OR: late Thursday afternoon in pictures but it might as well be Friday already.

Joanna’s baby sweater.  Finished on Saturday, August 21, 2010.

Joanna and her husband, Tory.

Random picture #1: my sister and her two girls.

Random picture #2 and #3: knitted teddy beay by K1Frog2:

Random picture #4: my peony bush.

Random picture #5 & #6: Lake Forest beach, at dusk, in winter.

Anyone who has ever worked for a college, or lived close to one, or enrolled in one, knows that August is THE SINGULAR BUSIEST TIME of the year!  This year is no exception and in fact, my work has only increased.  Launching a new external website and a new internal website IN AUGUST is nuts, but for some reason we choose to do this .  Here is what this week has entailed for me (and it is only Tuesday). 

*Disclaimer: all names and departments have been removed/changed to protect people’s identities.

1. I have to create 2 file up loads of new/returning students to give to 2 vendors who are on campus and need the information.  Usually a challenge because either a) our system has changed, b) their system has changed, or c) (my favorite) we changed our processes but they didn’t. Estimated time: 4 hours to create and troubleshoot any potential errors.
2. With the change to the new internal website, faculty need to be trained on how to do certain tasks.  Estimated time: 3 hours.  (Granted that this is  *hopefully* a one time thing.)
3. Fix all the course descriptions that are not showing up correctly on the new external website.  This problem is in fact self created because I insisted that all courses come from our student administrative system so that what we use internally is also what shows to the world externally (we’ve actually found quite a few discrepancies believe it or not).  With that said, this has already consumed about 40 hours of my time over the summer.  Estimated time for working on this problem this week: 10 hours.
4. With the launch of the new intranet, some people who dream BIG are already seeing its potential and are requesting some customizations.  Estimated time to dispell any such notion that I actually have time to do customizations: 2 hours.
5. Meetings.  4 hours. Need I say more?
6. One of the best features of the new intranet system is that we can take our internal report writer (akin to Crystal Reports) and put them on the site, including parameters (things that you use to select people/things from in a database).  This sort of falls into 2 categories: items that need to be done immediately so that people can do their work and/or get their information (aka, how much a student need to pay for school) and those reports that are dreaming BIG kind of things that require customization.  The downfall to this method of publishing reports is that they are “produced” as PDF files and for some unknown reason the print spooler on the server is EXTREMELY sensitive and needs to be reset frequently.  When it doesn’t get reset nobody can print a report.  This is bad.  Estimated time it has taken me to troubleshoot all such printing issues: 2 hours.  The number of hours in the future that I will spend diagnosing printing issues completely forgetting that the solution is to reset the print spooler? Probably too many.
7. Time spent answering questions from staff about why a process is not working and the answer is “because we have a new website?”: 1 hour.
8. Estimated time trying to dispel the *panic* that some users have that their personal information is being leaked to the world wide web: 2 hours.  I kid you not.  (FYI for those of you who work here and read my blog: my.lakeforest is SECURE.  We have a security certificate. Your information is only being leaked if you have an office with windows, your screen is pointed to those windows and someone is using binoculars to look through your window and glean any “personal information” about you and then posting it somewhere on the world wide web.)
9. The amount of time I have spent trying to coordinate the inputting of data between 2 offices that sit practically next to each other in the same building (and I’m, like 2 buildings down): 1 hour.
10. I fixed a problem with email not working with SMTP on the new intranet last week.  But now that it is fixed, I have a ton of work to do to get some forms up for certain departments.  These are forms that people fill out and the “results” get emailed to a team of people.  Believe it or not we have a TON of these forms.  The real hassle is that the forms have to be using HTML forms tags.  Ugh.  Estimated time on 2 of the forms to test and get working: 4 hours.

This is only the top 10 of the things I’ve dealt with this week.  So far. Total number of hours:  32.  Most of this is work that I have already done, some of it is actually work that I will do this week (hopefully).  But the net result is the same: my brain is mush.

I don’t have a lot of time to go into lots of details about this last week’s events, so I’m writing the abbreviated version.  Hope you enjoy!

