skittermagoo!

I live in a cardboard box fort

Or at least that's what it feels like! I've been scrounging boxes from work just about every day (we get good boxes!), and now my apartment is full of stacks of cardboard. We have started packing, mainly books, but the packing factory is definitely going to have to speed up soon -- the movers are coming three weeks from Friday!!

I managed to snap a couple of pictures of actual knitting stuff before my camera batteries crapped out . . .

Here's my latest sock-in-progress:

Anyone recognize that pattern? Anyone? Bueller?

I didn't manage to get a snap of the Iris socks, which are finished . . . maybe once I find my batteries (I don't think I packed them already).

I also got a fabulous package in the mail the other day from Chelsea . . . seems I won a contest on her blog at some point? I've slept since then, though, so I don't remember what it was about. She has excellent taste:

yarn and bath stuff and butterscotch sauce and stitchmarkers, oh my!

Thanks, Chelsea!

My other photo for the day just make me giggle. Here we have our own Purling P Petra, looking super-tuff with some smokes tucked into this weird little buttony flap thing on her sleeve:

isn't she adorable?

In other news, I've been busy this week setting up utilities, etc for the new house; the bad news I got today is that because of phone company weirdness here in North Texas, it will take 60 (sixty!) days to get our DSL set up. Yes, you read that right, sixty. I honestly don't know how I'm going to survive. I guess I'm going to have to blog from work over my lunch hour or something! ACK!

But other than that major inconvenience, it looks like we will actually have electricity and water and such when we move. Which is in just over three weeks. Uh-oh . . . I feel another tiny panic attack setting in.

I gotta go pack something.

Still consumed

by all this house stuff! We had the inspection done today; the only things that turned up are minor and/or things we knew about, so it's a go! The inspector told me that for a 21-year-old house, it is in great shape. Wheee!

Technically the Hub and I have until Monday to back out of the contract with only a small penalty, but I highly doubt that will happen!

And just for those of y'all who really wanted to see, here's a picture of what you see when you walk in the front door:

Keep in mind that the valances and the brass fireplace grate are going to rapidly disappear once we move in . . . two of the many things on my list of DIY projects!

And yeah, I have been knitting, though haven't taken any photos . . . the second Iris sock is almost done, so probably you'll get to see it tomorrow! I'm amazed at how different the patterning turned out from Iris sock #1. Gotta love the Lorna's Laces!

OK, so it's rapidly approaching pajama-time! Work has been a big wad of stress and frenzy for the last week or so -- I'd better get some good sleep to prepare for whatever is in store for me tomorrow!

Preoccupied . . .

Is the word of the day. Or of the week (or two), actually! The Hub and I have been so busy with the whole house thing that I've barely even done any knitting in the last week (oh, the horror!).

And what, praytell, is the object of my preoccupation?

I've always wanted to live in a two-story house!

Long story short is that we have an accepted, signed, initialled, etc-ed contract, and pending an inspection on Wednesday, we are buying this house!! ACK!

I haven't really talked about it much because I didn't want to jinx it (I love this house), but at this point it's so close to being a done deal that I think it's safe now. Once the inspection is done, I will try not to inundate you with too many interior photos!

The upside, with respect to knitting, is that for the next few weeks (until payday) we will be scraping by on nothing, so there will be plenty of knitting time! Stay tuned for socks and such!

Job essay

Okay, Jen, here goes . . . I had planned on including lotsa cool pop-up photos of things in my everyday work world, but if I wait until I actually have the time/motivation/whatever to take photos at work, it'll never happen and we will have all forgotten about it. Hmmmmm . . . .

What I like about my job
by Skittermagoo

(just in case you don't know already, I'm a research scientist at a major university medical center.)

I get to wear a labcoat with my name embroidered on it. In orange. I got to pick the embroidery color.

I can wear pretty much whatever I want to work, including shorts in the summer. I don't usually wear shorts, but on the hottest of Texas Hot days, I've been known to break that personal rule. I could probably get away with flip-flops, too, but I consider them a lab safety issue. So mostly I wear jeans and T-shirts and sneakers, because I'm on my feet a lot.

I get to do things that sometimes look like TV shows. Think CSI lab scenes, except not in moody (i.e. dark) lighting conditions. What's up with that? The lights in the lab are bright, bright, bright. Or even better, think news show footage of biomedical research scientists moving liquids around under a fume hood. I do stuff like that at least a couple of times a week.

My work hours are almost entirely up to me to determine. Which in my case means I work 7:30-4:30 most of the time, because my lab title includes "lab manager", so I like to make sure I'm around during "regular business hours". But if I wanted to come in at 10am, it would be no huge thing.

Addendum to that is that I have a really flexible schedule. Taking an afternoon off from time to time is no problem, as long as I get everything done.

I don't have to work with mice, and this makes me very happy. I laid down this rule when I was hired (go, me!), because the mice freak me out, especially the hairless ones (don't ask unless you really wanna know!).

My job is directly related to what I studied in college and graduate school -- so those student loans I'm still paying off went for something I actually use!

I do a little bit of lots of different things every day, which staves off boredom . . . and despite popular sterotypes, science isn't all that predictable! So many days I come to work and am surprised at what is in store for me that day.

And possibly most important: I work with some really great people, and for the most part there is harmony and helpfulness and friendship by the bucketload.

Wowwwwwww . . . I didn't think I'd have that much to say, especially after the day I had today! 'Course, I could have filled four times as much space with "What I don't like about my job", but that's not what this is about, is it?

