Afghans

These two afghans I made for myself. The cream colored one is currently my primary bedspread since I don't really need anything heavier at the moment. And if I do need added warmth, I just throw on a couple other blankets, including the whte and multi colored one.

"I see stupid people"

Sadly my part time job is a mecca for prank calls. I’m never sure which I dread more, the men who decide to call us as a free replacement for the 900 numbers or the kids. Either way, we’re not allowed to hang up on the caller and, in the case of the kids, we have to treat the caller as if we’re speaking to an adult. When it comes to the kids, we can usually get them off the phone pretty quickly.

Our ordering system has a form of caller id and the phone number being called from always shows up. When we get a prank call usually reading the number will get the caller to hang up. With the kids it’s kinda funny even. “I show your number as 555-1212” and there’s an “oh crude” type of silence. But that doesn’t always work, so then we resort to asking for a credit card number and that will either get them to hang up right away, or at least pretty quickly.

There’s been several times when I would love to bust the prank calls, but I bite my tongue, and never more so than tonight. I had a boy call and ask for the item being shown, a shirt. I asked him what size he wanted and had to repeat several times the size range it was available in. Reading the phone number didn’t work, he gave me his “number” and asking for the credit card number didn’t work either. Kid just kept asking why it was needed and stating I must want the number pretty badly.

We went around regarding the credit card number a few times and then Kid asks if we ship to Canada. I told him we are not able to ship items to Canada. His next question was “Do you ship to Toronto?” I then informed him Toronto is in Canada so he asked if we ship to the United Kingdom. Upon hearing that we only ship within the United States, Kid says “that doesn’t make sense since the United Kingdom and United States are the same.” Now, I was thinking before this kid needs to pay more attention in school, but when he seemed surprised that Puerto Rico is part of the United States, that confirmed it.

Oy what a week!

Thankfully not the whole week, just part of it. I live in a one bedroom apartment on the 1st floor. The apartment above me is also a one bedroom with 2 adults, 2 children and one on the way. Yeah, so not legal and yes, the owner of the complex has been made aware of this.

Wednesday I was getting ready for work when I hear drip....drip....drip. I go into the bathroom and my ceiling is leaking, along the repair line from last years leak. I put a travel mug under it and call maintenance. Then a leak starts coming down from the fan and I put my garbage can under that. Not five minutes later I have a steady stream from the vent. I put the empty litter container under that one. Within 20 minutes, it looked like this:

Within 45 minutes it was 3/4 full. The apartment above me had water coming up from their toilet and a full tub. It took the plumbers all day to find the clog and fix it. I ended up with, in addition to wet carpet in my bedroom closet:

Lovely isn't it? This morning included a call to animal control. An apartment in the building next to mine has this little dog (cocker spaniel size) that it leaves out on the balconey pretty much all day. In recent months the dog was out all night long and barking, it sounded like "hey let me in" barking. This dog was on the balconey yesterday afternoon when I took Ciera outside. I walked over and looked up at it and if it had stood still long enough I could have counted each rib. The poor dog also had spots of fur missing from it's tail and, if I remember right, it's hindquarters. Hopefully animal control was out today to investigate.

Sorry for depressing anyone. On the bright side, I got my doily from my partner at the Crochetville doily swap. It is very pretty and for some reason I didn't see the apples until this morning. I'm still trying to figure out how I missed them :-)

I have my partners complete, but I won't post pictures until she has received it, just in case :) Everyone have a good weekend, here's hoping for lots of wonderful weather all over!

P.S. I'm apparently having problems with photobucket this evening, the pictures either show up huge, or just show up as the code. So here ya go, direct from my computer!

It's Baseball Season Baby!

I'm a Twins fan, always have been and always will be. I still remember my first game ever. Dad had won tickets to the Renaissance Festival from WCCO and that's where we were going on that bright day. We get into the car and head into Downtown Minneapolis. Now, I'm between 7 and 9 years old, so I thought that was where the Fest was held at. We park and start walking, passing the HHH Metrodome as we go. Mom says why don't we go see if they'll let us look around since you're such a big fan.

