End of the Month

Happy New Year!

So good thing we bought a service contract for my instrument, because it's big bad broken. The technician spent four hours yesterday and four today and it still is broken and he has no idea what's wrong.

Yeah. Happy New Year.

Christmas Fun

So, it's been a while since I've written. It just seems like nothing is really happening worth mentioning. But, then I sit down to think about it, and that's not really true. I just don't know how interesting anyone else would find it!

So...we're going to Mim's for Christmas. Scott has to work Christmas Eve, but only until about noon, so after we will go down to her house. We will have Christmas Eve cheeseburgers as per tradition, and then we'll probably play games and stay up late and just have a blast hanging out with each other. Scott and I got awesome presents for Em and Jorg and Mim and we're just so excited for it all to come together!

So, big news! Not really. My instrument is acting screwy again. Yes, AGAIN. And, of course, my tech is on vacation this upcoming week...haha. I'm going to try to reprogram the darn thing on Monday, but we'll see if that actually works. But, I only have to work Monday and Tuesday this week, and then I get five days! Woo!

We had our company Christmas party on Friday, and I won a basket with all sorts of candy and goodies, and so I have eaten SO healthily this weekend...heh.

Here is a cute picture of Buster sticking his head out of the window:

It's been snowing! Finally! I've had to shovel four times, and it's still snowing, so I'll probably shovel again tomorrow! I know it's work, but I just love shoveling!

And Scott got me Jewel's and Sarah McLachlan's Christmas albums. Happy day!

Thanksgiving

We went to Scott's family's house for Thanksgiving dinner. I like traditional Thanksgiving food.
This was NOT traditional.

I almost threw up.

But, we went down to Mim's, and on Friday we had turkey and mashed potatoes and fruit salad and cranberry sauce and rolls, etc. All well done. As in, not nasty and definitely cooked all the way through.

And that's enough of that.

Buster is getting used to our routine here. We're making progress training him and he's just a really sweet dog.

At work I have free time while things are running and I can't just leave the instrument because every time I do, it decides to quit on me. So, no leaving. So, I brought crochet: I found some cashmere blend, blush colored thread on eBay (I LOVE eBay). It looks more white here, but it's a pretty shade of pink, I promise. Here it is so far:
I want to lose weight. I bought Slim-Fast at the store today and so we'll see if that helps. I'm tired of not fitting into pretty clothes. I hate that they don't make pretty bras my size (unless you go to Lane Bryant, in which case you might just have to sell a kidney to afford one). Mostly, I hate that I hate looking in the mirror. I'm really pretty when I'm skinny...I just haven't been skinny in a long time, so I'm having a really hard time with the self-esteem thing right about now. I ate salad for dinner.

New Things!

We got several new things! I got a zune! A pink one! See?

We got a dog! His name is Buster, and he's a Briard mix. See?

I gave Mim her sweater and took some good pictures of the details and the sweater on her. See?

Thanksgiving! We're spending it with Scott's family, and then when we're done there we're going to go down to Mim's and spend the rest of the weekend there. Hopefully the allergies won't be too bad and Scott will be able to stay. We're planning on having a Stargate marathon! Mim was nice enough to switch her Thanksgiving dinner from Thursday to Friday so we can have two Thanksgiving dinners! Hooray for Turkey :)

Cashmere

I want cashmere. Yarn, that is. Fingering weight...I want to make a sweater. The sweater I made Mim turned out so well that I want to make myself one. I'll post pics of Mim's later.
The problem is, cashmere yarn is so ridiculously expensive, and it comes in 50 g balls, so it would take like, 20 to make the darn thing, and cashmere can cost anywhere from $5 to $15 per skein. So, at least, $100 to make it. Dumb. I've been stalking all the yarn stores online to see if something comes on sale. I found this one website, mypollywogs.com, that sells yarn on spools, which is perfect because there are fewer ends to tie and weave in. Anyway, I went to buy something from them for a great price, but they were out of stock. So, I e-mailed them back and asked about another product, but I guess the lady that works there had a death in the family so she said she would get back to me next week or something, so hopefully the other stuff I want will be in stock and I'll be able to make a sweater!

This past weekend I went down to see my family. Friday night Mim and I went shopping. We found a comforter set with sheets and pillowcases, the works. I bought it for her for an early Christmas present, but when we got it home and tried it on the bed it didn't fit, so we had to return it the next day. Too bad...it was really pretty. Anyway, after we went shopping we went to Red Lobster for dinner. Mim had never been there, and she really liked it, and I tried lobster for the first time, and I liked it, but I still like crab better. Saturday I woke up early because my body is on a schedule now (boo, I can't sleep in if I try) and took a bath in Mim's giant tub and it was so relaxing...I've been a little stressed lately with things being broken at work. After that, I was able to fall back asleep for a few hours.

