Hat on Top, Coat Below
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Miscellaneous Monday
August 27, 2007
I would very much like to curl up under my desk and take a nap right now. No, that’s not quite right. I would very much like to get in my car and go home right now and get some stuff done so when bedtime rolls around I might actually go to sleep instead of being tempted to stay up and do more stuff. But if I get in my car and go home right now, I will not be able to meet my billable hours quota for the day, and that’s the sort of thing that could lead to me getting fired if I do it enough, in which case I’d have plenty of time to do stuff at home but no money and that isn’t exactly the life I’m aiming for. So instead of curling up under my desk and risking spiders in my hair and a bump on my head (because I’d probably not realize I was under my desk when the knocking at my door woke me, and certainly there would be knocking because nothing invites interruption like a closed office door), I’m typing this entry, which is rather more stream of consciousness than I generally like to inflict upon the world. I blame not writing much in my paper journal recently for that. Stuff that ideally would have gotten dumped out of my head into morning pages is still in there, rattling around, looking for an escape.
Topic #1: How did it get to be Monday? Where did my weekend go? I did not do enough stuff to account for two entire days. One thing I did do was sort through a Rubbermaid tote (a big-ish one, I think it was the 14-gallon size) full of yarn and other crafty stuff a coworker’s wife had weeded out of her stash. I detangled the yarn and sorted it by type and mostly was not tempted to add it to my collection. I did take the sock yarn (and the half-completed sock still attached to one of the balls) because I’m the only person at work who knits socks and those yarns seemed like fairly decent quality (though not quantity, so I may end up making afghan squares with it). The only Red Heart/Lion Brand/acrylic of dubious heritage I took was the primary colored variegated, because the first thing I ever knit was in yarn just like that, a scarf when I was probably eight or nine years old. I also grabbed the darning egg, because I think a darning egg is a cool thing to have even if one almost never darns anything. When repacking the tote, I stuffed in the Lion Brand I’d gotten from a friend of my mom’s when she de-stashed, since I had no intention of ever using it (indeed had never allowed it upstairs with the rest of my yarn but instead stored it in the basement with the rest of the things I keep meaning to get rid of), so I actually got rid of more stuff than I added in this exercise.
Another thing I did was sew. In an amazing but true turn of events, I used my machine on something other than a quilt, hemming a pair of pants for Mr. Karen. I had to refer to both my notes from Bernina class and the manual, but I did manage to use the blind hem foot to accomplish the task with pretty good looking results if I do say so myself. Then I returned to more familiar ground, starting on the quilting for the baby quilt that’s been resting on my felt wall for several weeks now. I was at least halfway through before I noticed I’d sewn a major unit in the wrong way round when doing the piecing. After some cussing, I decided to leave it. Yes, four of the blocks are now not exactly as I’d intended them to be, but the shapes and colors are right and to fix it I would have had to undo almost all the quilting I’d done to that point and that was just too much to contemplate. I figure I’m far from perfect, so there’s no reason to expect my quilts to be any different.
I also did some walking and some running and some more walking. I met my goal for last week of 5,000 steps a day Monday through Friday and 10,000 on Saturday and Sunday, though it was a near thing a couple times—5025 on Wednesday and 10050 on Saturday, I’m looking at you. I’m planning to keep that up this week and have additionally set myself a goal to do five squats each time I use the bathroom (during the day—I don’t think I need to be doing squats in the middle of the night). Yeah, it’s a little strange to be working out in the toilet stall, but it’s only a few reps at a time and the way things have been going those might be the only reps I get in at all. It’s certainly an approach I haven’t tried before.
Topic #2: There is no topic #2, because I need to get back to work. I could put it off a while more, but then I’d just have to stay later tonight, and I’ve got stuff other than work that I’d rather use that time for. I want to stop at Lowe’s and see if they carry replacement bulbs for the torchiere I bought there three and half years ago because Home Depot sure doesn’t—the gentleman in their lighting department looked at the burned out one I’d brought in and said he’d never seen anything like it. I want to stop at the library, too, since I didn’t get around to doing it yesterday and I’ll need a new audiobook for my commute soon. And I want to get to bed at a reasonable hour so I don’t feel this tired tomorrow.