All this free time!

Yeah. And then I go and spend it playing this! Warning, may be addictive!

Miss me?

Phew. I had quite the long weekend. And I've been so behind that it's now been a week since I last was in control and caught up with my online life. This stuff is hard work!

My in-laws went camping and left Wednesday afternoon, leaving me with no sitter for Thursday or Friday. We were joining them for camping Friday evening, so I knew I couldn't goof around on my days off and leave housework for the weekend. There was a time when catching up after 5 days offline was no big deal. Now? Let's just say I have enough blog entries to keep me busy for a week's worth of naps, and that doesn't begin to touch email and op-eds. Not to mention the fact that being gone all weekend leaves me with just as much catching up to do on craft projects and housework as ever. *And* I started reading a new novel, and added 2 to my long-neglected tbr pile. eek!

Additionally, I've found a very prolific blog that I'm sharing because, well, if I don't have time for anything but blogs, neither should you. Very useful stuff too.

Have fun at LifeHacker.

Need a throw-away email address?

Ooh, I'm thrilled with this little tidbit I just learned from Bloglines. Did I mention you need this?!

"You can create an unlimited number of special Bloglines email addresses that are tied to your Bloglines account. The email addresses show up as subscriptions in your My Blogs page, and email sent to those email addresses appears as new items.

When you create a Bloglines email address, a subscription is added to your account. If you unsubscribe from that subscription, the email address becomes invalid and mail sent to it will bounce.

Email subscriptions are great for announce-only or broadcast mailing lists that don't provide RSS feeds. They are also useful as temporary email addresses."

Go...go sign up.

Argh! Ahoy me maties!

Yes, it is international talk like a pirate day, and I'm entering into the spirit of things quite happily. After all, it seems yesterday's post, admitting defeat to the inevitable change of seasons, resulted in renewed vigor from our Western Washington weather, and this morning I woke not only to clouds but heavy rain fall. I need something to cheer me. Argh!

Actually, I don't really mind the rain all that much. I just don't like walking in it. I suppose a good rain coat might change that, but who can afford that? I always seem to have better things to spend my money on.

Swab the decks ye lubbers!

Sorry. Ahem. Anyway, there are some things I really like about the change of seasons. For instance, television! I really don't watch much TV, although I'm sure I watch more than others. And unfortunately, Tom and I have gone from being down to 2 shows we wouldn't miss, to 4 since Eve was born. But still, it's only 4 hours out of my week, and honestly less than that, since we never watch it live with commercials.

Sadly, the days of Buffy and Angel are gone (Oh James Marsters, how I miss you!), and Friends too has ended, but we still have CSI (Season premiere this Thursday!!) and Survivor. (Actually, I don't love Survivor, but Tom is an addict, so I have learned to appreciate the entertaining aspects of the show--and Jeff is a cutey!) Second episode of Season 13 airs this Thursday. The year Eve was born, we added Lost, a show with some really great actors and a frustrating plot, and some absolutely great episodes and some really crappy ones. It's basically a gamble, so we watch it because we'd hate to miss a good one. If this season is worse than last, this may move to our don't-miss-unless-there's-anything-better-to-do list. ;) Mark you calendars for Wednesday, October 4th if you don't want to miss this one. And last but certainly not least is the newly added Battle Star Galactica. This show actually tops our list of must-see TV this season. As television goes, this is the best, as far as I'm concerned. Well, excepting Firefly, which is off the air. :( Battlestar Glactica has drama, adventure, romance, and robots! It could only be improved with the addition of Steve the Pirate. ;) If you are a TV fan, you really should see this show. Yes, it's scifi, but it's not just scifi, it's great drama. Really. I suggest adding the Miniseries, and the first and second seasons to your Netflix queue now, so you can catch up with things before the season premier on Friday, October 6th.

Okay, that's enough about TV, it is, after all, only less than 4 hours out of my life each week (time in which I can often embroider!)

What else can I console myself with now that I don't get to wear sandals and ignore my lack of good rain gear?

Eve sleeps better when it's not light until 10 PM, and as we've left July behind, night time has become a little better. For those of you who don't know, Eve isn't exactly a great sleeper even at the best of times (I think she has a record of sleeping 7 hours straight, once!) So any improvement is a blessing. Daylight savings time is my mortal enemy.