Saturday the plan had been for me and Em and Jorg to go to lunch together, and then we would come home and Mim and I would run errands. But Em and Jorg wanted to come with us, so we all went to Provo together and we went to Pizza Factory for lunch. Bad idea. The one by Mim's house is great, the one by my house is great, but this one was awful! Bad food, bad service. Never going there again. Anyway, then we went to run our errands and Em and Jorg complained the whole time...grrr. They had asked to come along. Anyway. We went to Kohl's to return that comforter set, and they wouldn't put it back on my card. They said either store credit or cash, and I said I didn't want store credit, and the salesgirl got this look on her face like, I don't want to be here and I don't want to help you. Anyway.

Then we went to a specialty yarn shop in Provo, looking for yarn for aforementioned sweater. These old ladies were running it. I looked around, and then I asked if they had any cone yarn and they argued with me about why I wanted cone yarn and I explained that I hate weaving in ends and then she tried to tell me she could teach me to tie off ends and weave them in, like I wouldn't know. She saw me, 22, and thought well she's not 80 years old so she must not know anything about anything. Gr. I'm not stupid, people, and I can crochet better than 99 percent of crocheters out there. So there.

I stayed at Mim's until Sunday evening, and I was so tired when I got home that I went to bed almost right away.

Monday I went in to work and my first e-mail of the day was from Richard: I'm coming to fix your instrument today! Woohoo! Now here's the funny thing: it took him all of five minutes to fix it. I was so mad. It isn't something I could have fixed or I would have felt so horrible. It turns out that the tension was off between the contact cones and between the two halves of the magnet. He said what probably happened was the last time it was calibrated, the contact cones were on wrong and so when they were on right, like now, the instrument thought it was wrong.

Either way, it's fixed! So I'm back on schedule, back into my rhythm. It makes me feel so much better. I'm a creature of habit, and when things get different, I get stressed, even if there's nothing making me work harder, even if nothing's hard. I just feel all out of sync I guess. So I'm feeling better, more relaxed. I got a good night's sleep last night. That might be because of the benadryl though. Being at Mim's is great, but she has so many animals, so for a few days after I get home from there I have to take antihistamines and decongestants or I'm miserable. So, I took a half dose of benadryl last night and it helped a lot.

There were only two samples today, so I thought I was going to be out by 12:30 at the latest, but then another lab called with the results from all our retests, and everything was way high and didn't look right, so I had to re-prep everything since last Tuesday and run them, so I was there until 1:30. Still not bad.

I came home, bought lunch and some new fish, and took a nap after I picked Scott up. Scott then went to Naomi's to fix her computer, and even though he couldn't fix it, she slipped him a hundred dollars. I know she loves to give her loved ones money, but I feel so bad...I mean, she's getting old and probably needs it more than we do. But she's a sweetheart, and we love her.

For Thanksgiving, we're going to Scott's family's house, and then when we're done there we're going to spend the weekend at Mim's.

Two Days in a Row!

So I don't know why but I feel like ranting a bit.

First, work:
I swear on the precious that I told my boss's boss last week that it was the furnace and the spectrometer that needed a service plan, and that the furnace was the last thing to have broken. So, of course, what do I find out today? He didn't sign us up for the furnace, just the spectrometer. Which never breaks. Ever. So, he's going to try and re-negotiate and fix it, which means who knows how many more days without my instrument.

Ok, me:
I am so freaking tired all the time lately. I'm tired, and munchy, and dizzy sometimes...I've gained two pounds, which doesn't seem like much but to someone who is constantly at the same weight all the time for ever and always it's a change. I'm also getting these headaches...blech. I want to get back to dieting and exercising, and so every day I think to myself, "Gee, I think I'll spend a half an hour on the treadmill today!" and then I get home and feel like crap feels on a bad day. SO TIRED.

On the plus side, I am exploring the fun of trying to crochet socks without a pattern. My mom likes red socks, so I am making her red socks. I have no idea what I'm doing. I've undone them three times now...yeah.

Ok, family:
I hate that I live two hours away from Mim and Em and Jorg, and I should really be grateful that's all it is, because the only other way it would be is if they never left Sioux Falls, and then I would never see them ever because gas got expensive. I am glad I get to see them about once a month, but sometimes I get lonely and want to spend time with them, and they're all the way down there and I can't just go visit because I have to go to work and stuff. I like work, but I like my family too.

