Baby Crafts

Warning.... crafty Momma ramble ahead...

Well, Like I said yesterday, I finished up Boo's blankie. Last night and this morning, in a vain attempt to use up the rest of the leftover yarn, I created a vest and diaper cover. I still have an almost full skein of yellow and about a half skein of green! I'm sure some project will use them up... I hope....

I acutaly spent from about 8am until almost noon working on finishing up the last little bit of the vest (edging... yet again...) and creating the diaper cover. I found both patterns for free online. I'm not as happy with the vest. It's pretty cute and all, but it's just not my favorite. The pattern wasn't very clear in a few places, luckilly I know what a vest should look like and how to count. The one really nice thing about it is that you only had to stitch the shoulder seams, no side seams to try and line up. But let me tell you, changing colors every two rows stinks when you have to weave in ends. Normally I just work over them, but the open-ness of this pattern didn't make that look so hot. Oh well. I'm just hoping the crotch part of the diaper cover is long enough. We'll find out in a handfull of months now, won't we? I'm also thinking it may be a little wide, but that's easy to fix with a small piece of elastic threaded thorugh the waist. Now I really can't wait for Boo to get here, I need to see if what I made fits him!

Ok, enough crafty baby-ness for one post. I swear, I really do have thoughts other than about yarn and Boo... or Boo and yarn... or just Boo... or just yarn...

For example, Gak and I had a great time running through a pretty cool dungeon in EQII yesterday morning. We went with a handful of guildies. (Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, I pulled Addey from Wings of Fate and joined up with Despair... great group!) We also had a necro from another guild who was pathetic. And they accidentally bid on, and won, a no-trade item that Gak really, really, really could have used. Oh well. They appologized at any rate. Still a bit cranky about it, but that just means we don't need to group with them again. Anyhow, it was very nice to just be able to go out and have an adventure with a group for a bit.

Well, I've got to go start supper. Gak should be home from work in a bit. Peace to all, and may you have fun adventures and things that make you smile.

Groundhogs and Grandmothers

I know, I know, it's an odd title.
Not if you knew my Gram.
Today would have been her 85th birthday. My Gram, the groundhog. She always claimed to be born in a raging snowstorm, and she's probably right. It was a good snowstorm we had the day of her memorial.
This time 6 or 8 months ago, Mom and I were trying to figure out what we should do for Gram's 85th. We had a small suspicion that she wouldn't be doing well, but it wasn't until a few months later that we were pretty sure she wouldn't see this day. I wish she had, in some ways. It would have been nice to throw her one last party. She really was a very social and sociable person. She was always the center of everything, and it was fun to watch her.
I meant to call my Mom today, but I didn't. I feel pretty bad about that. I'm sure today was a bit more wierd for her than for me and my brother. Both of us would have called her, of course, but well... Gram was Mom's mom... a different story all together. Hopefully the shop was full of lots and lots of people.

The groundhog, who happens to live a couple of hours west of here, says 6 more weeks of winter. I'd like to know when we've had winter start? I mean, sure, we've had a few bitterly cold weeks, and a bit of snow early on. Back in December it looked like this was going to be a bad winter. I'm still waiting for something other than sleet and rain. Mind you, rain is much easier to drive in, but not as pretty and in some ways even more miserable.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some pictures for you. I finished up Boo's blanket and sent it through the wash this morning. I guess I should say the first blanket I'm making. Knowing me, I'll probalby make at least one or two more. Gak gave me a bunch of pattern books for Christmas. I told him to pick one out. He hasn't yet. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. We'll see.

Anyhow, just wanted to make a quick post and wish my Gram a happy 85th, even though she isn't here with us any more.
Peace to all and may your lives be full of wonderful people.

See Ya Later Al-agator!

