It’s all pretty depressing to contemplate though, since the Tier 1 General Migrant visa program(me) is closed and so, even if I do finish my degree at last, there’s no avenue for me to move absent an employer sponsoring it. I understand unemployment politics and immigration politics and blah blah blah, but seriously, I know enough Brits who want to come here, can’t we just arrange a one-for-one trade? I promise I’m a really productive person! And it’s not like I won’t be paying taxes in both nations anyways!

But I’m over at least the initial shock and bereavement, I guess. The first few days were pretty bad. The day I got the news, ironically, I had tickets to go see Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me — because it had been on my “things to do before I flee the country” list. I made it to the show, but I don’t remember much about it other than Peter Sagal had a bad head cold he heroically powered through, and Paula Poundstone cracked kleenex jokes at him. I know I made it home before I started crying again, but it was a pretty narrow miss.

I had started to seriously move on getting rid of stuff, of course. I mean, I started getting rid of the easy stuff to get rid of — sorting through my clothes more viciously to donate, selling books — after I got the “it’s really happening” in January. (On my birthday. Oh, the irony, it is thick on the ground in this tale.) I was pretty upset about the gaps on my bookshelves, after it all fell through. Not so much because the stuff was gone for no reason, so much as because the space where the stuff used to be is a constant reminder of what could have been. But, after a lot of sulking and thought, I think I’m going to continue getting rid of stuff. I had been planning to move with nothing more than my checked baggage, my two kitties in their carriers, my spinning wheel, and my bike… and if I’m prepared to do that, that means I’m prepared to live without all this stuff. A sewing machine I use once a year, that’s just not a significant need in my life… all the yarn that had been in my stash for a few years, I wasn’t going to use it any time soon anyways. It’s fine. It’s all fine. Stuff is just baggage. I don’t need stuff to be happy. I need space more than I need stuff. So, I keep on sorting through my stuff and dragging it off to the Brown Elephant to donate. May it serve someone else well.

That said… once it all fell through, I did go buy a new bed. I’ve been putting that off for years, literally, partly because I always felt like I was on the cusp of moving (even though I’ve been in this apartment for five years; I’d moved about every two years for the past decade before that), and partly because I have this sort of ingrained middle-class resistance to buying anything that I don’t absolutely need. And my futon is, technically, fine. I mean, it’s not broken. I can sleep on it. I don’t sleep well on it, I have insomnia problems and I remember distinctly last summer just feeling like I could never sleep off my tri training aches and pains. Well, fuck it. I’m not doing another summer of tri training aching like hell because I sleep on a (now) 19 year old shitty futon. I’m not a kid, and I have the money, so I bought a new damn bed like a grown-ass adult. I just went in to Macy’s, kicked off my shoes, curled up on a bunch of display models, and bought the one I almost fell asleep on.

It’s not England, but it’ll do for now…because what else have I got?

Anyways, I went to Foster Beach and found the T2 folks and we all completely rocked everything the hell right out, I did my mile swim and my baby bike ride (5 point something miles – wee bitty baby bike ride!) and my 5k up and down the lakefront, and THEN WE TOTALLY GOT FINISHER’S MEDALS, WHICH WAS AN AWESOME FABULOUS SURPRISE AND MINE IS TOTALLY ALREADY TACKED UP ON THE WALL BECAUSE THAT IS HOW MUCH I LOVE IT, and then we were all slowly trickling out and I talked to S. briefly about our plans for tomorrow — because we signed up for a non-mock tri, a sprint distance triathlon in Wauconda tomorrow morning, which will be fun except that I didn’t realize, when signing up, that Steelhead was the same day and that means I am going to be totally late getting over there to cheer on my T2 teammates and my buddy L., but anyways — and then I decided that since we were going to be going straight from Wauconda to Michigan, I was going to go over to Jewel and buy some bottled water and stuff. Because I had the car I wasn’t going to bother to go home and change first, so I actually — hahaha, I still can’t believe this part — went to Jewel still in my soggy tri shorts and sweaty bike jersey and I had no purse or anything so I just stuffed my wallet up my shorts leg (which, if you haven’t worn bike shorts, is a completely valid alternative to a pocket – for lip balms or maybe a gel packet or something. A wallet might have been pushing the boundaries a little more than normal) and grabbed a cart and went into Jewel.