I am so tired of seeing kids out with their parents, where the kid and the dad are talking and smiling and joking around and just having a blast with each other. I'm so freaking jealous...I hate to admit it, because my whole life I haven't had a good, strong father figure in my life, and I like to think that I'm strong and I don't want or need it, but it isn't always true. Jealous.
I'm tired of dad thinking we're all retarded enough to fall for his crappy lies.

I love Scott. More than yarn, and pickles, and puppies, and music. That's a lot of love.

LONG Time

Ok, so there's no excuse this time for being so late...every time I got home from work I would get on the lappie in the living room and all my pictures are on my desktop so I was like, I don't want to post without pictures, that would be boring, etc. and the rest was all pure lazy.


Anyway.


Here is a picture of something my brother made:They are apple-chuks. Yes, my brother is awesome.

We had the first snow a while ago, and it hasn't snowed since. Just rain. I hate it when it's like, "I'm going to snow" and then it doesn't, or it just melts. Hopefully soon. It makes driving dreadful, not because driving in snow is hard or anything, but because nobody in Utah knows how to drive to begin with, let alone with snow. Here is our yard the day it snowed though:

Boring, small backyard, but snow makes it magical!
I ordered some tee shirts online. I ordered this one from toothpastefordinner.com (One of the best websites ever, also check out nataliedee.com and superpoop.com):


Unfortunately, the sizing runs big so I have to exchange it for a smaller size...I hate it when you buy something on the internet, and they say it's this big, etc., and they give you measurements, and you get the thing and it isn't really that measurement...yeah.
So one of my projects lately has been to start food storage. We finally have room and with the way the economy is going right now it wouldn't hurt to have non-perishable food around just in case. So, I figure so far I have about 2 months of food if we tighten our belts a bit, and I add to it every time we go grocery shopping. Here it is so far, but since I took this picture I've added even more to it.

Anyway. That's it for pictures, at least for now. I made a sweater for Mim, which I need to take a picture of, since it turned out really well. I want to make one for myself now in pink cashmere, but it's going to be expensive, so I'm going to make socks for now. I'm having so much fun making things for other people that I forget to make things for me. The sweater for Mim was supposed to be for me, but when I had gotten far enough that I didn't want to start over, I realized that it was going to be too small for me. Way too small. But, since Mim is smaller than I am, it'll work out just fine!
Ok. Work. DRAMA. First, my boss got fired. Out of nowhere. We all knew he and his boss didn't get along, but we thought they could at least keep that professional. It looks as if his boss took a lot of minor things and wrote him up for them and used it as justification for firing him. So, everyone was kinda sad and angry, because we all liked our lab manager and we thought he was actually doing a very good job as a boss. So the next day the new boss started. I think he's cool. He seems to know what he is doing, and it really good at taking the initiative and figuring things out and getting it done. He's been really helpful while my instrument is down, but that'll be the next story. So he started, and another woman in our lab had a really bad attitude about it from the beginning...she just has a short fuse, and she and the old manager were really getting to be good friends. So, a week went by and everything started to smooth out, and then she got called into the boss's boss's office. She then stormed back into the lab and announced that she had quit. I guess what happened is he tried to call her on her attitude problem and she took it badly, and didn't want to have people telling her what to do and how to be (which is silly because that's what being someone's boss means). So she was gone. Now, when our lab manager was fired, they had planned it in advance and had someone to replace him, but since she just quit they had nobody. SO. She walked out, and we had no idea where in her work she was. And since our new boss was only a week old, he wasn't entirely sure of the methods and prep and such and so for a week we kinda had to tag team it to cover her work while they tried to find someone to replace her. But they found someone. Hwent to BYU, and I actually think I had him in a lab class, or else I delivered demos to his chemistry classes, because he looks familiar and he said I looked familiar. But he's really nice and very smart and clean, which is nice because between the four of us we will get that lab clean and organized if it kills us. I really want to scrub out that fume hood somehow, but I just don't know how I would do it. It's so dirty and corroded. Nast.
Things are calm at work now.
Even though my instrument broke.
Again. It won't let me get a new cuvette in. It won't even let me do a clean burn on it, it just says error! and it's an error message I've never seen before, so I called tech support, and they told me to change the contact cones, and that didn't fix it, so we need to get someone to come out and take a look at it. Here's the catch: the last time it broke my boss's boss was looking into getting a service contract for the instrument, but then they stuck it on the back burner and it expired. So, now, as soon as this happened they were like OH NO and they started getting the contract set up all over again. So, once it's set up, we should be able to get someone out, but I'm not sure when that will be. In the meantime, we didn't want to spend a gazillion dollars sending out all the heavy metals samples to another lab, so my new manager and I put our heads together and figured out some methods on the ICP to run heavy metals and so far it's mostly working. We're getting some interferences, such as manganese with lead, but most of them work so we're only having to send out two or three samples a day. The nice thing is, we're sending them to a lab we contract with instead of the (expensive) lab we usually use, and so they aren't charging us. I think my coworker must have set up a deal with them or something because I know we do a lot of their testing.
It's fun because I'm getting to learn ICP, which is good experience to have. Pretty fun. Also, as soon as the new manager figures out more of the methods on the HPLC, he's going to teach me so I can help out with the testing.
I just ordered a Zune from Best Buy. I'll get it next week or so, and I hope I like it. I read a ton of product reviews and customer reviews about it, and it seems like exactly what I want in an mp3 player. There were a few little things people didn't like about it, but for the most part it sounds perfect. I'll let you know how much I like it. It's pink. I *heart* pink.

