They Call Me Mum

So, life’s been pretty hectic, busy, stressful, etc. lately. 

On the good side, I have the following:

• I’ve booked our room for the cruisefor next year.  February 1 - 6, 2009, on the Norwegian Jewel, with port stops of Cozumel and Great Stirrup Cay.  On a slightly down note, though, Guster definitely will not be there, and Carbon Leaf or Gaelic Storm have not yet committed to the cruise.  But, BNL (of course!) and Great Big Sea will be there.
• I’m past row 100 on my Seascape Shawl.
• I’ve purchased yarn and (gasp!!) actually swatched for the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl.  I purchased 3 different lace weight yarns, and swatched each one to see which I liked best.  I’ve decided on using the Misti Alpaca Lace in “Cranberry” (at least that’s what I think the color is, since I don’t have a skein handy).
• Since I had two other yarns that I wasn’t using for the Goddess Knits Shawl, I decided one of them could be for the MMario “Spanish Armada” Shawl.  I like the color of the 10/2 Tencel I’d bought more than I liked the color of the Jagger Spun Maine Line 2/20 yarn.  The Tencel is a burgundy color, while the 2/20 merino is called “Aegean Blue”.  The blue is more of a teal/bright robin’s egg to me, and not what I thought looked right for the Armada Shawl.   So, Tencel it was.  And the Tencel is a dream to work with.  Smooth and slides along the needles wonderfully.
• While traveling back and forth to my training course last week, I managed to begin the heel turn on a sock I’ve been dragging along for a while.  It will probably languish until I have to go downtown again, though.

On the not so good side, I have these tidbits to relay:

• Our Human Resources office told us last Tuesday (after 5 weeks of testing and nearly no communication from them - 6 emails total and the last one was 3.5 weeks ago) that we would be going live with the new payroll system this past Friday.  And it all had to be completed by 3:00 pm this Friday.  And, oh, by the way, some things don’t work the way they did during testing.
• I spent yesterday training on a new travel management system.  This is a toss up between good and not so good, actually.  The system itself is much easier to use than the old system, and the on-line contextual help is superb.  On the other hand, I have a certain supervisor who is telling people that they MUST be trained on the new system.  Well, actually, no they don’t.  Have they traveled in the last 12 months?  Are they going to be traveling anytime in the next 12 months?  If the answers to those questions are “No”, then don’t have your people call me, freaking out that they need to be trained “RIGHT THIS MINUTE”!
• While all of this is occurring, I have one employee who is leaving the agency.  To do that, you have to go through an exit clearance process.  Employee Ass (since I won’t name names) calls me Wednesday, the day before the last day Employee Ass will be working here, and wants to know what the sign out procedure is.  Well, the problem there (actually, there are many problems there, but I’ll explain) is that (referring to bullet point above) I was in training all day yesterday.  Employee Ass then calls the HR people and starts bitching at them.  Long story short, it got ugly and it’s still pissing me off this week, even though Employee Ass:  burned all her bridges, tried to get her immediate supervisor to plead her case, still had to follow the rules, had to be polite to me for the five minutes it too for me to complete my portion of her clearance form and successfully signed out and left the agency.  Bottom line, I have 90+ employees who are still working for the agency that need me to make sure they get paid, and they take precedence over the one Ass who was leaving.
• That Spanish Armada Shawl I was so gleefully working on?  I screwed it up and had to start the whole thing over.  There’s a row where you create 9 stitches in a YO from the previous row.  I managed that ok, but screwed up on the next row.  And couldn’t fix it “on the needles”, and hadn’t been using a “lifeline” on it.  So I pulled it all out, and restarted it.  I’m going a little slower this time around, but it still looks good, and the yarn is still wonderful.

This past weekend was good.  I think I knit some Friday evening, but I’m not entirely sure.  Amazingly, it only took me just under an hour to get home, even though it was the beginning of a three day weekend.

Saturday morning, we ran down to the HOA Clubhouse to get our new pool passes, and then I spent the better part of the day lazing about and knitting, with a brief break in the afternoon for an appointment.

On Sunday, the plan had been to sew for the day, while TOH was out doing car stuff, but that didn’t happen.  TSM needed an adult to go down to the pool with him, as he’s under 14, and hasn’t taken the swim test yet this year.  So, I ended up going to the pool with him.  Didn’t swim any, because apparently the water is Freezing, but sunned and talked to a neighbor for a couple hours.  I got a little pink where the top back of my swim suit slides down, but no big sunburn.  (TOH is another story.)  Then, once we got home from the pool, I was fishing out TSM’s garb for our neighbor’s son, who is playing Amerigo Vespucci in a school play.  Everything mostly fits, and he’s tickled with it all.  We’ve got him wearing TSM’s shirt, pants, ghillies, cloak, belt and TOH’s floppy feathered cap.

And yesterday was spent mostly making cake.  Tomorrow is Klumpen’s birthday, and since we’ll be at Wolf Trap, seeing Ben Folds, we decided to make her cake over the weekend.  Devil’s Food chocolate, with buttercream icing.  Double layer cakes, with three tiers.  (I ended up using 2 cake mixes, since the tier set I have is a mini set which normally uses a single mix.)  More powdered sugar than is good for anyone, and we were all set.  Then it was out to dinner at Outback, home to eat cake, and a fairly early night in bed by 10:30.

The banning issues seem to be resolved, and the banned parties have gotten the message they’re not welcome here.

And that’s pretty much everything that I’m willing to talk about publicly.  Life is moving along, and things are better than they were at the beginning of the year.