Amsev's Miscellanea

A couple of weeks ago I finished a prezzie for my godson's b-day.  It's quite the most complex thing that I have ever crocheted. He's a hard-core hockey player for the league.  Used a cross-stitch software program to create the graph for the blankie.

LOL, just got this pic in an email from a friend...

"WEATHER ALERT THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A NOTICE FOR THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA. SUMMER 2009 HAS BEEN CANCELED. SNOW, WIND AND CONSTANT BLIZZARD CONDITIONS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL NEXT FALL WHEN THE WEATHER WILL MODERATE TO COOL FALL CONDITIONS IN PREPARATION FOR NEXT WINTER.."

Third Blizzard/Winter Storm in two weeks.  Starting to feel like I'm in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow."  Melts a little bit and then another foot comes down a few days later.  Today's debacle counts as a "Winter Storm" rather than a blizzard – not windy enough... yet.

Truly WTF weather.  Tomorrow's blizzard warning:

Issued by The National Weather Service
Rapid City, SD
10:04 am MDT, Sun., Mar. 22, 2009

... BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 12 PM MONDAY TO 6 PM MDT TUESDAY...

A BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 12 PM MONDAY TO 6 PM MDT TUESDAY.

RAIN WILL CHANGE TO HEAVY SNOW LATE MONDAY MORNING AND CONTINUE THROUGH TUESDAY AFTERNOON... WITH ACCUMULATIONS OF 12 TO 18 INCHES. SOME SLEET IS ALSO POSSIBLE LATE MONDAY MORNING AND EARLY MONDAY AFTERNOON. THE COMBINATION OF SNOW AND NORTHWEST WINDS OF 35 TO 50 MPH WILL CREATE WIDESPREAD BLIZZARD CONDITIONS. WIND GUSTS OF 55 TO 65 MPH ARE POSSIBLE.

or, Two Outta Five Ain't Bad?  Thursdays, that is.

Thurs. Jan. 8: my house burns down
Thurs. Jan 15: about 50 of my coworkers, including my immediate supervisor, are laid off
Thurs. Jan 22: I find out that my laid-off, immediate supervisor, who was all of 39 years old, died from a blood clot going into his lungs. This was as much of a shocker as finding out my house was on fire.  We got along well, not superbly as I'm a flaming liberal and he was very conservative, but in spite of that, we could converse and joke intelligently with each other.  And had a decent working relationship for the most part.

Needless to say, I awoke Jan 29th wondering WTF was going to happen next.  Fortunately, nothing happened, other than the total brain-dump training session I had with my laid-off friend Twilla, learning all her job duties, because I'm suddenly the evening "SME" (Subject Matter Expert) for her department, which dealt primarily with document handling scanning, faxing, making sure the huge fax system is running, etc. the entirety of which was laid off -- learn a department and all the software ASAP!.  Ah, such joy.  I now have to do her job as well as my job.  I do admit I have been coasting, with lots of time to do non-work related stuff such as crochet between phone calls (I work at a call center), however, there was no raise involved in suddenly having two sets of duties.

It's a happy coincidence that I'm fascinated by the technology involved in scanning tens of thousands of pages of documentation -- those high-speed scanners are simply effing amazing.

Enuf whinging.  Life is okay/good.  I have a roof over my head (still living with my friends), and I still have my job. Still wrangling with my lawyer and insurance company, but that's looking good so far.

There has been one sighting of an orange tabby on my lot, however, other than that, no sign of the kitties, alas.  I miss them so much.

A goodly percentage of my current crochet projects revolve around small blankets and such, which can be donated to the local Humane Society for their foundlings in memory/for the love of my babies.    If you are so inclined, if you're crafty, make something for your local animal shelter.  I crocheted a 2'x2' blankie big enough for one of the kitty kennels in an afternoon. 

Or the next time you go grocery shopping, pick up something a little extra to donate to your local shelter.  Most pet stuff isn't all that expensive, and, if your local shelter is like our shelter, they will welcome any donations with open arms.

Well, several days out and no sign of the cats yet, however I'm going to keep checking at the pound. Not sure what they would do if they wandered back as the house is no more, just a hole in the ground. 

It's a bit of a blessing in disguise on two levels:  I could have been sleeping when the fire started, in which case, yours truly would no longer be around due to the fumes.   Also, the city condemned the structure mid-fire because it was starting to collapse (and they hauled the whole thing away so I didn't have to try to dig through a burnt wreckage) found out after the fact, the way the foundation (or lack thereof) had been laid, it may have collapsed on its own eventually.  I did have a bit of a scare a few months ago as I was sitting at my computer, and the house went "thunk,"  Not your usual creaking noises of settling house, but a distinct thunk.

