I mostly knit, sometimes crochet or cross-stitch. I read, a lot. I love cats. I love hockey, especially my no-longer-local team, the Boston Bruins. Want more? Read on.
If that's your thing, merry Christmas! If not, well, I hope you're having a good Wednesday. Happy today to you.
This is where I would usually put up my Christmas card, but as I haven't sent a single one out yet, I think I will post it on the twelfth day of Christmas instead. Hopefully I will have them sent by then!
I got home safely last night, after a very fun and totally effing freezing trip, and eleven minutes after I walked through the door, I had a lap cat:
More to come.
Someone wrote about the magic of packing with compression cubes, and I decided to give them a try, but this is the first trip where I've used them. Magic! Who do I have to thank for this knowledge?
My winter coat is the kind that compresses down to pack into a pocket, which is great, but it's slippery, and though there's a drawstring to the pocket, it doesn't have a clip or anything, so although it's easy to squeeze the air out and get it into the pocket, it starts trying to decompress right away. Not without a fight, I managed to stuff it into this cube:
Isn't that magic? I'm off to use the other cubes for the rest of my packing. Time to get to it! I leave tomorrow, and it looks like I may never take my coat off:
When I was a kid, our Christmas tree was always a real tree---some years we even went out to cut our own (we have some pretty-funny-in-retrospect home movies of those treks). The house where I grew up had a large living room and the front, round end, was perfect for the tree.
We had colored lights, mostly what I consider regular bulbs:
But also some of these snowball ones (not a whole string, but mixed in):
Once I was old enough to "help," I got to help Dad put the lights in the tree, which made me feel very important. I loved watching these once they warmed up and started bubbling.
In our current situation, Mom doesn't want a tree enough to deal with the bother, so I haven't had a tree for a few years now. Which, given the last few years, is fine, but I was happy to pull out my bubble light night light this year. It gives a festive feeling. It looks like this:
I have worked at my current company longer than I ever worked anywhere, which is a funny thing to have happened considering my work history includes four layoffs. I worked there from 2012 to 2014, then elsewhere for a year, and then came back in August 2015 and have been ever since.
When I re-started, I was given a laptop, and it was not new-out-of-the box, but it worked, I wasn't complaining. I had to send it in a couple of years ago to fix something, I don't even remember what now, but otherwise, it has continued to work, mostly---the battery wouldn't hold much of a charge, making it less portable than it should be, but I largely work from home and can keep it plugged in, so it was fine.
A few times this year, the battery stopped charging, and the first time I mentioned it, someone asked if I had tried plugging it into a different outlet. My expression at the question would have been something like this:
But I tried it, and I'll be damned, the battery started charging again. (There's no reason I understand why that would work. It's the same power source.) So when it happened again a few times, I did the same thing.
Then last month, that didn't work, and the battery dropped lower and lower, until finally I reached out to IT to ask what I should do. They asked if I could try a different charger to see if that was the problem, but my personal laptop has a different plug shape, so no. They said I could go to Best Buy and buy one and be reimbursed for it, or they could send me one. I wasn't in a rush, as the machine was working and this was right before my vacation, so they said they would send it, and it arrived during Thanksgiving week.
But when I was back to work and looked at it, oh, surprise, it wasn't the right kind of plug for my machine. I sent them this picture to show why this wouldn't work.
The IT person who answered said that the person who could send me another was out on vacation, and would be in touch. At some point this week, someone asked me to look for and send them the specs for my computer, which I did.
Then on Thursday, I got an email from IT saying they had sent me a message in Teams, please respond. (I don't keep Teams open, unless it's for a meeting; the editors use Discord for our chats.) I opened Teams, and the chat literally just said hi. I said hello, and he asked if my laptop was an HP. I said yes, and then nothing for a while. (I admit, I was a bit miffed. We needed to use Teams for this?)
A while later, though, he came back into the chat and said, "would you say your laptop is pretty old" and "judging from these specs and the info I got, it seems a little outdated"! Oh, do you think? Are we just realizing that now? I said yes, it is old (I got my years mixed and told him it had been given to me in 2014, not 2015, but honestly, close enough), and he asked if I'd be okay with getting an updated one---he did not say new, but it has to be newer than this one. Of course I agreed, and he said great, he'd send it out. I thanked him, and said just tell me what to do with the old one.
His first answer was, "is there a trash can near you?" I just about fell off my seat laughing! He went on to say he was kidding, he'd give me the info to mail it back to them. I can only assume they want to destroy it themselves. Which is fine with me.
The new machine arrived safely on Saturday. When I saw that it didn't have the right kind of port to plug in the separate monitor I use, I put out a call for help on Facebook, and one of my friends knew exactly what I needed to get to make it work (I figured there had to be some sort of cord-plug-converter thing that would work, but had no idea what to search on). Now that should be all set, too! It remains to be seen how much of a pain it will be to set it up, but one thing at a time.
Okay, the trip itself is not crazy. I'm going to see my second family, and go to a fun party with a big friend group, and it will be very fun, I know.
Boston in December, however? For little Florida me? Is looking pretty crazy. This is the forecast as of Saturday morning:
Holy cats.
It is a week out, and that may change, but you know, better for me not to expect it to.
So my plans this weekend involve organizing my packing, and I am pulling out allll the hand-knits. For instance, I kept three hand-knit hats when I moved: should I just bring the warmest one, or the medium-warm one as well? To go with the leather gloves I kept, pull out the knit wrist-warmers to wear under them. Fingerless mitts to wear inside the house? Cowl(s), scarf(ves), shawl(s)...how much can I cram in a carry-on? We'll find out!
I mean, I could have used another hour of sleep last night, sure. But this view was worth it.
Where in hell did I put the holiday cards, when I was tidying up for my brother's visit. Where are they?
Okay, I've been looking for days, but apparently it took planning to blog about it to made them come out. Good grief. I am so tired.
Now I just have to find the holiday stamps. Sigh.
I've had some sore spots on my feet recently, and finally got myself to the podiatrist on Thursday. As is so often the case, treatment makes things temporarily worse, and I was very wobbly walking on Thursday afternoon/evening (turns out, you really use your big toes a lot for walking). They've been a bit better each day since, and we'll see how things are this Thursday, when I go back to see him again.
Hopefully things will have fully calmed down before I go up north for the weekend before Christmas, as obviously I will be wearing closed shoes that whole time! I got some warm-and-dries to wear.
Meanwhile, almost two years ago, I wrote about an enormous yarn windfall that came to me, and I'm not sure if I mentioned it earlier this year, but the same woman said she was going to have more to give me. Sign me up!
We agreed that I would be happy to come pick it up, and leaving it in bins was also fine (rather than her rebagging it and bringing it to me, as she did last time). After some delays, Friday was the day, and I went to her house to pick up what she had; she said she 'only got through about half of it' and it did fit into my car, but only just.
Oh, and at some point, there might be that theoretical other half. Phew!
We have had Florida-chilly weather recently, with temps going down into the 40s overnight, meaning that last week we had the air conditioning on part of the time, and this week it's the heat! It warms up nicely during the day, but that warmth doesn't come inside well enough for this working person at her computer.
The reason I start with this is that, while Maggie likes to be on my lap year-round, these mornings, we are deeply into a mutual heat exchange. She was extra-cute, progressively, this morning. Look:
My baby girl.
