I Am My Own Designer

(Choking on laughter now, at how ridiculous that sounds. Honestly, I was just trying to play off yesterday’s entry.)

So I loved the Scalloped-Edge Beaded Necklace so much that I decided to attempt a beaded necklace of my own. So this, The Beaded Necklace, is the result. It’s a little more like the Scalloped Necklace than I had planned. I think it’s mainly because I really like the loop of five beads along the edge. Looks a lot like bullion stitch in embroidery, I think. I offset the second row of those bullions from the first just a little.

I like it. It probably worked a little slower than normal because I was kind of making it up as I went along (frogging, knitting, writing steps down) and because I only had dpns within arm’s reach (God knows, I can’t afford the energy it would take to walk across the room and get the single points!) and I was knitting slowly and carefully for fear of dropping stitches off the end of the dpn.

So, this is Patons Grace in Natural. Twenty yards (maybe!) I’m guessing. And pink glass seed beads. The closure is a larger pink bead and a crocheted loop on the end.

Pattern will appear on the sidebar here, one I get around to typing it out.

I Am My Own IT

Have I mentioned how much I hate to call IT? I swear, these people are more frustrating than the “sandwich artists” at Subway. (Seriously, “one line of mustard” means… one line of mustard. Not one line and back again and then a couple of plops for fun at the end.) If I slacked so much at my job, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be working my job for much longer.

Power off and back on? Don’t you think that was the first thing I did? How about you log off of World of Warcraft for a second and help me out? How about that?

When I was a young Patwoman, a Patgirl, if you will, there was a lot of talk about how computers were the future and everyone should go into computers because that’s where the jobs were going to be. If only I’d listened! Then I wouldn’t have been sitting on hold for 15 minutes today, listening to some crappy Muzak version of “Careless Whisper,” (which is almost Muzak anyway). In the end, I decided to just fix the issue myself.

And by fix, I mean, press buttons and click links until something happens. Hey, if I eff it too badly, they’ll have to fix it then, right? So, I finally went into the Internet Options and reset the LAN connection to auto detect. And that seemed to fix it.

Not bad for a journalism/poly sci major, eh?

No Surprise Here (probably my use of parentheticals)

I write like
William Shakespeare

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Office Building Time Machine

Granted, that movie would not be nearly as interesting as some others. But, you know. You work with what you have.

Anyway, you know that T and I play a game called “Celebrity Watch.” The game is: spot people who look like celebrities. If the other person agrees, you get a point. You get another point if that celebrity is current—they have a new CD, movie, tv show, criminal conviction, scandal, bigoted rant, etc. (You lose points if that celebrity lookalike is actually the celebrity.)

The other day, when I was entering the café downstairs, I passed Ozzy Ozbourne, c. 1991. And today, as I was leaving the café, I noticed Penn Jillette from about the same era was there, at a table.


Of course, I quickly glanced behind me to see if I had my 1991 ass, but no such luck.

The Episode In Which Patwoman Almost Misses An Important Meeting, Almost Gets Run Down, And Then Almost Drowns

What a day! Had to run down to DrugCo for a meeting, which I like to do ordinarily. I like to get out of the office and into new scenery. It breaks up the day a little, you know? This time, however, we had the wrong time.

Actually, we had the wrong time and the wrong room, which only made it worse. So, there we are, Jill and I, killing time before our 2:00 meeting—and even got to the room ten minutes early. Here’s what tipped us off on the wrong room thing… No one was there. So Jill sent a quick text and found out where the real room was and we hurried over.

In time for the last 10 minutes of the meeting. Apparently, it started at 12:30. Niiiice.

So, I’m headed back to my office, and as I am crossing the street from the parking garage… Wait. Let me go back and explain something . First of all, I went to Kindergarten. I know you are supposed to look both ways before you cross the street. I always do. I looked and the only traffic was almost a block away, stopped at a light.

But as I started across, (in the crosswalk leading from my garage to my building) the light changed. No problem. I have time. I’d only taken ten steps, but I have time, right?

If you said “Not if there is a city bus coming, Patwoman,” you’d win some sort of prize. Like a prize for being obvious. This bus driver sees me in the crosswalk and guns it. I mean, he outpaces the taxi in the lane next to him! (And why do they never drive fast when they are in front of you on the road? Hm?) So this bus is barreling down on me with the speed and fury of… some furious, speeding thing… And I know he sees me, so I assume he is doing this because 1) I have offended him in some way or 2) he is a giant bag of dicks and thinks it’s funny to see people run for their lives.