It's soup season! I like soup, cooking soup, eating soup. It's all good. It never really seems appropriate when it's warm.

More time for crafting? Hmm... maybe, maybe not. TV season was never good for my writing, which is what I used to fill my free time with. But, the nice thing about crafting is that a lot of it can be done while you do other things. I can sit and watch TV (especially bad Lost episodes and every Survivor episode) while I embroider or sew. So, we'll see.

Fires! I don't mean the brush variety, which is more a summer thing, and not really all that good. I mean the fireplace kind that crackle and smell good and look pretty!

Winter squash with dinner.

Politics! Speaking of which, today was the deadline for mailing in my ballot for the primaries, and I forgot! ARGH! I'm not a big fan of mail-only voting. Hopefully I can get it done tonight and take it to the post office this evening...maybe that will work. If not, I guess I'll survive.

What makes Autumn positive for you?

I think that's it for me, me hearties, I'm off to sail the high seas of the blogosphere. Argh!

Summer is definitely over

I don't want to sound dreary, but it's true. As my dad always says, it's summer in the northwest from July 5th to August 31st, or there abouts. He's mostly right. It's been cool and overcast (or partly cloudy for most of the day) or drizzly or breezy since Tuesday (which was a perfect late summer day, just the right mix of hot and cool, and quiet because all the kids are back in school. Yay!) Nearly a week of such weather is more than a cold front, it's a season changing.

A few of the leaves are changing too. And I only have one half-ripe tomato. There will be no harvest from my carefully maintained plant. Bummer! I've got about a dozen green tomatos of various sizes that will remain so, I suppose. Maybe I should try frying them.

We've yet to find a woodburning stove insert for our downstairs fireplace. We can burn wood in the upstairs insert, and the convection circulation does a great job at heating that level, but Eve and I sleep downstairs and our television and Tom's music and computer are downstairs too, so we really need to heat from the bottom up.

We were supposed to put away the boat for the winter this weekend, but it was too cold for such activities.

Eve still has summer clothes we found in August that she hasn't gotten to wear. They'll be too small next summer. I guess that means we'll have to take a vacation this winter to somewhere warm and balmy. Hawaii anyone? (Yes, please!)

All that to say, we aren't really ready for summer to be over. How about you? Are you still enjoying summer weather? What do you want to accomplish before you pull out your scarves and boots?

Blogroll!

Check to the left for my Bloglines generated Blogroll!

P.S. Eve and I are working on our first joint sewing project, check back soon for the glorious results!

A brief time-out from frivolity

I do my best to keep things light here. I don't like to start arguments with friends, and especially when I must conduct the arguments in online text. I have previously mentioned the lost nuance that goes along with such communication.

Be that as it may, I had to share a serious article which I found regarding Plan B contraceptive (a phrase I use rather lightly here.)

I do expect you to go read it, but allow me to summarize. Plan B is going to increase the incidence of STDs, mainly among poor women, and especially among the younger of those women.

I am totally against Plan B, as some of you may have deduced from what you know of me. Then again, I don't really think the vanilla brand contraceptive pill is good either (for various reasons I will not go into in detail at the moment). And of course, I'm entirely against the more accepted definition of abortion. However, my reasons have chiefly been based on the sanctity of human life (even embryonic), and the physical and emotional damage of chemicals and invasive procedures on the mothers who choose these. Lately I've been struck by the fact that abortion works against the ideal that "reproductive freedom" would add to the equality of the sexes.

How's that, you ask? I know proponents of Choice tell us that abortions give women freedom. And to a certain extent they are right. I'll just mention here that I think the cost of such freedom too high, but I digress. Sure, women can avoid the burden of pregnancy, but this also gives men freedom to not worry one whit about possibly becoming a father, giving them little to no reason to keep it in their pants and respect the women around them as people instead of conquests. Men should be held responsible for their actions against women and for any children they father, abortion allows them to get off scott-free. Women (and aborted fetuses, of course) pay the high price of life, health, and emotional well-being of the wide-spread availability of abortion. Grr.

