Job!

I have excellent, excellent news!

I had simultaneous job offers from an ad agency and a software company's creative services department. I loved the agency. But I went with the software company. Both because the offer was fantastic and the location couldn't be more perfect, and because the agency was a little flaky. And don't get me wrong, I totally get being all loose and nontraditional and stuff, but when it comes to making a job offer, I'd like to see something a little more grounded than just "we'd love to hire you! Let me know what the other company says..." and then ignoring my emails.

I'm super excited. The office is located in a historic district and overlooks a little cobblestone street of shops and restaurants. The building has hardwood floors, wide-open windows, gorgeous fixtures. I felt creative just breathing in there.

I also have a backlog of some really cool yarn to put up in the shop, and now that it looks like my start date will be somewhere around Nov. 8, I'll be able to focus some energy on that.

Last chance

Don't miss 20% off savings in my shop! The sale ends tonight.

I couldn't be more content as I type this, because napping on my lap is this little baby sweetie:



Her name is Starbuck.

Gertrude, who is not yet a Battlestar Galactica fan, keeps asking what she can call the kitty.

"Starbuck," says Gary. "That's her name."

"Can I call her Ruby?" says Gert.

"No. You can call her Starbuck."

"I think I'll call her Hopscotch," says Gert.

"Um, that's not her name either."

I think she's having a hard time not being the one who named the small furry things in the house.

Matilda, on the other hand, who is ordinarily completely indifferent to the animals (because they're not her boyfriend. She's indifferent to everything that's not her boyfriend) is head over heels in love with the kitten. It's really sweet.

Mmm. Kitty love!

What to do with this?

Gert just announced that she'd tried to hack a classmate's online reading assessment account. She knew his user name, so she tried a few times to figure out his password. She bailed on the attempt when the system alerted her that it was going to notify her teacher that "he" was having difficulty logging in.

She just wanted to take a few reading tests for him to boost his overall score.

At least her little hacker heart is in the right place.

20 Percent Off, right now

This is just between us, okay? I've figured out how to run a sale in my artfire shop and everything is freaking 20% off until Oct. 15! (I'm just kidding. I'm promoting the hell out of it.)

But here's what really is a thing just for my blogger peeps. If you put a note in your order that you heard about the sale on the blog, I'll throw in a free gift. Because I love you and I want you back. ;-)

Cold

It's a fingerless gloves day. Fall reminds me of how much I don't love winter. Sorry. When one has to sit on one's hands just to get the feeling back into one's fingers, that is not a good time.

So I have this yarn that I just unraveled and it has multiple plies per strand that aren't really twisted together. That's how a lot of machine yarns are, they just grab the right number of plies needed to make gauge for the garment and then feed them into the knitting machine. The yarn is still fine for hand knitting, it's just more prone to splits.

I'm considering spinning it by hand to give it a better look and knittability. But that would add time invested, which would raise the price per yard, and it's hard to say if that would pay off.

On the other hand, it would be fun. And if this whole venture fails, it's not like I'm going to let all this yarn go to waste.

I'm so entertained by technology

Is anyone still reading??? It's been so long! Anyway, I'm so happy to be back. It feels like coming back home after a long vacation and everything is weirdly familiar even though nothing is quite where you thought you left it and it has a funky smell to it (which I'm just going to go ahead and blame on the cat).

Check out the fun widget over on the right! It's not only a link to my new artfire shop, you can also (supposedly) buy things just by clicking the little shopping carts. I haven't tested it, but I'm so impressed with it.

I'm entering Month Two since The Firing. You know that "At Will" clause written into everyone's employment contract that everyone knows about but no one really takes seriously because every decent company has a sane policy for hiring and firing employees? And even though a company says they can fire you without any warning or cause no one really believes it because there are procedures in place to protect us from that sort of insanity?

Not if you work for a crazy person.

I'm not going to say anything more about it, except this:

The Sunday before that Tuesday afternoon, when I took Cally to the pool with my laptop so I could get in a few more hours of overtime on the vet bookguide and the Herlihy brochure, Cally was standing in the 4-foot water waving at me to get my attention. I barely glanced up from the screen.

"Mom, watch!" she shouted. "Watch me do flips!"

"I'm watching!" I called, briefly looking up. As soon as she went underwater, I went right back to writing. I didn't see her flip.

And my efforts that weekend all went into a black hole of nothingness, because on Tuesday afternoon, after putting the finishing touches on that brochure, I stepped into a "meeting" to be told I was being terminated.

I want my Sunday back.

The blog is alive!

It's back! Oh blog, I've missed you.

A couple of 2010 predictions

Here's a baby step back into blogging. Everyone's making resolutions or predictions for the coming year. I actually have a few things could say about 2010 that are bound to come true.

1. I will turn 35.
2. I will not finish a single book, but I will start several.
3. I will reach some sort of career-altering breaking point.
4. I will make a great deal of progress toward that elusive inner peace thing.
5. I will promise myself that this is the year I’ll finally take down the ugly wallpaper, of course I’ll never actually do it.