New House, Old Snake

It's been a long time since I posted, but there are good excuses! We got a house, and we're moving this coming Saturday, so we've been pretty busy packing and planning, etc. As soon as we have our house full of stuff and organized, I'll post some pictures. It really is a beautiful house! We have a ton of people who are going to help us move, and we'll have conference playing on the TV and pizza ordered so it will be like a moving conference party, I guess.

I was down at Mim's a little while ago. I went for Jorgen's birthday, so I spent almost all of Saturday hanging out with him. We went shopping and saw a movie. While I was there, though, I helped my mom get things put together. She's moving back to her big house, so we painted and got floors ready to be installed and stuff. Anyway, she doesn't have a place to keep Roach (her boa constrictor), so she's giving him away. Before he left I got some pretty pictures of him. He was HUNGRY. I would get close to the cage and he would coil up as if to strike me through the glass. But, when we tried to feed him, he wouldn't eat! Weird. Anyway.



He's gorgeous. Six feet long! It's sad to see him go, but it's very expensive to feed a boa constrictor! And dangerous. We always had to keep weights on the top of his cage because even though it supposedly locks he can still muscle his way out. He could have strangled someone easily.

Up And Running

So my toes are healing. They are healing slowly, but healing nonetheless. My feet still hurt, which makes me not want to walk around anywhere. Oh well, there aren't that many places to walk anyway.

I finished a baby blanket for Mim's friend Lisa's granddaughter. It took me about two weeks or so to make it...nothing compared to the one I'm working on now for Scott's sister's baby.

I'm rewatching Gilmore Girls, because it makes me happy.

I got my stuff up and running again at work.

That's basically all the news for now. More later this week, I think.

Intentional Chemical Burns

So yesterday I went into the doc to have him look at some ouches on my toes. I expected him to look and then schedule a surgery, but he did it right there! So, my toes are gross, and wrapped up and swollen, and it was fun to drive home yesterday without being able to feel most of my feet...Hello gas pedal! Hello brakes! I went to work today anyway, since I figured I could figure a way to be sitting most of the day, which I did successfully. Anyway, the procedure was pretty simple, since he just had to work on two of my toes. He got in there and basically gave me chemical burns with sodium hydroxide intentionally, and in specific places, and then put acid on it to neutralize it, and over the next two weeks it will heal and I won't have ingrown toenails any more. Hopefully. Crossing the fingers.

We had a lab meeting today, and they ordered Chinese food, and since I'm on Atkins I couldn't have any and I was so sad because it smelled ridiculously good. And everyone kept trying to get me to eat. It's getting really annoying telling people every single day that I can't have carbs. I explain what I can eat and what I can't, and people still ask every time, and are all like, why don't you eat, blah blah blah? People should mind their own business and stay out of it if they've been told ten times.

I did something difficult today. My boss was talking about a woman at my work yesterday. He was saying things about her weight and eating habits and how she's so fat, blah blah blah. Well, I overheard and was completely offended and very hurt. I mean, if that's how you feel about one fat person, is that how you feel about others? I'm overweight...I hope people don't talk about me behind my back. Anyway, I went into his office today to call him on it. I was so nervous...I didn't know how he would take it. For all I know, he could have gotten mad and said something mean. Anyway, I just went in and told him how I felt, and that it isn't fair to say things about a person behind his/her back, and how if she had heard it she would have been devastated. I said how I was overweight and have a sister who is overweight, and told him he can't understand what it's like, since he's never been overweight. For all we know she could have a thyroid problem or an eating disorder. You just never know. Anyway, he was very gracious about it. He said he wouldn't talk about it any more and that he was glad I was honest enough to just tell him.