Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

Both of my professors are off at a conference this week. There is some online work to be done but it's not all that difficult. Ok, one test was hideous but...what can you do? I've had a few things on my list to do this week and they are done as well. I went to Goodwill and tried to obtain a dinner jacket for the hubbs, but the ones I chose were too small. I visited a classmate at her bar in a small town 40 miles away. She and her hubbs just bought it. They are in the process of fixing it up. We spent the time trying to puzzle out a good menu that would get customers coming in and returning. I left her with my Chicken and Dumplings recipe. Knitting is being done. Charity knitting as usual. My Lenten sacrifice is to reduce or stop cursing. It's moderately successful.  I've got a curse jar, and for every 10 or so pennies I put in, I have to knit another baby blanket and donate it to the pregnancy resource center. I'm not sure, but I think I'll be knitting ab...

It's been more like a week without any real knitting. Friday before last I woke up feeling like the floor of a NYC Taxi cab. Even at work, the boss noticed. Although he thought I had gone out partying the night before. It was a vicious cold. The remnants are still hanging on. I've got bronchitis and a set of sinsues that scream each time I cough. But the worst of it is over. Odd though, even when I'm laying there wheezing and shivering and wishing to be unconscious, I don't knit. I'll lay there doing nothing, but I will not knit. You'd think I would just be knitting all the time since my brain is too stuffed up for any higher-level processing. Oh I know knitting can be tricky, but knitting hats is easy. Before I started back at school, I knitted a 6' long stole for myself. It's just like 100 stitches, knitted in stockinette with the exception of the last 3 stitches on each side, to keep it from rolling. All white sock yarn, all off a 1,100 yard co...

Wow, I started this about 20 minutes ago and have gotten distracted since! Posted to a FB group the photo of David with Gretl. She's now in with the flock and has been adopted by Rube, Sev and Molly. We're all really REALLY bummbed at Alan Rickman's passing. I mean, come on! We name the flock after Harry Potter characters. Severus was on the list to be culled ...the list we never got to, but he was on the list. NOW we can't kill our Sev!! Ok , so I also started and tried to finish the heelhead scarf but this top turn is just not working out.  I have 1/2 the thing done and it looks cool, but this top...wow, ain't working and I've tried it twice. So what the heck will I do with this?  Frog it back to the increase, make it just a scarf? Try again? Devise my own way to make it into something else? Frog it entirely? Yeah, I don't know. Yep, another distraction...hang on.

I started working on the year end review like 3 hours ago, but I was distracted. First my nephew came over with his family to get eggs, then he got stuck in the driveway. Our 2nd snow of the year has made most of the driveway a skating rink. I've not been outside of my yard in a week. But then again, I'm on vacation,, so. I'll pick a few random photos to share. Dave shaved. Say that 3 times real fast: dave shaved dave shaved dave shaved. Yep, that's our bathroom and me holding up my cell phone to take the pic. Total time it took me to tell him never to shave again? 30 seconds. He looks like this Brother..........the one I don't like. Miss George and I spend a lot of time together. She has the bum leg,, so she would rather just sit and hang with us. She's a great Mom though, and her two daughters are out and about with her all the time. She will not go into the coop for the night without one of her girls with her. You've seen her in the big blue p...

End of Semester was Friday. I'm done working and schooling til the last week in January. With no money coming for that time, the vacation will be low-key.  The odd thing was how this weekend has played out after all that finals stress and stuff. I don't mean to put more pressure on the family, but apparently I do.  Saturday, I woke up all stiff and sore...especially in my back. As the day wore on, more and more of my joints screamed in pain. We were scheduled to meet Dave's parents about 2 hours away from home for a gift exchange. The ride  up and back were painful, but I wasn't going to beg out of this because of my pain. I took 2 ibuprofens and sucked it up. Dad, Dave and Mom As it was, the visit was good and thankfully brief. I got up about 3/4 of the way through and walked around a bit. It helped. A nap later at home helped more. Sunday found me uncommunicative and grumpy. I think that the entire semester of having to be 'on' and chatty with others ...

Yesterday, my chem class was to take a lab quiz. A precursor to next week's lab final, this was to give students a refresher on how to use chemistry to ascertain what chemical is in front of them. Next week, we will be given an unknown liquid and our goal is to use chemistry to figure out what it is. Prof. Dan hammered it into us on the first few weeks that our lab notes will be key to this adventure. "Keep good notes." he said. So I did. We will be able to use them on the final.  As the resident lab rat, I was chilling in the lab prep room before class when Prof. Dan asked if I could prepare a few samples for him. Turns out a camera crew is in for the day taping a promotional video. I prepped the chem experiment: Something that uses an indicator to tell you what's inside...by using a color change. But here we are two hours later and the video team is still there. It's classtime! UGH. So we wait a bit, then we all go in and the video team says, "We will ...

Remember that from last semester? Yeah. What did that job last? A week? HA! I've beaten that with this semesters' work study.  My work entails streaking petri dishes with bacteria, as well as inoculating broths with said bacteria. I also make more media to put into those petri dishes. Yeah, that's more like what I do every working day Each of these tasks is a skill. Yep, a skill I've had to learn and am still learning. Yesterday's mistake was that I should've set the media I just made into the autoclave and ran it through. TOTALLY forgot about it while I was doing other stuff.  But while I'm perfecting these skills, I'm getting $9.00 an hour instead of minimum wage. So the question I always ask about a minimum wage job with minimum wage skills is this: If I can walk into your job and with about 5 minutes of 'training' DO your job, then your skills are worth minimum wage. I don't think that other people could do what I do with 5 minut...