Don't trust cross-walks

We don't get a lunch break at work. We eat at our desks so that we only have to be here in the office for 8 hours. This means that one of us in the office usually takes 5-10 minutes to run to a nearby eating place and pick up food for the whole office and bring it back so that we can all eat nice fresh meals for lunch. Yesterday was my turn to pick it up. The Chinese restaurant we were ordering from can literly be seen from our office window and is only 30 feet away so I decided to walk over and get it. I walked to the restaurant with no problem. Picked up the food no problem and it started to rain as I was in the restaurant. No umbrella. Okay. So I'm waiting at the corner for the cross walk light to come on in the rain. It finally starts flashing green so I start across the street at the best jog that I can do considering I'm carrying 4 take out orders. The light then changes while I'm in the middle of the cross walk but I don't see this because since I wear glasses, I've got my head bent down to keep the rain off my glasses. I look up as I near the other side of the street to see a Jeep bearing down on me. Not a good sight. I had enough warning to slow down and try to stop so that the jeep could go by but I didn't get actually get stopped soon enough. The mirror of the jeep clipped me in the arm and rolled my body enough that my shoulder landed pretty good on the door of the jeep.

The poor man in the jeep started crying. I checked over his car to make sure that I hadn't done any damage to it. I rolled my shoulder and moved my arms to make sure I hadn't been damaged and then told the poor man not to worry about it and I finished the walk back to work.

I can honestly say that I will not be walking to pick up food anymore. I will use my car rather than walk across Peachtree St because Peachtree St does not have reliable cross walk signs!

I am fine. I'm a little sore on my shoulder today but there isn't any visible bruising. Just a few tight muscles.

I hate Atlanta traffic!

Come on Weekend!

This week has been dragging away. I know it's only taking forever because I want the weekend to come.

Dh made me watch Donnie Darko last night. Very strange movie. It did keep me guessing on what was going on and I was quite surprised by the ending. I wouldn't watch it again but it was worth seeing once. You can thank Erin for the little paragragh since I just finished reading her movie reviews and it prompted me to write a little more about the movie. We're gonna watch Shaolin Soccer tonight.

I've been stitching away as always. I've finished Crabapple Dragon. I finished it on 9/23/05 and mailed it off on Monday. Norwood's has already gotten it and is very happy with it which makes me happy. I told myself to go back to Enchanted Mermaid since I finished all the models that I currently have but I ended up starting Tropical Dream instead. I can't work on it anymore right now though cause I don't have the Kreinik Ombre or the Caron Watercolour. I have them on order and will have to wait until they come in to finish it. I guess I'll go back to Enchanted Mermaid now.

I can't wait to head to the GTG on Saturday and see everyone. I'm also looking forward to going to the fair on Sunday.

Fair Fun

I had a blast at the fair last night. My Fantasy Triptych took 1st in it's category and my Merry Christmyth took 2nd in it's category. Valerie and her son also won several ribbons between them. I think I had more fun watching the little one search for his pieces to see which ribbons he got and then getting so excited when he found one that meant he got some prize money :) I'd forgotten how much fun it is to share something like that with someone.

Dh enjoyed his first fair too. We both tried fried oreo's for the first time thanks to a very generous Valerie. We both loved watching Phoenix play games and win "stuffies". Dh is actually looking forward to doing that with our kids someday I think. I love exposing him to Phoenix cause he's such a well behaved kid so it gives DH warm fuzzies about the possiblity of kids in the future.

We'll be heading back to the fair on Oct 2nd to explore and watch shows and pick up my pieces. We'll probably get there when it opens at Noon so we have plenty of time to explore.

Mood: Content and Happy

Wednesday Blues

The internet was still not working at home as of this morning when I left. Comcast did call DH though and tell him that they have fixed it but I won't know for sure until we get home tonight.

Work has been rough. The boss is really pushing us to sell life insurance. We have to sell 7 policies before the end of October or we don't get raises this year or Christmas bonuses. I don't really feel this is fair but what do I know. I'm very good at selling auto and home insurance because people need this and they can recognize that they need this. Life insurance is a hard sell though cause most people think "OH I'll get that later when I get older". Young people do not like to think about dying in the future. This mandate has put a strain on all of us at work. We have managed to get 2 in here since the mandate last week with a possible 3rd coming in today. Just pray that we get to the 7 before the end of next month.

The model piece is going well. I'm down to 6 colors now so it's almost done.

I have managed to catch a head cold and spent yesterday at home in bed sleeping all day long but I'm here at work today trudging along.

I am looking forward to tomorrow so that we can go to the fair and next weekend since it's the next GSFL get together.

The real estate broker sent us a list of homes so that we can start cruising neighborhoods in Norcross and Duluth but we won't actually start looking at any houses until January. This puts closing off until February so I guess I get a house for my birthday instead of Christmas. That works too but it keeps us in the cruddy apartment until March. This means that those evil people get my money for 2 more months.

