Tuesday, December 13th

Yesterday was a good day, other than me trying to do more than I really had time and space for, and stressing out about it a bit, and not having enough water to drink so this morning I’m a little dehydrated and paper-thin and a touch cranky. But I don’t even like to use the word “cranky” next to a photo of such smiling, happy people. See, I used to work at an Enginerding company, and that’s a number of posts all in itself (I did used to blog when I worked there but most of my blog was lost in The Great Blog Migration of 2009) but most of the friends I made there have at this point either left for greener pastures or have been laid off in one of the many rounds of layoffs they had (including Tim, in September of 2009). Most of these people used to work there, and a couple of them still do. Why did we get together? Impromptu ex-pat Christmas party! My friend (and one of my two former bosses at the company) Katherine bought some soap recently and we decided to meet for lunch since Lynne (the third person in our three-person department) was also coming into town. And then between the time that we set this up and yesterday, Katherine ran into aallllll those other people at the table and invited them to lunch as well!

Starting at the top, we have Dan (a field guy who now works with Katherine as part of the Great Exodus of 2007, currently not out in the field as he took a completely horrific header over his motorcycle into a tree a couple of months ago); Alice (John’s daughter) (don’t get confused, there are a couple Johns. Also a couple Lindas. We used to joke there that if you ever forgot anyone’s name, you could safely call them John or Linda and you had a good chance of being right); empty seat where John was sitting; Barb (now retired); Lynne (also part of the Great Exodus and now retired) (long-time blog readers may remember that I sold my dad’s 1957 Wurlitzer jukebox to her husband Dick a number of years ago); that poor new guy at HDR whose name I can never remember, but he’s one of those mostly-quiet-until-he-says-something-screamingly-hilarious kind of guys (help me out, Katherine?); Sherman (recently let go by The Company and looking for work, and he’s a great computer guy so if you know anyone hiring he’d be a real asset!); Linda (still at The Company); John (now works with Katherine) (also makes banjos and used to book music at the Theatre of Memory up in High Springs – he’s the reason Tim and I had such a great band at our wedding!); Linda (still at The Company); John (also part of The Great Exodus); Sherra (part of the Great Exodus) (they both also still work with Katherine); and Katherine herself, who I just love to pieces and don’t see enough of. It was really great to see so many people I genuinely care about, and it was sort of what I imagine a platoon reunion might be like. We’ve all been one some level wounded by That Place, some more than others, but nobody’s dead and we’re all healed or healing and have definitely moved on. Living well is the best revenge.

In between meeting those fabulous people for lunch and then knitters in the afternoon (where I also had some restock soap and new ceramics to drop off at Wild Iris) I tried to dye yarn, bag up Chex Mix, and unpack the kiln… I really should have left it at just unpacking the kiln. I had some tri-color yarn to do, and dyeing normally takes me about 2.5-3.5 hours per color. So I did a color first thing in the morning, put in the second color before leaving for lunch, put in citric acid to set it as soon as I got home, put in the third color as soon as I could, put the citric acid in before leaving to go knit, and took the yarn out and hung it to dry when I got home after. In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have even tried to mess with it, because it was in the back of my head all day — but there ya go. Over-inflated sense of my own ability to do things: EXHIBIT A. Sure, the yarn is dyed. But the Chex Mix was packed but not mailed, I had a bunch of other Etsy orders that I couldn’t even get boxed up to mail, I didn’t drink enough water and am a little headachy this morning because of it, and yadda yadda yadda. Today I need to go out to Melrose to do a soap inventory at Shake Rag, followed by a HaldeCraft photo shoot with Marple Sharp for the January Ravelry advertisements. But I’m out of yarn bowls and yarn mugs. What should I advertise? I’m looking at you, pineapple crochet tumblers. Or maybe just yarn…? Yarn soap?

ANYWAY.

On with my day!