Category: Useful Things I did Today

Since becoming in-valid…. I am really excited by every little thing that I can get done. No dishes yet, but I can stack the dishwasher!

More info on Peace Silk

From The Abolitionist Online. Now if only I could find a local supplier. You listening Kris?

And in todays “News From The Frontline” of medical technology sales, we have some progress. On the last day of the second week I have worked for this company, I actually got to see one of the machines we sell in action. Not with an actual patient – the boss had to whip his shirt off and slap on some electrodes – but I did see the machine that goes ping, actually going ping. PING. A lot. And printing reports. Eeeeeeeeeee!

I actually got out of the office for the first time. And I got to spend a few hours talking to the boss. I got some work to do for next week, and I learned something. I didn’t actually leave work till nearly 8pm, but them’s the breaks. Still haven’t been paid. Might get paid tomorrow, if the accounts person decides that all the paperwork is in order. If I don’t get paid, I might just throw a hissy fit. I have now provided three rounds of paperwork, each of which have been required as the “last step” to actually having money transferred into my bank account. And each time, another excuse, another bit of paper, or information, or fact checking required. Could this be a deliberate ploy to make me take a sharp knife to the paintwork on someone’s SUV? I can’t stamp my little broken foot and be taken seriously…

Tomorrow, I am taking the lovely Christophe for his birthday adventure to Rubi + Lana’s (no link because their website is so crap), and will hopefully get some housework done so that we can enjoy Tony & Kate’s housewarming party in the Blue Mountains without guilt. Life is good, but I may need to take speed to keep up with everything.

And huge thank you to mum and dad for taking Spongebob the iMac to hospital today – picked up and delivered home with a new pacemaker, all in the one day!

Tuesday

Not even hump day, and I am aching for the weekend.  Boss won’t be back till thursday, and I am running out of things I can do to occupy myself.  Tomorrow I’ll be turning into a printing press for a mass mailout, at least that will keep me amused for a few hours.

I left work a little early to get to Mosman to pick up a monitor adapter, keyboard and mouse – so that I can use the larger monitor that is on the desk I am using.  Ask me why I don’t say “my” desk.

I spent over four fucking hours in traffic.  It’s a good thing Mark hooked up the FM transmitter in the transporter, I got to catch up on two episodes of Cast On, one episode of Lime & Violet, and two episodes of Sticks and String.

I made the choice to start work with a broken foot, knowing that driving would not be good for it, but also knowing that I wouldn’t be able to get to work unless I drove.  I wasn’t counting on spending over 4 hours driving (including driving to work this morning), and tonight my poor wee (size 11) tootsie is aching. 

All because there was a boat in the harbour.

(if you know Sydney, check out the size of Fort Dennison compared to the monster ship.  Check out the Opera House)

Another roadtrip

Today was a great day. It started off with some political bullshit. Hornsby Council had another by-election (after one in September last year), and since I knew the candidate to be a good bloke, with an outside chance of getting the job, I thought that it would be the decent thing to scramble out of bed at the crack of sparrows and spread the green word to the uneducated voting masses. Or hand out “How to Votes” at least.

At 10 am (after some malarky with the liberal candidate pretending to be an independent pretending to have environmental principles), Candi, Sally, Meg and Mandy arrived to ferry me off for yarny good time.

First stop, the Wool Inn at Penrith – I am sure Meg will have a great description (and pictures) of our adventures, because I forgot to take my camera out of the bag all day. I blame the drugs. I’ve been good with the painkillers, but today required some intervention. Sally, Mandy and Candi are, sadly, blogless.

I bought some Filatura di Crosa lace-weight in white (yes, I believe I will dye it in preparation for the arrival of my new book), a ball of Zara in a very intense teal/turquoise colour, and a variegated cotton that I found in a sale bin.

Then it was off to the Blue Mountains Knitters Guild meeting. I had never been to a guild meeting before, and it was educational, and inspirational to be in a room full of crafty women of all ages, skill levels, interests, styles, and degrees of yarn snobbery. I deliberately only mentioned women because David was the only man there. It was freaky. My knitting life is full of men – most weeks at the Courthouse we have more knitters with balls than knitters with boobs, so it was rather strange to be in such a large room, that was so overpoweringly female dominated.

Though it is definitely the case that a persons gender is the least interesting aspect of their knitting, it appears that I have taken for granted the rather special group that makes up the Courthouse. It never occurred to me that men were all that special – I thought they were just like people.

Another day

Today I will draw your attention to my adorable husband. First, his blog, has two recent posts that are both awe inspiring, and creepily beautiful.

Yesterday I featured his thoughtfulness, generosity, and romantic spirit. Today, I will balance that by recounting a tech support issue. I am a wee bit nerdy, but I am also lazy – so sometimes I will ask Mark to fix things that I could probably fix myself. But I just started a new job, and have been somewhat self obsessed. So I asked him to fix ecto, which wasn’t retrieving posts since the upgrade to WordPress 2.1

A moment after I handed the laptop to him, he announced that he had fixed the problem, and sent me this link. How rude.

And work? At about 3pm, my email started working. Next, a computer….

Happy Valentines Day

Valentines

Now, if the profanity and anti sentiment wasn’t too much for you, here is a picture of what I got for valentines day.

P1070614

A heart shaped bottle of Armagnac, an exceedingly pink rose with a superb scent, and a garish sock yarn in my signature colours.  I think I’ll keep him.

On the work front, I went in today, still no computer, but I did get the car to drive home.  It has all the bells and whistles, including cruise control.  And insurance, I hope.  The thing is freaking huge!