Well, today is the end of an era here at work. My friend Al is retiring after being here 10 years. Mind you, this wasn't his first career... he's done all kinds of things including being in the Army and a Philly cop for 14 years. Today was his last day. We just had his retirement lunch.
Al and I don't exactly see eye to eye on a number of political issues, and those we do, we don't always agree on what to do about them.
That's OK though. We enjoy our conversations.
I must admit though, it did take a little time for me when I got here to warm up to him. But, he's a great guy and a good friend.
I will miss him.
He definitely brought a lot of life to this building. His wife is a saint to have not killed him yet. He's always got a story or something to say. If you needed help understanding something, he'd take the time to explain it as best he could, which was often just right. He would willingly give an ear to listen and come up with some creative (sometimes very) solutions to things. Although, I think mostly he was here for the cookies... especially my oatmeal cookies. (I made a batch just for him last night... well, gave him half and the rest that Gak and I didn't eat are for the rest of the office.)
I wish him the best of luck and the enjoyment of his 7 grandkids. I'm sure they'll be keeping him busy!

I Love (?) AT&T

Well, that was an exercise in extreme patience and almost futility.
I just spent over an hour on the line with AT&T trying to straighten out something I should have taken care of over a year ago.
Yes, that's right, a year ago.
Back shortly after we moved into the new apartment, Gak and I got new phones. I forget the whole story, but for whatever reason we couldn't transfer Gak's old number to a new phone. Something having to do with the AT&T/Cingular merger. Anyhow, we were able to keep mine (thankfully!), but this whole thing required us to close out the old account and open up a new one with my number and Gak's new number. No big deal. My bills have been automatically billed to the credit card. I noticed two bills each month from AT&T, but as the company was paying, I kept saying "I'll take care of this next week." Well, next week finally came. (I'm truly embarrassed at how long this took me...)
What really prompted this is Gak's phone started acting up yesterday (it's better today) and I figured I should probably get all this straightened out.
I called the 800 number given to me online on my account. I even got to talk to a real, live human being pretty quickly. It all went downhill after that.
Once I got through to him that my number is actually on two accounts he transferred me to his manager because he couldn't find the second account. I then had to repeat the entire story to the new guy. He did find the second account, but it was on the "old" billing system. He then transferred me to some chicky who talked too fast who was on the "old" system because he could only access the "new" system. So, yet again I have to try and explain everything. She muddles her way through for a bit and then transfers me to another woman. Well, it turns out that this woman was also on the "new" system. I almost didn't find that out in time. I almost accidentally got Gak's new number canceled! Eeep! He would not have appreciated that.
Well, she transfers me to another woman. Yes, that's right, this is person number 5 that I've talked to. She quickly figures out she can't help me. I'm trying very hard not to loose my cool at this point. I mean, I worked customer support for power plants for 4.5 years and have been traveling with the wonderful airlines for the last 3. I know a lot of these problems aren't their faults, they can only do what their systems tell or let them.
I have to remind myself of this several times.
This woman was nice enough to stay on the line with me while she connects me to person number 6. Person number 6 makes sure she understands what's going on and I double check to make sure she's talking about the right account. By now all kinds of numbers are getting mixed up in my head and I can't read my own writing any more. (Not like it's that great to begin with...) I'm pretty sure it was this 6th person that was finally able to cancel my old account.
This whole adventure took over an hour.
It's a good thing I'm not overly busy at work.
Of course, I hang up the phone and about 5 seconds later Gak calls to tell me he's still at work and to pick him up there. I relay the outline of the adventure and he just groans.
All this because we need to get Gak a new phone soon.
And from what I've heard, AT&T has slightly above average customer service for the cell companies. At least everyone I dealt with was polite and I'm pretty sure were native English speakers. (Hey, I have nothing against someone in India or elsewhere being support, if I can understand them, and they can understand me. They've got people just as bright, if not brighter, than people here... I don't care who helps me, but I shouldn't have to ask them to repeat themselves 10 times to understand they told me to reboot the computer.)
Ugh.
Well, I'm going to get a few emails sent out and turn off my brain and go home.
Peace to all and may your phone bills be simple, and your customer service needs few.

Clean!

... Well, sort of.

Yesterday was a very, very productive day.
We found the closet!
There are no more packed boxes in the apartment!
We took 6 boxes of trash and 2 boxes of stuff for Good Will out of the apartment!
I'm exhausted.

