Tuesday

It's Tuesday, it's cooler outside and we're loving our new office setup. The jury's still out on the keyboard. I can type fast, but I'm a numbers keypad user, and there isn't any numbers keypad - you set numlock and it's on the keys like a laptop. Ouch!


My cousin sent me this test to find out how smart you are. I was 6.1% smarter than most people (according to this test) but I think it really means I know and remember 6.1% more crap than most people. I may have more common sense, but I'm not sure about being smarter. http://www.flashbynight.com/test/.


Here are flowers from my garden - pink rose, yellow rose *looks white) and orchids.

Mowry can almost always be found on his cat tree (or "crow's nest"):

I am on the loveseat looking up at him:

This is a nice shot of Cinders on the Trader Joe's scratching pad that has a little catnip on it so they all like it:

I ripped out the most recent sock and started it over again. I was doing a k3 p1 rib and decided I needed to do k2 p2. I got about an inchd or more done last night after this picture was taken.

I am busy working from home today. One of my clients has an employee who really bugs me. I was happy to hear that her direct report agrees with me (she brought it up, not me). So now the auditors are asking her for information and she is asking me. Wouldn't it be nice if they let me know when the auditors were coming in so I could be ready to help? I'm actually busy doing other work for them, not to mention that she never provides me with all the information I need. She didn't give me dates (for the quarter or year-to-date?) so I had to ask the auditor, and then I saved all 3 reports in PDF format and (of course) the auditors now want it in Excel. When I asked the auditor for date clarification, wouldn't it be nice if he had asked for the format he wanted?

Do you wonder why I like my cats better than most people I have to deal with? I have Alex sleeping on my desk on the cat bed that I made room for. What a love, even if he is a skittish love.

Nothing gets by Alex. He's kind of like me! He woke up when I took the picture. He had to check out what was going on around him.

Monday

We're still online this morning! We both really like the office, but the cats aren't sure yet. I had Cinders on my desk for a bit, but I left for So. SF (where it's foggy and chilly, by the way) and apparently no cats in the office right now. After all, we changed their domain. Ha!

This is the keyboard I'm now using at home, described in yesterday's blog. It's ergonomic because you never move your hands, just your fingers, although my hand is much smaller than Will's, so how is it possible that it works the same way for both of us? Maybe I'm just too logical. It costs $289. What can I say? Check back in two weeks (see prior post).

I was given a very generous gift to Yarnmarket (www.yarnmarket.com) by someone to whom I referred business, but I can't decide what I want to order. I have enough yarn for now (I can hear several people, some who read this, some not, saying "you can never have too much yarn"), so I was thinking needles. I need to check it again. I wish people didn't do the gift thing for referring business - just refer back - but they seem to do that. It's appreciated, but not necessary.

It's 60 degrees at home right now at 10:21 am, but only 55 degrees at the office where I'm at today in So. SF. I think 72 degrees is ideal and it never needs to get warmer, and certainly not colder!

Sunday-offline-online-offline-online **Pictures**

We decided to rearrange our home office. Will took the window seat when we first set it up, but that turned out being bad because the morning sun was right in his eyes and he had to pull the shade down often. Even when it wasn't down, it was blocked for him by his big monitor and all he got was brightness. I was on the adjacent wall, so I had no problems.

We are now both on the walls that are adjacent to the window and it works well. EXCEPT - it took Fri., Sat. and Sun. to perfect, and we were offline. Diann had offered up her and/or Ken's help and I told her we couldn't possibly fit four of us in the room, but they are persistant (bless their hearts, it's a good thing), and not only did they come by to see how we were doing on Saturday, but they suggested we walk into town for lunch, and then *bonus* - Ken helped Will while Diann and I got to knit. AND, they even showed up with flowers from the Farmer's Market!

Diann organized my yarn find from last week by color. There was some that wasn't spun, and I gave that to her! I hope she can use it! The string on a stick is a cat toy Will made using an old drumstick that got into the picture!

I'm starting the sleeves of the brown sweater and loving this yarn! I tried it on, and it fits how I want it to fit!

Office before:

During:

Thank goodness Ken knows what he's doing here because he did a much better job helping Will than I would have!

Cat stairs to nowhere! They ususally lead up to Will's desk, and they will again.