First day

I have to admit, I had a quandry. Was it better to turn up with a broken foot and a cough like Typhoid Mary, or not turn up at all ? Tough call.

I turned up, and smiled a lot between coughs.

They didn’t have a desk ready for me. Or a phone. Or a computer. Or any time to teach me anything. But I grabbed a pile of brochures, and spent a fair proportion of the day on Wikipedia (check out CPAP – it’s not as boring as some of the other stuff I poked into).

I had another maths revelation during the day. Reading about human biology is fascinating. All the respiratory stuff was enthralling, and I think my retention rate for the new information was pretty high. But when I came across maths, my mind went blank, and I literally found myself nodding off. The word vector was a trigger for me. I know what it means in art, but in the context of a biological explanation of electricity in the human heart, my eyes glazed over. Very peculiar.

Perhaps if I can name it, I can conquer it ? Let’s hope so. I know Mark will get a job soon, but in the meantime, I am feeling a lot of pressure to excel at this job.

On the upside, I sold something today. I think I got the client contact details right, and even the products they wanted. Thank god I didn’t have to discuss pricing!

And for todays entertainment, here is a clip of Frank Zappa being interviewed by Norman Gunston. If you don’t know Frank, do yourself a favour and get acquainted with Sheik Yerbouti. Or at the very least, go to you tube and do a Zappa search.

Frank Zappa once said, in response to criticism of his very public smoking, and the possible effect on impressionable youth, Frank took a long drag of his cigarette, and said, “you see to me, this is food”.*

*Please don’t smoke. Smoking is bad. It may make you look cool in the short term, but your knitting will smell bad, and only other smelly people will have sex with you. And you will die young.

Some knitting content

I showed Sarah and Adam the beginnings of the purple and green WIP and they seemed to approve, so I pressed on.  While waiting for the godlike apparition doctor at the fracture clinic today, I reached the decreases.  I discovered that the pattern requires a wee bit of thinking, so I made a leap of faith, and did what I thought was right.  And now I am doubting the wisdom of pressing on without a notepad and paper.  I have done decreases, which I have to match on the other side of the front, and on both sides of the back.  Sheesh.

At this point, I have no choice but to press on, and hope it all works out.  If it doesn’t, I can just post it to Emma, or suck it up and use the rest of my week of bed rest to sort it out.  At least I have something to distract me from the waiting.

A very social weekend

It was lovely to catch up with the SSK crowd, no pictures because I forgot to pull out the camera.  It was funny to chat comfortably with these lovely people, and recollect how overawed I was just a few short years ago when I first met Mary-Helen (amongst others) after reading her blog for a few months.  I was a very new knitter at that stage, and had only just started reading blogs, so it was an unusual thing to meet someone  that I felt like I knew from reading a blog, and yet she had no idea who I was.  Sydney has a relatively small knitting scene (compared to many cities in the US), and a few years ago it was even smaller, and so meeting M-H was a little bit like meeting Madonna, but with less paparazzi, and more DPN’s.

And the best bit?  Being told that my travel blogging brought some joy to people who have inspired me to blog.

Saturday evening Mark and I went to dinner at the home of Sally and her husband David.  We had such a thoroughly splendid time that we committed the unforgivable crime of being the guests that would not leave.  The conversation was so lively and interesting that it was past 1am when we finally left.  Sorry!

Sunday morning was passed over in favour of a lie in, after which we enjoyed Meg & Craig’s hospitality – and we got to meet the famous Pierre.  He’s smaller than the pictures suggest, but he’s every bit the chewer that Meg complains about.  Damned cute though!  Pictures, again, *WIGATI.

We had just over an hour at the Courthouse S’nB before we had to meet the Nettles for dinner in Newtown.  Kerry and her partner went to Palestine while Mark and I were in Vietnam, so we had dinner and a we slide show to see what she had been up to.  I’ve never had much of an understanding about Middle East politics, but if people could just be nice to each other, I’d be a lot happier. 

The cardi has grown to the end of the available yarn, and I see a trip to a yarn shop in my immediate future.  I also see a trip to medicare to get some money back, and some frugal living on the cards while we pay rego on René de Car, and get used to living on one income again.

And just when you thought it was safe to click on links to craft tutorials, someone had to do this.

*When I Get Around To It.

Baby’s First Tattoo

On friday, while we were waiting for the pictures of my modified foot, we wandered around Pennant Hills looking for lunch, and I stumpled across a yarn shop. Quell Suprise!

Actually, I knew the yarn shop was there, and I went there deliberately, but let’s keep that between ourselves, shall we?

I bought another ball of black sock yarn to finish the birthday socks for dad, and two balls of Zara, lime green and a soft but vibrant purple.

After the drama of the day, and a whole lot of hobbling around, I took to my bed in the afternoon, determined to try out the new needles with the yarn I had bought. So I went in search of a suitable pattern on the intertron, but ended up with one of my old standbys – “Stitch ‘N Bitch Nation”.

Here is a link to another bloggers finished item. Mine will be much larger, as it’s done in 8ply, and it will be also much greener. With some purple. But you get the general idea.

And the needles ? I am in love. I am smitten. I am in deep smit. Smooth like an addi, but pointy to perfection, so that even using a splitty yarn and a cable cast on – it did not spilt once. Knitpicks Options needles are the needles of my dreams. I once said htat you could pry my addi turbos from my cold dead fingers, but I am changing allegiances. Pictures when I can get out of bed.