I am alive, I swear. But with the hesitation to blog at work and the lack of interest in blogging at home....well, y'all don't get many updates. So let's fix that.

Work: going well, thanks for asking. I'm a little stressed because the 2 main projects I've been participating in have become my own. It's become a panic of "OH no, what if I forget something? What if I leave out that control or that form or....something I haven't even thought of yet?" My concern about my abilities as an engineer has lead me to order Process Fluid Mechanics, An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics, Transport Phenomena, and Unit Operations. All used of course! I have my own library at work now. Feel free to ask me what all of those mean - I've come up with alot of good cooking/baking analogies :)

Creative stuff: I've been writing alot more. And playing around with GarageBand (trying to make up for the shortcomings of my mic). Though I am starting to feel like I'm stuck in a rut of bitter songs. Eh. Eventually it won't be so all-consuming and I can write less bitter songs. Patience or something. Knitting has been ongoing as usual - as is no surprise I have a ton of projects on the needles (all packed to take home with me for the shutdown next week) Life in general: These past few weeks have been rough-ish. The commute is definitely starting to affect me - after over an hour of driving to get home and having to go to the post office every night to pick something up (yes, I know I could sign for them to leave it but that hasn't worked out too well in the past), I've become incredibly crabby and short-tempered. I finally broke the news to my landlady last night that I'll be moving closer to work after my lease ends. I just can't do it anymore. It's only 30 miles (as someone who grew up in an area where towns are more spread out, driving generally doesn't bother me), but 30 miles of traffic going at most 30 mph tends to induce a murderous rage in me. And I just can't joke about it anymore. Maybe I could write a song about it....

The last few weekends have been fairly eventful. Dinners with friends, movies, concerts, slumber party (yes, I said slumber party). I checked out Bizarre Bazaar for the first time - lots of interesting stuff from jewelry to T-shirts to devilishly scary looking elves. I also went to a friend's holiday party as a volunteer photographer - which only heightened the desire to upgrade to a digital SLR. I'm looking forward to going home - sleeping in will hopefully help me kick this cough I've had since October. And I'm trying to get as much recording and knitting done as I can before I get back to LA....we'll see how that goes :) And eventually I'll get around to posting some FOs!

And, randomly:
Upon deleting spam message entitled "disapointed about what happened last monday": Yeah, me too (what did I do last Monday? What did I do this Monday? What day is it?)
Glancing over to read the box of binder clips: "Diversity Product Solutions" - everyone deserves their own kind of binder clips. Sure.
Listening to iPod while reading technical reports: Boy am I glad I used the educational discount to get my iPod.
Upon viewing this link: Hmm....

I hope all of you are well - enjoy the holidays, whatever you celebrate :)