Man, the past couple of weeks have been total chaos. I don't really have much to show for my efforts, either, which is pretty annoying. Work has been hectic, but it's been a bunch of testing for our planned system upgrades. I hate testing, because it is so open-ended; you start with a plan, and something breaks, then you wait for days for somebody you've never seen to fix it, then you either repeat the exercise, to prove it's fixed, or move on to the next step, and then it breaks again, and so on. There is no closure, no "done" to the process; even when the system upgrade is done, it's just a few weeks before somebody somewhere decides we need to add more stuff, so we get to test that against what we just figured out. Man, I hate it. It just seems like such a huge waste of time to me; I know it isn't, it has to be done, but it definitely is not my thing. It's a never-ending pile of failure. Sadly, I have the skills for testing and troubleshooting that kind of stuff, but I do not have the patience for it. Part of it is, it trickles down to me from the boss, but the actual communications about what is going on don't; 9 times out of 10, I don't have all of the information I need, so I either do 4x more than necessary, or totally not enough, or start in the wrong place. And all of the communications come out of the California office, so we have this huge time-delay thing that we have to contend with, and it just drives me totally insane. I am just such a do-it-now, don't-stop-until-you're-done person, that a 3-hour wait time is just about more than I can bear most days - and 3 hours is the best case scenario, and rare. Whatever, I guess; I get paid the same whether I am sitting and waiting for something to do it's thing, or actually getting something done.
I have been trying to get website stuff together and done the last couple of weeks. We are making progress. I have given my web guy a bunch of data; he just has to figure out how to put it up there the right way. I have some more to do; for some reason, I seem to be having trouble writing a bio for myself. The one here on the blog is okay, but I need something more detailed for my site, and I just can't seem to build on what I have. I need to do it in such a way that I toot my own horn without appearing to do so, which is tricky, and success probably depends entirely on the reader. And I want to tie in my cross stitch and AF stuff without distracting from the BUY MY JEWELRY message. Gee, I don't usually have trouble talking about myself (as I am sure people will agree); this ought to be a no-brainer.
Also, I volunteered to have a jewelry show here at work in March, to take orders for Mother's Day gifts, with 10% of each sale going to Relay for Life. So I've been planning that, which kinda goes in conjunction with getting the web stuff together; as I plan to be organized and open for business for this show, that gets me that much closer to having the finer details for the site worked out. I need to take an afternoon off in the next couple of weeks to go get my license done; what a big cash layout for a stupid piece of paper. And I need to get a PO Box, for contact info on the site, but I don't have the funds right now - they aren't cheap. That will come after the show, I hope. I have been making color samples for the show, which will also be photographed, as soon as I figure out how to display them. The multi-strand necklaces have a huge color choice - like over 100 colors, so that'll have to be a doc, which I made; I need to get some good glossy card stock to print that out on. I'm going to try the printer at work - my printer at home doesn't do the orange and reds very well, though the blues and greens look great. HMMM?? I figure this show will be a good indication of whether or not I'm out of my mind to try doing this business-thing. We'll just see what happens, I guess. Hopefully I'll get some interest in it, but also hopefully not more than I can possibly handle. We'll see.
I joined a new Yahoo cross stitch group, BAPXS, and let me tell you, I am one of a very few stitchers that only has one project going at a time. So, I have begun my Scarlet Quince design, Maiden & Unicorn: Sense of Hearing (sm). Now, by beginning, I mean I have bought the fabric - 22ct white Aida (hardanger fabric, I believe) - and have almost completed the gridding of it, into 10x10 squares - 1308 of them, to be exact. I have never gridded before, but I think it will probably prove to be a very useful tool; maybe if I had done that on my carousel horse, I wouldn't have screwed up the leaves in the border. Of course, I can't find that mistake anymore, so I guess it doesn't matter. If I can get it done tonight, I will put a picture of it up in my Webshots album. I am going to bring it to work so one of the girls can zig-zag the one long edge, since my machine just won't, and I don't feel like struggling with it to try to make it. Then DH will have to get my scroll frame built for it - none of the bars I can find locally will accommodate this huge thing. Then I will have to make extra-special effort to get to a needlework store, so I can start looking at threads; I really want to do this in silk, but I will have to do the conversion from DMC myself. My group has given me lots of insight on what to look at, it's just getting to a store that has what I need, since I don't have one in less than an hour's drive from home. It will have to be a "trip", and as outdoor soccer officially starts next weekend, I need another trip in my future. But it can't be done in any way other than in person, so hopefully one of the games will get me near a shop, and they don't mind boys in cleats being bored out of their minds for a couple of hours. If I can get DH to let me stay long enough to take care of it. Maybe it'll be a game where I am with Big Kid, and he's with Little Kid, and all I have to do is listen to Big Kid bitch and moan. Not sure that's better....
Speaking of soccer, we are already ridiculously busy with it. Big Kid made his middle school team (of course), so he is practicing that and outdoor Club soccer, and his indoor season isn't over yet, either, though they aren't practicing (everybody on the team is too busy at their other practices). The school team practices are good, in that they are doing things we aren't doing at the club, but our particular coach is working on his Master's, so on Thursday's, he can't have practice after school, so it is before school, at 6:30 am. So Big Kid gets up around 5:30, goes to practice, then school, then gets picked up and goes to practice with his dad and brother, then his practice is at 6:30 pm, and ends at 8:00. That is a long day, and hopefully he gets some homework done in there somewhere. And a lot of his games will be on Fridays, so with that practice schedule, he's going to be really tired for his "real" games on the weekend - he's on the school team just to get his picture in the yearbook, and the girls, I guess. Because he needs more girls chasing him around. My god, my son is a jock; how did that happen? I guess since I didn't really fit in any one particular niche in school, that it was possible I could produce a jock; it's just weird. And who knows if Little Kid won't follow right behind him; he might. Well, anyway, 4 months, and we'll be over for a few weeks. I look forward to the games themselves, but all the driving, and waiting, and weather, I could skip all of that. I assume it will be arctic next weekend at our big tournament; as usual, we have 8:00 games on Saturday and Sunday both (we have never not had the first game - do we have a sign over us that says we all like to get up and leave the house at 5:30 am on game day? I don't think so), so we'll go out and break up the frost for everyone else. Of course, maybe we'll be out there before the wind comes up, too, but standing on frosty ground for 2 hours sucks - once the feet get cold, the rest is lost. Oh, and by arctic, of course I mean 40 - anything below 80 is intolerable to me, you know. That's why I don't live in Ohio anymore....
