Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.
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| Like The Queen Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content. |
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0 Comments:Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Friday, December 30, 2005 I am officially out of the office for the next 11 days. Unofficially, it will be this afternoon before I’m actually out of the office - because the computer priest still has some more blessings to confer on our network, as well as, (thank you geeks), a filter on that computer in the genealogy room. Some day I will wax eloquent on filters on public access computers - but not today. Just know that I do not believe that it is the public’s obligation to give every unemployed 18 year old unlimited high-speed access to pornography. Anyway - I need to let in FatherWiseOne at 9:30 on my way to the PT. I have every hope that I’ll have a grocery list to shop from on the way back through town, when I’ll get a lesson on operating the new back-up program. After that, I’ll be absolutely, actually and officially off till Jan. 9. And wouldn’t you know it? I am already homesick for the office. Homesick for the work I haven’t gotten done all these past weeks when I swung from the ache of post PT to the euphoria of post-post PT. The worst thing about an illness that involves your spine and neck is that it leaves you dopey. So, while my body’s been in the building - the brain has been lost in the Fog of Unfocus. Happily - if my body had to go into Acheland and the brain slipped over to Stupidsville, at least there wasn’t anything of pressing momentous note that had to be done. The ubiquitous cataloging never ends. The bills got paid before the 15th. We had a lot of days off anyway. Story Hour doesn’t gear up again till the 12th, and on one of those clear windows between exhaustion and exhilaration I got an article for the paper written and delivered. I can afford to be absent and by golly I will make myself give that place a rest. I do like my job, but being homesick for it before I’ve even been away from it is downright silly. Sometime yesterday, round about lunch time, my body clicked over into the feelin’ good track, a fortunate thing, since about then the winter monsoon let up and everyone plus his brother wanted to use the computers. I was flying solo yesterday because 2 people are on vacation and 1 called in sick. It’s never easy to handle the library alone, but it is particularly trying now that we have public access computers and only limited computer skills. Even my least skilled staff have a lot of computer skills but being cast into the role of “The Person Behind The Desk - who has read every book in here and can build a new computer in an afternoon” is a guarantee for lowered self esteem. You would not believe how much the public wants us to know and in fact, I sympathize with them. You would not believe how uncharitable the world has become now that every business has a technology expert and an on-line presence. Did you know that you can’t apply for a job at Old Navy by walking in and talking to the manager? You have to apply on-line? For a minimum wage sales clerk job you have to have the skills and cash to afford Internet access to a freakin’ job application. Ditto The Gap, Banana Republic, Mary Washington Hospital ... What gives? It’s all of a piece, in a world where those least able, who get the least reward, will also have the most onerous demands put upon them. Think of it - teachers, who make only so-so wages at best - are required to take recertification classes almost every year - while it is only recently that doctors - who make so-so much better wages - have been required to. And I know that my lawyer friends all get to claim the convention weekend at Virginia Beach at the height of the summer vacation season as their continuing education. Sweet, no? But some little girl who is trying to find a sales clerk job has to already own a computer with internet access and know how to use the pdf files to apply at The Gap? The one down the street at the mall? The one she’s shopped in all of her 4 teen years? Weird. Hmmm. Where did that come from? Ah yes. Public access computers. Well. Hmmm. Yes. There’s the grandma who is trying to get her Medicare classification straightened out. There is the decrepit 53 year old woman (that’s my age, but she looked like she was tottering over the edge of the grave) whose daughter said “Just go to the library and find your social security disability benefits forms on-line. They’ll help you.” For every daughter who says that to her Not-A-High-School-Graduate mom, I wish a perpetually frozen dsl line and a Monday edition of WindowsXP on her next computer. Not that we don’t help. But don’t go thinking that a job in the library would be fun, because then you too could get to read books all day. It ain’t that way, darlin’. So. Of course this has nothing to do with anything. Not even with the next 2 weeks of my life, since I am going to be spending it lolling and napping and doodling and napping and spinning and knitting and napping some more. I brought home the limit of checked out items yesterday - books and DVDs and an audio tape. I have one magnificent book I’ve borrowed from a university library, Color and Fiber. That one I want to delve into. The other temptation is At Day's Close - a book about society before technology gave light to the night, when nighttime meant darkness, to cloak the hidden life of sex and crime and secrecy. That one just came yesterday - I’ve been looking forward to reading it and the introduction had just the alluring style to keep me hooked at least a while longer. Another new book that I did not bring home, because one can read only so many, is a Prayer: a History. Intriguing. Prayer is something I am always thinking about and doing. I cast little imprecations heavenward all the time - as I am sure most people do. But I often wonder - what am I really asking? What am I expecting? What is my duty and why do I pray and to whom? Ahh well. I will save that one till the end of January when we are expecting bitter snowy weather - Old Farmer’s Almanac promised! I also have a goodly number of sock knitting books at home - but since I have to go back in today, albeit briefly, I may return some of them. Especially since I don’t plan to knit socks soon and when I do they’ll be the plain kind for BD followed by that star-toed sock in the winter issue of SpinOff for me! What I will be doing the next 11 days will be knitting on the Brown Sheep Handpaint ribbed sweater. I’m well into the second ball and it has begun pooling. Normally I like pooling and wonder why people work so hard to prevent it when they bought yarn that, by the very nature of the way it was dyed, must pool. But this yarn, in this stitch, does not look good pooled and when it doesn’t pool it looks fantabulous. It looks like starry lights in a dark night. The contrasts are extreme - glowing reds and yellows and oranges against the blackest of blacks, dark greens and browns - with a soft tan to lead the transition between them. It’s a very TheQueen-ish yarn. It really makes a statement. Except when it pools and the reds stack upon each other making it look like badly planned vertical stripes. So I am alternating 2 balls of yarn every 2 rows. I didn’t rip out the bit of pooling already knit, since this is the back of the sweater. Let us hope that doesn’t turn out to be the thing that niggles at me as long as I own this garment. My plan is to knit this sweater, which is ribbed stretchier than an accordion, so it will fit me in my avoirdupois but will still fit after the next 3 months of being a good WW girl. Then I will get back on my NBP and knit it the size that will fit the body I want to have. The goal is to have both of them done before MS&W. Maybe even way before MS&W. The goal is also to have that body again, by MS&W. To further myself along the path to goal #2, I have begun mapping out menus and shopping lists. Fogbrain kept me from finishing the shopping list yesterday but I’ll try to get it done before I leave this morning. In serious contemplation of this weight/food issue I came to see that I was bored out of my skull with the tastes of things that, 2 years ago, were new and exciting. My repertoire of recipes and cooking knowledge was stale and unable to compete with a busy schedule, an exhausted body and that box of white cheddar cheese crackers. But I own 5 really interesting, tempting WW cookbooks and there’s no reason I can’t find excitement and fulfillment in the kitchen again with no more effort or preparation than I’d give, say, a new boyfriend. So - in the last half hour before I have to get ready for the Traction-Man, I believe I shall work on those menus. posted by Bess | 7:24 AM |
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