This is how the trip started: I am not hungry. I am going to grab a flat of water and some bananas or something. Ok, cool. Grab cart. First aisle, eggs and frozen stuff. GOD IT’S COLD. Do I need eggs? NO! Do I need cheese? YEAH OKAY, GRAB IT AND GO. Do I need — NO! IT’S TOO COLD IN THIS AISLE! GO! … walk into snacky aisle. I should get some pretzels. Pretzels are valid post-race snacks. They have salt. WHAT KIND OF PRETZELS? THERE ARE TOO MANY! I AM CONFUSED BY CHOICES! think…think… after the race Thursday, N. had some pretzels…they were sticks! OKAY! PRETZEL STICKS IT IS! GOD IT’S COLD! And now I’m getting kind of hungry. Hey, I got some cheese back there. I need crackers. Water crackers… yeah. I want rosemary. I WANT ROSEMARY WATER BISCUITS. WHERE IS THE ROSEMARY?! DAMMIT JEWEL! Settle for sesame water crackers. Eye other snackies… decide that no, chips are not valid post-race snackies the same way pretzels are. Successfully depart snacky aisle. Pass peanut butter aisle… think, oh, peanut butter is totally post-race food! I totally saw the T2 marathoners eating peanut butter after their 14 mile run! Find organic creamy peanut butter and think… you know what goes with peanut butter? APPLES go with peanut butter. I should get some apples. Oh, and do I need coffee? I don’t know. Let me see if coffee is on sale… wander up coffee aisle, discover coffee is not on sale, decide to live dangerously. Then pass a Gatorade display! OH HEY, my favorite flavor! On sale! AWESOME! GIVE ME 3 8-PACKS OF IT! BECAUSE I’M TOTALLY THIRSTY NOW, I WANT TO DRINK IT ALL! RIGHT! NOW! … oh hey, there’s water. Ok, grab some water. On to the produce aisle. APPLES! APPLES ARE DELICIOUS! Except the red delicious kind, which are gross, so delicious is a lie, but whatever. Gala apples. I’m sharing, so how many should I get … 8! 8 seems like a totally reasonable number of apples to buy! I WILL BE SHARING! Also, I’m hungry. Oh, bananas. Ok, grab some bananas… OH APRICOTS, APRICOTS ARE MY FAAAAAAVORITE… I AM BUYING 8..NO, TEN! TEN! THEY’RE VERY SMALL! AND I WILL EAT 4 OF THEM AS SOON AS I GET HOME! APRICOTS APRICOTS APRICOTS! GOD I’M HUNGRY! oh, strawberries are on sale, and they’re not even all picked over. I should get some strawberries for my morning smoothies, I’m running low… 4 boxes of strawberries seems like a totally reasonable amount of strawberries… ok OH HEY LOOK, IT’S THE GOOD CHEESE. MMMMMMMM. I WANT BRIE! BRIE! FOR MY CRACKERS! Which would have been better if they were rosemary, stupid Jewel. But brie is still yummy… oh hey look, stilton! Stilton with cranberries! THAT SOUNDS DELICIOUS TOO! I AM GOING TO GET THAT TOO! TO HAVE WITH MY BRIE! AND MY CRACKERS! Except do I have enough crackers? Maybe I should look at bread. MAYBE THEY HAVE ROSEMARY BREAD! No… NO ROSEMARY!?!?!? DAMMIT JEWEL! WHAT IS YOUR BEEF WITH ROSEMARY?!?! … ok… no bread. Bread is boring without rosemary… oh HEY, they have BAGEL CHIPS! BAGEL CHIPS WITH SALT ARE TOTALLY LEGITIMATE POST-RACE FOOD, BECAUSE THEY HAVE SALT! … oh jeez, I have a cart full of gatorade, random fruit, cheese, and pretzels… this is not grocery shopping like normal people do it. I got progressively hungrier as I went through the store and I also got progressively more caps-lock impulse shopper… OH SHIT, ALL THOSE PSYCHOLOGISTS WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG!

