Tale of a Shooting Star…

It feels odd to be home. Correction: it feels odd to be back in my cubicle at work. Home felt like the comfortable mess that it is. Comfortable except for the fact that the grass needs to be mown and there are 5 foot tall weeds growing in front of the house. I really need to find a landscaper to do the weeding and put down some landscaping fabric and/or mulch for us. We just don’t have the time to look after it and I’m starting to feel really ashamed of how the outside of the house looks. I’m not sure if I can actually get someone in who will pull out the weeds or if I’m going to have to do that myself first. Does anyone have any experience with landscapers or other companies that might offer yard or landscape maintenance? Maybe I should just dig everything up and go with an Asian rock garden? 😉

Anyway, being in my own bed, with freshly laundered sheets felt really good last night. And Phoebe must have been as happy as a clam at doggy daycare while we were gone because she almost didn’t want to leave! Seriously, though, she was spoiled rotten there. Everyone loved her and doted on her. She spent the mornings in the playroom with the other dogs and the doggy daycare crew and the afternoons in the office with the owner and other office staff. The owner said that she spent most of the time in their laps, “helping” them type and such. They were happy to take care of her and she wasn’t strange and withdrawn when they brought her out like she was with the kennel we left her at in May. She was just a tired version of her normal self. We’ll definitely be taking her to this place again in the future. I really feel like she was well cared for and loved as much as if we had left her with relatives. I’m very relieved. Well worth the price and the 40 minute drive!

So, I came in to work today to “Welcome Back!” comments from a bunch of people and goodies sitting on my desk, waiting for me. My friend Richard, who has temporarily relocated to China for a couple of years, is back for a couple of weeks and brought me this huge Toblerone fruit and nut bar. In addition, my friend Mary, whose daughter is interning at the company for the summer, had her daughter drop off these nifty little 3″ photo albums that you print all of the parts for (including custom covers) and assemble yourself. It’s called a ZoomAlbum and looks like it should be pretty fun to play with. She couldn’t figure it out when she tried a while back, so if I can work out how everything prints and goes together, I’m going to make an album for her, since all of the materials she sent me will make 4 or 5 albums, depending on how much she used herself.

My punch needle charts came while I was away, so there’s some fun to be had there, as well. Except for the fact that they couldn’t get one of the items that I ordered and I was looking forward to that particular design (the round sunflower). I’m irritated that the way I found out was via a note in the package instead of an email or phone call asking how I’d like to proceed. I would have substituted another design, if possible. Oh well, no one’s perfect. Plus, the mistakes made by other companies help me to learn so that I can hone my customer service skills for OSL. 😉

Well, that’s it for me for now. I’m going home early to get rid of the last of this headache I have and to deal with the digestive tract issues that cropped up after lunch in the privacy and comfort of my own home. 😆

I’m frantically trying to squeeze in the last few minutes here at the plant before we leave to do some last-minute shopping and head back to the hotel for the night. We never made it into Edinburgh yesterday, so no cross stitch goodies for me, but I’m okay with that. I really don’t need any more stash and the Textile Heritage kits that I was looking for can be ordered directly from them for only 2 GBP shipping, which isn’t bad at all, really. So, I’ll survive. But I need some more German chocolate, some Aero bars, some Scottish shortbread and maybe some Jaffa cakes before we go. If I go home without mint Aero bars, I’ll be REALLY grumpy! 😉

I’ll be boarding a plane for Manchester tomorrow morning UK time and then making the long jump over the pond from Manchester to Philadelphia later in the morning. We’ll be on the ground and heading towards Phoebe (and then HOME!) by 2:00 PM EDT, if all goes as planned. Maybe I’ll post tomorrow night or maybe I’ll just pass out. That remains to be seen. Either way, I’ll be posting next from the area I lovingly call home. Tah!

Yes, I’m in another country now. Have been since Saturday afternoon. It’s a whirlwind tour for Terry and me this time around. We landed in Germany on Wednesday, worked on Thursday and part of Friday, did a little bit of wandering around Munich Friday afternoon, flew out on Saturday, landed in Scotland Saturday evening, hung around the hotel yesterday and are working today and tomorrow in Scotland, flying home on Wednesday.

So, no, this wasn’t a leisure trip (unfortunately), nor will we have/have we had much time to see much in either country. Fortunately, this is our fourth time in Scotland, so I don’t feel like I’m missing much, but I do miss not having had more time in Germany to explore. I would like to learn a little bit of German before we visit again because it was extremely intimidating to visit a country where I don’t speak the native language. It just reminds me that I need to brush up on my French before we visit Paris next year for our 10th wedding anniversary.

