The new contacts arrived last night and the world is once again crisp and clear.

Except--not so much. The computer monitor is still fuzzy. It cleans up when I put on my reading glasses, of course. Worryingly, I don't really remember having this much trouble reading it a week ago.

I guess there's always a possibility they got my prescription wrong, but everything else looks pretty good.

Sigh. I'm going to have to get better-looking reading glasses if I'm going to start having to wear them every time I use the computer at the office. It really sucks to get old. (Okay, I always figured my eyes would be the first to go. I've been wearing glasses since I was in the fourth or fifth grade. But still.)

This morning when I arrived at the office, I was feeling chirpy and cheerful and ready for a leisurely day of doing whatever came up that could be done without actually over-exerting myself. (I have an ugly, suicide-looking scratch on my right wrist and two nasty paper cuts from cardboard boxes on my hands. I want to heal up a bit before I dive back into massive packing duties. On the off chance that I get a job interview in the next week or so, I'd rather not be sporting a dozen band-aids, you know?)

This morning's commute was sunny and bright with roads mostly dry and clean. Traffic was whizzing along at speeds I've rarely seen in the last two months. Now, though, clouds have moved back in and there's a strong (although not particularly cold) wind blowing outside.

Later....

Breakfast (vanilla yogurt. Ugh.) is safely behind me and I had a banana this morning. I'm still hungry, though. (This food update brought to you by the color puce, the number 37, and my current diet.)
I Hate Yarn Interval Approaching!

I was recently dissed by someone because most of my recent entries have been talking about yarn. This person seems to be under the opinion that I maintain (and pay for) this blog for the benefit of whatever readers might wander by and not for my own amusement. This person is incorrect.

You want interesting, educational, and informative? Read something else.

I Hate Yarn Interval Arrives!

I've finished seven scarves (in addition to the two made for the R.C. and the first lame effort foisted off on a friend as a Christmas gift). Three are for friends, four for charity. I need to get by Goodwill one of these days.

When I got to the end of the first one, I just sat there looking at it. I knew there was probably some kind of technique or stitch for finishing off that last row, but I had no idea what it was. Googling was of limited use because I didn't know the name of the technique I was looking for, but eventually I discovered that I needed to "bind off" my last row.

The ugly cream-and-brown thing knitted up into a decent scarf. It's not to my tastes, but if you like those colors, it's nice enough. Very straight stitches, pattern is interesting without being "busy."

The bright red one was a disappointment. It was my first knitting effort and one side went a bit whompus a couple of times. I should have ripped it out and redone it but knitting, unlike crochet, takes forever to redo. The medium blue and gray ones, both crocheted, look very nice.

I started two more last night.

I'm trying that ghastly cream-and-pastel-mess yarn again. I have some size 10 knitting needles and they just might allow me to turn this wad of yuck into a marginally acceptable scarf. If not, maybe a dishmop or a floor scrubber.

I bought some fabuloso variegated (dark blue through light purple) yarn last week. It's almost a bouclé, so a bit tricky to work with, but I loved the colors. It's soft and has a sort of satin-shine to it. I'm working it with size eight needles (I tried it with nines, but it just looked sloppy) and it will either work up to be gorgeous or boring. It's always an adventure!

Got quite a bit done on my latest afghan (medium blue) last night, but now I'm unhappy with it. It really needs to be 6"-8" wider. I'm about half done and before I do any more, I need to decide whether or not I care enough to want to rip it out and begin again. (Sigh. It's three feet long. That's a lot of stitches to redo.) I might have to redo it, though. This yarn is so soft that I need to change the stitch I'm using as well, so it will keep its shape better. (I feel it coming out. I'm going to have to rip it out.)

And I still have the expensive cobalt blue, vivid purple, and matching black skeins I bought at the little yarn store in Boulder a week or so ago. I want to work at least two of those colors into one scarf. I've been experimenting with using more than one color but so far without a lot of success. I had some ideas for doing it that involved keeping multiple skeins of yarn working at a time. One I used for the R.C.'s Christmas Present scarf and it worked reasonably well but it's not an elegant solution. My other ideas haven't worked in practice.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I could Google around and find instructions for how to do it, but that's not nearly as much fun as figuring it out on my own. Or at least trying to figure it out, before I admit defeat.

For instance, my current experimentation gave me some ideas for how I could work two colors of a much lighter weight yarn into one scarf. I'll have to buy some lighter weight yarn now and try it. I have a notion that I could work a darker color into the "bottom" of the crochet stitch and a lighter one into the "top" to give the project a layered look. It looks great in my mind, anyhow.

/End I Hate Yarn

So, what else is up with me right now?

Last night we hit the grocery store after work and I never did get around to searching for my resume. I'm a bit discouraged by my failure to find it so far. I can see it clearly in my mind. It was a draft I'd printed out and handed to the R.C. to turn my lame job descriptions into resume-ese. (I'm not good at self-promotion.) I have an idea that it was in December that I ran across it somewhere and laid it aside to be kept safely. I have the impression it was in the bedroom. So far, I have many things but an actual resume isn't one of them.

A couple of major clients moved closer to signing actual agreements with the company and now Bernie talking about how I'll have to change my mind, stay with the company, and commute to Boulder. (No mention of the $10k salary rise I told him would be a minimum requirement to make me even consider such a thing.)

This week's Ridiculous Task? To learn enough about a primitive version of a software program that Bernie doesn't want to spend the money to upgrade to use it occasionally.

The key turned out to be that while it says it accepts .xls, .dbf, .db, .wk3, etc., files, that apparently only held true for the versions that existed in 1995 or so, when this program was written. As long as I save my new database records down to .csv for MS-DOS, it will recognize them.)

I am so unappreciated in my time. A ten year-old software program. Do you even remember back that far? This is antique software, written in an era when being compatible with Windows 3.1 was important. It was written for a 386 processor with 4 MB of RAM. It has floppies! (I whine at you because I know Bernie will never understand.)

And then I had to write a User Manual for the stupid thing so that whoever gets my job won't have to go through this again.

I wonder if Bernie really appreciates the range of skills I bring to this place?