So up to the enterance we go and Mom asks the ticket taker if we could go in just to look around. Being equal measures shy and embarassed I hid my face in Mom's belly. The ticket guy says no, sorry he can't allow that. Mom then asks "Not even for these?" I look up and she is holding a beautiful pair of tickets for the game. We went in and had seats on the lower level underneath the old scoreboard. I had cotton candy and watched Kirby and Herby (Kent Hrbek) work their magic. We didn't stay for that entire game and just after we left a ball was hit to our seats. But it was a wonderful first game, the first of many.

Living in Florida I have 1 chance a year to see my boys play in the regular season. Thankfully Tampa has an American League team here so I can have that opportunity. This year is going to be a little strange. Three major players are no longer with the team. Torii Hunter had free agency and I don't think the Twins persued keeping him. He's a wonderful player, bringing to mind the way Kirby used to attack center field, but Torii has had a lot of injuries in recent years. So I can understand why the Twins were happy to let him go on his merry way. The Twins organization is huge on promoting through their farm system so I'm sure there were a few outfielders they've had their eye closely on in the last year or so.

The other two players to leave were pitchers, Carlos Silva and Johann Santana, both through trades. Personally I don't think the loss of Silva is that big of a deal. His pitching hasn't really been steller and has been more, to borrow and twist Randy Jackson's phrase, pitchy. Like some of the Idol singers Silva seemed to have more hit or miss days then days and seemed to lack consistency.

Santana on the other hand is a different story. It seems that by trading him the Twins have weakend their awesome (a few players not withstanding) bullpen. Santana was up for free agency in a year or two, so I have problems understanding why the Twins would get rid of someone who has been consistantly fabulous, amazing, wonderful and all of those adjectives. He was top or near top of the league. He hasn't had any major injuries, if he's been injured in recent times it's been very minor stuff. Yet he's gone.

There are now several open spots with the Twins. The other day while in the gym ESPN was showing the Twins/Yankees Spring Training Game. I got to watch the first inning and when the announcers were going over the Twins batting order, I was surprised to see I only recognized 2 names. Now I know this is a time for young players to try and convince the managers they deserve a spot in the big show, but it was still a little jolting. What was even more so was the interview the announcers had with Derek Jeter of the Yankees regarding their new pitcher. A guy who isn't even 19 years old! I remember how strange it was when I first realized I was older than the new players, but then it was only by a few years. Now it's 10 years! I had an I feel old moment. So here's to America's favorite pastime and GO TWINS!

Happy Saturday Morning

I'm sitting here multitasking as usual. I'm working on the doily for my partner at the Crochetville doily swap. Since I don't have the pattern I'm currently using printed out, I have to sit here at my computer. I'm also scanning through a new blog, CraftyCarolinaGirl, mostly looking at the pictures of some pretty cool stuff. She does several differenty types of crafts and it's pretty cool seeing the different projects she has posted.

J and I watched a new tv show this week, New Amsterdam. I remember seeing the previews for this show (Tuesday was it's series premier) last summer with all the other previews. But I never saw it on the tv schedules for fall. I couldn't remember the name or channel it was supposed to be on, and since I don't have cable I knew it had to be on ABC, NBC, FOX or CW. During the superbowl I saw a commercial for the show and was excited to see it would start on March 4th.

If you haven't seen the show, Amsterdam is the main character, he is about 400 years old and cannot die until he finds his soulmate. I keep thinking of Highlander while watching, but there are differences. For one, the Highlander never had to find his true love. And there were several immortials, as far as I can tell there's only one with New Amsterdam. Amsterdam has apparently done several things during his long life, but is currently a NYPD detective. So each show has him solving a mystery while trying to find his true love, in New York ('cause there's just so few women for him to encounter there alone).

