Junk & stuff

Yesterday I threw a surprise birthday party for my husband. He turns 35 on Tuesday and he's feeling bummed about it so I decided that a party was just the thing...but not just any party...we had a G.I. Joe party. Floating balloons, G.I. Joe dog tags, a blow up M16 and plastic military hat, camouflage bowls with chips, burgers & dogs, theme plates & cups, streamers, the whole deal complete with guests here when he came home to holler "surprise!". He was totally fooled. He got several cards from his friends with cool stuff inside, and I got him a video game, a wireless controller, and charging kit. People stayed till about 7pm and it was just great.

Saturday's party (which took away my only full day of studying) was far better than Friday's company outing on the Majestic in Newport. The weather was poor and the fog was so heavy that I couldn't help feeling like I was stepping into the movie The Fog. We went out for a bay cruise that lasted for three hours...three. hours. With people from my new job that I've only known for three weeks who started to get a little embarrassing after they had a few drinks from the bar. There are no street signs in Washington Square, so my directions to the dock didn't help me at all. The food wasn't very good and the only meatless things there were a green salad, dry roasted potatoes with too much pepper on them, and undercooked summer squash, zucchini, and carrots cooked without any salt or pepper, or butter for that matter. Then after they finished rushing the food out they brought out dry cake. My stomach started to hurt from being on the boat which really started to list from side to side as the trip went on and I just started to get more and more anxious to get off the boat. After I got back on land (about an hour later than I would have liked to) I had to make the 3-4 block trip back to my car alone in the dark on streets in Newport that were dark and narrow. All I could think about was how I was smarter than this and I was going to die because I ignored the rules and put myself into a horror movie situation by going out on a boat with a hurricane warning, then walking back in the dark to my car alone, with a cell phone with a nearly dead battery. That would come to haunt me again later when I got lost three times on the way home because the towns of Newport and Bristol don't feel it necessary to light their roads or put up street signs that are larger than an envelope (if there are any at all). I couldn't find the street sign until I was passing it and some of the signs weren't marked at all, or they were marked incorrectly. I called Aaron stressed out and tired only to have my phone die on me, which is when I lost it and started to cry. That was also when I found the correct street but I was too frustrated to feel calmed until I was turning into my parking lot. I lost an entire day to study on Friday too and it so wasn't worth it.

Today is another "no studying" day so I'm going to try to get a little knitting done and take a nap. Alex is napping right now and the rest of the boys are out of the house so maybe I could get a nap in...if I can just get the people over at the carousel to stop with the Karaoke. I can hear horrible singing clear as if it was going on in my backyard, and it's three blocks away.

It's me

Here I am! I haven't had much time for anything other than school, work, and sleep and if you know me personally I'm sure that every conversation we've had has been about one of these three. This week my actual work load is a little lower for math and I decided to cut my studying at 10pm so I had time to make my lunch for tomorrow (which I usually do) and add my newest yarn to my stash on Ravelry (which I'm bad about doing). I went upstairs to get photos of the new stuff only to discover that I haven't photographed much of my stash and I ended up spending about 30 minutes taking photos of the yarn in my middle drawer. I still have the top and bottom drawer to do, and then I'll need to update my page. This will make deciding on a yarn to go with a project much easier to do. Sadly, I was typing this as they were uploading and now that they're all done I can see that they all look yellow and blurry (thanks to taking them on Alex's cream blanket for a background) so now I have to do them all again. I was hoping to do this in secret so that Aaron won't see how much sock yarn I have...

Work is going as well as expected. I've finally been assigned a teller drawer and gotten some cash (which I was short $20 on yesterday). I'm taking some transactions now and learning the difference in how Union Federal handles things compared to Sovereign branches. It's just different enough to throw me off, and just familiar enough for my old habits to interfere with learning my new processes. I hope that the things that I'm learning in Cognitive Psych about how memory works will help me to pick this up faster than I normally would. Otherwise things are good. I'm getting to keep my old work schedule so I'm still 8:30am-4pm M-F and one Saturday a month so I leave at the same time in the morning and I get home at about the same time even though I drive to N. Providence every day. And next week we're going on an evening cruise on the Bay Queen in Newport for a work sponsored team building thing-ie.

