Windy Day

When it is so windy that signs get blown around and eventually stuck in the tree outside ur office, Don't leave ur windows open after ur lunchtime nap or u'll get this:

A seat full of dirt and leaves.

My whole car is gritty. YUCK.

PS. Happy Birthday Dad!

PPS. Send good thoughts Emily's way as she had her eyes re-lazered a few days ago... um.. was it a week ago? Wow time flies. I've been thinking of her by eating the frozen veggie burgers she left in my freezer last time she visited me. She's such a good sister!

Working Really Hard

Email String between Melanie and Arvid (in chronological order):

Melanie: PJack information as requested.
Arvid: Re-send this after modifying to the taller rails. Thanks.
Melanie: But it doesn’t change the pjack force.
Arvid: Than no-need to re-send.
Melanie: Yup.. just wanted u to know why I was going to ignore ur email.
Arvid: Thanks. Just needed to know since I will re-send Tandra’s and Akiko’s Pjack info to SDI.

Poor Arvid. Someday he'll get to manage nice engineers.

And here's another reason why I will never be paid the big bucks:
Somebody say go!

It was a stalemate so I decided to be nice and let Faraz out of it.

There was no way he could put me down, not on my left hand.

Not that I told him of course. Just everyone else here at work after he went back home to Scotland. :-)

Fair Results

This fair was a bit crazy. I thought I had a whole nuther weekend of crocheting so I ended up just entering a bunch of random stuff.

For example, these animals.

I had made the lion a while ago without a face, so I finished him up and made the elephant the night before I was planning on turning my fair stuff in. With the mix up and drama of turning it all in the next day, I had time to make the pig the next night.

This jacket was what I made during last conference. Yes, that was the jacket with all the button drama. See the top one? Its not the same as the others so I put an S sticker on it so they might think it was on purpose :-)

And here is my Second Best in Class winner with the ubiquitous booties behind it (I think the judges might be tired of seeing my booties every year).Remember last year when I told you the best in class winner was a crocheted toddler jumper? Well, I remembered. This was this years attempt at Best In Class. I'm closer with Second (last year I got Third with my booties) but obviously I have to do something even BETTER next year. I will need ideas cuz this year I didn't get a chance to see what won since I was at work and running a race. As I was walking in to the library to pick up my stuff, a huge plastic canvas Halloween house was walking out with a big Best In Class Ribbon but I think that was in a different class.

Um.. I'm not ribbon obsessed, just very observant.

Now you know.

Now here's a quick question. Do you think this is the front of the dress (where they pinned the ribbon)?Or this?U'd think the buttons up the back would have given it away.

Every year I have this problem with at least one of my items. Those old lady judges have a REALLY hard time with finding the right side of doilies.

Here is the lowest score I've ever gotten (one of the random sewing projects I entered just so I'd have more entries).Mm.. those comments are really informative on how I could do better and get a better score.

And these are the comments I got from the dress. The better the score, the more comments. Doesn't that seem a little backwards?

PS. Here is a very SMALL picture of the front of the Jane Austin era ensemble I turned in (again.. just to get more entries). I'm a little surprised it did better than my quilt cuz I really did a POOR job on the underthings. Hello! no one will see them because they are UNDER things :-). It was my first (and final) attempt last year at creating authentic period clothing.

Now it's Official

I finally got to use my stamp the other day. But first I had to carry it around the whole building
looking for an ink pad.

Chuck couldn't believe my stamp was still so pristine. All it had on it was the remnants of the test ink they used before sending it to me. I was embarrassed to ask Arvid to borrow his stamp pad even though he was the one that told me to stamp it. Akiko and Tandra were excited for me but a little perplexed as to why I didn't just go borrow Arvid's since they both didn't have an ink pad in their drawers. Before I left Tandra told me to be sure to blog about it. Glen mentioned that Pam had stamp pads but then Anil showed me where they were kept in the supply closet. I didn't know when my license expired so Chigdem showed me where to look on the Internet. Jen agreed that I would have to throw away the first atempt since I didn't sign directly over my name. Apparently in Florida you used to sign before stamping since it was a raised seal.

My poor coworkers. Sometimes I bet they just aren't quite sure what to do with me.

Here it is in all it's glory.
I'm now a stamped engineer!

PS. One of my cooworkers was going to fly back to Scotland by way of London thursday night but is now stuck here for what looks like over a week because of that volcano in iceland. Poor Faraz!

Cooking Mayhem

Sunday I finished the book I had been reading nonstop all day (except for church and choir) later in the evening. Of course I was hungry since I hadn't taken time to really fix anything while I read. So I got started.

Saturday night I had gone to the store hungry after work so I had picked up quite a bit of food. First, I started roasting a chicken based on the idea I got from the pioneer woman because the little chickens were on sale at Smiths.
Then, I had bought some cabbage to try out a pork and cabbage dumpling soup I'd seen featured on the Pioneer Woman's Tasty Kitchen so I started water to boil the cabbage leaves and mixed the meat (I might have added carrots AND onions to my sausage instead of pork... I like sausage!) to make the dumplings.