Anyway, that's a tangent. Back to Plan B. This article caused a light bulb moment. Here is yet another reason to be outraged by the development and outrageous over the counter availability of this drug. How dare we subject the most unfortunate of our sex to further danger? How much are we willing to destroy at the feet of "choice"? These women will pay with their lives and flesh for the convenience of a morning-after pill. Our society owes them better.

A little bit bored

So there's not much to do at work today. Not because there's not work to be done, but because one of our major tools is getting updates.

So I've plenty of time, but not much to say.

Let me introduce you to two sites you might find interesting. I'm still not sure what I think of them yet.

First, I may have previously mentioned Next Favorite. It's a really cool concept: rating books, movies, and music all in one place and giving you recommendations all across the board. Think about it, your taste is reflected in music, movies, and books that you like. Yes, you can rate movies in one place, and books in another and music in another, but you can't link up all that information together, until Next Favorite. Sort of.

I'm not really sure how well it works though, as I haven't rated enough yet. Why? It's pretty clunky. Someone else should do it an make it slick and simple, more like Netflix. There's simply too many steps involved for me to want to spend a whole lot of time on it. I keep hoping they'll improve the system. Maybe I should approach Netflix with a similar idea, they have a really cool ratings->recommendation system... just imagine if it were harnessed for more than movies.

On to something actually cool. Have you checked out Wists? It's a cool concept and a cool execution. Visual bookmarking. Like something you see online? Wists it. Then when you go through your wists you can actually see why you "bookmarked" it to begin with. Never puzzle over a bookmark again. But that's not my favorite part, as cool as that is. My favorite part is how pretty it looks! I imagine my wistsing will be aimed mostly at building a beautiful gallery page, and less about the actually bookmarking aspect. :)

Another cool feature is that you can view the galleries of other users. If you find someone whose taste you admire, you can look at all their wists and find other wists to add to your own. I like the word wists even. Yay for Wists!

In other news...

I caved and got a myspace. I know. It's silly. And actually, I'm still not a big fan. It gives me a headache, and it seems to be rife with poor grammar (you know, because I've got perfect grammar myself). But, it's fun to get in touch with people you haven't seen since high school. On the other hand, it's not so great for meeting absolute total strangers who share nothing in common with you (unless you actually want that, in which case, it's like a candy shop). I think it's possible that myspace was responsible for a creepy email I received, but then, I'm all over the place on the Internet these days, so I can't really blame any one place. It kind of makes me want to rethink all the picture posting I do though.

That's all for now. I'm off to find pretty pictures to Wist!

Read the manual

Okay...so I have been taking pictures of my embroidery work for over a year. And I'm always really annoyed that I can't get a really good shot of the details...So a detailed, beautiful piece ends up looking like this:



On Saturday, I helped my mom prepare for some ebay selling of her huge collection of antiques and I needed to be able to take good close ups. So, I got out the manual for the camera. Look what I can do now!





So, the moral of the story is: Read the manual! :) Now all I need is an uber expensive flash and diffusion umbrella thingy, and I'll be set. :)

Crafty goodness

And now the post I wanted to make yesterday. :)

Here's some of my latest embroidery projects, and by latest, I mean back to the very first! :) Go check out my post on Craftster! This one too!

And here is the labor-intensive project Tom and I tackled in June, again a post on Craftster.

I'm such a junkie. :)

Happy and Sad

Morning! I was going to post some links to my latest crafty ventures, but Crafster is down! :( Oh well, lucky for you, I had a backup plan. The other day we got some pics of Eve doing her "cute" face and her "sad" face. It's pretty darn funny when we tell her to do her "sad" face. I'd describe it for you, but take a look yourself.





Of course, she doesn't know that both of those "faces" are cute faces.

And just because, take a look at her struting on the catwalk in her bikini (it's finally getting too small, but we got it for her last summer, so I can't complain.)



In case you forgot what I look like, I was able to find a recent picture of me too! With Eve.



This was at Tom's sister's recently (nearly) finished house. That room behind us is her music room! My music room looks a lot like Tom's computer room/office. Oh wait, it is!

And last but not least, Tom caught a nice shot of a pale sunset the other night. Not exactly the most impressive we've seen, but it was very pretty.