Oh well. Fuck it. Those apricots are gonna be DELICIOUS, man. Maybe I’ll eat them with some stilton on water crackers!

Step 1: Employer receives CV. Employer drinks enough caffeine to decide that CV is not completely awful.
Step 2: First pass: HR tries to make sure candidate has a heartbeat and is not a zombie.
Step 3: Second stage: phone screen. Actual sysadmin calls to make sure candidate is not entirely full of shit.
Step 4: Candidate gets to go to actual face-to-face interview! Once, twice, or possibly many times, depending on how dedicated employer is to exhausting candidate’s interview wardrobe.
Step 5: PROFIT.

So you’ll note that very early on in this process, the use of a telephone is indicated. You’d think it wouldn’t really be much of a problem, because phones are, like, old, and stuff, and they just work, and stuff. And maybe that would be the case if I had a real phone. But I don’t. I am the one out of four Americans who has given up her landline and has only a mobile phone, because I’m only one person and how many phones do I need? (Especially because I kind of hate using the phone a little. I never was one of those people who sat around for hours and just chatted.) I haven’t had a real phone as a matter of course for few years. I had one in my old apartment at Printer’s Square, because I had to have one for the door intercom buzzer to let people in, and I had one in my apartment in Wicker Park because I thought pizza delivery people would push back (prank caller!) if I gave an 847 number — which was clearly just me being old and paranoid, nobody cares about area codes anymore. But in my place now, I just have the mobile. And even though sometimes service is spotty in my apartment, it doesn’t really matter much to me because I do all my social outing arranging via text, basically, and about the only time I use phones is if I have to call customer service for something. And I have Skype for that.

Except now, you see, it’s the end of my delicious, delicious summer vacation and I have to go back to being a grown-up now, which means hunting for a job. (I loved you, summer vacation. You were so awesome. Let’s do it again sometime!) And what does Step 2 of interviewing involve? THE PHONE!

Spotty voice service + mandatory use of phone = FAIL.

(Side note: I was going to put in a little graphic here to spice up the blog post a bit, but I didn’t find anything fun and legal to reproduce. I did, however, have a good time browsing the google image search results for ‘phone fail.’ You’re welcome.)

I had a phone screening scheduled with Company A last week. 10:30AM. I untethered the phone from its sync cable and made sure it wasn’t on silent, and just waited for it to ring. Wait, wait. Then the relaxing sounds of Screeching Weasel chimed, and I answered. We had just enough time to mutually establish our identities before the call dropped.

Nice.

So the interviewer called back, and I apologized for my stupid phone, and we almost got a chance to talk, when … drop.

NIQUI SMASH AT&T. NIQUI TRY GET COOL JOB, JERKFACE TELCO. NIQUI SMASH NATION’S LARGEST 3G NETWORK THAT NOT FRIGGIN WORK!

You know, when my phone was first stolen in May — which SUCKED — I called AT&T, and I said, “OK, my less than one year old phone was stolen, I’m not paying sticker price for a new iPhone, what are my options,” and they answered, “anything but an iPhone, because The Steve doesn’t want you to have another this soon, you clearly fraudulent aftermarket reseller.” So then I said, well, the 3g service in Chicago is shit anyways and so if you’re not going to let me buy cheap shiny shiny, maybe you should transfer me to the cancellation department. They promptly transferred me to the Department of We’ll Tell You Anything So Long As You Don’t Cancel. Oh, I have dropped calls and spotty service in my apartment? Well, have I considered getting a microcell for my home? “Why,” sez I, “why would I pay more, and use up my own precious Internets, to make up for your lack of being able to provide baseline service? Yes, I have considered it, and I damn near laughed myself into an aneurysm, so no, sorry dude, you’re not making that particular commission today.” So the Phone Company Designated Liar asks me, well, where do you live? I give him my address. And lo! Guess what! They are doing repairs on the cell tower nearest my home this very month! What are the odds! By the end of May, they expect everything to be just jim-dandy! Surely I can wait just a week or two and then I will see, they really care about me as a customer and about providing the best possible service to me.