Which I do. Because I have seen city busses hit people downtown. Twice. They don’t care. They would just as soon run over a pedestrian as smash into a car. I have seen them do that, too. I think it just eases the boredom a little for them.

Anyway, I make it to my office with my skin intact and the rest of the day goes fine. Until the rain starts. Like monsoon rain. Like, Go Get Two Of Every Animal rain.

Actually, it’s not really the rain that bothers me, although I hate like hell to get my hair wet in the rain. (Which I will, because I don’t carry an portable lightning rod umbrella.)
In all fairness, Michelle offered to drive me to my car (she parks in the creepy dungeon subterranean parking garage in our building and I park in the nice, well-lit, above ground parking garage across the street) but I kept telling her, “Oh no, don’t worry about it. It’s just across the street.”

Ha.

Anyway it wasn’t the rain that cheesed me off. It was all the dicks. Like the dick who says to me (as I entered the parking garage, soaked to the skin, wind-whipped hair plastered up in impossible angles) “Don’t you have an umbrella?”

I just stared at him. “What do you think?”

Dick.

Patwoman Sticks To Her Knitting

I mean that literally, not in the colloquial sense. I’m going to talk about actual knitting. (As shocking as that is!)

Anyway, it seems like I’ve done less knitting than usual this year. Or at least spent less time at it. It’s a sad but true fact that if you do more of one thing (like writing a game sourcebook) you will have less time to do other things (like knitting).

I keep trying to explain the math of it to my crazy doctor, but she’s not getting it. She tells me, “You know, Patwoman, you are not going to lose weight or lower your blood pressure until you start exercising and start getting more sleep.” She suggests I get up half an hour earlier so I will have time to exercise.

So which is it? Sleep more? Or get up early? I’m getting something like 5 ½ hours sleep a night anyway, not counting those new training calls at work. Where was I? Did I doze off? Oh yeah. Knitting. So, I’m really only knitting a few hours a week, as I watch TV. The combination of lack of sleep and multi-tasking has had some counter-productive and comical results, I have to admit. Like this scarf. Notice the direction of the diagonals.

They are all supposed to go the same way.


Oh, and I did knit another Beaded Necklace in black and red. This is LB Microspun in Black. Seriously, I recommend this pattern highly. Knit it.


Other than that, I have spent my knitting time frogging,throwing yarn and needles across the room,cryingtrying to design a scarf that will become a Christmas present for M’s boy Eric.

Not Knitting

Yesterday was Mr. and Mrs. Patwoman’s anniversary. How do you like that? How long have we been together?

Listen. We were at our store the other day and I mentioned to a vendor that we would be celebrating our anniversary. He asked how long we’d been married and I told him 26 years.

Vendor: Wait. You were married in 1984?
Patwoman: Yes.
Vendor: Wow! That’s longer than I’ve even been alive!

Anyway, we went to Olive Garden for dinner. That was nice. But I do think it is the parent’s responsibility (if you are taking your kids to OG instead of Chuck E. Cheese) to say, for example, “Don’t stand on the table.” “Don’t kick the cake.” “Don’t bash your brother’s head against the next table.” “Don’t throw food at other people.” “Don’t climb on strangers.”

(It occurred to me, btw, that maybe all five of these kids were special needs and didn’t have a lot of control over their social interaction. But no. I saw their faces. They were just bored. And take it from me, a former vandal, boredom will make you destructive.)

After dinner, we had this idea that we would go play miniature golf. When we were dating, and when we were first married, we would always play mini golf. It is, in fact, the only kind of golf I approve of. We used to go to this little place in Southport, next to the DQ. So how romantic, to go on a “date” just like we always used to!

Only… That place is gone. Ha!

So we went home and ended up watching the Science Channel. That may sound boring to you, but remember, T and I are nerds. We watched and ended up discussing black hole theory, Hawking’s Paradox, and parallel universes. It was a good time.

This morning, we were talking and I said PCs should never be monster classes, in my opinion, and that I felt minotaurs and dragonborn should be NPCs, at best, in a game. In fact, in my opinion, the likelihood of encountering a minotaur would be so extremely rare something would be extremely rare and he replied “Like an elf in the fourth age?”

Ha! It’s nice to have someone who gets me.