So we were offline from Friday afternoon until this morning, but when I came in to use the computer this afternoon, my mouse stopped working. The keyboard didn't let me use a few keys, so I'm now using Will's old keyboard which I've always hated. It's ergonomic, and the only other place I saw one like this was in the movie "Men in Black" but for some reason when I sat down and used it today, I could type on it, and it works, so it's mine. I am actually typing fast, too. He promised me after two weeks I'd love it (you supposedly never have to move your hands while typing, just the fingers) but who wants to wait two weeks. When my mouse stopped working, he gave me another one he had, and then everything stopped working (offline again), but it finally started working again and Will's certainty that it may never work again was in vain (online again).

It's hard to visualize from this picture, but we face opposite walls (the window is to my left and Will's right when we are seated). See the blue cat stairs that now lead to Will's desk again?I finally got a picture that shows how Alex's fur is turning gray by his mane, and even a little reddish.


The tomato plant out front is growing FAST!!

I'm very happy to be back online! Now if we can get the printer to work on my computer, that will be great. I should say "when" and not "if".

Any typoes are the fault of this keyboard.

Thursday

It's Thursday already. I'm working from home today for the company that I only have to visit in person approximately once a quarter. It will probably just be a couple of hours of work. Then tomorrow I'm back on BART to South SF.


I have already been outside trying to maximize the green bin before trash/recycle pickup. The mini roses out front are blooming. Maybe I just forgot, but I think they are blooming with many more roses than last year.

And close up:
It's really much prettier in person.


I finished the burnt orange scarf with just enough yarn left over that I couldn't have done one more row! Mowry is checking it out, and the string of yarn at the end is all I had left. Of course it's easier to use it all on a scarf than on a larger project.

Is this what they mean by a cat nap? A cat napping on a person who is napping?

This weekend is our home office "rearrange" - we are rearranging the whole office. I hope it's easier than it sounds, but I think it may be more difficult. The end result will be great.

Wednesday

Last night we went for birthdays dinner at Chevy's. That sounds funny, but there were two birthdays (mine and Kathryn's), and one dinner.

I had half of the Portobello and Asparagus Burrito and brought the other half for lunch today.

It was very good, but since I don't add salt when I cook I could tell by how thirsty I was after, that they use a lot of salt. I asked the waitress for no added salt and she looked at me like I was bonkers. Here is their nutritional information on the Portobello and Asparagus Fajitas - the burrito isn't listed, and it's a little different from the burrito, but I'm sure not much, - complete with my editorial comments:

Calories: 878 (much lower than most of their dishes, but still a lot!)

Fat: 57 grams (are you kidding me?)

Saturated Fat: 19 grams (wow!)

Cholesterol: 43 mg (much lower than many of their dishes)

Sodium: 2496 mg (that's 2,496 miligrams - no wonder I was thirsty!)

Carbs: 86 grams

Fiber: 14 grams

Sugar: 26 grams

Protein: 15 grams

This is yet another reason why we don't eat at restaurants very often. It's downright unhealthy! I NEVER eat that much salt unless I'm eating chips, and even then I will bet my salt intake is much lower.

Today I only have pictures I can get from the internet, unless I wanted to get creative and take pictures with my camera phone and email them to myself. So far, this is good enough. I've heard that people like the pictures on my blog. Who cares, what I'm doing, it's the pictures that are amusing, and that works for me!

This is the "shuttle" I ride from the Glen Park BART station to the company I am working at. It's not a small shuttle bus, as I had expected, but a huge bus.

Here is the BART map. I go from the Union City Station to Glen Park, and then the bus takes me to South San Francisco, or if you're a local, "South City".

Birthdays and Things

Today is my birthday! We are going to dinner tonight with Kathryn - her birthday was Sunday. It's a busy birthday month for Will. His sister's birthday was 10 days ago.


I went in to the TV room to take some pictures of the scarf I started working on, and I didn't notice Mowry on his "crow's nest" cat tree, so he meowed to greet me and let me know he was there. The picture below is still my favorite of Mow playing on the cat tree! We figured out his birthay based on paperwork we got when we adopted him in August, 2006. It said on a certain date he was six weeks old, so counting back, that puts him at April 30th. Another April birthday! Ha ha.This burnt orange yarn was in the stash I acquired on Sunday. It's a color I'd never choose, but it is really pretty, so I started a quick scarf - but it's been anything but quick. I've had to rip and restart no fewer than 3 times due to operator error.

