There's never a bad time for a cheesy song, right?
This one belongs to Carlos. You remember that I had a song I'd sing to Pan? (Just say yes.) Well, Carlos has one now, too. He doesn't even mind that, a, it's a cheesy song, and b, I can't sing for shit. He's very good that way.
Today wasn't a bad day. It wasn't wonderful, but sometimes "not actively bad" is good enough. And just for fun, I pulled out pictures of my buddy. Just a few. To remind myself that not everything from the last three months has been that bad. I've got this guy, after all.
(Thank you for the support yesterday; I appreciate you guys.)
So, today was not better.
Was it worse? This morning I would have said so, but overall, probably not. (It helped that I felt somewhat better than I did yesterday.) I did have an awful moment in my head when I found out after lunch that my boss had called me in for a "quick meeting" and I was, briefly, convinced that I was going to be fired. Obviously, that didn't happen, and it actually went fine--showing both that anticipation is worse than actuality, and that theory can be much better than practice. Yes, that makes sense in my head.
Still and all, I can't say I don't understand why I've been indulging more than I should, lately. A Coca-Cola here, Ben & Jerry's there, and yes, I have put a few pounds back on. I don't want to talk about that today, though. I actually do want to talk about it, but not today. It needs to be a day when I'm not already standing in a hole.
For tonight, well, I'm going to curl up with the new Laurell Hamilton, fresh from the library, and some of that Ben & Jerry's. As for you, let me ask you something: what's your favorite funny thing on the web? Video, cartoon, lolcat, whatever. Want to share? Anything that makes you smile. (Bet you didn't expect to get homework!)
Disclaimer: Today was not a good day. I didn't feel well, partly due to fighting off the migraine and partly due to not sleeping well last night (which may also have been part of fighting off the migraine), so I felt off-kilter. Not Well. Disclaimer to the disclaimer: On the other hand, I wrote some of this last week. So it's not all dismissible as "having a bad day".
I am not someone who expects every minute of the day at work to be joyful and fulfilling, but there have been more than a few moments lately where I feel serious concern that I am never going to not hate this.
There are projects due every day. Maybe five, maybe twenty. The pressure is different from everywhere else I've ever worked: stronger, more constant. There have been a few quiet days, but more often it's busy-busy-busy, enough that I hate to interrupt people except I always have questions. I've been there two months, and I'm used to picking things up pretty quickly, but there's still almost nothing I can get through without asking questions.
It depends ... it varies ... if it's that project type ... if it's this client ... if, if, if
I don't have terribly high expectations, I don't think; I don't expect to drive off eagerly in the morning, to anticipate Monday morning happily. But I would like to get through the day without wishing at any point that I could go home and curl up in a ball, sucking my thumb.
Just about every day at work, I'm hearing Gary Larson's angels (remember that? it was a long time ago). I know it will get better, I tell myself it will get better, but the knowing and the telling just doesn't make the waiting any much easier. After all, if we figure I should be more comfortable once I've been there for 6 months, we're talking about Thanksgiving, and given the (wonderful, much enjoyed) 90 degrees outside, Thanksgiving feels very far away.
Sometimes things just suck. All you can do is hold on and try to remain standing against the force of the storm. Tomorrow, it will be better. One of these days, that will be true.
Today was one of those days, those headache\post-headache, no energy, nothing got done days. A day when reading the paper was an achievement, when heating up food was a chore, when I went back to bed more than once, when I spent time on the couch without even considering picking up the knitting.
So. Hopefully tomorrow is better. Tonight is better than this morning was, so it's possible. Sometimes hope is all you have.
There's nothing for uplifting the spirits like coming home to find a gift of yarn in the mail!
Recently I won a blog contest, and if there was no other reason to read knitter's blogs (and there are many reasons), that would be enough! Thank you, Clumsy Knitter!
The lighting wasn't the best, but I went ahead anyway. Thus the photos above are too light, while the one below is too dark. I mean, it doesn't look like the same yarn, does it?
The outside of the skein is on the darker side, but still, that's ridiculous. Perhaps this weekend I will take advantage of better lighting. After all, I finished something else last night, and it needs its 15 minutes of fame!
Meanwhile, there is this yarn. Good colors, and soft! You know I'm a sucker for soft. I think I have to go play with it now.
Again I was out late tonight, voluntarily, but I'm tired. I decided to visit the stitch and bitch group near where I used to work, and not only was it a fun and lively group, one member brought her almost-three-month-old son, so I got a little more baby cuddling. Quite a week for this baby-lover!
But I need to get ready for bed now, so I'll leave you with this fun non-hockey story via Stanley Cup of Chowder today: the Boston Police Department has a sense of humor, who knew?
Now, the kitty is meowing for me, and my bed calls me, too. When did it get so late? Night!