Next time I won't spend the time to make the dumplings.. I'll just add the sausage and cabbage and lime juice (with any other vegetables I feel like.. like celery!) and call that it. Those dumb chives kept breaking!

Of course I knew I wouldn't use up all the sausage and cabbage so I started the dough for peroskies (I learned today that peroskie is the correct word for them, not Runsa. The drafter lady originally from the Ukraine told me so).

There is the finished soup and my roasted chicken (it was prettier in person).

And the peroskies cooling with the chicken carcass boiling away on the stove at 10pm.
What is wrong with me? Apparently I've never learned MODERATION in all things yet.

So.. if anyone is hungry, they can come raid my freezer. I've got LOTS of food.

PS. To top it all off, because this project is supposedly winding down at work (WHY OH WHY not for ME?) people brought in from other offices around the country are going back and we are taking them out. Yesterday we went out for lunch (whose leftovers has/will feed me for two meals) and today we went out again (whose leftovers fed me for another meal). Good thing I only had to pay for one of those.

PPS. This is a picture I took in February when I used the new dish Jared and Amy gave me for Christmas to make apple crisp when the apples were so cheap. I wanted to show them I love my new backing dish and can't wait to use it in my toaster oven! Perhaps it will help me learn portioning :-).

The Half Marathon Runner

Emily is miffed at me cuz I didn't tell her until last night that I was running a 1/2 marathon this morning.

I'm at work right now and have been here late all week. I didn't want anyone to feel obligated to come since I wouldn't be much fun with all the work I need to do. And watching long runs are pretty boring.

So yes, I ran 13.2 miles this morning after all of 7 weeks of training. I wasn't getting out swimming or biking (too much effort apparently), I needed a goal for my exercising, and this was a pretty low-key race so I chose it. Melissa, her mother, and her sister all did it last year and told me it was really nice.

They also told me there was the big hill, but it wasn't that bad and the area was beautiful.

I chose to ignore the "big hill" part of that sentence and focus on the "wasn't that bad".

Every hill we went up (it was an out and back) I thought to myself that maybe this is the hill they were talking about.... then the road went DOWN into the valley and I knew the truth of the BIG hill.

I bet it was more than 12% grade.

Yes, I walked back up it. When the going gets tough, the Melanie slows down. This is why I can recover quickly after my events... I don't actually ever push myself.

My original time goal was 2:30 but after trying a "long run" (just over 7 miles) one Saturday my goal changed to "I hope I can finish", although I was hoping for under 3 hrs. I did it in about 2:43! Pretty proud of myself.

Now I am dead tired (I never sleep when I'm nervous/excited) and pretty sore (I need new running shoes but didn't want to get them right before the race), but I have a medal and that's all I care about right now.

Go me!

PS. They only had 3 porta pottys there at the beginning for ALL the runners. I didn't want to wait in line for 30 minutes since the race started in 20 minutes so I figured I'd go out on the course (this race included a full marathon, 50 miles, and 100 miles so they had porta pottys out there for them) but unfortunately everyone else had that idea too. I kept telling myself I'd stop at the next one since there was always a line... even at the end. Boy was I ever glad to get home I can tell you!
PPS. It started out SO COLD and then got hot and windy. For the last couple miles I could barely hear my book on tape. Dumb changing weather.
PPPS. I don't have any pictures, but I'll post something once the race puts some up.

A Simple Target

What does a pile of rubber bands,

And a home(work)made target

Placed on the wall across from my desk

mean?

It means Melanie is going crazy at work.

Conference

I LOVE conference. No stress, no responsibilities. Just sit and be fed. I totally understand why people pay clergy to preach to them. Nothing is required of them on Sunday!

I think I might have mentioned that before. I'm afraid the people at work might think I am a bit fanatical. Everyone heard how excited I was for it. Arvid asked if it was boring.. and hadn't I already heard it all before? No! and ... we all need to be reminded.

I did go to work yesterday after conference but just for a couple of hours last night. Mostly because I felt bad that Arvid, Akiko, and Tandra were all there during the day. I have such a high opinion of myself that I think I can get everything done next week although I know it will all be late nights.

This is my conference watching set up.... cleaned up a bit for the picture :-)

I took the used bowls and glasses of juice off of the piano bench and back into the kitchen. See all my crocheting needs on the piano bench with my notebook and remote controls? And then the yarn and stuffing (I was making a last minute elephant and pig Friday night for the fair). Don't forget the basket of Easter candy there under the bench!

Oops.. it suddenly got all quiet on the streaming video I have going here on the computer. Ah.. the prophet came in. I better go downstairs for the last session. I'll be so sad when it's over.