All Things Must Pass

I lost my job today. I have another one, but I am still quite upset. I liked that job and it blows that I won't be able to take advantage of the employee discount anymore. I'm a real addict now, and my dealer has cut me off. Well, seriously, I'm not happy about how it went down. They wanted me to be more aggressive and I'm just too laid back. I'd been uncomfortable about this for a couple of weeks and contemplating requesting a transfer to a different location, but that's no longer possible. Poo.

On the other hand, I can now wear color whenever I want. No more black and white uniform. No more crazy homeless people yelling at me because they want a free piece of soap. No more hanging out with my friends there either, since I've decided never to return to that location again. It would be too weird and I will feel some resentment about this for a long, long time.

Sometimes, we need a crack in our hard shells to let the light into our souls. Now, I don't feel like I have to stay in town to keep my job there. Maybe I'll gig around again, put more pins in my map. It's hard to say, so I am keeping my options open.

Today, I was called into work to cover for a sick coworker. No big deal, but it did preempt my plan to watch hours of Law and Order and knit. Maybe take another bubble bath.
My schedule has been a little topsy-turvy lately. I skipped another concert at the Symphony last night; I was just too tired. If I keep this up, they'll stop giving me tickets! Yesterday was a low energy day for a lot of people here, with the grey, rainy sky. I hadn't anticipated the rain and went out without an umbrella, managing to become bedraggled in walking a couple of blocks. At least with the shorter hair I look less like a drowned rat when soaked.
What was important enough to venture out in the rain? A trip to a yarn store, of course. I really *need* more yarn. I'll not even discuss the contents of my stash anymore, but will simply state that I won't need to purchase yarn again for a very long time. Really, I was so pleased by the way that Erica's jacket turned out (as was she, yay!) that I decided to make a similar one for myself. So I worked heading over to Nina into my errands for the day to pick up a few skeins of Malabrigo yarn . Lo and behold, on the counter, she had a swatch made with Malabrigo's new lace weight yarn. I am not a big fan of lace, but this yarn could win me over.
Since I've instituted a new Finish-One-Start-One policy, I have a decision to make. What do I want to make next, now that I've finished Erica's wedding jacket? I have so many projects to choose from!
I had my hair professionally colored on Tuesday. It cost a pretty penny, but I am very happy with the results. It's a medium auburn, with blonde highlights. My hairdresser suggested it the last time I was in and the idea really grew on me. So I gave her carte blanche when I got to the salon. My mother reports that my hair color is famous, since one of the other stylists was talking about it when my mother went in to get her hair cut over the weekend. Hee. I really like it, and it's the right tonal quality to be believable as my natural color. Maybe I'll take a pic the next time I have a good hair day.

So, my rant against itunes was undeserved. I just need to be more patient about my instant-gratification music purchases. I downloaded the new Pink Martini album. It is excellent, as expected. They're going to be at Ravinia this year. Maybe I'll have to take the train up. If I can take a train to Montreal to go to one of their concerts, I suppose I can make a trip to the North Shore.
Okay, I just dropped $87 at the Ravinia store. Now I'm back. I'm a bit of a populist, so I opted for lawn seats for my three Jazz events. This will undoubtedly put me on the CSO mailing list and result in phone calls from my department. Sigh.
Had a pretty good weekend. I ran a bunch of errands yesterday, including visits to Trader Joe's, Arcadia Knitting, and Art Effect. I bought a bunch of snacks (never go to TJ's while hungry!) and a six pack of perry, a few skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton to make tiny sweaters, and a necklace with an oak leaf pendant. I even avoided the temptation to shop when I went to the Armitage Lush for another fitting with Erica. Very good.
We had a skincare training session at work. It was kind of odd to see all of my coworkers without makeup. None of us are ogres or anything, but we all wear makeup on a regular basis. We're starting a focus on skincare soon, so I'm hoping that my skin will cooperate. It's so much easier to sell product when my skin looks fabulous. I never tell people that it's the result of recessive genes and faithfully washing my face before going to bed.
Well, must get back to the fiber. I've been winding yarn on the swift and knitting like crazy the past couple of days. I must have had a fiber craving or something.

I wish I could quit you, itunes store. You tempt me to spend large sums of cash in the middle of the night. You even have an area of music "just for me". You even convinced me to give Belle and Sebastian a chance after years of avoidance. But why, why, why, don't you have the new Pink Martini album? It dropped today and you finally have a deal with their record label, but no new album. I need my vintage Cuban ballroom music, damn it! BTW, they're going to be at Ravinia this summer and I plan to rock it on the lawn. I'll be the one with the knitting and empties.

I just stocked up on knitting/train riding music. That is, anything but dance. I bought the new Rufus Wainwright album the second it dropped as well as Dolores Riordan's solo album. DR is an old favorite of mine, since the Cranberries were really big when I was in high school. Yes, I am officially old. The Rufus album is amazing. I've been off him for a while lately. I haven't loved one of his albums since Poses. The new album could change that. Highly recommended.