Because I am too stupid for words, and also because I kinda didn’t want to pay up the contract early termination fee, and because I am a big giant sheep and I love my iGadget (shut up i am enjoying my stockholm syndrome it is very shiny here), I thought, well, okay, maybe this time they really will fix the phone network and it’ll be better next time, and $friend said I can have his old 3g iGadget when he goes to a Droid on account of ATT being the worst ever phone company. I mean, the phone company wouldn’t baldfaced lie, right? Not to me! I’m a loyal customer! That would be wrong!

So, back to last week’s phone screen with Company A. After the second call dropped, I wound up using Skype to call back to the main number of Company A and asking for one of the interviewers by name. They transferred me to him, then he answered and it turned out he was working on something and had bowed out of the phone interview and wasn’t even anywhere near the conference room, but he offered (very nicely) to try and chase down the other folks doing the interview. Then my phone rang, and it was the interviewer again, and so I told the guy on Skype that it was probably them calling me back, and he offered (again, very nicely) that if it dropped again, I could call him again and he’d chase them down for real. So we hung up, and I answered the cell, and I said, “hey, let me just call to you, ‘cos then I can use !ATT,” and it transpired that he didn’t know the conference room phone number (why, why, why does no one ever put the phone number on conference room phones? Nobody ever does it, yet it would be so useful.), so he actually set up a conference call bridge that we both dialed into, and finally, we got to start the phone interview, like 15 minutes of drama later.

(Ironically, Skype got in on the hijinks and actually dropped me once, like half an hour in. First time Skype has ever dropped one of my calls. I had to dial back in to the bridge. It is to lol, except for, zomg, I felt so bad. It’s a credit to the patience of the interviewer that he put up with this nonsense long enough to actually conduct the interview.)

So anyways, that was that phone screen, and it went well, thank you for asking, and I got to show off some of my interview wardrobe, which was nice because I like to wear grownup shoes from time to time (I get to be tall!). If I am very lucky, perhaps they will get back in touch — though I don’t expect them to use the phone to do so.

And so yesterday I had the zombie-weed-out phone screen with Company B, which went well since I am not a zombie, and for once, AT&T behaved, and the call didn’t even break up once. (Though later in the day, my gym called to get me to quit slacking off about working with my personal trainer, because they are sitting on rather a lot of money I gave them for sessions I’ve been too lazy to use this summer because, dudes, gym < sunshine… and anyways, that call broke up badly a couple of times, but didn’t drop. Improvement?) I thought, OK! Great! Maybe my phone mojo is back. I can do this!

I was pretty sad when, this morning, minutes snicked away after my 10:00 scheduled phone screen with Company B and no Screeching Weasel. I unlocked the screen and yes! It said I had 5 bars! But no ring. Booo. Sad niqui. Sad niqui sadly clicked over to email and …

Subject: what is a good number to call you at?

847 xxx xxxx …automated message says your not taking calls…

*facepalm* Just … just kill me. Oh, come on. What the. I don’t even. But. But. *sad face of resignation*

Why do you hate me, AT&T? Why? Do you have, like, some sort of heat-seeking 3g missile that swoops in on my phone calls in your cell towers, when they’re important, and smashes the electrical signals to bits? What did I ever do to you? (other than make a whole lot of remarks about how you’re the evil empire and i hate you and you’re wiretapping bastards and you’re the phone company you don’t have to care and so on? insults don’t count when they’re true!)

So, forlornly and sheepishly, I emailed and offered to call back if he’d send me a number. Which he did, and I did, and Skype did not drop the call this time, and we had a nice chat for about an hour, and I’m going to get to show off some more interview clothes (YAY SHOES), so it all turned out well in the end, but, c’monnnnnnnnnnn. You’re killing me here!

The really awesome part of today’s wacky hijinks is that, after the call, I tried making a few outbound calls. It would go from 5 bars, to 1 bar immediately after I hit “call,” and then it would sort of think for a little while, and then it would go to “Searching… .” As soon as I hit “end call,” it would pop right back to 5 bars. Okay, seriously, now you’re just fucking with me. I rebooted the phone (i REBOOTED a PHONE) and after that it would let me make calls. So apparently this was not actually AT&T’s doing, unless their heat-seeking phone missile targeted me really, really well some time overnight since it was just fine at 22:30 yesterday, but just the gadget flaking out. Yippee.