Close up:

Cinders is sleeping on the cat bed on the desk. She probably opened her eyes because she heard me sneaking up with the camera.

Alex was climbing up to his spot on the desk, and I heard hissing. Cinders is afraid of every other cat! Here they are both on the desk - Cinders taking a bath, and Alex watching.

It's possible we may get rain today, but I see sun now!

Tomorrow I'm back to my long BART ride to So. SF. It wasn't too bad, but it would have been better had I been able to reserve my own BART car, which I can't do! It still beats driving any day!

Monday

Today was the first day at a new client that would be a royal pain to drive to, but after some extensive research I was able to figure out how to take BART. No wonder people don't take public transportation. It takes a lot of research getting the train times to work with the shuttle times. I originally thought it would be longer, I'd have to change trains with 5-11 minute waits between trains, train/shuttle, etc., but I was able to find a route taking one train, no transfers, directly to the shuttle. I took the 7:40 a.m. BART train and got to the office at 9:00 a.m. That's a long ride, but I was able to read, and knit and daydream.

I forgot to bring my MP3 player so I could listen to music instead of people sniffing and snorting and all those other annoying sounds people make when they don't realize we can all hear them. I loved it when the train stopped at the SF stations and the train emptied out.

I got off BART, walked up the stairs to the street level (gotta get some exercise) and the shuttle was waiting for me (and several other people). It wasn't a small shuttle bus, as I expected, but a huge bus. I missed my stop but got off at the next one and it was fine. I hope going home is as easy!

Yesterday I was checking the free ads on Cragislist (http://www.craigslist.com/) and I found someone giving away yarn - no acrylic, lots of cotton and some wool. It doesn't get any better than that, except it was in San Jose. Will would probably have agreed to go on any weekend, but this being "birthday weekend" he was game! We went to the lovely home that I later found out was built in 1923, where she had left the huge bag of yarn on the front porch for me. I brought her a few lemons and some clipped lavender from my backyard "farm".

The inside of the bag was a treasure chest. The yellow yarn is a wool and there are about 4 or 5 skeins of it. The orange/yellow yarn is a soft cotton that looks very interesting! There is lots of blue cotton, and some other stuff. I won't be buying yarn for a LONG time! I started a little scarf with some orange yarn that I'd never buy, but looked quite pretty. I wanted a portable project for BART, one that I wouldn't have to think about (which leaves out a sock for now).

There is even a cool bag of buttons for baby stuff - cats, dogs, etc. It's between the fuscia and blue yarn above, but you can't see it! After picking up the yarn, we went to our favorite Hamburger Joint in SJ to grab a bite for dinner!

Things on Saturday

It got chillier today, as predicted! It's 1:15 pm and it's vascillating between 54 and 55 degrees with 3 mph winds. That's cool for us! We went to a few garage sales this morning, and it was cold!




We unintentionally followed someone in a Hummer to a few of the sales. Since I couldn't very well say to the person "are you stupid to drive that gas guzzling piece of _____ in the first place, and are you even stupider to do stop and go driving to garage sales in that?" I can say it here. What kind of a person drives a Hummer in the first place, and to garage sales? I wonder how much it costs to fill the tank? They don't advertise that in the Hummer ads. If that isn't the biggest statement about the person driving it, I don't know what is! There are plenty of big vehicles that don't make the statement a Hummer makes.

We found two albums for $1 a piece - one was Joni Mitchell "Court and Spark", and one was Bruce Springsteen "Born in the USA". Bruce will be great for listening to while running on the treadmill. Will put some music on when I was on the treadmill that didn't exactly motivate me to keep going, but this will be perfect!

We also found a fake ficus tree for $4. It's a really nice, full one.

It will take the place of the old tattered one that was originally purchased at an estate sale several years ago for 75 cents.
This isn't the same one, but as you can see, Mowry thinks these are cat trees.
I filled the plastic drawers in yesterday's post with yarn. It also required moving around several pairs of shoes that belong to Will, and throwing away little tiny balls of yarn that no one could use!

I watered out back, and the purple flowers (Irises and Lavender) are lucious.




And close up:

Last night we went to open mic. Will's friend, Eddie, asked him to play bongos while his friend, Steve also played guitar. They sounded great. I knitted some of my brown sweater, and a little on my newest sock while listening to everyone.