Why the new *knitting* music? Well, I've taken on another commission. One of the gals from work is getting married soon and had a big deadline knitting realization. So she emailed me. Yay! I'm apparently a walking advertisement for my knitting skills. I went to pick up the yarn yesterday, a gorgeous blue purple wool single by Malabrigo. The colorway is violetas and I swear it smelled of violets when I untwisted the skeins. I'm a secret romantic, so I am pretty excited about making Erica's wedding jacket. So, no long commutes spent looking pensively out the window or reading the New Yorker. I've got knitting business!

I've just climbed out of the tub from a very relaxing bath. Aren't most baths relaxing? Hmmm... This was a well-deserved bubble bath, a good end to a long week. I've been a busy, busy girl. I worked every day this week. I'll probably work every day next week as well. Fortunately, I have a lot of bath products.

I actually took a day off from one of my jobs this week. Personal days are a rare thing. I think the last one was in September. I used that precious commodity to attend the opening night of a play that I'll call Oedipus Wreck. James and I had been looking forward to this show for almost a year. We certainly set ourselves up for disappointment. I went to the theatre with a great sense of anticipation, expecting the show to be absolutely amazing or an absolute piece of shit. I can safely say that I cannot recall the last time that I have spent such a night at the theatre. It was so incredibly bad, and yet not bad enough to be enjoyable as camp. There were free drinks afterward, and careful phrases were uttered, such as "The actors had excellent enunciation". In spite of the play, I had a wonderful time. I got to see all the old gang, while feeling and looking fabulous. A little self-esteem and MAC go a long way! I miss (almost) everyone from that gig, but I am so much better off now that I work elsewhere.

After making up a couple of lost hours at the posh job, I was left with some unexpected free time. First, I killed time at a chain bookstore. I'm fairly shameless about free reads, but not at indie stores. The indies also don't carry my free reads of choice, trashy magazines like Cosmo and Us Weekly.

Then I headed down to Loopy Yarns, on State Street, for a yarn tasting. No actual yarn was consumed in this endeavor. It was a really great marketing idea: allowing knitters to make tiny swatches of the new summer yarns to tempt them into buying. There were some that I will definitely not buy. And there are the eight skeins of Hemp for Knitting AllHemp6 that followed me home. The plan is to make the sweater pictured, left, but without the ruffles. I'm really not a ruffle person. Besides, they involve casting on a suspicious number of stitches.

The highlight of the evening, though, was meeting Franklin, the author of the Panopticon. He was just as witty in person. I was at my fag-haggy, Dorothy Parker loving best. There was a very clever group of knitters at our table, keeping the repartee at the cracking pace of an About Town column in the New Yorker. I had such a wonderful time that I hope they will do another tasting for the Fall/Winter yarns. Because I need more yarn for my stash. These projects just keep finding me, I swear!

So, things haven't been as bad as my last post may lead you to believe. Sure, I've been tempted to call people unprintable things, but isn't that par for the course in customer service? I've been pretty lucky, actually. The renewals campaign is going very well. I might even be able to spring for a couple of new pairs of clogs to replace the current ones. I was thinking of getting some Crocs (I know, I know, they're ugly), but the shoe salesman took one look at the Danskos on my feet and declared that I would hate the Crocs. Maybe if I hadn't just dropped a ton of cash at the company store, I could have bought some new kicks today. Oh well.

Yesterday, I was waiting at the train station, reading a book, when a lovely older woman with a German accent asked me about how to purchase a ticket. Naturally, all of the windows were closed even though it was obvious that someone was in the ticket office. I buy a ticket once a month and am rarely inconvenienced by this, but it still ticks me off. So, I took her over to the vending machine instead and punched all of the proper buttons. I wondered for a moment why she had approached me out of all of the people in the waiting room (Is it so obvious that I'm a girl scout?) until I realized that the book I was reading had a photograph of the Brandenburg Gate on its cover.

I am really enjoying my current knitting project, when I have time to work on it. It's Wendy (of Knit and Tonic)'s Tomato sweater in Blue Sky Alpacas Cotton. Now, if you have a good memory, which is quite unforgivable in a blog reader, you may recall all of the problems I had the last time that I knit with this yarn. It grew and grew and grew. This time, I am cracking the gauge whip! It is knit tighter than the manufacturer's gauge suggestion and making a very nice fabric. It may redeem itself yet. This is the first thing out of the delightfully overstuffed box of yarn from Webs. I was really charmed by how well they packed my order; not another skein could have been squeezed in there!

I think that I'll knit Rusted Root next, but I haven't quite decided. I've got a few things on the needles at the moment and some birthdays coming up to consider. Imagine the sweater pictured here in a color described as "cotton ball". It's white, but not as white as Donny Osmond's teeth. I'm not usually a big fan of cap sleeves, because I feel like they make me sweat more (an informal survey of coworkers indicates other people experience this), but I like the playfulness of these. They're pretty without being fussy.

Today has also been a good week for music. Both Tori Amos and Feist had new albums drop this week. Fantastique! I was surprised by the sheer length of the Tori Amos, but also really happy to like about 80% of the album. The last one only featured one song that I liked. And if you don't listen to Feist, you should check her out. I like the messiness of the recording. You can hear the room where it was recorded, as well as birds chirping outside. It's charming, kind of like hearing Yo-Yo Ma turn the pages of his score. Yeah, I'm a nerd.