As usual, we have . . .
In other news

I haven't knit in more than two days, which I think is a record. Sunday I was too sick to even think about knitting (thank goodness it was a 36-hour bug), and last night Hub and I went with Real Estate Agent Jeff to look at houses. Eight of them! Out of the eight, one is the standout champion (we're going back for a second look tomorrow), and two were hm, okay. The others were "No, no, no, NO", including one that was just insane. Seriously, like possibly built by an insane person.

But I don't want to jinx all that, so it's all I'm saying for now. And anyway, I gotta go knit something, quick, before I forget how or all my knitting muscles atrophy.

p.s. I finally watched the most recent two episodes of Lost. Wow.

Job meme

Oh, jeez! Jen tagged me with this job meme thingy (several days ago, actually, and I just got around to noticing!) . . . but at this very moment I'm up to my elbows in tons of work, so I will post on it later! I promise!! Later as in probably late tonight after I get home from looking at houses with our real estate agent. Yep, you heard it here first!

Secrets revealed . . .

No, not all my secrets, sillies! Just the ones I've hinted at here . . . you know, the things that have been keeping me busy and quiet.

First off, in the knitting category, I've had a super-secret project on the needles that I couldn't reveal until today. Ya see, my knitting girl P'La is "with child", and the rest of us knitting girls decided we would secretly knit squares of different designs to then assemble into a blanket for the baby. Once we found out what color the nursery was to be painted (pale orange), we secretly shopped for yarn together, and secretly knitted five squares each (three solid, two multicolored) for the project. Lemme tellya, it was quite a feat keeping the whole thing a secret . . . actually, the secret wasn't exactly kept, but that's another story.

Well, today was the baby shower, and we gave P'La the squares, with plans to get together in a couple of weeks for assembly (so that she can decide on the arrangement, etc).

So anyway, here are the squares I've been knitting for her!

My first Argyle Experience!

Please forgive the crappy picture!! I took this shot mere seconds before gift wrapping and running out the door. The orange squares are all textured, and it didn't really at all. The argyle is my absolute favorite, though I wouldn't necessarily wish that much duplicate stitch on anyone.

I've also been doing this, which is surprisingly color-coordinated with the baby blanket squares:

Actually, I'm lying by implying that I'm still in the process of reading the bookbookbook. I found it at Borders on Friday evening around 6:00, and by 11:30 that very night I finished it. If you haven't read it yet, run (don't walk) to your nearest bookshop and buy it and read it all in one sitting like I did. You won't be sorry.

I have even more secret stuff to tell, too.

One of the other reasons it's been so quiet here at Skittermagoo Headquarters (besides covert blanket-square knitting) is because there's another big project going on. I didn't say anything about it before, because I didn't want to jinx it, but now that one or two of the big steps are out of the way, I feel like I can do it.

The Hub and I are going to buy a house.

I don't know where yet*, or exactly when**, but we took care of two major steps on Friday: we applied and were approved for a loan (!), and we found a real estate agent. I'm still shocked and amazed at how easy the loan part was . . . part of me was (irrationally) afraid that the loan officer would just laugh at us. Anyway, let the wild ride of finding a house begin! This will be our first, and I'm so giddy about it that I can't sleep at night.

*The where part may be partially solved -- Hub found a cute neighborhood with an outwardly awesome house in our price range . . . we drove up and took photos of the outside today, and hopefully will see the insides on Monday! I know I can't tell at this point, but if the inside is as good as the outside . . . (I would show you a picture of the outside, but again, I don't want to jinx it)

**The when part is basically As Soon As Possible. We have our apartment leased until December, but I'm pretty much willing to break the lease if we find the right house.

So, that's the scoop. I'm going to try and not neglect the blog while I'm spending all my free time househunting, but y'all know how it is . . . I might be a bit scarce around here for the next little while.

Not lazy, just busy

Wow . . . the past couple of weeks have just flown on by me!

I've totally neglected the blog, but with pretty good reason . . . I have a monumental non-knitting project in the works, and any knitting I've been doing I haven't been able to show. I've been strangely silent about the non-knitting thing because I'm just a bit superstitious and I don't want to jinx it. But all this will hopefully change soon, my chickens -- I should have news and pictures (and bears, oh my!) to share very soon!

Assorted . . .

Can somebody please tell me where the last six days went? I feel like I've been doing the time warp or something . . .

I would show you some knitting, but I can't. Well, I could, but then I'd have to kill you. Super secret stuff, this is. But I promise to share it with you as soon as I can.

The weekend was fun and fast . . . on Saturday I got to meet another knitblogger! Yarnmaven Julia was in Dallas for the weekend with her adorable daughter visiting family, so of course I had to drag her away to do a bit of yarn shopping! And shopping we did . . . I broke my self-imposed yarn-spending boycott, but only because I found a great deal. Seriously. Oh, like you'd pass up enough half-price Noro Cash Iroha to make a whole sweater. Half Price!!! This is the yarn that I swore to myself I would buy if I ever found it in the clearance rack at the Woolie Ewe. Yep, thinking I'd never ever ever see it there. Unfortunately I was in such a hurry to finally post again that I forgot to take a picture.

But I did remember to bring my camera on Saturday, and Julia's sweet mom took a photo of us:

In other news, I hate the time change. I know that in a couple weeks I will get used to it and will love the extra hours of daylight in the evenings, but for now, it sucks ass. Here it is 9ish pm, and I feel like it's only 8ish, and I'm already starting to resent the fact that I am not going to feel ready to go to bed later. And then in the morning I'll get up in the pitch dark to go to work. Of course, the later daylight is useful for things like househunting (shhh!), but oh, I hate it for now.

And speaking of which, I have tons of crap to do before I can even think about bedtime, so I'm off for now. But I promise to come back tomorrow . . . I promise!

Ta!