Bordering on Blog Delinquency

Been a while.  Things have been kind of crazy at work and I've not been doing much except for sleeping and knitting in the evenings.  The sad thing is, we've been doing a lot of busy work, so it's not like we have any real sense of accomplishment for all of the hours we've been putting in.  Hopefully that will change soon - we've actually got a legitimate schedule that we can plan to...FINALLY!  We've got realistic milestones!  thanks mostly to our newest teammate, an adorable Brit name Damon.  I'm especially glad he's working on the schedule, because that means I get to hear him say "shhed-ule" all the time.  Adorable.

In knitting news, I finished a great pair of pink socks for my friend Abbe.  They turned out beautifully.  I think they're my best yet.  I put them in the mail to her today.  I hope she enjoys them.  






I've got two more pairs of socks queued up.  One is a pair of navy blue ones for my mom in a pattern called "Lizzy."  It's got a diamond pattern going around the top, near the cuff, then ridges running down the length with more diamond patterns across the foot.  I saw my friend, Rosemary, making a pair a couple weeks ago and I knew my mom would love them.

The other pair is going to be my first attempt at "toe-up."  It's got some funky techniques to it, such as short rows and stitch wrapping, so I'll need support.  Good thing I'm attending the fibre space "Sock-in" tomorrow evening!  It's a lock-in from 7pm to 1am with sales on sock yarns, instruction/help on patterns, and the Indiana Jones movies.  I'm excited.  


Tomorrow during the day is my company's summer celebration.  We're having a picnic at the marinas on Washington Island.  I'm looking forward to it.  I'm going to set up a table where the kids can paint dog bowls and bandannas for the Search Dog Foundation dogs.  We're going to have a beautiful day, too!

Face + Palm, cont'd.

Upon my arrival to work this morning, I remembered what the biggest facepalm of last week was:

So, I'm in that meeting, where I accidentally hang up the conference phone.  While I'm in there, my client leaves something at my desk.  I come out of the meeting to find on my desk chair:
A printout. 
A printout of an email. 
A printout of an email she had just sent. 
A printout of an email she had just sent on which I was included. 
A printout of an email she had just sent on which I was included with a post-it saying "Please go on sharepoint and double-check my work."

And she is "trying to go paperless."  *facepalm!*  I'm just surprised it hadn't been stamped five times.

I can totally visualize how it went down, too.  She probably walked up to my desk, ready to ask me to go online.  When she saw I wasn't there, she walked all the way back to her desk (she would've had to have exited my cube area and badged herself back in across the hall), printed off the email, stapled the pages together - oh yes, it was a 2 page email a one page with 5 lines on the second page email, NOT printed front/back - wrote out the sticky, walked back to my desk (badging herself in again), and left the email just-so on my chair.

And, as a reminder, we're on the "Transformation" program, where we're trying to turn the paper immigration process into an electronic one.  I mentioned in a meeting one time that we should start transforming within the Transformation program and almost got boo-ed out of the room by gov't folks. *facepalm*

And I wonder why I have an eye-twitch.

Face + Palm =

What a week.  

First, let's remember two great men:
Bob Sheppard was the iconic Voice of Yankee Stadium. His voice was, and will continue to be, uncomperable.  I'm very happy that Derek Jeter will use the recorded introduction every time he comes to plate.  Just thinking about it gives me chills.  I wonder if they'll also immortalize the "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Yankee Stadium," too.
George Steinbrenner may not have been the most popular man in the world, but he was a brilliant businessman.  I'm happy that when he passed away, the Yankees were on top and were the defending world champs.  I'm also very happy to hear about all of the stories that have started to emerge of his generosity.  A few people have come forward to share their stories of his donations - including a woman in Long Island who was critically injured as a child.  Mr. Steinbrenner stepped in and paid for her care, including an operation to insert a plate into her head.  He did so under one condition - that she never tell anyone about his gift. She kept the secret until last week.  Apparently he had similar agreements with the mayor's office in New York City surrounding many donations to the city's programs.

Ok, moving on.  Again, what a week.  It had been filled with many "facepalm" moments, but they've all run together.  I guess the biggest one was when I was in a conference call with a few Booz Allen folks and I went to unmute the phone to say something, and I hung it up.  Of course, this comes after all of the instruction and supervising I've given to my clients around hitting the right button.  I was so embarassed, but it was pretty funny.  


Another facepalm happened when I got home yesterday evening.  I fell asleep within half an hour of getting home, slept until about 7:15 or so, even though I was supposed to be at fibre space at 7 for the birthday week sales preview.  Thankfully, it was more of an open house event, so people rolled in before me and after me.  Phew!

As far as knitting goes, I blocked out the sweater and gave it to Lynn.  I hope the baby enjoys it.  It turned out really cute.  I also finished my Sunday Swing socks.  They turned out really soft.  I started on socks for Abbe - a pattern called "Fawkes" in pink Sweet Georgia Tough Love sock yarn.  I also started on the gossamer triangular shawl.  I bought the pattern and the yarn during my trip to Key West. I thought I had the requisite size 15 needles, but had pretty much all sizes except for 15.  Luckily, I was able to pick some up at the shop yesterday evening.  It's a fairly simple pattern and it's going pretty quickly.