26 posts from March 2007

This past week was a sort of "when worlds collide" type of week. Aside from the work load it was also a strange week, with odd people popping into my life and small strange occurrences.

The nadir was Wednesday, when something happened that just made me plain angry. I very rarely get mad over anything, but I was having a hard time shaking this. And I couldn't afford to be in a bad head space because that evening I had to speak at a professional event. I wound up leaving work a bit early and went and sat for 30 minutes in a beautiful waterfront park adjacent to the event venue. It was seriously the best 30 minutes of the week!

I am still working [working as in night and day] my way through this week.

This morning I had a client meeting first thing, and when I arrived I took the opportunity to visit the restroom. Which happened to coincide with my phone somehow dialing Drake, who, well, had no problem figuring out where I was (complete with flushing sounds, hand-washing, etc.).

I have NO idea how my phone dialed - I have a key-lock enabled that prevents any keys from activating unless I explicitly take my phone out and unlock the keyboard. Thank heaven the phone dialed Drake and not someone else on my contact list.

I discovered the phone was on a call when pulled my phone out to double-checked that the ringer was turned off. How my phone turned itself on and dialed is a mystery. Very weird.

Drake suggested this is exactly what I need this week to TAKE FULL CONTROL.

I am otherwise lacking almost ANY control this week... nearly buried under at work.

But with the Magnatrac (TM) I will  "Conquer 1,0001 'impossible' jobs!"

Think of the impression I would make rolling up in this baby!

Pattern: Loosely based this free pattern from Blue Sky Alpaca. I did not use the herringbone stitch pattern - it was just too much of a pain to execute. So I switched to a K2 P2 "checkerboard" pattern.

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpaca Brushed Suri in Pink Lemonade (67% baby suri alpaca, 22% merino, 11% bamboo)

Dimensions: 33"L x 6"W, with a 2.5" keyhole
Needles: Size 6

Start Date: December 27, 2006
End Date: March 5, 2007

What worked well:
This only took one skein and knitted up very fast. I hadn't worked with a brushed yarn before and it took a bit to get the feel of picking up the stitches. In working the ends around the keyhole opening, I did some whip-stitching around the keyhole to reinforce it. This yarn is so soft and cozy - the scarf feels great around my neck.

What I would do differently:
Really, can't think of anything here. I'm happy with how it turned out and this basic pattern I think would be great for gifts with any sort of brushed yarn.

Talked to my Dad this morning and he said he's got less pain now from the fractured ribs, and the (unrelated) difficulty he was having swallowing has improved as well. Really, he sounded good, stronger than earlier in the week.

He said he now has an enormous pitch-black bruise on his torso -- I can only imagine.

So, I think things are stable for now.

I'm likely traveling to the east coast in April, so I'm planning a stop-off in Chicago for sure assuming the business trip goes as planned.

Here's another photo from 1958. This looks like it was taken in the summer, which would have made me about 6 months old here.

The other issue that has been looming this week was Drake's appointment today with his oncologist (he was diagnosed with Stage IV small lymphocytic lymphoma in 2004 and had five months of chemotherapy [Fludarabine] combined with immunotherapy [Rituxan]).

He is still solidly in remission, with no detectable cancer cells in his blood. He's been feeling great, so there was no reason to believe the cancer had recurred, but it's still nice to have the lab confirmation of that. At this point, they don't need to see him for another year, unless he begins having some symptoms of recurrence.

The only thing slightly marring his good report card is that his immunoglobulins are still very low, which is a side-effect of the Fludarabine; it means he has a weakened immune system. Normally, immunoglobulins rebound a year or two after treatment; his clearly are not. At this point, it's likely that they won't rebound. But, so far he's had zero problems with infections, so there has been no practical impact of this (other than if he does get sick, we need to call them).

But, overall it is fantastic news.

Last night, I did the first of two speaking events I'm doing this month. This one was the "bigger one" in that I was the only speaker for the event (a professional society meeting) and it was on a topic that hadn't spoken on previously (a method of task analysis I developed for our consulting work). I was very curious about how it would all go, and the types of questions people would ask.

It turned out to be a great forum for my "first time out" with this topic. I encouraged people at the start of the presentation to ask questions along the way and they did. Then there was a good Q&A session afterwards. As a result, I've got some good ideas on additional elements to include in the presentation.

Next week will be easier since it's a shorter presentation and there are two other speakers. So I feel like I'm over a hump.

He's doing OK, but has two broken ribs. He somehow caught his foot in a cord and fell against a TV stand.

I just found this out via my brother; I haven't been able to get a hold of my Dad directly, but he's not in the hospital right now, he's at home -- so that's a plus.

But damn, everything had been going so smoothly.

Update: I talked to my Dad and he sounded OK. He really didn't want to go into the hospital and so they wound up not admitting him. He's taking Percoset every 4 hours to manage the pain. He's been doing his best to breath as fully as possible, get up out of bed -- the concern at this point is pneumonia settling in to his lungs. There really isn't much they can do for broken ribs; the healing time and pain is extended by the necessity to breath, which keeps a certain amount of constant stress on the ribs.

The timing is really awful on this, just as he was gaining back some strength. All things considered, he sounded pretty matter-of-fact about the situation, but I am sure it's extremely frustrating.

There is something about sunflowers that just makes me smile. Our grocery had a huge display of them yesterday so of course I picked a bunch up. The tulips were pretty too, but the sunflowers were gorgeous. 

The beef is what we were missing last night. Drake's home-corned beef that is.

This year, the kitchen appliance-replacement project disrupted getting the beef started the required ~4 weeks ahead of time.

And so we got a nitrate-free corned beef from Whole Foods. Drake even talked to the actual person at Whole Foods who did their corned beefs this year.

But, the Whole Foods corned beef was just blah.

[We don't shop much at Whole Foods, but when I do go I always feel some cognitive dissonance between the pricey, over-the-top feel of the place and their supposed progressive/environmental mission.]

We still had a nice time visiting with friends. The Whiskey Bread Pudding turned out great. It was from Cooking Light and I am normally dubious about "light" versions of desserts but after a beef-laden dinner I didn't want to serve a calorie-bomb dessert.

Today, however, I am heads-down working on my presentations for this week and next.