• Wednesday: got into car after bible study: no lights
• Thursday: took car to repair shop – 6 lights out (both headlights, 2 break lights and 2 running lights)
• Thursday: drove away from repair shop and started having transmission problems
• Thursday: repair shop determined transmission problems not too bad….yet
• Friday: took day off to collapse
• Friday: went to do laundry and dryer broke
• Friday: recovered enough from collapse to have people over for dinner.
• Friday: dinner guests had good time (!)
• Saturday: did sound for a wedding at church then stayed to do song visuals at service (=long day)
• Monday: called dryer store and they said they would send someone out on Tuesday
• Tuesday: found out friend from college in Chicago and didn’t tell me
• Tuesday: meetings…ugh!
• Tuesday: dryer repair man called me and diagnosed the problem over the phone, after I had left to meet him at the house
• Tuesday: took rest of day off anyway
• Tuesday: good news is dryer will work, just not with the knob, have to use pliers
• Tuesday: called college friend and decided to drive down to O’Hare to see her before she leaves
• Tuesday: on way down to O’Hare got pulled over by police
• Tuesday: had good time with Anna, even if only for an hour
• Tuesday: police were nice and gave me a warning (ostensibly because I “told the truth and didn’t try to lie”.  )
• Wednesday: now I’m back at work.  UGH.

I was a complete bum this weekend and did just about nothing except for knitting.  On Saturday I spent a couple of hours working on my Seascape Shawl and it is progressing right along.  Can’t say “nicely” just yet because I’ve had a few challenges.  This shawl is lace work and knitting lace is somewhat of a challenge for me simply because you become a slave to the directions.  This is not a pattern that repeats – on the contrary, each row is unique and directions must be attended to in order for the overall pattern to work out properly.  Here is a picture:

Notice that there are 4 pattern bands, as indicated by the arrows.  The first pattern (there are three rows of it but you can only see the third band clearly) are conc shells, the second band is for sand dollars, the third is some other aquatic thing and the last one is for starfish (obvious).  So my first challenge with this is just staying on the pattern.  There are a couple of tools that knitters can use to do this effectively.  The first one is to use stitch markers.  These little dodads slip onto your needles between stitches at strategic intervals to help you keep count.  This is the method that I am using for this shawl because there are actually 4 repeats of the pattern on each row.  This way I know that when I get to the next marker, I should be at the end of the repeat.  Here is a picture of what this type of marker looks like:

I was speaking with my sister the other day and she is wanting to come a visit me to see my new house.  Great!  Except that she also wants to come so that she can “help me with house stuff”.  And, in this conversation she also mentions that Mom and Dad were planning to visit to “help me do stuff around the house”.  Basically what they are saying is “Tonja has never owned a home before and she has never been responsible for one either…so she may just be a little ‘helpless’ (RE: clueless) with house things.”

Actually, they’re right.  As much as I would hate to admit it.  And I really do appreciate all the “help” that they’re offering.  I really do.  I know that home ownership is a huge responsibility and that there are many things that I don’t know…and I’m glad that my family thinks that I’m 1) teachable and 2) helpless.  This way I get to see them more…and I get free labor out of the deal.  :- )

(Mom, thank you for not being like Rizzoli’s mom!)

Most of you know that I am in the midst of a really, really big project at work.  I don’t ususally talk about work on this blog, but I just want to say that my schedule has been nuts lately – absolutely nuts.   I just informed my boss that on August 3rd I was going to drop dead.  August 2nd is our “go live” date, so I’ll be nice and wait until afterward to collapse.  Thank you very much.  I am so, so glad that I decided not to take classes this term.  So, so glad.

I’m going to have my plethora of visitors this fall: Aunt Sarah, Mom & Dad, and finally my Sister are all due to make an appearance.  Yey!

So now I’m going to go back to work so that I collapse dead on August 3rd.