Here's a good, quick read

No, it's not a novel. In fact, for the moment, I'm abstaining from novels. In fact, I'm not doing too much reading these days, period. It's amazing how toddlers suck away all your reading time. :)

But, while I'm pumping at work, I don't let that moment of quiet go by without reading something.


I just finished How Not to Look Fat. What a great book! It's small and short. Danico Lo, the author is funny and frank (and an authority...former plus-sized model). I sound like I'm on her marketing team, but this is just a really cool book.

I picked it up because I have been recently inspired by Crafster to sew some of my own wardrobe. It looks fun and not too tough. But, I don't want to go spending a lot of time and effort making clothes that fit but don't actually flatter. So I started searching for what is flattering, in general and for my body type. This book is just what I was looking for!

So, if you are a gal (sorry guys, it doesn't seem to have any advice for you, but then again, you don't care, do you?) and you would like to look slimmer, without dieting or exercise (or losing weight in any way) check this book out! Now, if you are so thin that looking thinner would cause concern and make people wonder if you're anorexic, don't buy this book. Otherwise, without much effort or money, you could start looking thinner after reading just a few pages! It's pretty cool. :)

So, there you go. Run off and enjoy yourselves.

Beware of Safety

Let me keep you up to date on me. I don't feel like blogging today, despite the fact that I have time. Why? Life is less than perfect right now, and all I ever do is complain, right?

Let me just give it to you in bullet points:

*I have two co-workers in this department-to-which-I-am-still-fairly-new that drive me absolutely crazy. They are like children. *And* they are in a "relationship." Could it get any worse? They check each other's work, and they aren't very critical of each other. The guy basically does most of the gal's job, or at least it seems to be so. And they gossip and badmouth everyone behind their backs. Add this to the guy's penchant for desk-flair larceny, and you have the personnel equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard and the smell of burnt pop-corn all rolled into one.

*My mom and dad are not doing well. I think some people may assume that divorce isn't as traumatic on adult children as it is on children children...and maybe that's true. I certainly don't feel it's my fault, as I might have when a child and still believing the world was entirely all about me. But, I still feel like crap. They both frequently talk about thinking maybe they ought to die, and they both bandy about the word "divorce" like it's an article. I hope they get through this, but it seems like they have both given up, assuming they'd be happier apart. If that's true, the rest of us certainly won't be. It's going to make all future family events much messier than they currently are, to say the least.

*Tom and I are doing okay. We have up and down days. It's now been over a year since we've regularly attended church, and I'm tired of it.

*Eve is awesome. Sure, she still has a biting problem, and yes, this past Sunday when we ventured out to church for once, she refused to stay in nursery, and refused to be quiet in the service, so we had to go home early. *But* she's cute as ever, and talking in almost full sentences. She's really quite the communicator.

So, that's the latest. Now for something fun. My little brother is leaving for college--the only one of us to go to university right out of highschool, and hopefully he'll stay too!--tomorrow. The school is only about an hour's drive away, so we'll still see him often. Anyway, I had him over for dinner last night so we could spend a little time with him before he's gone. I made not-so-great sweet-n-sour chicken, and we got to talking about Engrish...which reminded me of Engrish.com. If you haven't visited in a while, go there now, there's always something fresh. If this is the first you've heard of Engrish.com, you may want to put your drink down. It's all fun and games until someone sprays piping hot coffee through his nose. I highly recommend the cat smack in the Recent Discoveries section.

Finally, take a look at this hot guy with the cutest girl toddler ever on his shoulders.

Cool new something you can't go another day without

Trust me.

You are a blog hopper. Each day, you go to your favorites/bookmarks, and click in sucession on each of the blogs you like to read, only to find that there are several that aren't updated. You spend a lot of time checking un-updated blogs. Time that could be spent reading updated blogs. Every second counts.

Your new favorite website:
Bloglines

Enjoy!

Further evidence that I am a wonderful mother only when I have a happy, well-behaved child

Phew. Okay, back to Eve! I'm sure we've all missed this.

First off, for announcements: Watch this space for the first edition of what I'm titling my religious tract morality tales: The Little Sinner. You'll read about the pitfalls of church hoping with the nursery bully!