Tonight we go to a Passover sedar at Ken and Diann's.

TGIF

It was supposed to be colder today, and much colder this weekend, but so far it's 64 degrees and beautiful, if not a little bit windy today! I hope it doesn't get too cold over the weekend, but the weather reporters are usually right.

I went to lunch to Panera Bread with Gale. We had a nice visit and a very good salad for lunch, but not before we found a garage sale where I found these plastic drawers for yarn storage for $2 that I had been looking for! I could easily buy them at Big Lots or Target, but I was determined to find them at a garage sale. The seller also gave me a small plastic trash can with a top that flaps - more important when Mowry was a kitten and thought getting into trash was fun. I still sometimes find the plastic trash can in the TV room on its side, so maybe it will go there.

Then, write this down in your "it'll never happen again" book - Gale and I went to Costco, which for me was the third day in a row (that's the "it'll never happen again" part). I didn't even try to write a check since they hassled me because our address is not imprinted on our checks at both the Fremont and Sunnyvale Costcos. It's not like you couldn't print a fake address on your check, and when I was at the Fremont Costco the checker said to me "if you know your address you can just write it in" - I kid you not, while in Sunnyvale, they almost didn't take my check. Can't you use my membership card to check and see that I am a member in good standing who writes good checks? WHATEVER! I only bought a big jug of cashews that I forgot yesterday, and I paid cash, and I hope not to have to go back there to any Costco for a very long time.

Our city and Allied Waste, our trash contractors, had a contest, and I was one of the winners! http://www.fremont.gov/PressReleases/pressrelease071120foodscrapscontest.htm

Here's what the contest was: The City of Fremont and Allied Waste Services are offering free garbage service to 60 Fremont residents with the best suggestions for increasing participation in Fremont's food scrap recycling program. Contest winners will receive credit for three free months of standard collection service (garbage, recycling, and green waste services) from Allied Waste. The credit for free service will be awarded to 60 people who submit the best suggestions as determined by City of Fremont Environmental Services Division. The food scraps contest is available to Fremont residents who live in single-family homes, and are billed for individual garbage, recycling, and green cart service. Employees of the City of Fremont, Allied Waste Services, and their family members are not eligible to win. Allied Waste is sponsoring the contest as part of their exemplary customer program.

OK, I can't remember exactly what I wrote, but I told them that I put my food scraps in a container in the refrigerator until my green bin gets a base of green waste, and then I dump it in there. It's not that hard, and I don't feel like I'm wasting any leftover food. But I was far more articulate since I had time to think about it, and edit it!

I want to get some "before" and "after" pictures when we re-do the office configuration. This is before -we will definitely have to make a place for Alex to hang out. He can still hang on the desk, but the desk will be against the wall, and not against the window. I think the window is part of the appeal right now - sometimes he even gets a sunbeam. Can you see him?

Weds

Today I started out going to a nursery with Diann, but then we checked out a thrift store, and then we went to Joanne's Fabrics, and then to Costco. Costco is always a little annoying, but so much less so on a Weds. than on a weekend! I had a fun time hanging out with her.

The baby blanket looks good. I had to have the trademark "Joan asymmetrical" going, or it wouldn't be a Joan original.

I started a new sock on Sunday while standing on Niles Blvd. volunteering for the Niles Canyon Railway. I was at the boarding area for awhile, but then I got a very boring post, so I had to amuse myself! It was quite warm on Sunday, and chilly yesterday, and warmer (but not as warm as Sunday) today.

I couldn't get a good picture of Alex and Cinders, but Cinders was in Alex's favorite spot on the desk, so he had to find another spot. Can you see the gray around his neck? He's always been solid black with some white on his chin, chest and paws, but he now has some gray on his maine. Not white gray, like humans, but actual gray. Alex is happily back in "his" spot. It's hard to tell when Al is happy, but he is.

Will is at band practice. I talked to Aunt Mary tonight. I'm knitting and watching HGTV. Next week will start a busy time for me, so I'm enjoying this week. I have a professional association lunch meeting tomorrow, lunch with a friend and then a software product demo via webinar on Friday. Then it's birthday weekend. I think it's supposed to get cold over the weekend. I hope it doesn't hinder garage sale Saturday!