Gobble gobble

Thanksgiving weekend is a wonderful time of the year. I've been looking forward to this for some time - four day weekends are great! I more excited to head home tomorrow! Pokey, here I come! Oh yeah, and it will be nice to see my parents too :)

I got it!!!!

Having the cold over the weekend has forced me to sit on the couch, and what better way to pass the time than knit! I'm extremely excited because after three frustratingly wrong tries, I finally got the bottom portion of the Christmas stockings right!

I was starting to get worried that I was going to continue to f*%k up that bottom portion. After every try, Chris lovingly said that people wouldn't be looking at the bottom part because the top part was so great. That wasn't good enough for me though. I will not give the people I love a crappy stocking!

It was especially frustrating because I know how to make socks! The reason I messed it up so many times was because the sheer size of these stockings made me think that I needed to do more decreasing than was necessary. In the end, I found that I only had to decrease for five rows for the gusset and that was enough to make my 92-stitch-CO stockings look right.

I have to say that this process is extremely rewarding because I got to design the whole stocking myself. I even expanded my horizons and used a round heel instead of the v heel. Crazy stuff.

After I finish off my dad's stocking, I have to fix the bottom portion of my mom's, then off to knit up Chris's stocking in secret (hopefully we can both resist the temptation of spoiling the surprise). I can't wait to put up pictures of these, but that won't happen until after Christmas :)

Ready for it to be over

Before I was a little bit nervous with the co-worker leaving, but now I'm ready for them to be gone. I'm not trying to sound mean, but it gets a bit frustrating when each of us spend at least two to three hours each day learning from this person, as she teaches us about stuff like where old archives are.

I realize that everyone's time is always stretched, especially where I work, but we couldn't have gone over this sort of thing like around the time all of us started? Maybe I'm being ridiculous, but it's frustrating. But she's just that way: you have to ask all the questions, even if you don't know what questions to ask.

Besides that, I had to go home early today because I've got a nasty cold. The plague is spreading everywhere, and the fact that I've been more stressed out than usual probably didn't help my immune system. I must say that I'm getting less stressed as I become more comfortable with the information for the long-term financial planning, and I'm becoming more confident that I'm not going to completely mess up the five-year plan (don't kid yourself - I was finding myself getting a slight headache each time someone mentioned the five-year financial direction before). Confidence (melded with lots of research and time) worked wonders to stop those headaches.

Eek in a week

One of my coworkers is leaving. She's the one that was my boss when I was an intern. She is the holder of much knowledge, and she is leaving right before we have to start creating the Council Adopted budget book...with a new system...

It will be a very good move for her because all of us could tell she wasn't happy where she was. And all that negativity was getting quite old - it made it difficult to work with her at times. But it will be interesting to see how we do over the next couple of months.

Apparently we're going to try to fill the position sometime in December (if we can find anyone!). So don't mind me if I get a little more crazy than usual around the holidays...

Migraines: Help Wanted

As many of you know, I get migraines. I have been keeping a journal of all of my migraines since the end of June this year in order to figure out some common links or triggers so that I can figure out how to treat them. I have already talked to my doctor this year about the migraines and he prescribed Midrin, which made me even more nauseous than the migraines do. I've found that my body cannot handle much caffeine, which has caused me to stop trying Excedrin.

Overall I have found that the drugs that I have tried don't really work because the migraine will usually come on in the afternoon one day and carry on until the afternoon or evening of the following day. I get so nauseous that I can't do much of anything besides lay in a darken room and wait for it to pass. I'm lucky in that I don't have any changes to my vision and sounds don't really bother me, but any kind of light is blinding and I tend to have a heightened sense of smell.

I've been researching more on the Internet about the condition itself and I've found that nobody really knows too terribly much at this point. I found out that I shouldn't be a woman because there is a higher percentage of adult women that get migraines and it's linked with periods. Awesome.

I'm wondering if any of you have had migraines and have found that certain treatments work for you, and I'm hoping that you will share. Do any of you know of good resources that I should look into for more information? Thanks in advance!

I started biking to work again last week without any pain in my IT band. I'm glad I took a break from biking and basically everything else so that it could heal. I figure that it took about a month. I missed out on a long of great biking, but I'm working on making up for that now.

I got the first stocking done, but I need to fix the foot and toe. I expected to make some mistakes since I'm making up the pattern as I go, so this next stocking will go much smoother. I still can't believe how big these are. You wanted big stockings, right Mom?

I got through all of season 4 of Grey's Anatomy, so now I have to go back to watching just movies. Darn. Chris set up a TiVo for us, and it will take me a bit to get used to having it. We don't tend to watch regular TV, so it's weird to actually watch shows on TV rather than on the Internet. It is a good addition.

I've been researching more ways of reducing the amount of waste we produce. I've been looking into starting a compost bin right outside our door. I've asked my dad if he has any spare metal garbage cans, like the one that the bear got to (that way I don't have to drill as many holes - Mom, can you make sure that Dad reads his email? hee hee).

Back to cleaning...