Friday, again

Only half a day of work today. I should get to it, but I'm blogging instead. Leaving at lunchtime to go to a soccer tournament in Rapid. The main thing I need to do today is draft a MOU and a proposal for the city money. That shouldn't take too long.

Oh my hair is shaggy. It's driving me nuts. Can't get in until next week though as my hairdresser is on vacation.

I frogged Firebird yesterday and started over. I was getting tripped up on the body, realized about 10 rounds in I was making mistakes and what I should be doing. Unfortunately I hadn't put a lifeline in and when I tried to frog back to the beginning of the body section, I had trouble picking up the stitches. So I just decided to frog the whole thing. This time I'm knitting both socks at once. Woo hoo, no second sock syndrome on Firebird!

I'm almost done with the first Oktoberfest tsock. About another inch and a half to go before I knit the "head." Then I can cast on for the second one...

Speaking of soccer, my first adult league game is Tuesday. I fully expect to suck. hehehe

I should have worn...

...the "work bites" t-shirt I bought in Breckenridge to work today. I am just very unmotivated this morning. Oh well.

I did not want to come back from the weekend. We had a great weekend, it was a lot of fun, very relaxing and enjoyable. Hanging out Friday evening, shopping on Saturday, cycling on Sunday. Also watched cyclists finish a bike tour Saturday morning.

Here are some pictures from Dillon Lake, along the bike path:




This was an eagle statue in Breck. Ron liked it and took this picture.


Here we are at a restaurant in Frisco. It had Paulaner Thomas Brau... what a great nonalcoholic beer!


My bike was named Leonardo, Ron's was named Chevy. Man I am sunburned... NTS: don't go on 22 mile bike rides at 9500 feet without sunscreen. But it was still fun.

Home again, jiggety jog...

So. Friday afternoon/evening/night the kidlet and I flew back from D.C. Then hopped in the car and drove to Cody for soccer. Got there at 2 in the morning. Then two days of soccer. (I did at least KIP on WWKIP Day, although I had to make a trip to the Cody yarn shop to do so. I picked up some Plymouth Boku and decided to make another wine bottle cozy.) Finally saw my house this afternoon, for the first time since waaaaayyyy too early Monday morning. OMG the lawn was shaggy as heck...

However there were two cute kitties wanting to cuddle up to me, and my KnitPicks order was here - dye and circs. I don't know when I'll be able to play with the dye tho... busy the next two weekends.

After mowing the lawn, I decided to start Oktoberfest since I have the KP needles I needed. I'm about halfway thru the toe on the first sock. I also went through the Firebird errata and made notes.

I don't want to work tomorrow. Or at all, really.

Oh yeah kidlet's team won all their games. Two of their victories were shutouts. W00t!!! Oh, and Junior won today! W00t!!!!

More news from the Beltway.

So when I went down to breakfast, apparently the big news was a power outage somewhere in the metro area that was messing up the Metro.

Anyhoo.

This is the Hope Diamond. It's fuzzy, kind of hard to get a picture when 10 billion people are surrounding it.

This quartz crystal was also on display at the natural history museum. It's like 3 feet tall.

Looking down the Mall, from outside the Washington Monument.

From inside the Washington Monument, at 500 feet up:




The white things on the Mall are tents, they're setting up for some sort of cultural festival.

More dispatches from inside the Beltway

Today in Washington. I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the nation's capital even tho I'm in the middle of it. I have succeeded in avoiding the news, which is probably not a bad thing.

This morning, waiting in line for tickets to go up to the top of the Washington Monument:


Our tickets are for 4:00.

At the WWII memorial: (someone was being goofy)


This duck was protecting her duckling and quacked at us as we walked past. (along the reflecting pool between the WWII memorial and the Lincoln memorial)

And here's the Lincoln memorial. And a kidlet who's continuing to be goofy.




Oh yeah, some guy from Texas lives here:

(I was instructed to make a goofy face for the above picture)

We also went to the National Aquarium and the National Air and Space Museum but didn't take pictures. My enthusiasm for taking pictures was waning considerably by the time we got to the National Air and Space Museum. It's hot again today.

Here are some more pictures from the National Zoo:

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da...

I survived the conference without having my head handed to me on a platter. I had been worried that I'd get dragged aside and given the third degree (again). That didn't happen, fortunately. I did come away with some materials about transition and succession planning... which may come in handy... maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon...

I also finished the Zombie Socks during the conference.

Also before leaving for D.C., I spun up half of my May Enchanted Knoll Happy Hooves batt:
Marathon update. It went well, albeit chilly and windy. My announcing got rave reviews. Scary thing is, I will probably be asked to announce again next year.

Kidlet and I went to the National Zoo today. Here are some critters:




We saw the giant pandas but I don't seem to have gotten a picture of them. They are rather elusive. I did buy some panda souvenirs tho.

Yesterday Kidlet and I went to the National Archives. He thought seeing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was really cool. Apparently the Archives people get a lot of questions/comments about the "National Treasure" movies...

Tomorrow we are off to the Mall. I had to explain that it is not a shopping center.

Life, or something like it

So the last few weeks have basically sucked, work wise. Since this is available all over Teh Interwebz, I won't go into detail about what has happened over the past three weeks. But my friends and my staff know what has been going on. Let's just say that there are those who care more about crossing T's and dotting I's correctly, than about making sure people truly have equal access to justice?

It's been one of those days/weeks/months that make you rethink your life. Am I really doing what I should be doing? What I want to be doing? The grass is looking awfully green on the other side of the fence... And I do mean green. As in Benjamins. As well as other things, such as not having to deal with certain pinheads.

Ron and I both had sucky days Wednesday. Actually my day Wednesday was a carryover of my sucky Tuesday. So we went to see "What Happens in Vegas" which cheered us both up. Hilarious movie...

(I just got attacked by a cute boy whose 10th birthday is in less than 2 weeks.)

Anyhoo. No cool pictures of spun or knitted stuff today. However I did have three packages show up this week that brightened my sucky work days. Two of them were Tsock Kits from the Tsarina of Tsocks and Van Calcar Acres. The Tsarina designs the tsocks, and the Yarn Fairy of Van Calcar Acres dyes the yarn. The two tsock kits I got this week were Oktoberfest and Firebird. The other package I got was the May Spunky Eclectic fiber club roving - Corriedale in a lovely rose colorway.

I'm still working on my zombie socks. I finished the first sock and am turning the heel of the second sock. No Second Sock Syndrome on this pair...

The Casper Marathon is this weekend. I worked packet pickup for a few hours this afternoon/evening, will work packet pickup tomorrow as well. Sunday during the race, I will announce the finishers as they cross the finish line...

Then Monday at a truly ungodly hour, I board a plane for Washington, D.C. for a conference... which brings me back to the beginning paragraph of this post... long story...

Um, I better stop. Laterz