And so Company C has gotten in touch today, and expressed some interest in speaking to me using a telephone. I’m practically too embarrassed to actually admit to having a phone, at this point. I mean, I have an electronic thing that has “phone” in its name, but it doesn’t actually have that functionality. It seems like it would be much less embarrassing at this point to offer to use AIM, a pay phone on an L platform, or maybe carrier pigeons.

So, I guess I’ll be revising my CV tonight. Got to add my shiny new Skype phone number to it. If nothing else, it’s in 312…

I put snow on the cats (who were inexplicably unwilling to go out and play in it) and they just sort of sat there and acted like I was the crazy one. Typical!

Oh, I have to go do that thing today because it has to be done tomorrow. Let me just make the coffee first.
It’s 9AM. I should start, because I don’t want to do this all frigging day, I want to chill with the TV and some knitting this evening.
Oh, I have to go to PetSmart and Staples and should probably hit Jewel. But I don’t want to do that yet, I need to get this thing done first.
Let me just put the crockpot on.
I have to check my RSS reader.
I’m going to put on some nice mellow music and chill out, so I can think straight.
It’s almost noon. That means I have, like, 7 hours left of practical work time. Okay, I’ll start at noon.
I’m going to get the kitchen timer because that trick always works.
I need to finish this first. Let me just finish this first.
If I write this down, I can stop thinking about it and go on to do my work.
Okay, I’m going to put on music with words in another language so I can’t think along with them.
You are fucking driving me up a fucking wall.
The kitchen’s a mess, I should do the dishes.
I think I’ll make tea. Tea has less caffeine, I’ll be less stupid.
I wonder if I should do laundry or if the short work-week means I can get away with the clean clothes I have now.
I’m cold. I should put on a sweater.
I liked that speed-reading class yesterday, even if I do already read really quickly. That 3×5 card trick was cool, I’m going to have to use that. Do I have any 3×5 cards?
Wait, do I have any rice to make to go along with these red beans in the crock pot? Am I seriously going to have to go to Jewel after all? I fucking hate Jewel on Sundays.
It’s after one. I cannot think straight.
Christ on a pogo stick. Why can’t you just sit down and concentrate? It’s like only two fucking hours of work and you’ve fucked off all day.
I wonder if I really should hit Jewel today. It’ll be stupid-busy the rest of this week because of Thanksgiving. I can go to PetSmart tomorrow. I’ll have to hit Walgreen’s or something on the way to work tomorrow though to get those divider thingies.
Is it sugar? Did I eat too much sugar today or something? No more goddamn Smarties, ever.
I should plan what I need to do around the house. I will write that down so I don’t forget it.
I wonder if I had a glass of something alcoholic to drink if that would cancel out the sugar. No, that’s a bad idea, isn’t it. Does just thinking about that mean I have a problem? Is this a crutch? But is having a crutch really so bad if it’s a, like, once every few months thing? This is deeply stupid, forget I said anything.
I’m not listening to this Mahler. I can practically sing along to it. No, that’s out, and that. Why don’t I have more music in my collection that I don’t know how it goes? I could put on WFMT, but they’ll probably have a pledge drive or more German opera again like last time I really needed them to play something, and that clearly won’t work.
You know what would go really go well with red beans and rice would be if I made some cornbread. Am I out of cornmeal? Do I need to go to Jewel?
I am losing my fucking mind here, can you just be quiet for ten fucking seconds? Will someone for the love of God remind me why I went off the anti-anxiety meds.
Seriously, what ancient god did I piss off that I’m pushing 32 and still can’t have clear skin? It’s just deeply unfair to have to worry about the impact of benzoyl peroxide on crowsfeet.
I’m just going to check — no, no new mail. Nobody’s ever going to buy this frigging Louet, I’ll never get to buy that Lendrum.
I wonder if I could take a nap, and if I could, if it would help. Too bad I don’t nap.
OH HAI, now it’s after two and I’m still out of my fucking lunatic head.
I could go clean the house, sweep and, like, pick out DVDs I never watch to put in the to-donate pile. Maybe that would help.
Oooh, Amazon has that box set on sale. I shouldn’t, but … oh, let me just read the reviews.
I should really return those boots I can’t wear to Zappos, I’m sick of looking at the box.
Fuck it, I’m getting a glass of brandy. Brandy has less alcohol than Scotch, right? So it’s not really cheating if it’s not, like, something I love. Anyways, it’s afternoon now, so fuck it.
I wonder, if I were to take up smoking weed, would that fix bullshit like this? Ah, your natural-born pollyannaness bites you in the ass again. If I were a stoner, I wouldn’t get much done, but then again, I’d probably be happier about it. Oh well. It smells funky anyways. Probably explains all the people wearing patchouli, like that chick yesterday, their noses must be acclimated to ugh.
I’m hot. Why’d I put on this sweater?
Fucking sit down and shut up and quit being distracted by all the blinky shiny jesus christ what the fuck with my fucking head???
I have to go update that thing on Ravelry before I forget.
This is why you never did well in school, you know. Dumbass.
I have to reschedule with L. after she bailed yesterday. Tuesday?
I wanted to go ice skating today, too. Dang.

