Wednesday randoms

After lots of cat cuddling and talking with both Erich and my original manager at work (who seems to be having similar issues to mine), I'm feeling a bit better. Between their support and the emails and comments I received from you all, I really do feel better. Thank you to everyone who gave advice-- on a variety of the issues. :)

I really do try to not spew forth vitrol about situations, but every once in a while I just hit that wall, and last week was most definitely one of them. *sigh*

Anyway... here are the things circling my brain today...

Wedding: The more I think about it, the more I really, really want to pursue Mount Hope Farm. It just feels right. But before that really goes forward, I'd like Erich to see it-- so we're going to see about arranging a quick look-see next weekend (in early August) for him, and then when Mom comes up, go forward with booking. While both Erich and I were easy going about having any day of the week for the wedding... my mom said on Monday that she really wanted to keep it on a Saturday. In the spirit of "pick your battles," that's fine. If she's willing to drop $1,000 more just because it's the most popular day, I'll go with it.

And I already have a caterer in mind, who comes with good reviews from a couple of co-workers who have been to events they've done, plus the event planner at Mount Hope Farm.

So as of right now, if everything works out right... we're shooting for September 2007 with an old-fashioned New England clam bake.

Bugs: Aside from the REALLY FRIGGIN HUGE Junebug that scared the crap out of me at Park Street station last night (dude... any three inch long bug that lands and then crawls on my shoulder is going to result in a very big EEP! and freak-out flailing from me), our bug problem seems to be quieting down. With the cat food removed from the kitchen floor, the ants have disappeared in the kitchen. I'm well aware that it takes very little to entice them back (having dealt with the aggressive ants in California at my mom's former houses), so we're going forward with the scrubbing & spraying/baiting with taro plans for the weekend. Once everything's set in the kitchen, I'll be doing the cat dishes/plates in water trick for the summer and early fall, and see how things go. I imagine that Noby will ensure that there are wet paw prints on everything once that water's down... but hey, it's better than the ants. :)

Elly has also ensured that our house remains flying bug free, being the Mighty Huntress that catches (and of course immediately eats) anything that manages to fly in when we open the screen door. We've watched her stalk the house, staring at the ceiling a few times.

Illness: Finally starting to feel better, although I think there's something coming out of the air vents at work that is causing me to cough more. It only seems to really affect me at my desk. Last night, after one of those "settle down" coughing fits, I finally got about 5.5 hours of solid sleep... almost my normal nighttime average. I felt surprisingly rested this morning when I woke up.

Journals: All but one of my journals for the 1001 Journals Project are now enroute to the first person on the list. The last one will go out Friday. I'm psyched to see what happens with them!

Stitching: Due to being sick, I really wasn't able to stitch as I'd hoped this past weekend or much so far this week. I just didn't have the focus to read the patterns. :( Last night I managed to get about an hour done on Apache, but an hour equalled perhaps 30-40 stitches because I started to cough a lot. I'm hoping that I can plunk down tonight and tomorrow (backstitching slot) and really push Apache forward. If I keep moving, I'll get all of the cross-stitching done plus perhaps a bit of backstitching done on the left border of the piece.

I'm also trying to decide which of my Teresa Wentzler pieces I'm going to put into the UFO ("Unfinished Objects") Round Robin that starts in September... or if I should reconsider and find something else. As I mentioned a couple entries ago... I'm leaning toward Magical Night. I also have Millennium, Floral Bellpull, Fantasy Triptych and Noah's Ark that I *could* send. Magical Night is probably the most straight-forward design (other than Floral Bellpull). It is quarter-stitch and backstitch heavy, but no over-one stitching. Due to all of the over-one (and really predominantly over-one), Noah's Ark may not be a good choice, even though it is otherwise probably the easiest TW piece I have sitting around. Millennium has a mix of over-one and standard stitching to do, and would probably be a good piece to move along. I'm going to alter the wording at the bottom, though... but haven't decided what I want it to say. Floral Bellpull would be fine to send, but with all of the fantasy TW stitching I'm interested in, I thinking that the bellpull would be a nice change for my own stitching... but still might be a good one to consider sending. Fantasy Triptych is absolutely impractical, due to the weight of the thread with the kit-- with everything in a large ziplock bag, it literally weighs more than Elly does. I'm not going to ask people to spend the money to send 6+ pounds of stitching materials around the world.

So right now, I'm deciding between Magical Night, Millennium, and Floral Bellpull. I'm still thinking Magical Night is the most practical to send. Of course... with over a month still to go before sending it out into the world, who knows. I'll probably change my mind four more times. :)

But yeah... I'm feeling better, and working on being myself again... :)