Tale of a Shooting Star…

I’m still not feeling hot, so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me much this week. I want to send a hearty thank you to all of you who have left comments for me. I don’t like to whine excessively, so I don’t want to continue to talk about my headaches. I see the neurologist on Thursday and I’ll update everyone on what happens then.

On a good note, I went to the dentist today. Yes, I’m wierd. The dentist is usually a pleasant experience for me. I like my hygienist a lot. She’s just a couple of years younger than I am and she recently (the day before our wedding anniversary) married a guy who works also works in IT at the company I work for. She’s a real sweetheart and has been working on my teeth for years. We get along really well and I work with her husband every once in a while, so we always have a good little gab while I’m in the chair. Which reminds me – I promised to send her some cookie recipes. Anyway, the news was all good. Everything looks fine. Woohoo!

No new stitching to report. I did frog the cross on Heirloom Memories Sampler, to be replaced with a heart. I’m still trying to get Terry to decide on the personalization for the sampler. I’m leaning towards his mom’s full name, plus birth and death dates. I also brought the frame with the new fabric for Fairy Moon downstairs and put it onto a lap stand. It won’t fit on the floor stand because it’s so big and heavy; it would probably tip the stand. I’d actually like to put at least one stitch in it before January ends (i.e. tomorrow). 🙂

I had high hopes for this weekend. Training finished well on Friday and I had a lot of fun. We beat Diablo’s butt last night and ate a lot of pizza. But I woke up this morning with pain in the right shoulder, neck and head. Took two Excedrin and laid back down. Woke up a couple of hours later, went downstairs and stitched for a while. Ate breakfast, took two Fioricets and laid down for a nap. Woke up a couple of hours later, ate some more food and stitched some more. I still have a headache and my head feels like it’s going to explode, so I think it’s about time to take the mega migraine medicine and lay down again.

Needless to say, we did not travel to see the baby today. Fortunately (or unfortunately?), Terry doesn’t feel so hot either, so it’s not all my fault that we can’t go. We’ll drive over to see them next weekend, once we’ve both recovered. In the meantime, I seem to be paying for the week of training and the excessive gaming last night. I’m glad that I’ll be seeing the neurologist on Thursday.

I probably shouldn’t have stitched today, but I get SO BORED when I have a migraine! I can’t really watch TV because it’s hard on the eyes (and the ears), I don’t want to sleep all day, I don’t think I could read for the same reason as not watching TV, so what does that leave me? Not a whole lot. So I stitched, whether my body liked it or not. I started the Alchemy Stitchcraft mystery sampler. Part II was released this morning and I hadn’t even had a chance to work on Part I during the week, so I caught up by stitching both parts today. This photo doesn’t show the colors accurately at all. It looks so much nicer in person and I’ll probably lay it on the scanner at some point to get the best representation:

[Photo removed. See finished project.]

Now that I’m caught up, I took that project off of the stand and put my Twisted Oaks Designs Hearts and Flowers Hardanger Collection on the stand. I’ll try to work on that tonight if I’m still bored or tomorrow when I’ll hopefully be feeling much better. Of the other two ladies with whom I was doing an informal SAL on this set of designs, one has completed all of her stitching and the other has actually finished all of the pieces into their final form. I’m waaaaaaay behind on this one and I like the designs, so I want to get moving on it.

For now, though, I’m hungry again, so I’m going to get something more to eat and then think about taking some medicine. I hope that everyone else is having a great weekend!

Awwwww yeah! That’s right… I’m dancing. Go Jenna! Go Jenna! 🙂

I just finished my World Trade Center quilt panel and I’m so very excited, I can’t even tell you. It will go to the post office on Monday, along with the SBEBB Valentine Exchange gift that has been sitting in my craft room for weeks waiting to go out. With the WTC quilt, I’m happy to have been able to contribute to such an incredible effort and commemorate the lives of 18 people who died in the attacks. I’m also happy to be done with all of my obligation stitching for a little while so that I can finally get to stitching some of my own projects! WOOT! 😀

I ripped through this panel in exactly a week. I started last Thursday, spent my stitch-a-long weekend working on it and have done at least 1 name a night since. Despite being completely exhausted every night this week from the training. I’m amazed I didn’t make any huge mistakes!