And, as Anna pointed out in her comment, I didn’t advertise this trip. I was struck by Cathy’s comment after her vacation trip about not wanting to advertise that her house would be sitting empty, but then I realized that I would have absolutely no blog fodder for over a week if I didn’t talk about it. Besides, no one knows EXACTLY where my home is, unless they’ve been there, so I shouldn’t be too worried. I also think I misconstrued my point about the German hotel versus American hotels. I was trying to say that they were equivalent, with everything costing extra, as opposed to some of the places that I’ve stayed in the UK where more services are included or less expensive. Sorry for the mix-up!

We’ll be getting out early today, so I’m hoping to make it into Edinburgh to either Jenners or John Lewis department store to browse their haberdashery section for some Scottish cross stitch charts or kits. Okay, well, I’m not picky, so they don’t have to be Scottish, but it will count that I bought them in Scotland, right? 😉

Not much else to talk about just now. I guess I’m a little bit boring, despite being in different countries!

I’m writing from Germany today, having landed yesterday. I would have hopped onto the ‘net yesterday to post, but the cost of internet access from the hotel is nearly 20 Euro a day, which is nearly $40 a day! It wasn’t worth the cost to me, when I could just wait one day and go into a German plant and get free internet access. So, here I am. 🙂

Our flight over was uneventful. The food wasn’t bad, the flight attendants weren’t overly friendly; overall, the flight was fairly neutral. We flew US Airways straight from Philadelphia to Munich and I think that the general concensus of associates who also flew US Airways is that British Airways does a better job, even if you can’t get a direct flight to Germany. So, if we have to do this again, we’ll see what we choose to do. We have a HUGE car from the rental company, having had to rent a full sized car in order to get an automatic transmission. I may have learned to drive on a manual transmission, but it’s been what 15 years since I’ve driven a manual? Too long ago for me to be comfortable picking up and driving in a foreign country. We have a Chrysler 300m which, and Carol will attest to, is a large car, so it’s been interesting for Terry to drive this bohemoth in a country where most cars are not that large. It has also drawn some comments and laughs from our colleagues.

We’re here for Terry to work this time, as opposed to Terry tagging along with me to Flagstaff in May. It’s a little strange for me because I don’t really know many German associates at our company and it’s also my first time visiting a country in which English is not the primary, native language. It was quite interesting getting from the airport to our hotel. All in all, we didn’t do too badly. We got going in the wrong direction on one highway and had to exit and turn around to the right direction. Finding the hotel was interesting, as we couldn’t find the road it was on the first time past, but we found it after making a u-turn and trying again. Mostly, it was just funny because I was navigating for Terry and the best I could say is “Look for exit number blah-blah to highway blah-blah towards a bunch of German words.” 😆 I really wish I spoke German, but all of the places we’ve been so far have employees that also speak English, so it hasn’t been too bad. I just wish I felt a little more in my element. It’s good to stretch yourself, it’s just not always comfortable.

We haven’t seen any of the sights, nor will we have much of a chance to before we leave here and head to the UK on Saturday morning. We’ve seen the roads between the airport and our hotel, the inside of our hotel and the company building. Exciting stuff.

The hotel is modern and expensive. Everything is extra. The garage is extra, but necessary because you can’t find a parking spot on the street; internet access is extra; breakfast is extra. Where do they think we are, America? 😉 It’s just much more painful with the US dollar being so weak right now. It’s hard to convince yourself mentally to accept the prices as if they were US dollars, without doing the exchange rates in your head, but it’s necessary in order to feel comfortable with the charges.

I’m struggling with a headache right now that is trying really hard to expand into a migraine and that I’m trying equally hard not to allow it to do so. It’s a little more challenging because I’m not at home with all of the normal accoutrements to help me overcome the headache. I do have Excedrin, Fioricet and my mega-migraine-killer medication with me, though. I just had a tough time getting through breakfast. I normally would have something dry, like granola bars or animal crackers, which helps to soak up the acid in my stomach without causing additional issues. But here, I had sausage and eggs, which went down okay, though the scrambled eggs were starting to push the limits of what I could handle, but the cereal I had afterwards was really difficult for me to choke down, for some reason. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be home right now so I can curl up with a heating pad to relax my shoulder muscles in my nice, soft bed. The bed at the hotel is a bit hard and unforgiving, so I didn’t sleep well with the headache overnight. I’m just hoping that I don’t have to have Terry take me back to the hotel over lunch for me to try to sleep off the remainder of this headache. As it seems to be leaving me, I’m starting to get more and more tired. Or maybe it’s just the caffeine from the Excedrin wearing off. Oh well, it will all work out. 🙂

In the meantime, I have plenty of work to do today, so I’ll sign off for now.

