The pattern is Palindrome, which I made recently for a friend and really liked.

The yarn is blue-faced Leicester, which I bought at Stanley Pottery in PEI last year. It's got a lumpy, thick-and-thin thing going on, but it feels lusciously smooth going through my fingers.

And the needles are Knitter's Pride, part of a sample set of interchangeables I got to see if I like them. They feel very smooth, the points are decently pointy, and the joins have given me no trouble.

Happy knitting!

Oh, and while I was knitting, the Bruins won the first game of their series. Yay! When it was tied at the end of the third, and headed into overtime, I thought we were in for a late night, but just over a minute in it was over. Phew! Though it was nerve-wracking to see a pane of the plexiglass fall out and knock David Krejci over. Careful, fans, don't celebrate so hard you break one of our best players! (Supposedly he's okay, but still, ow. It weighs 121 pounds, according to the Globe; no wonder he has a sore neck today.)

Happily, last night's game was on the local station, NESN, with my preferred announcers. Tomorrow is game 2, and it's on a national station. Fortunately, to distract me from the pain of it, there's an NBC Bingo card* for the points they seem to hit in every broadcast. That will help me listen!
*Not officially! But hockey bloggers are funny people.