Sewicked’s crafty look at my life

I had most of my stuff gathered up Sunday and finished selecting tshirts last night. This morning I actually packed it all. I have literally stuffed my suitcase/duffle. I’m also taking one bag for my game books (mostly character notebooks). The last bag is for the books to run my Ironclaw game.  So that’s 3 bags, for one week. The sad thing is, if it was just a 3 or 4-day weekend, I’d have the same number of bags.

I met with Carol for lunch yesterday. My student assistant was late so I was late meeting her (about 25 minutes). But we had a nice time despite the hot & humid weather. She showed me some current projects of hers. She has a very nice split ring chain going & I really liked that red & white bag that she’s making for her sister.

We leave in 20 minutes & I still have to finish packing. See you later.

Everyone has seen those 3′ tall garbage cans, right? The plastic ones? Since Tuesday, I’ve helped fill up one+ of those with discarded paper. Before anyone freaks, know that these garbage cans are for paper recycling. They’ll be pulped down & re-used.

We’re doing the file cleaning at work. It’s the end of the fiscal year & we have a new director. The old director still worked for the department last year so we kept the same file system. He’d been here for decades & we didn’t want to upset him. He liked things centralized. The new director..doesn’t. So all the stuff past retention date goes away (it would have anyway) and other stuff gets sent to the program directors. Luckily, I’ve been able to hand a lot of stuff to the program directors for them to sort through. One poor guy had (literally) 2 stacks of folders 2 feet high.

I just have to go through the manuals. Most of that stuff is on-line now so we don’t need the hard copies. Plus the hard copies are out of date & thus we can’t use them. Of course, that still leaves the question of what to do with the actual notebooks.

On the tatting front, I sent some little (5 ds) flowers in the letter to my mom’s youngest sister today. I was going to send a motif but I’m having trouble mastering the magic thread trick. I re-read it today & I know what I did wrong. I just don’t know if I can solve it now. I’m going to try it again this evening (after I finish downloading the scans a friend gave me, burning a cd of Palmetto Tat Day pictures for Sherry, prepping stuff for my trip to Origins). I’m practising for my Great Doily Challenge (see etatters.com for info).

Speaking of which, I’ve decided on a pattern. It’s dead easy & I’ll be able to work on it even during gaming/talking. I just don’t know if I have enough blue. I may end up doing most of it in white & just doing the last row of motifs in blue chains. I’m not sure that I have enough thread to do all the motifs entirely in blue. The ball is that low.

The end is in sight re: downloading my music cd’s onto my laptop. According to my song thingy I have 1364 songs, or 3.5 days of music. Whew. I’m now starting playlists. So far there’s "Wake Me Up" & "Soothe Me". I also plan a "Cheer Me Up" & an "Upbeat Instrumentals". Possibly I should have a religious-themed playlist too. Maybe another set of playlists based on genre. I have time to decide.

I now owe one letter to my dad’s step-sister & one to my niece. Then no more letters until late July I think. I have 2 conventions in early & mid-July, in both of which I’m running at least one game. That will take my concentration, just a little.

I found my Palm. Now I just need to find the hotsync cord. I put up the Palm because I had nothing to hotsync it to. Now I can’t find what I did with the disc & other accroutrements. Needless to say, I’m not doing much data entry in the Palm. After all, why bother. All it takes is one power failure & it’s all gone.

I tried Georgia’s split ring rose. It worked a lot better this time. I ran a thread throught the bottom picots instead of trying to join them. I meant to send it to Aunt Carol but I forgot. Maybe I’ll send it to Aunt Shirley (my mom’s next older sister) to give to Margie (Aunt Shirley’s daughter-in-law), she makes miniature scenes & she might have a use for it.

Actually, that was the color of my mood yesterday. I got to my car & just started reading. I cried sometimes during the book. Then, despite the happily ever after ending, I just started bawling. No discernible reason, just great gulping sobs. And I do not cry pretty.

I spent long enough that almost everyone had arrived for the game. I still had to finish filling out the rebates, drive to the post office to get them postmarked with yesterday’s date (branch that still had pick up by that time, ie Airport), and pick up enough to have a clean table for gaming.

I kept bawling, even after I got home. People were nice enough to sympathise but not talk about it too much. I made it, so we only started an hour & a half late and they had cleaned off the coffee table enough to use.

I was just sooo tired. I only napped a couple times during the game, that was a success. I drank soda, I tried to tat (too tired), I ate. It was only moderately successful.

I wanted to try & download some more 1920 census images but I was too tired. Luckily I got some done earlier, maybe even all the ones that I could. I found Ggrandmother Myrtle living with her aunt & uncle. That was a success!

Gotta go, lunch arrived & I’m starving.

I’ve been downloading my cd’s into iTunes on my laptop. That’s right, I’ve reached 900 songs. And I still have another 10-20 cd’s to go. I had not realized just how many cd’s I have. Even the songs that I’ve rated 4-5 stars hit 140 (loaded into iPod). Of course, I haven’t rated every song that’s in iTunes yet. Some I don’t remember very well, so I have to listen to them once before I rate them. If someone was trying to get a handle on my character from my musical selection? Heh. Let’s see yesterday I heard, for example, <i>Rocket Ride</i> by Tom Smith (Filk), <i>Center of Eternity</i> by Ozzie Osborne, <i>Seven Days</i> from Rocky Horror Picture Show, <i>The Cry of the Wild Goose</i> by Tennesse Ernie Ford & <i>Shady Grove</i> Traditional by Doug Trantham.

I still haven’t managed to reconnect my laptop at work. The work network is firewalled (good thing) so I just need to register my laptop with the network. Last time, it didn’t take long. I’m going to have to doublecheck my work & see what I’ve missed.

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I had a lot of fun at the Palmetto Tat Days. I just wish my laptop had enough power for me to type up everything that happened.

I amy even recover, someday. I hated to go to bed, I knew that I was missing stuff. But the days started early, if I didn’t get up early…I missed stuff.

It’s time to write all my aunts again. I only have 5 but it’s hard trying to find stuff to write 5 times. Plus, I write to my niece. It’s almost time to start writing to my namesake, too. Hey, she’s two, she’s almost old enough to understand when her parents read my letter.

Tropical Storm Arlene has degraded to a tropical depression & is sweeping over the Ohio Valley. I got razzed so much about that storm on Friday when it was hitting Louisiana & the Florida panhandle.

I was feeling pretty crappy yesterday so I went home just after lunch. I got home & started to load my brandnew XP Pro onto my laptop. It froze. Spent >5 hours telling me ‘35 minutes to finish installation’.

Spent 1/2 hour with the support techs at 2 different companies. Net result: too bad, dump XP Pro. Can’t tell you how to unfreeze it. Sorry. Arrrrgh. I am not happy with MicroS*** or HP right now. Can you tell?

Gotta go. Gotta finish packing.