The first episode had him having a heart attack on a subway platform. He's convined his true love was on the platform and was even the doctor who tried to save him. J agrees with him. Me, I think it could have been any of the women he ran past while chasing down a guy to question. It could even be his new partner. After all, there has only been two episodes and previews for next week shows Amsterdam finding and meeting up with the beautiful doctor. That would be too easy for a show this new.

All right, back to doing laundry (since it's so perfectly windy I can let my clothes dry outside today!) and crocheting. I really need to finish the two I'm working on so I can start the next couple, all deadline projects. Oh, and a co-worker (V) is found out Thursday what her first baby is going to be, so another co-worker and I will be coordinating on baby gifts to make once V shares the news with us this coming week. Happy weekend everyone!

Life's Little Pleasures

Sadly I am back to my part time job, I started back last night after roughly a week and a half off. So this evening I am working (no, not one of life's little pleasures), feeling the slight breeze coming in and listening to the rain. The forecast last night called for a cold front to move through and bring rain. This morning was cool, but pleasently so. It stayed pretty consistent through the afternoon and there was a very noticable drop in temperature when I left work this afternoon. And now the rain is here.

Listening to the rain makes me want to get some candles going, put on some soft music, curl up under a blanket in my fabulous chair that's by the door and read. I'm in a chair right now, just not the one I want to be in. And I can read, but I'm busy working a doily for my doily swap partner. Priorities here people, the doily has to be mailed out by the end of the month, and I have other deadlines as well. So finances being what they are and because I'm being responsible, I guess I'll just continue to dream about my book and chair. Unless the power goes out like it's threatening to do right now.

What is your life's little pleasure right now?

I officially do not miss winters!

Hey everyone! J and I got home yesterday from visiting friends in Virginia. I can I definitely do not miss the winter season. Yesterday was nice and I was able to not have my jacket on between the restaurant and the car. Friday was better than Thursday, which was in the 30's and very very windy. J was laughing at me because I was cold, but he had to put a hat on!

We had a very good time. My friends live about 30 miles from downtown DC, so they dropped us off at the metro station Thursday and Friday so we could go play tourist. Thursday we went to the Natural History Museum and the Air and Space Musuem. The Air and Space also had some of the items from the American History Musuem since that building is under renovation. J also got to see the outside of the Library of Congress, plus the lobby area. We got there 15 minutes after they closed, but I can tell you the lobby area is beautiful!

Friday we walked from the metro station to the Washinton Monument, around the Reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial and then back up to the Holocast Museum. We did A LOT of walking those two days! The Holocaust Musuem was the one I wanted to do since it wasn't there when I did the class trip in 8th grade. J calls it depressing, which in a way it is. But it's also very poignant and heartbreaking. The biggest issue I had was there was too much reading, a problem when there are a bunch of people moving through an area. The pictures all had small plaques describing what they were and the only way those could be read was up close. Other than that, the museum was amazingly well done. It's one of the quietest I've ever been in. People didn't feel right speaking in normal tones, so there were a lot of whispers and hushed tones. Most people had rubber soled shoes on and it was very jarring when a couple went through and they were not in rubber soles shoes.

The museum has a lot of actual articles from the victims of the camps, several uniforms and personal objects. There were even actual pieces from some of the ghettos and camps, cobblestones from Warsaw and bunks from Auschwitz just to name a couple. But what really got me was seeing the shoes. People entering the camps had to give up their shoes and one of the displays was just shoe upon shoe upon shoe. It was also heartbreaking to read and hear about how the different countries first responded to the rising problem.

Ok, I'm going to stop depressing everyone. We did have a very good time and are very thankful to our friends for letting us crash on their guest bed. We got an amazing cost for air up to DC, $129 round trip, so going back again won't break the bank! Hopefully we'll have a much better landing the next time we head up there. For once the approach was so bumpy that my stomach felt rocky. And when we landed, we were tilted to the right, the left side tires were not on the ground at the same time as the right. But we made it safely and had a very good short vacation! And pictures can be seen at Photobucket.