Of course the punchline is:
Maybe if I go write a blog entry about this, I’ll get it out of my head for a little while.

And the post scriptum:
Forgot to close that <em> tag… and oh hey, two of those are out of order, that doesn’t make sense in context, gotta fix…

Personal to our FBI, CIA, DEA, alphabet soup, ATT-circuit-snooping corporate overlords: I am not now nor have I ever been a stoner. So quit with the plotting to strip-search me at the airport next time I fly, jerkwads, and don’t think I don’t know you were thinking about it.

So that’s been my Sunday. Hope yours has been more productive.

It’s annoying, as it turns out, to try and get more sleep. I’ve been going to bed in the 10-11ish time frame, on an average night, for ages. There are exceptions, but mostly they are of the ‘get to bed later’ variety. So deciding at 8:50PM that it was bedtime was foreign and, honestly, made me feel like a big baby. And, for example, on the nights where I don’t get out of class until 9PM, it’s impractical. But mostly I made it to bed on (my new) time. I turned on my white noise generator — a fan — and, surprisingly, dropped off to snoozeland in pretty short order. My usual alarm goes off at 6:45AM (at which point, depending on how much I can bear the idea of facing the day, I generally hit the snooze button up to about 5 times). So that gives me roughly 10 hours of time to get sleep, which I figure gives me a fighting chance to actually get in my recommended 8 hours, or more if I need it.

I started these early bedtimes last Sunday, the 8th of November. It has already made a clearly noticeable difference. Usually, I’d be sleepwalking through work by Wednesday (after my Tuesday late class!), and by Friday, I’d be so whipped the day would take an eternity to slog through, not that I’d be doing anything worthy of note anyways. This week I was actually perky on Thursday and Friday. Possibly the sort of perky that verges on chirpy. I was awake enough to fight some sort of weird issue with an RPM spec file that has been plaguing me (Mike said to me Thursday, after listen to me lecture my computer that it was being bad: “Didn’t you start working on this, like, three years ago?” In fact, I did; I just abandoned it shortly after that point because something was on fire. So I’m picking up where I left off. It’s depressing that in three years no one else has apparently gotten Quickfix to make pretty RPMs, either. But I am determined.). I actually, like, noticed that my desk was becoming cluttered and did something about it. Plus? Today? Saturday? When normally I’d have to set my alarm to make my personal trainer appointment, then slog over there all sleepy and yawning? Today I was up at 7, on my own before my alarm even thought about going off (at 8), cleaning my kitchen, considering alternatives to Quicken, and was awake and lively for my whole workout (though not any more thrilled about the eight-pound medicine ball than normal — perhaps medical science can offer another solution for that problem).

It’s only been a week, and so far the benefit of wakefulness has yet to make me feel like less like wookat da big baaaaaaaybeeee, it’s eight o’cwock, has ta go get weddy for beddie-bye for to go ni-ni when actually confronted with the reality of early bedtime. But seriously, dudes, I was, like, awake all week at work and at class. That hasn’t happened to me in I can’t even tell you how long.