So, last night we all went to bed around midnight. Now, this isn't too much later than we went to bed on Sunday night--but that was on purpose and enjoyable. Last night at about 9, Eve was on the verge of being asleep in my arms... probably 10 minutes away from being able to be put in bed without waking her. At least, that's what I thought. She began with the sign for potty and a small, sad whine of the same word. This was repeated again and again, escalating quickly to hysterics and sobbing, wailing. At first, before it got bad, I asked her if she really needed to go (this is sometimes a stall tactic I'm sure many of you are familiar with, from your own childhoods even!) she ignored the question and simply got more and more frantic about it. I could tell she really needed to go, so I took her, but as we entered the room, she continued her pitiful wailing and began shaking her head and just as hysterically saying "mama" over and over. I began to put her on her little potty and remove her diaper and she simply clung to me, crying and shaking her head no. I lifted her up, and proceeded to reapply the still-dry diaper. She cried and shook her head, she called for daddy. We went down stairs to see him and she wouldn't go to him. All of this is happening as she cries so hard it breaks my heart. We go upstairs again, back to her room, I try to nurse her, she wants to go potty, repeat above scenario. This time, we stay downstairs as my husband showers, and she calms somewhat, but is still very close to tears. I ask her if her belly hurts and she ignores me, I ask her if her teeth hurt, and she ignores me... I have no idea what was bugging her, but as she seems to have calmed down, I take her upstairs again to try putting her to sleep. The whole thing starts again. This time I'm getting really frustrated. I am sympathetic to her, but at the same time, completely and totally frustrated. I had anticipated a nice night with Tom, we could watch a movie, have some dessert, enjoy each other's company and get to bed before Eve woke up. Nuh uh. And worst of all, I can't figure out what Eve needs to make it all better. I know she's exhausted, and sleep would be very helpful to her state of mind, but she got close to sleep 3 times, and then woke up with the same "potty" refrain, and the same refusal to actually go potty, and refusal to go to daddy when she asked for him, and refusal to nurse when she asked for that. gah!

I didn't want to give her Tylenol if it was her tummy bugging her, because I know that such drugs can make upset bellies worse. I suspected possible teething, but she wouldn't let me probe, nor would she answer any questions about what hurt. I finally gave in to Tylenol as the only thing that might help. She cried continually while we administered, but then we were able to calm her down with distractions. She fell asleep after that and stayed asleep for 3 hours before a normal wake-up. We didn't have any other problems with her all night, what was left of it.

Then this morning, she woke up with the same fussy, I-want-this-I-don't-want-this sort of behavior. Again, I do feel so bad for her that she's not feeling her normal, cheerful self, but it makes it so frustrating to get ready for our day, and really hard to leave her and come to work.

I didn't have any serious blow-outs because of this, but it was a test of my patience. I felt really guilty for being mad at my daughter for being--to all appearances--ill. How selfish of me.

Debrief

Okay, you all are great. And smart too.

Thank you for the cyber hugs and assurances that I have friends. I know this isn't the first time I've seemed to be begging for such a thing. Honestly, my comment about friends was more about local friends than friends in general...you are all the best of my friends, here or abroad, and I love you! :)

Why are you so smart? At least for the moment, things seem to be better here in my new position. Looks like this was a good thing for me. I am working with a smart and mostly funny group of guys. Some of them go a bit over the top, but I can deal. As for the work, it's not particularly challenging yet, so I can say I'm starting slow--which is what I am equipped to do at this point in life. So, it's all good. Hopefully, this will be the end of the melodrama in my life for a while. It's much easier to be my usual, optimistic self when there's nothing to be pessimistic about. ;)

Thank you again for your friendship, care, assurances, and well-wishing. I truly, deeply appreciate it.

ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes... la la la

I seem to find myself with legitimate down time in my new position.

Whee! This will probably only last as long as I'm a newbie... but when I'm waiting on busy people to show me the way, I can blog and surf and play.

So... whirlwind of activity over the past few days.

Tuesday was really quite an awful day. I was...freaking out, basically. I'm ashamed of this. I will tell you all about it in a little while, but suffice to say, I don't like myself when I'm a freakazoid.

The only good thing about Tuesday is an old friend, who at one time was basically my assistant, is now head of several departments. I spoke to him (at my mother's insistence. I really was just freaking out too much to think of such a logical course on my own). He offered me several positions to choose from that I could have if (a)my director's replacement didn't mind letting me go, and (b)the manager of the department I was interested in agreed. I'm old buddies with him too, so I wasn't too worried. However, I also know there are about a dozen people trying to get into his department... so I wasn't real sure of myself either.