Tomorrow night is computer game night at a friend’s house. We will be hunting down Diablo and giving his evil, demonic behind a sound thrashing; hopefully finishing the last act of the game (this has been an ongoing saga for 5 of us for over a year; we just don’t get together very often). Tomorrow promises to only be a half day of training, as we’ll need to let out early for those who have to catch flights home and we’re almost through all of the material on the agenda. Which means we get to come home and take a nap before sitting in front of computers all night and into the wee hours of the morning, stoked by pizza and soda (water for me, thanks) and me probably relieving my stress by yelling random obscenities at the monsters on the screen while I shoot arrows into their leathery hides. Woohoo! 😈

We came home to a message on our answering machine from good friends of ours who are going to be visiting this weekend with the mutual friends who recently had their first child, a son. So, we’ll probably be driving over there (in the new car; much better gas mileage and a little bit of show-off value if I can remember to run it through a car wash before we get there) on Saturday, after we drag our weary behinds out of bed… probably sometime after noon. I’ll take stitching and/or knitting with me in the car.

And, of course, after all of the excitement all week and on Saturday as well, we’ll most likely totally crash on Sunday. Hmmm… I’m having a premonition here… I see myself not getting out of my pajamas all day!

Oh, and by the way, all of this training has been a bit of a snore, but it has an up side. I’ve been finishing all of the labs before just about anyone else in the class, so I resorted to playing games on my cell phone this afternoon. BUT… the leader of the team has noticed how well I’ve been doing this week with the software we’re being trained on and wants to make me an official developer on the team. Of course, Terry is THE official primary developer and has been working with the stuff for years, so it’s not like I’ll hold a candle to him. But, recognition is everything in this company. The more people see of me and what I can do, the more valuable I am and the more I get paid. And this is going to be a huge, global project. Woot!

Sorry, too many woots in one post. And now that I’ve actually slowed down enough for my mind to start catching up with how tired my body is, I need to think about going to bed in a little while. *yawn*

This week has so far progressed pretty much as I expected. I get through the busy day, come home, eat and crash out on the couch. After a nap, I get up, stitch a bit and then go to bed. Repeat all week. 🙂 So, don’t be terribly surprised that you don’t hear much from me this week.

I have a headache tonight. Brought on by stress. I was pulled into an impromptu meeting after a team meeting that I missed today and the results sent my blood pressure (I assume) and stress level through the roof. Have you ever noticed that interactions with certain people always end up being stressful? I’m starting to figure things out. The more patterns that I can decipher, the more I can avoid things that trigger the headaches.

Okay, time to stitch. I got another name done on my World Trade Center quilt panel last night; 4 left. After tonight, there will probably be 3 left. At this rate, I can easily knock it out in time to mail it next week. Woot!

Well, I had a busy, but successful weekend. It was stitch-a-thon weekend on the Friends Gather BB, so I chose to work on my World Trade Center quilt panel since I have not been motivated enough to work on it at all lately. I started with just one name stitched on Thursday night when I posted my before picture.

When I finished stitching late last night, I had 12 names on my fabric, meaning that I stitched 11 names this weekend at a rate of about 1 hour per name.

I also got through three loads of laundry, from start to completion, including folding and putting everything away, with Terry’s help. I also washed a load of dishes by hand and put away all of the Christmas decorations (again with Terry’s help).

I also realized when I woke up this morning with a headache that I had successfully gotten through at least 5 days in a row without a major headache! Some minor twinges, but nothing big until this morning, and even that went away with the help of some food, a Fioricet and some tea. I’m really trying to relax myself consciously, when I think of it, plus I’m doing Core Program exercises and neck stretches almost every night. I’m happy to be making some significant progress. It should be helpful to report to the neurologist next week. Plus, I’m glad to have some relief from the head pain!

I’m in training every day this week at work. We accidentally woke up at 5:30 this morning (we were aiming for 6:30), but I wasn’t sleeping well anyway because I was anxious about being late for the training. *sigh* The training ran for 9 hours, though I finished a little less than a hour earlier than everyone else. 🙂 It will be a long week, with only Friday ending early so that the out-of-towners can catch their flights home. I’m meeting new co-workers, though, and hopefully making a good impression. I’m having fun so far!

Regardless, it is time for me to go to bed. Once I get cleaned up, do my exercises and stretches, I’ll be lucky to get to sleep by midnight, so off I go!