When I got my new clock radio a few years ago, one of the features I really liked was that it resets the time after a power outage (or even if you just move it--plug it in and it knows the time). That's come in handy recently; two mornings within the last week, I've woken to find other clocks flashing wrong time, but my alarm went off when it was supposed to.
This morning, I learned it's even better than that. Instead of going off this morning to the radio ("It's six o'clock and here are the stories we're covering..."), it went off with a be-be-beep, be-be-beep instead. I squinted at it in confusion, then realized that we'd lost power again and it was still out, but the backup system was working to get the job done. Hooray for Sony! Three cheers for El sistema de No Power No ProblemTM!
I was actually planning to write some more, but suddenly the computer is acting up and I'm getting tired, so I'm going to call it a night. Sorry for the blog-post-us interruptus!
I went to stitch and bitch tonight, and got remarkably little stitching done. No, not much bitching, either! And yet I am in a remarkably good humor about it.
Want to know why, do we? Hmmm?
I gots me a baby fix!
And this time, I took out my camera!
For all of two pictures, one of which was blurry, but in a fairly dark room and with a moving baby I'm glad even one came out. And then I spent most of the time holding the actual baby, something for which I will put my beloved camera down any day.
(He'll be a month old on Wednesday. This isn't even my baby, and I can't believe how quickly he's growing up.)
I spent the day with friends yesterday, down by the MA/RI border, and it was one of those perfect days where the weather and the company and all the world seemed to be united in their desire to have nothing go wrong. I did manage to get a bit too much sun on my left upper arm (the result of a driver's tan, mostly), but a tender spot is a small price to pay for that kind of day.
We ate lunch outside, at a place with great food, friendly staff, no rush, and this view:
We went to walk on a nearby beach, or on what was left of it at high tide. This isn't usually a surfer's beach, but I guess it was a special day for surfers, too.
The waves were very aggressive, but being wet to the knees was a small price to pay for the beauty.
There were signs of creativity from man,
as well as from nature.
It was simply beautiful. Overall, the day was the sort that had us all giving little happy sighs.
The place where we went next for ice cream has some young cows for you to look at while you try to eat fast enough to avoid wearing a thin layer of melted ice cream.
Close up of tongue action
And some birds hanging out in hopes of crumbs.
A great day.
Today I ran a bunch of errands, after a pleasant morning of lazing around. One stop was to pick up some prescription refills, since I haven't yet transferred to the mail-order option. Mail order will be even cheaper and easier, but already the new health insurance is a big improvement over the old one I had. What I paid $15.99 for today cost me $47.98 a few months ago. Yikes!
Another stop was at Barnes & Noble, since I've been wanting to pick up what was available on my beloved Bruins, or as I believe we are now required to call them, The 2011 Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins. Thanks to a few dollars left on a gift card from Christmas, and a rebate card from my contact lenses, I paid all of $1.04 for this pile of fun and commemoration:
Along with my receipt, I was handed a slip of B&N advice for what else I might want to buy. At least the first two are hockey titles; the third is football, and the last, well.
Not exactly going on my list. Isn't Orange County in California? Roughly 3000 miles away?
Seen around town
These poor children: they're so slow, they didn't even get the "w" onto the sign!
Nice car! Want!
I'm not knocking the train to Maine, but I don't think that advertising should be covering warning signs and the how's-my-driving number.
On the other hand, the T, the transit authority, has been know to suggest that walking might be faster, so consider the source.
This was at a book sale; I think the sign would have been better if it had made it clear that the children's books were inside.
Though if they had actual children inside, it is considerate of them to have rooms for people to rest. Soundproofed, presumably.
Finally, here is an absolutely awesome commercial with knitting--so creative!
I watched part of the Boston Pops concert on Monday night, as you may recall, but I turned the TV off long before it was fireworks time: I like fireworks, but they're better in person and I needed my sleep. Not to mention that I haven't forgiven the organizers for changing The Way We Do These Things in order to pander to the national audience. (The order is SUPPOSED TO BE: concert including patriotic singalong, 1812 Overture with cannons, and immediately into the fireworks. World without end amen.) All this is a roundabout way of saying that this morning's Globe story was news to me, and I am fit to be tied.
It turns out that the fireworks were not scenic enough, impressive enough, something enough for CBS, what with their annoying location being so far from Boston's famous landmarks. So they did what any moronic insufferable foolhardy creative network would do, and "dubbed" the shots of the fireworks over footage of Fenway Park, the state house, and other landmarks that were inconveniently far from the river, or facing the wrong way, or the other side of Beacon Hill. Why show reality, when it can be improved upon? (As one of the comments on the story said, then why show real fireworks at all? Go for CGI, it's "better".)
Sputter.
Stop it! People watch the Boston fireworks because of what they are, and where they are is part of what they are, and stop it stopstopstop!
It's that time again! Time for posting a random collection of odds and bobs! Welcome back ...
