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Security Breach

This past week has been super-weird - I need to preface this entry by saying that.  In my non-knitting life, things are really heating up....in the case of the project I've been working on since January, that's a good thing - I can log more hours and really hold out hope that this thing is going to take off!  In other areas, it's not so good - Tyler's work situation continues to suck, and as his hours get whittled away more and more with each passing week, so does our "fun" money.  We aren't the type of people who live really high on the hog - for us, a blowout is to go out to dinner and spend less than fifty bucks on a meal and a few beers.  We are, unfortunately, very good at being broke - our three years in Portland was a great crash course in this, and let me tell you, we ate a LOT of pancakes and quesadillas.  I digress - where I was going with all this is to say that, along with the rest of the world, we're feeling the pinch and tightening our belts.  For those of you not familiar with Spa Week, it's a twice-a-year promotional event that my place of work has participated in years past, but opted out of this time around.  Though I have complained about being overscheduled during Spa Weeks of the past, I also appreciate the fact that I have people to work on and a paycheck that doesn't suck (see above).  Let's just say I was busier than I thought I'd be, but not busy enough to make up for not taking part in the promotion.  So it goes. The next few weeks may not be pretty, but I'm determined not to let The Man get me down.

Prince was right.
Things that made last week weird?  I think "Trash can on fire on the Irving Park Blue Line Platform on Saturday Morning" certainly tops the list.  A rash of clients who simply could NOT get off their cell phones and onto my table is high on the list....and overall, it was just a feeling.  I don't know if there's some planetary misalignment, or what comes when one is overextended, super-stressed, and just needs a vacation, but I felt incredibly scattered this past week.  So scattered, in fact, that I did something last night that I haven't ever done before:  I left Robin's bag of food out on the kitchen floor.  As you can imagine, the second we went to sleep, the frenzy began....I'm just relieved that I didn't leave Tilly's food out - for those of you who are new to this blog, my cat Robin has Chronic Renal Failure and is on a special low-protein prescription diet.  In essence, if he eats normal cat food, such as Tilly's, it will overstrain his kidneys...and as you can imagine, that's not a good thing!  So I woke up this morning to a mangled bag of cat food and - of course! Snow in April! 

Stalagmite the First
At some point I should probably get around to talking about knitting, right?  I think this entry says it all - somehow I haven't had very much knitting time of late (light bulb!  That explains the weird feeling, no?).  I did manage to finish the first stalagmite sock, but I haven't cast on for #2 - should really get cracking on that before second sock syndrome, which has never been a problem of mine, sets in!  I also started a new toe-up sock design I'm pretty excited about - more on that later for sure.  And last night, I frogged Tyler's sweater and re-started it.  I had taken off the sleeves on Saturday and did a fitting and everything seemed alright - but for some reason I just wasn't happy with the way it was going - it wasn't perfect.  That's not normally something I worry about when I knit - achieving absolute perfection - but in this case, I want it to be perfect.  I've never made Tyler a sweater in the 11 years we've been together - and it may be a long while before I make him another one, so this one needs to be the Best Thing Ever. 

Well, if you made it to the end of this post, thanks for reading - now you know why I typically don't mention my personal life on here!  Here's a little something to make up for this misery guts of a blog entry:

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