Yeah, we do; yeah we do.

Sorry, that Coldplay song running through my head and now it’s running through my headphones. 😉

Anyway, it’s another beautiful day in the neighborhood. I so wish I didn’t have to be fighting with malfunctioning software right now. I could stand to be out on the boat. We played hooky yesterday (otherwise known as a rare vacation day) and went sailing. Of course, problems cropped up at work for both of us, but I was able to pass mine off onto someone else, while Terry actually had to come in and fix something. Ah, the life of the dedicated computer professional. Isn’t it lovely?

We had a bunch of company on the boat yesterday afternoon/evening. That was… um… interesting. 6 people don’t fit on the boat at one time. Anna is probably going to read this and fall off of her chair, as she’s been on the boat with the Dude and knows what it must have been like to have crammed another 2 people on board. Never again.

We were so out of our normal rhythm that poor Terry got hurt. He was trying to bring the sails down while having me turn the boat. Bad idea. The boom for the main sail came across the deck and knocked him over the side of the boat! Think Pirates of the Caribbean when Johnny Depp’s character wheels the boat around hard and knocks Orlando Bloom’s character so that he’s hanging over the water, hanging onto nothing but the boom. Terry didn’t end up in the water, but was hanging onto a pole and the lifelines. He’s pretty banged up, though he did his best to act like it was nothing at the time, to allay everyone’s fears. I feel bad for him. Just one of those things that wouldn’t normally happen, but I’ve learned the hard way that jamming a lot of people into any sort of vehicle can be a recipe for disaster. After all, that’s how I got into my first automobile accident as a teenager.

Heh-heh… automobile. Dong, where is my automobile? 😆

Anywhoooooooo. Not much going on here. I received my pearl cottons so that I can create the cording to finish off Barnabee’s Quest. Just as soon as I finish sewing on the velcro strips to hold it to the bellpull hardware. You sew both strips onto the back of the piece so that it wraps around the bellpull and then sticks to itself. A good technique to know for fixed bellpull hardware, since the only ones I’ve used so far either allowed you to slip the piece over the dowel and/or the finials could be removed to allow you to slip the piece onto the dowel. So, I’m used to just stitching a little pocket for the dowel, which wouldn’t work this time. Hopefully, Barnabee will ready for his debut as a finishing product sometime in the next week or so.

No more card crafting for now. I’m not totally tapped out of ideas, but I have nothing to do with them, so I’m going to send some to Barbara and the rest to my grandmother. I’ve also been working at learning and practicing Kirigami, though all I’ve done so far are two pop-up cards/sculptures. I’ll have to take pictures. One is of a ballerina on pink backing cardstock and the other is an oriental dragon. The ballerina will go to my psychiatrist, who has a special interest in ballet. The dragon is for me, especially because he took quite a while to cut out and was a good challenge for me. I just forgot to mount him on his backing paper before I popped him out, so it will be interesting to try to put on the backing after the fact. I may have to do him again!

I printed the patterns from this website, if anyone is interested. All you need is some white cardstock and a sharp Exacto (or other) knife. And I mean SHARP. I was working with a dull blade for the entire ballerina and part of the dragon and it was really hard on my hand to push so hard. When I finally changed out the blade, it was amazingly easy and I was able to finish up the dragon in no time afterwards. Duh to me. 😉

I’ve even almost picked up a needle. Okay, that’s a lie. I did pick up a very thick needle yesterday to do some plastic canvas work while on the boat. Remember the coasters I stitched last year? Well, I bought a matching tissue box cover at the same time. So, I started it yesterday, only to find out (much to my dismay) that they totally forgot one color of yarn – the gold that is used for the anchor. There are only 5 colors used, how do you manage to miss one? So, now I need to run out to ACMoore or WalMart or someplace and pick up some gold yarn, along with some more white cardstock so I can make more 3D cards. 😀

I also kitted up Just Nan’s Flower Girls WhimZi design that I bought for my work cubicle for the spring and summer months. I will put needle to fabric on that one soon, I think. I even ironed the fabric last night, so I’m ready to go whenever my mojo decides to pay me a visit.

Finally, I acquired some new stash yesterday. Shame on me! I was trying not to buy anything else for quite some time, but this one called out to me with a specific purpose. I won an eBay auction for Just Nan (can you tell I like her designs or something?)’s Sparkling Iris design, embellishments and the beautiful frame. Once finished, this will go to either my mother or grandmother, both of whom love irises!

That’s enough babbling from this little brook for now. Time to get back to the grind. 🙂