In the past I have freely admitted to my yarn addiction.  Who wouldn’t want tons and tons of soft fluffy stuff around?  Especially soft fluffy stuff that can be made into fabulous things?  Who, I ask?  Well, I am happy to say that I have added only 5 new skeins of yarn into my stash, one of which is already on the needles being made into something just fabulous!  While I had lots of fun at the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair (MFFAF), there was just too much to see and do.  Kate and I were remarking that this year’s MFFAF had a wider variety of vendors: paper crafts, jewelry, quilting and other such novelties found a home in the barn.  There were over 130 vendors and I must say that half of one day is not enough time to pay due homage to each booth.  Not nearly. 

One good thing that came out of the fair this year was that Kate and I had the opportunity to take a class on lace edgings.  Now this may seem a little strange, but the more I think about it, lacework is on the edge of a great many things.  So learning how to knit these edgings onto the primary fabric in a variety of ways was very enlightening.  And the guy that taught the class did a fantastic job.  My only regret is not taking his other class on the history of lace knitting, but I couldn’t afford to take Friday off, or to even pay for the class.

All-in-all it was a FANTASTIC weekend and I am sure I will be spending this week recovering from all the standing and walking.  But I did take a nice little walk this morning – got to start the conditioning for the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in September!

… Jane for the honorable and prestegious award that she has to kindly given me: The Versatile Blogger Award.  Wow.  An award.  I don’t know what to say, except that I’m honored.  And now I feel guilty (but only a little) because I haven’t been blogging consistently for a while now.  I’m not sure why, my only excuse being that I feel completely overwhelmed by life right now.  I have things at the house that I need to be doing but feel nearly paralized at the thought of attempting to do them.  I have a few things at work that I’m working on.  I’m trying to keep straight all the personal stuff going on in my life (Dr. appts, bible study, baby gifts to make, Christmas gifts to make, sewing classes) but it is hard, man, I’ll tell you.  Very hard.

The sad thing is that I truly love writing this blog, and so this award has probably come at the right time to sort of spur me on to writing more consistently.  I am also moving into a new office (one that was offered to me a few years ago and is not vacant again) and I’m hoping that the move will spark a little creativity in my work.  The office has a window, which is good because it lets in more light, but is bad because the office is colder than mine, and anyone who knows me well knows that I am nearly ALWAYS cold.  But I’m also inheriting a table upon which I can place my water kettle (can’t live without my tea), and my coffee maker.  The table also hides the fridge pretty well too.

Now, on to the award.  It aparently has rules, so here it goes.

The Versatile Blogger Award Rules:

1. I spent the summer after my freshman year of college working at Disneyland (in California).  Awsome!
2. I consider myself to be a “Southerner” and yet for most of my life I have not lived in the South.  I was born in Louisiana, went to college in Louisiana for 3.5 years and lived in Atlanta for 8 years.  But my first 20 and the last 9 (or so, this is not exact math after all), have been in non-Southern places.
3. I am currently working on my 2nd Master’s degree.  Most people don’t know that I already have one. 
4. I’ve only been to 30 states and 4 countries.  But I think it is more than just about anyone else in my family.
5. I’m in the process of joining DAR.  Daughters of the American Revolution.  Which means, of course, that at least one “branch” of my family has been here since the 1770′s.
6. I have a small collection of books in Russian.  I can no longer speak, read or write Russian (having only studied it for 2 semesters in college, like, some 20 years ago….) and yet I still hang on to them.
7. Speaking of Russian, I once devised a plot to over throw the Communist Russian government when I was 12 years old.  It was a great plan, you should ask me about it some time.