The building apparently started out life as a barn back in the early 1900s, so that explains the lack of a real house's foundation.  They had basically stacked rocks and then stuccoed (?) around them for the first floor.  Not even nicely mortared stacks of rocks...

They did manage to save a couple of photo albums, so I still have family pictures.

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by to comment.  Your thoughts, prayers, and comments mean the world to me.

Today my house burned down.  At this time I still have no idea if the cats made it out or not.

Yeah, I'm still in my Dramione rut and looking for a good fic.  I appreciate everyone's suggestions, and I loved the reads.  However, I've been looking for new reads, and all I'm finding are concept fics.  Deeeeeeeep psychological studies.  Anyone have any just plain ol' romance to suggest?  My simple brain needs simple romance.  Thanks in advance for any help.  Preferably of the Post-Hogwarts variety.

Whiiiiiiiine.....

Came home to the gentle sound of rain.  "What?" you may ask in surprise.  "I thought it was sub zero there." 

Well it was raining INSIDE the house.  Effing pipe on the second floor must have frozen and cracked.  Needless to say, it's 10:00 pm here right now.  Turned off the water (always a pleasant experience to go down in the gawdawful cellar in subzero weather to turn off the water main) and am abandoning all hope until tomorrow. 

The damage is done, no hurry to mop shit up.  That and my flashlight died so I couldn't see exactly where the crack was and didn't want to turn on anything electric lest I manage of off myself that way.

Through whining.  Tomorrow is another day.  Off to blithely ignore everything and read some fanfic.

Ganked from valady :


It's effing cold here, -11F with a windchill of -36F (-24C/-38C), and my home is cold, and I'm whining about it cuz the furnace and spaceheater can't quite keep up when it's that cold outside.  Whine, whine, whinity, whine.

So there we all were on a Friday evening, having ordered delivery of Chinese for dinner. Ronda was poking at her highly suspicious Chicken Teriyaki, which we had gradually decided wasn't quite 100% Chicken. Neither was it entirely Teriyaki. I thought the whole mess smelled too funky to eat, but wasn't entirely sure if it was truly nasty or not. My Curry Chicken was just fine, fortunately.

In her digging, she suddenly pulled out a slice of carrot that had to be three inches in diameter and made a comment about WTF huge-ass carrots. I chimed in with, "Yeah, those are food service carrots, you should see them, they're huge. Maximum amount of carrot with minimum amount of taste." I had seen said carrots when I worked in the dorm cafeteria in college, and those buggers are abnormal. I've grown some pretty big carrots in the garden, but food service carrots are truly carrots on steroids. Or something.

In any case, I went googling for a picture of food service carrots to show her. I didn't find a good example, however I did find this little deviation and laughed until my guts hurt. Chance, a coworker who should do phonesex for a living, he's got such a smooth, low voice, added his two cents' worth: "That's where baby carrots come from!"



(These are originally from http://www.lesjones.com/)

In any case, rude jokes about carrots spun out of control until I finally burst out with, "Ya know, sometimes a carrot is just a carrot!"

Speaking of WTF, Chance also found this emoticon that we use on our in-house chat system. Every time I look at it, it cracks me up because it is completely WTF!?!! I hope it runs correctly as it is an animated GIF file, and I don't know where he found it so can't post the original:

Sheer genius, whoever came up with THAT!

Fave Advent Carol:

X-Files (even with the lame last couple of seasons)
Millennium (even with the lame last season)
StarTrek DS9

Even though I never wrote any fic for the last two, I read a lot!!!

LOL, I'm doomed. kingpig sent me the quiz, and here are my results:



And I've four of them! It's a conspiracy!!!

Ganked from ayerf 

Your result for Howard Gardner's Eight Types of Intelligence Test...

Musical

27% Logical, 10% Spatial, 61% Linguistic, 41% Intrapersonal, 6% Interpersonal, 78% Musical, 4% Bodily-Kinesthetic and 8% Naturalistic!

Take Howard Gardner's Eight Types of Intelligence Test at HelloQuizzy

To my United States flisters --

If you have not already done so, do it today: Get Out And Vote

Not sure you want to vote? Give this video a watch on why you should vote.

Snitched from droxy :


How evil are you?
Sigh.  How plebian....

Yep, there can be such a thing as too much spam.  It's all starting to run together.

I was zipping through my email deleting all the garbage out before going back to read the good stuff. Suddenly, one subject line made me pause.  For a moment there, I thought they were advertising chronometers for erectile dysfunction...

...when it actually read "Rolex for pennies..."

Snort!

From hypnobarb1's lj




snort!

Ganked from the journal of rhosymedre47:

Your result for The Classic Dames Test...

Katharine Hepburn

You scored 19% grit, 24% wit, 48% flair, and 19% class!

Take The Classic Dames Test at HelloQuizzy