Mom came up around 11 and other than a break to go grab some lunch, buy some fabric and yarn and a photo frame, we worked almost non-stop from then until about 5:00. There is so much room in the closet now! There is actually empty shelf space. Mind you, the back bedroom is still a disaster area and a half and I don't want to think about our current bedroom at the moment either, but we're getting there.
Mom was great about getting me to make decisions and go through stuff. Some days it is the getting started and the keeping going that's the hardest part. When you've got someone to talk with and hang out with who isn't invested in what you're cleaning up, it helps. I mean, doing this with just me and Gak would be pretty hard, we don't push each other enough to get rid of things or make the tough choices. We just shove it aside and pretend to do it. I'm just as guilty, if not more so, of this than he is. Therefore, we're not much help for each other in this.
I really do need to get better pictures of the dinning room, and the picture wall in the hall. It finally looks like a real dinning room and put together. That's good because it's right inside the front door. We also even ate dinner at the dinning room table last night!
Hopefully this week I'll be able to go through my yarn stash and get rid of some *gasp*. Hopefully I'll get to the point where I can put the "unspoken for" yarn into the storage thing and put the yarn for specific projects together into bags and get it all into the closet. I think I have a lot more yarn than I thought I did. Unfortunately, not much of any one thing. Well, I do have enough for mom's afghan, but that's only because we bought it on Sunday.
I still have to finish the border for Boo's blankie and then I'll share it. I still can't find my pattern book of edgings and borders. Oh well, I may just have to wing it or find one from another afghan that I like and steal it. I need one big enough to add an inch or two to each side. Not too difficult when working with double-stranded yarn. I also need to measure my one blanket and make a plan of attack for Mom's. I'm going to try and make it 5 squares by 7, but it may take some fancy math. I guess I should figure out if the green or the blue should be the "main color" as there is definitely a difference in amount of yarn of each color needed.
Ok. I'm totally rambling about yarn. I guess I should stop. Sorry, it's on my mind as it's the next part of the mess that needs tackling and something I enjoy any how.
Hopefully in two weeks when Mom comes back up, we'll be able to make some real progress in the back room. Then we can move the bed into there (I really need to pick up new curtains first...). Then I can clean out the other room and start getting it ready for Boo. I've already got some stuff for him floating around the apartment and it would be nice to get it all in one place.

I hopefully will be this productive at work the next week or two. I'm still frustrated by the lack of movement on what's happening to my position (and me for that matter) after March. I've got some other projects that are keeping me busy, but it's mostly busywork. The only reason it's getting done is that I've got people hounding me for it and I can't ignore it.
So, on that note, back to the code and the issues at hand.

Peace to all and may you have productive weekends, good weeks and much less clutter in your lives!

Totally Random

Well, this is going to be a bit of a chaotic post. I've got several things I've been meaning to post about, but just keep forgetting to or haven't gotten to yet or whatever. I'll try and keep it in some kind of coherent order, but no promises.
I'll start with this picture at the top. I've been lax in introducing you to two new members of the bear clan. The one on the left is DD. She came to us the week of Thanksgiving. You see, DD was given to my great-grandmother, Mum Mum, by a close friend over 20 years ago now. The friend's name was Dot Davis, therefore, the bear was named DD. A few years after DD came into her life, Mum Mum passed away. Therefore, Miss. DD stayed with Gram. DD enjoyed her status as only child. Sure, Jon and I spent a lot of time there over the summers with our own zoo of friends. But mostly she's been content to be the shoulder for a couple of older women. When we were down in Maryland visiting Gram the week of Thanksgiving, she asked Gak if he would adopt DD. She said that DD needed a good male role model, as she's never had one of any sort. Of course, Gak couldn't say no. I was planning on bringing her home with us eventually anyhow. She's adapting well. Having lived a quiet life, living with Mum Mum and Gram. She's not used to being one of several, especially some young rambunctious ones. She spends most of her time hanging out with AT and Sally.
The other little girl in this picture is Angel. She came to us the day that Gram left us. She's a very sweet little girl and has been a wonderful addition to our family. She loves coloring and playing all kinds of games. She is, however, very good at getting into all kinds of trouble with Scout leading the way. Usually this involves them ganging up against poor Sam. Well, he does deserve it, as he is the big brother and all. She's really been a bright spot around here since she came to us.