I've been trying to stay organized so I've taken everyone's advice and I'm planning dinners for a week on my calender. Then I'm making a shopping list of only the things I need for that week. I have to take the meat out of the freezer the night before and put it on the stove so that I can prep it in the morning before work. I have to leave directions for Aaron to start dinner before I get home and I take over once I get in so we've been able to have dinner on the table no later than 5:30pm. I didn't account for my own special food needs when I planned dinners for the last two weeks so when I was at the library I found a copy of The Single Vegan for sale for .10 and I bought it. The book outlines dinners for a week and comes with a grocery list for the week. I'm going to try it out this week and see how that works for me. All the meals are portioned for one person, and so the shopping list is for smaller amounts like 2 onions, and 1-2 carrots. We'll see how this goes.

There has been very little knitting because of my really exhausting schedule but I did manage to work on my socks for the knit-along. At this rate I'm not going to have these socks done by the end of the month. I've got new yarn for a pair of Griffindor House socks, and for a pullover vest by Eunny Yang, both just waiting in the que for me to have time to get to them. I really want this vest so I can wear it to my new job. My last two projects for work are working out really well. I wear the February Lady Sweater almost every day (I'll try to get a good photo of me actually in it) and I've worn the tuxedo vest as well. I've decided that I want one in wool for the branch to keep the chill of the AC off.

As if this wasn't enough, I'm also putting together a surprise birthday cook out for Aaron's 35 birthday next Saturday. I've called our friends and they've all confirmed. Now I just have to enlist one of them to get him away from home for a little while so that everyone else will just be here when he gets here. If you know us personally (and you probably do or why else would you bother to read this blog, lol) then keep this on the down low. No mention of the BBQ around my husband, on my Myspace, or in my email as he's the one who actually runs my Myspace and he sometimes uses my email. Okay. Now I still feel like I'm forgetting something but it's past my bedtime so I'm going to have to wrap up for now.

Why do I do this?

This week has not been fun here in the Washington household. Dante has been as space camp for most of the week and was not here to play with Alex. That left me to try to keep a three year old busy all day while trying to get my school work done for the week. The work load in my math class is seriously ridiculous! I had to read 35-40 pages, work practice problems, do a project, take an assessment and a quiz, and post to two discussion questions totaling 151 math problems for this week. Next week I'll have aprox 179 math problems to work on and another 40 pages to read. This doesn't count my work in my Honor's Psych class, which thankfully only has three projects due for the term but they all are big points. I've also got the regular final project, and an honors final project due for that class. This would be tough to figure into my day all on it's own but now add in the little complication of my going back to work on Monday. There's eight hours out of my day that I won't be able to use for school. I'll be cooking less real meals and I probably won't be able to bake as much of my own bread (which I'm sure my husband won't be heart broken over as he doesn't like it for sandwiches anyway). I've only knit a few rows in the last week, mostly to try to hold off the anxiety attacks I've been dealing with this week. This is just too much to do, but I can't refuse work or I'll lose my unemployment benefits, and I can't drop a class because it will affect my financial aid and push my graduation back. I'm going to have to make the most of every spare moment for the next 10 weeks and hope for the best, but I've already decided that I'm keeping my Tuesday craft night for my sanity.

Today I stoped into Bella Yarns and chatted with Naomi (co-owner) for a bit about the great new yarns and things going on there. They got a huge shipment of books, including Barbara Walker treasuries, and more sock books. I bought Nancy Budd's vintage socks finally. I've been eyeing it for a while now and finally broke down and bought it. There's some great socks in there that I've seen showcased really well on Ravelry that don't look like anything special in the book's illustrations. I also bought some Berrocco Comfort Sock for my Vaili socks (August pattern for the knit-along) in white, and bought some J Knits Superwash in a lovely cool spring green and some Skinny Feet Sheep 2 in a lovely variegated blue/green. Lots of money later, I should be all set for a little bit with yarn for my next month's knit-along pattern.

I'm starting to fade here. It's 10pm, and I want to knit a little bit before I drop. I hope these vitamins the pharmacist recommended will kick in soon and help me bounce back. This vegetarian diet (which I'm finally cool with and rather enjoying now) really wiped me out recently and I need to get back on track again.