Inside My Brain!
(Am I overselling? If you make it to the end, tell me what you think.)
One: A Most Ridiculous Item, courtesy of the Unclutterer blog: Please never buy this. Please. Go peel the bark off a stick in the backyard the way you're supposed to.
Two: Dave Barry recently blogged a letter from a fan who reported that when wearing one of his Dave Barry for President shirts, she was asked not only who Dave was, but if he won.
Arg.
Three: In a happy confluence of hockey and knitting* comes a story of how historically famous goalie Jacques Plante used to knit to relax, as well as because “I can’t get what I want in the stores.”
*Considering that they quote from a book, it's practically my perfect story. All it needs is a cat!
My favorite part of last night's Pops concert (and granted, I didn't watch all of it) was their debut of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
How can you not love the Pops headbanging?! (Starting at 3:27 in this video.) I wish Freddie Mercury could have seen it.
I think the in-the-crowd perspective shows, better than the TV broadcast did, how the crowd was singing along, though last night I did like seeing the closeups of the electric guitar player, who is a little obscured in this version.
If you need a refresher on the Queen version:
Or, for that matter, the headbanging from the Wayne's World version (banging starts at 1:10):
I was at the house of friends today for a 4th of July cookout, and sat smiling at these flowers for a few minutes before I realized that they are, in fact, red, white, and blue.
So happy 4th from the flowers!
And from the cats, who spent most of the day as one might expect:
But I'm sure that they were feeling the national holiday, really. Deep inside.
...
Who am I kidding? Every day is a holiday to these guys.
It really isn't the heat, it's the humidity! Today was only a windows-open day if I was planning to sit on the couch reading, and occasionally raising a cloth to dab at my brow. For me to get anything done today, it was an air conditioning day. This always makes me a little sad, but this morning I broke a sweat sitting and talking on the phone: it's humid. I do feel grateful to have air conditioning. (And now the windows are open again. It's humid in here, but not more than I can stand.)
And not to have a headache! Feeling grateful for that always makes me a little sad, since it shows how much headaches muck up my life, but it's true. Not having one is a gift.
So what have I been doing today, you ask? Well, laundry for one--the stairs are a bit much, but it's nice and cool in the basement. The sweater is (ulp) washed and laid on its rack to dry. It seems to have come through the experience all right, though I don't want to handle it much while it's wet, so I don't really know for sure. Solution: put the rack in the corner and try not to think about it. The weather has certainly passed into the realm of too-hot-to-wear-it, so there's no rush.
I'm also doing some closet clean-out, since I have way more clothes than I ever wear, and I want the space back. Some are things I don't love, some don't fit, but in any case, I can take a lot to the Salvation Army without feeling the pinch. I mostly tend to wear the same 10% of what I own anyway, so I may as well let someone else get some use out of the rest. I didn't think to take a "before" picture of the very overcrowded closet, but trust me when I tell you that I can see the difference.
Food for thought this afternoon: Is it wrong to wish that the rain storm currently threatening would come in, so that the kids next door would go in and stop with the almighty never-ending basketball bouncing already?
The last month or two have been so crazy, and one of the casualties is that I never wrote about the books I read in May, and here it is time to write about June's. Another casualty was reading time, as can clearly be seen in the numbers. After reading 20+ books in each of the first four months of the year, I read ten in May and 16 in June. (Legacy of a long weekend: I've already finished four books in July, and that doesn't count a couple I tried, but didn't like enough to finish.)
In May, only one book was a re-read. Some of what I read was only just interesting enough to finish, but not compelling. I found a new sci-fi author I liked, John Ringo, and enjoyed a middle-readers book, Okay for Now, quite a lot.
In June, five were re-reads, including the first three of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, preparatory to reading the new one, Heartless (which was good! Go read the series! And tell me what you think!). I don't know if I was more excited for that or for the new Penderwicks book, and considering that one of those is a re-imagining of Victorian England with werewolves and vampires, and the other is a series of young readers books about a family of young children, well, what's the word I'm looking for to describe my reading taste? Varied? Eclectic?
What about you? Have you read any good books lately? Or do you have any further questions about my reading?
This week was a very busy one at work, with lots of projects due and lots of people working late (not me: I don't know enough yet to be on the late-coverage calendar). Today, though, nothing was due, they announced first thing this morning that the office would close at 1, there was 100% less urgency, everything was much more relaxed, and of course, time crawled.
At noon, I'm normally not even half-way through a day, but today I was all, "Another hour?! No way!" Why are short days and short weeks so long? It's a weird perception thing.
Anyway, it was a pleasant playing-hooky afternoon, and at 8:15 I'm yawning fit to crack my jaw. Three days off. Doesn't that sound lovely?
Happy Canada Day, if that's your thing. Happy 4th of July weekend, if that is. Happy Weekend to all.
