They Call Me Mum

I’m really tired of looking at the smudge on my office window where a pair of doves committed suicide last week.  I’ve mostly closed the blinds, but if I catch the window just right, I can still see it.  At least maintenance got rid of the poor little bodies.  I need a good heavy rainstorm to come and wash it away from the window.  What’s really bad is that the maintenance people had just washed all the windows in the building.  So mine are quite clean, except for the large smudge with a couple feathers stuck to it.

Birds seem to be becoming something of a recurring theme in my life: 

• A couple months ago, I was startled by a hawk sitting in the tree next to my parking space at the office.  He was tracking a squirrel that decided to hide under my car.
• Around the time of my boss’ death, a large flock (murder, actually) of crows took up residence in the trees around our building.  They were there every day for at least a week.
• And lately, on my way home in the evenings, I’ve been passing a flock of what appears to be some sort of vulture perching in the the trees near the Occoquan River.

I managed to knit about 2 inches worth of sock while riding the company shuttle from my office to a meeting at our downtown Headquarters building and then back again.  Socks are always great shuttle knitting.  And I put on my headphones, so I don’t have to listen to the IT geeks blather.

Last night, I worked on the Seascape Shawl some more.  I got about another dozen rows done.  Today I brought the charts in to the office, so I could enlarge them onto 11″ x 17″ paper, which is much easier on my eyes, reading glasses or no.

Today I’m playing with a demo of a knitting chart generator program.  I’d like to try to design my own lace shawl at some point, and could use the help of a program.  Between the stitch dictionaries and a charting program, I think I can come up with something.

Yesterday, I started playing with the tagging features of the upgraded WordPress software and a tagging plugin.  There’s a lot of work to do to clean up and tag the old posts, but it’s fun to play with.  In the meantime, I’ve put a “tag cloud” over there on the sidebar.  The automated tagging makes some connections I don’t quite think are appropriate, but if you click on “knitting”, you should be taken to all my postings that mention knitting.

I’m feeling rather ADD lately.  I have all of these things I want to do, but can’t focus on any particular one for very long.

A friend here at the agency is up for a new job, so I’m crossing my fingers that the stars align for him and he gets it.  I’m still debating whether or not to wait until they hire a replacement for my boss to go out and start looking again myself.

Oh, my tickets for Great Big Sea came in yesterday.  Row BBB of the Orchestra Pit at Wolf Trap.  Sweet.  And I forgot to mention The Cure in May as well.  We bought the tickets for that last summer, but they rescheduled the show.

And, yesterday I got the teaser email about next year’s cruise.  It’s scheduled for February 1 through 6, on Norwegian Cruise Lines.  No word yet on when tickets go on sale, or what other bands will be along, or prices, or destinations (other than the NCL private island), but I’m excited already.  Of course, last year, I’d already made the reservations and paid by this time.  So they’re a little slower getting things arranged this year.  I’m hoping that means extra cool stuff will happen.  Either way, it’s something to look forward to.