There is one other side effect I noticed: I’m dreaming a lot more. Some of the dreams are more fun than others — I kind of could have done without the one where I was on a window-washing platform being winched up to the 42nd floor of the CBOT building — but just noticing dreams at all is somewhat unusual for me. So I’m taking that as a good sign, that I am actually having the time to get into quality sleep states.

It remains somewhat to be seen whether or not I’ll be able to keep this up on an ongoing basis. For now, I’m done with scheduled classes for the year — DUDES, I HAVE BEEN BACK IN SCHOOL FOR A WHOLE YEAR, AND I TOTALLY SURVIVED IT, GO ME! — but in January it’ll kick back in with twice weekly, after work, 6-9PM classes. I think they’re Monday and Wednesday for winter quarter, though it doesn’t matter much which days, really. Saturday mornings are reserved for the gym. Sundays are homework. That means that my other weekdays, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, will be my best chances for sleep during the week. If I can get to bed by, like, 8, those nights, I should still be able to be asleep by 9, and catch up on my sleep by the next morning, thus avoiding the day-after-late-class zombie state.

But that’s long-term planning. For now, I’m just going to try and get to bed early this week too, and gauge the results. Hopefully there will continue to be less foggyheadedness…though I would not mind fewer bizarro skyscraper dreams to go along with that.

Yes, it’s true; I wound the plied yarn up on a cardboard core from a roll of paper towels. I love those for yarn storage, but the only problem is, I avoid using paper towels and try and stick to nice washable rags, so I literally go through about a roll in a year. (Well, unless there are serious cat puke issues going on. My environmental friendliness has limits.) So now I’m committed… no new spinning stuff that has to get wound off for temporary storage, until I finish up that merino and wind it off that tube, or finish another roll of paper towels, which, gauging from the current state of the towel roll, it’s got at least half an inch of towels left on, which probably means November at the earliest. Hmf.

Also, I have been toying with the idea of selling my Louet. It has, to be honest, never been productive for me. I think I’ve spun one skein on it successfully, ever. The purple merino that I’m drop-spindling? Literally made me lock that wheel in a closet for about a year after trying to spin it on that thing — the take-up was so strong it wasn’t putting any twist in, it kept drifting apart, I kept wasting wool bits (and it was an expensive bit of wool), and besides, it was not only not fun but it was actively making me furious. Since then I’ve tried pretty regularly at least once every three or four months — maybe this time I’ll discover the trick! — and every three or four months, I wind up disappointed and pissed off. I’ll spin up half a bobbin with no trouble, then the fiber will drift apart and every attempt to re-join it will just break apart on the hooks, until I have ten thousand bits of used-to-be-perfectly-good-singles sitting on the arm of the chair next to me and I am furious again. I actually wasted a good ounce or two of one bag of Louet Northern Lights printed pencil roving because I spun up a good bit on the Louet and then it broke, and I could not find the end. After literally hours of poking and prodding it with tiny steel crochet hooks and pins, trying to dislodge wherever the end had crammed itself in, I gave up and started cutting. I wound the entire singles off that bobbin by hand in bits and pieces, trashed it, said “fuck this,” and spun the rest of of the roving up, quite happily and successfully, on my trusty Babe.