Pictures uploaded

I uploaded lots of pics to the my webshots album under the model stitching album at
http://community.webshots.com/album/308544292UOamLg
and under the necklace fobs section for those of you that haven't seen the new ones yet:
http://community.webshots.com/album/445538746SslLnY

I can't believe that the week is going so fast. I charted something out for the dinky-dyes competition and I'll start stitching on that as soon as I finish Crabapple Dragon. I talked with Valerie about my idea and she thought it was a good idea so I guess I'm gonna give it a go since I took the time to chart it out :)

Mood: creative

Stitching Frenzy

I had a wonderful trip to Rome on Saturday morning with Valerie. We hung out at Norwood's for quote a while cause Susan was in a talking mood. We played with Myrtle too. I ordered several things to take up that wonderful credit for turning in Cat's eye.

Valerie went on home after we got back. I decided to take a trip to Nease's cause Norwood's doesn't carry #5 perle cotton or Kreinick ombre or watercolours and I needed some of these for the new TW design. I also wanted to see Nease's new location. I was very warmly greeted. Susan was actually very glad to see me. After talking for a while, we realized that I hadn't been in for over a year and the last time she saw me was just before I went in to the hospital for surgery last September. I was there buying the perle cottons to work on dragon's quilt which I ended up working on and finishing during my recovery from surgery. I didn't realize it had been that long. She was actually worried that I had passed away cause she knew the kind of pain I was in as I couldn't even stand up straight the last time she saw me.

While talking, she said that she was looking for a stitcher to organize the cross stitch area and asked if I would be willing to come in on a Saturday and help with that. She also mentioned that she might be looking for some more shop models since she will now have more wall space and since I had done 2 for her would I be willing to do more. I kind of side-stepped this question because 3 of my 9 projects this year were shop models that I'm not getting back and 4 of the remaining 6 are shop models that are being shown for 6 months. It would be nice to keep something for my wall this year :). I did let her know that there may be other people in the group that might be interested too and she seemed receptive to that idea which was nice. She also said that she'd trying very hard to get some cross stitchers back to her stitching night and asked if I would come on Thursday and let my stithcing group know about it. I did post about it and I am going to go on Thursday and at least get the feel of the people that are already there so I can see if I want to do that again. She only does this 1 night a month so it might not be too bad.

After getting home, I started stitching on Crabapple Dragon again. I am making wonderful progress and I need to upload the progress picks into my webshots album tonight if my internet isn't still on the fritz.

I didn't realize that I had gotten so involved in my stitching until I looked at the bookshelf last night and realized that there were over a dozen books there that I have bought in the last two months and not read. That's the first time I've had more than 6 on that shelf in years!

Mood: stitching frenzy

House Hunting....

Sucks!

I thought this would be fun. I thought I could go and look at houses on the weekends in the areas of town that I wanted to look at and close the end of December or mid-January so that I could be moved before the end of January and out of the apartment. I was aparently dreaming.

We met with the real estate agent (REA) last night and got bad news after bad news. When we told him our price range and that we wanted at least 2 bathroom and more than 2 bedrooms and the radius that we wanted to look at, it narrowed where we will live down to Norcross or Duluth. When he started looking at how long homes in that area stay on the market most of them are only on the market 10 days or less. This means that any home that I look at now will not be available in December or January.

He then started explaining the problems with closing around that time of year and how people don't want to move. Now it looks like we won't be making an offer on a home until January or later which puts the closing in February or March which mean an extra 2 or 3 months in that aweful apartment. It also puts off looking at houses in person till November or later but he suggested waiting until January when lots of houses go on the market.

Everything he said makes sense but I hate waiting. Once I decide to do something, I like to get right to it.

Mood: Frustrated

Good Weekend

Friday was wonderful. I had a great time at the dinner. I loved meeting Jennifer and Teresa. I was stunned to learn that Teresa and I graduated from the same High School and that she actually went to high school with one of my Aunts from my mother's side. It truly is a small world.

Saturday, I spent the day stitching. I finished Cat's eye so the day of stitching was worth it. It does look very good all finished up but I definately don't want to do another Mystic Stitch pattern as a model. They are just too time comsuming to not keep.

Sunday, I started on Crabapple dragon and actually made some good progress. I did however start to feel a little rough so I didn't get a lot of stitching done.

Monday, we spent the day doing laundry. We had way too much laundry to do. There are still 4 loads sitting in the house that we didn't get to but we'll keep working on it through the week.

Today, I'm sitting at work trying not to be sick. I've managed to catch a chest cold at some point over the weekend. I walked in this morning to discover that 2 of the other girls also had the same thing so I'm going to assume I was exposed to something at work last week.

Thursday, I meet with the real estate man so that we can start looking at houses so I better start feeling better before then. Saturday, I'm heading up to Rome with Valerie so that we can shop and talk and I can deliver this model. Hopefully I will have made a lot of progress on Crabapple Dragon as well too so that she can see how that is going.