I got some, in my opinion, sad mail the other day. I found out that my advisor, former head of the biology department and head of the faculty at LVC, Dr. Paul Wolf is retiring at the end of the year. I learned a lot from this man and he's touched the minds and hearts of many, many students over the years. He even taught the son of one the biology teachers at my high school. He has a really gruff exterior, but inside, he's a real softy and cares a lot about his students. Most of us referred to him as Big Wolf, not usually to his face though even though he knew we called him that and I'm sure secretly enjoyed it. You see, there were two Wolves at LVC in the biology department. Big Wolf and Little Wolfe. Big Wolf is just that, a big man with a big presence. He was a marine in Korea and some of that drill Sargent-ness still hangs about him. Like I said, he is a real softy and cares a lot about the students though. Then there was Little Wolfe. He is a much smaller man in stature, not a whole lot taller than me, and a little scrawny. He's about the same age as Big Wolf I'm guessing. Little Wolfe is a much more soft-spoken, academic kind of person. He rules his class and lab with a quiet efficiency. Very different professors, but both very good at what they do. LVC is loosing one of it's best to retirement. I just hope that, in the far future, Big Wolf gets his wish... that he just keels over while working out in the salt marsh and they just leave him there. I'm sure they won't just leave him there, but that's what he wants. I know this because I took two semesters of Ecology with him and both semesters we did a marsh study. That and I did an independent project with him in the Delaware marshes. Hopefully now he'll have time to fiddle in his garden, hang out in his beloved marsh poking and prodding at things. I wonder if he's completely given up working with U of Delaware as well. Anyhow, I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to go out to school for his retirement party in the beginning of April. It's only 1.5 hours from here and it would give me a chance to see what all they've done to the Neidig-Garber science center. I'll let ya know.

Man, this is getting to be a long post and I've still got stuff to talk about.

Anyhow, Friday Gak picked up a used X-Box 360. A lot of the guys from work have one and play online with each other. We'd talked about it several weeks ago and told him then, not yet, there are other things that need done first. Well, he didn't eat as many lunches out and didn't buy any Warhammer stuff, so he had enough discretionary funds left over to pick one up this week. It's quite funny to watch him try and play it. Especially since the one game that the guys from the office play is a shooter, Call of Duty 4. He, quite frankly, stinks. He always has at these kinds of games. (I'm even worse, so we won't go there...) He did pick up a really cool game by Bioware, Mass Effect. It's an RPG and man, the graphics and the story line both blow me out of the water. It's great. Hopefully I'll be able to master all the million buttons on the silly controller so I'll have a chance. The one big thing I hate about the X-Box is that it isn't wireless. I'm spoiled by the Wii. The controllers are wireless. It connects to the network wirelessly and it comes that way. (I think he payed almost as much for a stripped down X-Box without a hard drive as we did for the Wii... He got a free hard drive from a coworker.) The X-Box does have wireless controllers, but they're extra. You can also get something to connect to the wireless network, but that's extra too. Hopefully Gak'll remember to pick up an extra long Internet cable today so he won't have to keep unplugging it after he's done, since the router and the X-Box are across the room from each other.

Well, I was going to share some crafty stuff I've been up to and pictures of the dining room, but I think I'll save those for tomorrow.
Mom is coming over today and I should probably get a few things done before then. Peace to all and may you have good weekends, even if they are a little random at times.

Friday

Well, today is Friday. I haven't posted since Tuesday. Not much has really been going on. I've been pretty tired in the evenings, work has been work (still no clue of who/what's going to happen in March...) and everything else has just been the same as ever.
I guess that's a good thing.
I just got back from my latest poking and prodding session, aka prenatal appointment. Everything looks good. In 4 weeks I get to have the sugar shock treatment. That is, drink some sugar water an hour before your appointment, get some blood drawn and see how well you handle the sugar. It's basically to check for prenatal diabetes. I'll probably do fine, but you never know. It doesn't help that I'm heavier than I should be to begin with (although my weight gain so far is well within reasonable). We had a hard time finding Boo's heart rate today. He was squirming all over the place, not wanting to be heard. My kid, shy? Well, more than likely. Neither Gak nor I love overly social situations and neither one of us likes being the center of attention. Especially a doctor's attention. Oh well, it sounded good when we could hear it.
I do feel him squirm about quite a bit more now. Of course, this is usually when I'm in the middle of something important at work and then Boo lets me know he's there and I loose any connection to my previous train of thought.
Not that that's a bad thing, but at work it's not always a good thing.
Well, I'm rambling. I'm working from home today and should probably get back to the email stuff that needs my attention. I'm going over a permit for someone so I can give some intelligent answers to the customer. (I'm not sure it'll really help, but hey, it's worth a shot...)
Peace to all and may you have the occasional "normal" weeks where not much happens.