Anyways. So yeah, my Louet has never been reliable for me, unless by reliable you mean “reliably useless and frustrating.” So I was thinking of selling it, and putting the money aside for a new one, maybe a Lendrum Complete (with the lovely high speed flyer! in addition to the others it comes with! LACEWEIGHT, YOU WILL BE MINE.). I mean, I never use it since it hates me, so I might as well get the closet space back, if nothing else. But I felt guilty, because of course, it could just be me, so I thought I would give it a go with some wool I had gotten from Cheryl as a gift. I didn’t think it was really slippery or short-stapled, so figured it’d have as good a shot as anything would, to work for me on that wheel. And … shockingly, it actually has kinda worked. I’ve spun up about 25g or so (neglected to weigh the bump beforehand, and I’m using a high-speed bobbin of which I’ve only got one so I can’t tare my scale accurately, alas) with about 125g left. I want to do this up as a 2-ply so I guess I’ll spin up the rest of this half the bump on this bobbin, if all goes well, then wind it off onto one of the standard bobbins to hold it, then spin up the second half of the wool on the high-speed bobbin again, then ply them from there. We’ll see how it works out. I still assume I am heading for disappointment, here, but if I am, it won’t be the first time I’ve wound singles off that Louet’s bobbins onto one of my Babe bobbins to finish the project on it. (And people mocked my Babe for being cheesy and a bad spinner. Shows what you know, Wool Warp and Wheel snobs. You can take my Babe out of my cold dead hands, even if I do buy a shiny new Lendrum.) Anyways, here’s how it looks now… actually, how it looked a while ago; I’ve got a bunch more spun up now than I did when I took the photo:

Lastly, I continued work on my Scarlet Swallowtail shawl. Nearly done with the second ball of yarn, and into the 18th Budding Lace repeat — by now, it’s something like 230 stitches wide. The pattern is sufficiently easy that it doesn’t take long to go across, really, but I did get held up because I had to tink back a couple rows — a week ago or something I thought I’d knit on it, but I was flat-out exhausted, and I made some mistake that I didn’t discover for a while, and I couldn’t cope with fixing it then so I just put the knitting down and walked away. So yesterday I fixed that, and then continued forward for another few repeats. I only have to do 19 repeats before I start on the next chart, so I’m feeling pretty good, especially with school about to be out and all. No new photos of it, though, as it looks the same really — misshapen blob of shiny red wool.

That is really about all I did all weekend. I did a little reading, I ran some shopping errands, I cooked and cleaned and blew off doing the laundry (a fine Sunday tradition), listened to Jose Contreras doing his level best to be a crap pitcher, cruelly denied the cats food outside their regular mealtimes even though they were clearly staaaaaaaaarving, listened to some podcasts and radio plays, showed someone at Jewel how to pick out avocados, and hung out on my balcony for a little while watching the city at night and listening to the reverberations of Lollapalooza bounce around through the white noise of air conditioning equipment and the L.

All things considered, I think I did all right.

But he apparently gave Kiyoshi his headcold before getting over it, because since Friday evening Kiyoshi’s been sneezing. And he’s just so miserable when he does it. He looks so pathetic. If there’s anything more sad than a tiny little grey cat who feels the burden of his own ridiculous cuteness by sneezing repeatedly, I don’t know what it could be.

home, drinking said Goose Island and listening to the White Sox pregame on WSCR by 6:30.

LIVING IN THE LOOP == COMPLETELY PWNS THE ENTIRE WORLD.

last i heard, we were not projected to get access back until mid-july…after the balconies were barricaded last OCTOBER. (nine months != six months! argh!! but i digress.) so, imagine my SQUEEEEE when i came home late last night and realized I HAD BALCONY RAILINGS AGAIN!

then i looked a little bit more closely at the bubble wrap and noticed something else.

yes. those are bolt holes. with no bolts through them. on a balcony thirty stories up.

i guess we should hope it doesn’t get windy out, yeah?

oh, no, hey, wait! it’s all good!

no, i’m wrong, i’m totally wrong… there is a bolt.

singular.

…

AWESOME.

and then there’s this. (bad photo because the angle is terrible, but…)

yes. the mounts closest to the building are actually up off the concrete. so it’s, like, front-heavy, which is probably predictable… BUT IS NOT REASSURING AT ALL, GUYS, SERIOUSLY.

i mean, i never studied physics or engineering or, you know, even watched Bob the Builder or anything, but it does seem to me that if you’re going to haul a railing up thirty stories to put it on a balcony you could probably fit more than one bolt in your pocket… and if you’re only going to install one or two bolts, maybe you should put it in the back, so that if it leans anywhere it leans away from toppling off the edge? you know? because the whole reason we’re repairing the balconies in the first place is because there were things falling off that weren’t supposed to fall off?

meep.

but at least i guess this means i actually am going to get my balcony back someday, so that’s good!