1. Right of the bat I am going to give this to Kim.  She started a blog, like, yesterday (literally), but I can already tell that it is going to be good.
2. Michelle is someone that went to Trinity with me and I love the way she writes (although I’ve never told her…so SURPRISE, I read your blog!)
3. Wayne also was a student at Trinity (whose wife, I might add, is also named Tonja. (with the “j” and all)…how strange is that?) and although he hasn’t written in his blog for a while, he deserves this award.
4. Wendy is a Christian author who wrote a very good book called Practical Theology for Women.  Her blog is equally provocative.
5. …gee…this is only 4?  and I have to get to 15? hm…..let me think….
6. Food in Jars is a blog about canning…the whole process – from picking the right foods to recipes and even full picture tutorials on how-to.  A must read for anyone interested in canning.  Or thinking about canning.  Or anyone who has not clue about canning but like to look at pictures of food.
7. Choosing Volunteer Simplicy is also another well-written blog that gives a great perspective of a family who has basically changed their lifestyle and now live simply and frugally.  Something that I totally admire.
8. I have another friend (Melissa) whose family is over in Scotland (the land of my ancestors) because her husband is pursuing a Ph.D. at Aberdeen.  It is mostly a blog about family and living far away from everyone else, but I find it interesting hearing about all the cultural challenges that they face.
9. Then there is Kate.  She has a blog readership of 3, I think, but she tries.  She also puts up with me, which says a lot about her. 
10. …(me again)…I think all the other blogs I read are knitting ones….

So now that this blog is way long…I think I will save the rest for another day.

Toodle-oo!

What day is today?  Oh.  Thursday.  Yeah, that’s what I thought.  I am having a hard time keeping track of dates, times and places that I need to be.  I basically received a promotion a few weeks ago and since then I’ve been given, for all intents and purposes, nearly full responsibility for implementing our new web portal system.  With new responsibilty comes much more expectation.  So I’ve been a little busy.

For the most part, I consider this to be a good thing – it keeps me out of trouble, for one thing.  The down side is that it took me a little bit longer to mail in my adjusted tax forms to take advantage of the first time home buyers credit.  It also means that I was a few months late in scheduling my annual physical.  It also means that I am in serious danger of losing my mind.

I know that the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair is coming up – I’m thinking next weekend, can’t remember.  I have an appointment with a plastic surgeon to remove a pre-cancer spot from my nose next week.  I have another appointment with my regular doctor next week.  Bible study every Wednesday.  New assistant registrar starts in two weeks so I have to help train him.  Need to find time to install 2 window air conditioning units this weekend.  Somewhere in there I need to do laundry.  I also have a couple of sewing project that I would like to get started on.  I have 2 knitting projects that are WAY, WAY behind schedule and need to get finished.    Oh, and I have to get my field ed for school worked out soon so that I know what I’ll be doing this fall.

Time?

What a concept.

I finally had some time to cast on again for the new pair of socks that I’m knitting – the pair that I’m knitting on DPN’s for the first time and with a new “toe” technique that I decided to try.  When I was to the point where I was before the frogging happened, well, let’s just say that I had the same issue.  Things looked backwards to me.  And then I realized that it was supposedto look that way because of the short row technique.  UGH!  All that frogging for almost nothing (there was still the issue of alternating between the real yarn and the cast on tail that I knit with, but that is a different issue).  I’m glad that I frogged though, because I had the opportunity to widen the toe piece a bit to fit my foot better – yea!

In other news, I’ve been waiting (patiently) for some visitors to come my way.  The family that live across the street from us growing up is going to visit (well, the parents are coming, not the kids).  I’m so excited to see Terry and Stu!  They are like my surrogate parents and I haven’t seen them in over 5 years.  They purchased a motor home earlier in the year and they are currently on this massively long tour of nearly all the Lower 48 – due to pass my way on Thursday or Friday.  They actually stopped and said “hello” to my grandmother when they realized that they were passing through Monroe, Louisiana – something that was just very special for Meme.  The only problem is that when I got home yesterday I realized that my place was a MESS!  I still have empty boxes in my dinning/living room from unpacking the office 1.5 weeks ago!  Yuck!  I’ve been saving them for my friend Lee Ann, so I guess I’ll have to move the out to the garage, since it seems to stay dry in there during rain storms.

Speaking of rain, we have had the wierdest weather here lately.  It rains buckets and buckets for an hour and then quits, which causes minor flooding in the streets, and unfortunately in my basement (just a little trickle).  I’ve had to place a fan down there to help dry things out faster.  *sigh*  It looks like I’ll be calling a basement sealing company sooner that I had hoped.  I guess now is a good time to file my amended tax return so that I can get back that first time home buyer’s money.