Baby Pictures!

I finally have the ultrasound from last week to post. Dad was able to scan it today and it actually looks good. Almost better than the glossy printout, since you're not competing with the glare on the paper. You can clearly see his spine and skull, almost see his ribs and get a hint of his face. Yep, he's a cutie and he's all mine and Gak's.

Today was a good day at work, or at least not a bad day. Somehow, and I'm still trying to figure this one out, I got roped into this conference call with a customer. I think it has something to do with the fact what they were calling about were initially problems/issues they showed me while I was at their site training and had brought back to the engineer and software team here. Anyhow, after an hour and a half, I ended up with a bit more work to do. Actually, it's a lot of investigative work on my end figuring out why we did certain things and working with the engineer to check out some stuff. It shouldn't be that bad, almost fun even. I'm just glad they didn't ask about me coming back for more training, since they're out near Bakersfield, CA and I really have no intention of wanting to go back any time soon.

Gak surprised me when I got home this evening. Not only was dinner ready (and not spaghetti!) but he'd attacked the closet of doom earlier. Mostly he'd rearranged stuff and put boxes up on shelves and the like. It's wonderful, I can actually get into the closet. Sunday I'll probably have him take down several of the boxes as I want to go through them and get rid of a lot of stuff that's just been sitting there not doing anything since we moved or before. I also want to try and organize some of the stuff that's in there, like the paper/computer stuff and the yarn bin. This is where I need Mom's help... to make me get rid of junk. She's merciless and will make me deal with it. Some days I need to be beat about the head and shoulders with this stuff. That's been her job for over 32 years now and she's good at it. I love her for it too. (Even if I used to complain loudly as a child...)

Well, that's it for today. Just a brief little post. Mostly I wanted to share the picture of Boo.
Peace to all and may your days be easy.

Productive Day!

Now, if only my days at work could be as productive as today was...
This morning after dropping Gak off at work, I managed to get the laundry done and most of the grocery shopping. I did forget a few things because I didn't remember to bring my list with me, but I pass at least 3 stores on my way to and from work each day. I think I'll be able to stop and pick up the odds and ends. It wasn't anything urgent like bread or milk.
this afternoon my mom came up to help get the dining room together and some other odds and ends. There were only a few boxes of things that we brought from Gram's dining room that we needed to take care of. Most of that was taken care of quite quickly. We then looked at the shirts I bought. Mom loved them all. One we're putting aside until next year because it's cut a little too straight for now. But that's OK, it just means that I'll have something new for next fall. Three of the shirts needed a little attention to the sleeves and she's being a saint and taking care of that for me this week. (I can't quite get at my sewing machine at the moment, I've got a table and several boxes in the way...) Then we decided to tackle putting up the new pictures that I brought home from Gram's as well as the pictures she and Dad gave us for Christmas.
This became a fairly big project as there were well over a dozen pieces that needed our attention. One thing to remember is that we have plaster walls in this place and no idea what's behind them. Therefore, we decided we needed to go to Target (oh... darn...) and pick up some of those 3M Command hanger thingies for pictures and the like. We found something new by them that's essentially Velcro for pictures. It looks like it's going to work great for a few of the smaller pieces. Of course, we didn't just by the Command hangers. No... I needed to pick up laundry soap and we just had to wander through the baby stuff. We'd put a hip sling carrier on the registry and Mom thought it looked neat. Target had it on sale for half off. She picked it up. I also picked up a neat mirror that attaches to your rear view mirror so you can see the baby in the back without adjusting your mirror for traffic. I'd used one with Zoe a few times when she was little and I loved it. I would have put this on the registry right away, but BabiesRUs didn't have anything like it. I hope this one works as well as the other did. It was pretty cheap too. Of course, by the time we got done at Target, Mom was getting hungry as it was 5:00 and she'd only really had breakfast today. (She went out with some people from her water aerobics class...) Of course, there's a Red Robin (evil, evil place) across the parking lot. So, we ended up eating there instead of me fixing supper. (I did cook off the chicken for leftovers when we got home...)
Today was quite productive. We've got almost all the pictures hung, just waiting on a few Command strips to cure before adding weight. Although, the dining room almost looks more of a mess than when we started. That's because there's some picture debris there and a few odds and ends that need to be put away. That'll happen. Soon.
Mom will be coming back up on Sunday to help me some more. There's a boatload of work that needs to be done to this place. (I, and Gak, have really let this place turn into a major disaster area the last 6 months or so...) We've got to rake out the hall closet first, so we can rake out the back bedroom. Once this happens, we can move our bedroom into that one and get the other one set up for Boo. We need to get furniture for Boo, but I'm not even going to think too much about that until we've got our bed moved. Hopefully in the next week or two that'll happen. I just want to reclaim my space and get rid of the junk and trash that's accumulated while I wasn't looking. Yes, I'm nesting. But... this has been a long time coming. I've been very cranky with letting myself let this place get this way for several months. It needs fixing and thankfully, Mom's here to help kick my butt into gear. (That and she'll actually make me throw stuff out/send it to Good Will...) I can't wait to get organized. I'm sure it'll last all of about 2 weeks, but hey, it'll be nice while it lasts.
Ok. I'm rambling now. Anyhow, if you really care, there's a link to Boo's registry in my links now. (No, I'm not above pointing out the fact that I have a gift list and wouldn't turn down any gift...)
I'm off to play with yarn or the DS for a bit before I crash. I have no idea when Gak'll be home, as this is his Warhammer night.
Peace to all and may you have productive days and reduce the unwanted clutter in your lives.