Wednesday arrived and I could not find the manager of this dept. This continued until noon or so... so basically I was at loose ends all morning. I hadn't slept too well the night before and was nervous and basically on a low-boil freakout. Blah blah blah... I have the job. Yay! Except... not so yay. I still feel a bit freakish... because they really wanted me because of my programming experience... which I ejected from my brain way back when I first left programming over four years ago. Additionally, any residual knowledge I retained was completely erased when I became pregnant. I feel a lot of pressure now to reinvent myself...and yet I'm still working part-time, and I don't want a career... I just want to be a mom!

Sigh.

There's also a tendency for this all-guy department to be foul-mouthed and make sly comments (regarding making the newbie do such-and-such (strictly work related, nothing that would anger my husband, if you know what I mean)) that I totally miss. I'm clueless on all the inside jokes.

This all makes me very lonely for the close buds I used to have when I was working in the technical departments of this company years ago. They are all gone now, on to bigger and better things. I miss my friends! That's another thing I'll have to talk to you all about later on. This feeling of being almost friendless. sigh.

well, as I embark upon this new...adventure, I'll try to keep you posted.

Of all the times not to be procrastination, this is it.

I will likely be losing my job due to downsizing within the next month. Last month they let 50 people go, yesterday they demoted the COO and my very own boss. Ouch. Quite a few people in other departments, mostly management types, were demoted and re-assigned. So... I know my turn is coming.

I've always kind of flippantly said that if I lost my job, at least I'd get to stay home with Eve. But right now, I'd have to find a new home to stay at if I lost my job... so, I take it all back.

Ruminating on my resume and the (im)possibility of finding a new job in the middle of summer that is part time and flexible, no nights or weekends (you know, all the jobs the college kids and highschoolers already snapped up) has me considering what else I can find to do. Obviously, I'll be looking for other jobs...but what if I could just do nothing?

Maybe you've heard of One Red Paperclip. It's just one of those almost cost-free publicity stunts that has to be profitable... not to mention that this guy may eventually actually get a house... all from trading up on a paperclip. There's the Million dollar website that sells pixel advertising... I mean... how do I get in on this? I think I have to be more creative and less... cynical about things.

I guess I could always go back to programming. Maybe Microsoft is hiring.

Well... there you go. Not a fun update, but that's life.

Myspace

So... what's up with myspace?

I don't have a "myspace". Do you?

The few spaces of others I've visted have... let's just say, offended my sense of visual order. ick. Am I really too old to "get" myspace?

My little brother has a space, as does my even littler nephew... and I suspect my niece does too... although she'd have to lie about her age...

Am I missing out on a way cool feature of the net?

Sigh...

So, where have I been lately? I've been in an absolute fever of creative activity. No...not writing, but crafting! I'm mostly not very good. But, I've been having fun, and it's much easier to do with Eve under foot than writing is... for me anyway.

If you want to see the two things I've actually completed, check out these threads on the way cool crafting forum, Craftster.org.

First, an embroidered onesie

And my very first solo sewing project, a reversible clutch

Before I found Craftster, I was not particularly interested in crafting anything... and now I'm very disappointed that I took wood shop instead of home-ec. :)

So why the sigh? My life is in turmoil. Well, really, only work is in turmoil, but it's very difficult to... separate anxiety about work and the rest of my life, when it's so very important for me to be working for us to stay afloat.

On top of that... I've been feeling uncharacteristically lacking in self-esteem. Tom and I used to have this incredibly busy schedule...we always had something going, people to entertain, places to go. But lately... I feel like we have no friends, like *I* have no friends. Not that I have no friends at all, after all, I have you all. Just no friends close by to get together with, no one to share the day-to-day annoyances (oh yes... and joys) with.

I don't think that normally bothers me, but this past week, it's set me to wondering why that is? Why are all my close friends actually quite far away, and my near friends mostly tepid? Is it me?

I'm afraid I'm getting a bit down... so I think I won't go on. I don't like negativity...so basically, I hope you all are doing well.