12.23.2007

Enjoying My Long Weekend

I just accidentally marked everything in my Google Reader as read, and I know I had 100+ new items in there. So I'm taking that as a sign that I need to stop reading blogs and start updating my own, and then get my butt back to stitching.

I've been watching Season 1 of "My Name is Earl", can't you tell? (Because on that show everything happens for a fairly obvious reason - as a punishment or reward from Karma). Got it out of the library Friday and I'm breezing through it. There's 24 20-minute episodes, basically 8 hours. It will be going back tomorrow. Luckily I found Tammy's blog, she has some good reading recommendations that'll keep me busy, starting with a new author for me, Tess Gerritsen, and a new book from Faye Kellerman that I hadn't heard about but will go comb the library for. Or possibly purchase myself.

I love Faye Kellerman's books, I think it's great that she has Orthodox Jewish characters and actually knows what she's talking about. There aren't enough *real* Jewish characters in popular fiction. In my own life I know so many different types of Orthodox Jews, and it's sad that people don't get to see that that variety exists. The only kind of Jews I see on TV are either secular, cultural Jews who don't practice anything or completely stereotyped charedi men (and that's not even Orthodox!).

I'm sure it's the same for other religions, The Media is not good at accurately portraying anything.

I'm gonna move on before this turns into a rant.

Ok, so a recap of last week... Friday the Fun Committee, aka MZ, JC and me, threw my department's *holiday party*. The Fun Committee mandate is to have some sort of *fun* event for our department (15-20 people) about once a month. We don't have a budget, so we are to charge people as little money as possible while still doing something fun. So field trips, nice restaurants, and paintball are out. We usually stick to board games, barbeques and pizza lunches.

Anyways, for December we usually do a holiday party. I obviously don't celebrate Christmas and I don't think it's appropriate to throw a Chanukah party for my 80% non-Jewish coworkers (3/15 of us are Jewish, and A. is pan-religious so I don't know, that might include Jewish), so it's a whatever-holiday-you-like party.

This year we went with a Festivus theme, JC's idea so he got stuck on the committee. MZ is new to our dept. and she really came through with presentation skills, powerpoint prowess and a Festivus pole. We had a cleaned-up-for-the-workplace airing of grievances which turned out hilarious. The feats of strength were pictionary, a bakeoff and a pushup contest, which turned hairy. Most people are good sports, and this is a dorky Fun Committee event, but I/we forgot that one guy in our dept is SUPER competitive and hates to lose. Apparently, "do as many pushups as you can in 60 seconds" is subject to interpretation (who knew?), and he wasn't letting it go. We should've stated the rules clearly before the contest began so that there'd be no confusion - but that part of the event was slightly hijacked by the head of the department... and next time I know not to let that stop me. It was slightly terrible. 15 people arguing about who was the *real* winner, and what to do to fix it... it wasn't pretty. JC had participated in the contest, so after way too much discussion (like 10 minutes) MZ and I conferenced... we told the guys that they could rematch at a later date to be absolutely fair since this contest was kinda screwed up), but that as the people running the even we were declaring so-and-so (not the guy who confused the rules) to be the winner. We needed to move on, and they just continued the debate after the party.

After the Feats of Strength we did our holiday gift exchange. No drama, thank goodness, and everyone remembered to bring a gift. I ended up giving my exchangee a gift card to Best Buy and a ginormous book of Sudokus. I didn't realize, since I got the book for a dollar at AC Moore, but the list price was $10, so it turned out to be a pretty good deal for him. He said he liked it, so that's what matters right? I still don't know who my gift is from, but it's a basket of Vanilla Caramel scented skincare products. I don't really use skincare other than the standard cleansers and a moisturizer for my hands, but since I work with beauty products, including skincare, maybe it's time I started using? We'll see.

I spoke to JF Friday afternoon, she was spending Saturday in my town with her boyfriend (who's from my town) and wanted to know if I'd hang out with them after Shabbat. I like her bf and love her, so of course! Well last night I checked my vm and she has broken up with her bf but was coming out anyways to go to Old Bethpage's Candlelight Evenings. That was a surprise! On the 30 minute drive I got the whole story out of her, and it was ok, they just weren't right for each other. OBVR was closed (which isn't mentioned on the website, GRR) so we turned around and came back to town, where we met Sh. for pizza dinner. It was exactly what JF needed - girls' night. Sh and I both know & like the ex so it was a good girls night: no bashing, just therapy :-)

Today Sh and I went to Lazy Daisy Stitchery. As soon as I picked her up Sh made it clear she was just along for the ride and had no time or interest in cross stitching. That's ok though, I can probably get her back into knititng :-) But while we were there Diana gave her a demonstration of punchneedle that was *this* close to hooking her... I think if I brought her back we could talk her into taking it up.

Diana & I have 2 running questions that I ask every time I stop in. First is, how's the website coming? I don't know who she's got doing hers, but it has been a WIP since June and there's nothing to show for it. And the current website has incorrect hours listed - she's open late Thursdays. I really hope she gets the site up soon, the internet is such an important tool these days! But anyways. Our second running joke started later, in October. I was looking for a design to stitch Mary Kathryn for the Fair Square exchange and I found Wish on the Shepherd's Bush website. Since it wasn't in stock I ended up stitching her Thankful, which is from the same *line*, but Diana ordered Wish for me from Shepherd's Bush. She ordered it in early October and just got it in this week. So now that one impossible task has happened, I'm hoping it means good things for her website too!

Other acquisitions today include:
  • A color I was missing for Princess & the Pea's bedspread, which I will stitch ASAP and show you once Jennifer posts a promised pic of her progress on P&tP. (Hehe, look at me buying myself some time :-)
  • Threads for Winter Symphony, a pretty LHN design from the new issue of JCS. How did I miss that there were Crescent Colors threads involved when buying those charts? Lol.
  • Spiced Tea threadpack from LHN. I'm a huge tea drinker, so those 3 packs are a must for me. Of course I read thread pack and thought kit, so I need to go back for the fabric. But I have plenty to stitch before Spiced Tea anyway so this is Karma working for my own good, lol.
  • 3 Caron Watercolors threads for... something.
I had chinese food for lunch and went to see National Treasure with C this afternoon, so I don't know what I'm going to do for christmas or erev christmas! If for whatever reason you don't do christmas either and find that you also have a lot of free time to kill on the 24th and 25th of December, drop me an email! I might go to a Matzah Ball with C (this is an example) but otherwise I'll be around. And probably stitching.

Happy christmas if you're of that persuasion!

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Well, I did take the pictures, so now they're on the camera (along wiht all the pictures from the family Christmas) but I can't get motivated to get them from the camera onto the computer. After having been away from my computer and our cable internet, it's a lot of catching up to do! LOL

Also, I'm super competitve as well, but I also smart enough to know you just don't behave like a horse's ass at a work function. Sometimes you have to set your ego aside and act like a decent human being (and a good sport!)