Good Weekend

Well, so far it's been a good weekend.
Friday night Gak and I went over to Kat's. Scott, Chris and Dianne were there as well. Steve even showed up for a bit. We had Pizza, played Apples to Apples and had a generally good time. Well, Scott's brain nearly exploded. I'm good at doing that to him though. I'm not exactly the most predictable person on the planet. I think towards the end I was doing things just to see the gears spin and break in his brain. It was quite fun overall.
We also got lots of mail on Friday. Gak got a bunch of Orks he'd ordered and they look great. We got a nifty package of stuff Michelle had picked up for us from Puerto Rico when she was there in the fall and I got 6 new shirts! Six! And all but one fits really well... one I'm still thinking about. And for just under $70! They were ordered from http://www.womanwithin.com. They were cheap, but decent quality and look great. They weren't even maternity shirts, but regular ones that I'll be able to shorten a bit after Boo is born.
Yesterday I didn't do diddly squat. I didn't sleep well, and I was just out of sorts. That's OK because I have a three day weekend. I slept a bit, fiddled around with yarn a bit and was just mostly out of sorts. Gak had to close so that meant I had the whole afternoon and evening to myself. I enjoyed it in a grumpy kind of way.
Today was a productive day. Gak and I finally went down to BabiesRUs to register for stuff. If anyone cares, you can find it on the web here. There's lots of stuff on there. I'll probably be making some adjustments and additions over the next week or so, when I get a chance to really look it over again and add some stuff that's available on the web only. I think Gak was having a bit more fun than I was with some of it. He really, truly is excited about all of this. In a quiet way, which is his way. He was quietly excited and terrified about the wedding. He's the same way now. We're both really excited about this journey. I just hope we can get through with as few big mistakes as possible. (I know we'll make lots, all parents do... just hopefully nothing huge.)
Tomorrow I have off. Mom is coming up in the afternoon and we're going to alter a few of my new shirts and tackle the dining room. Hopefully I'll be able to get pictures of the setup dining room by the end of tomorrow. We'll see. I may be able to convince her to give me a hand with some of the stuff in the back bedroom or hall closet as well... I need a swift kick in the butt to actually deal with it, not just complain and worry about it.
Well, I'm off to go fix supper. Gak's beginning to gnaw on his arm, so I guess I'd better feed him.
Peace to all and may you have a good weekend.