Saturday, April 30, 2011

Craftiness: Easter Edition

Guess who came over for a play date last week?  


For some reason, I was feeling really ambitious and decided to make my Easter dress.  The pattern was simple enough (hooray for raglan sleeves!) and after a few...*ahem* disagreements with Ken and the knit fabric I was using (yes, I do yell at inanimate objects), it actually wasn't too bad.  Of course, the hem isn't actually "finished" (knit doesn't unravel, so who cares if it's just cut instead of sewn?), but I finished it in time for church last Sunday.  Hooray!  Here it is!

Umm...so this may or may not have been sitting wadded up for the past week before I took the picture...


It's just a basic wrap dress--I know these pictures don't give you the full effect, but I really didn't get any of me in the dress.  Maybe later.  Oh, and you obviously can't tell from the pictures, but the fabric is about the softest stuff ever.  Mmm....

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Frankenbear

At the end of March/beginning of April, I decided I was going to make my nephew's birthday present.  After all, he was turning 1, so if it turned out completely hideous he wouldn't care.  I forgot to get a picture of the finished product before (and I'm a horribly lazy blogger anyways...), so now I'm making up for it.  


Behold: 
He looked kind-of creepy with just eyes, so I decided to call him Frankenbear.

See?  The resemblance is uncanny.

Ah, much better.

Almost done...

So, yeah, his legs look a little wonky, but...

...sitting down, he looks pretty good!
I couldn't really come up with name for him earlier, but I think I like Theodore.  Yes, a bit cliche, but he's got a fat belly like Theodore the chipmunk, so I think it works.  I'm not too attached to it, though--I know as soon as Nephew T can really talk he'll probably make up his own name for it.  I just hope the poor thing can survive the next few years with all his limbs intact....(finishing off is not my strong point)

In case anyone is interested, you can find the pattern here.  Thank you Lion Brand!

Monday, April 18, 2011

Little Things

5 Little Things That Make Me Happy: The Work Version
1. Rolling around my giant cubicle in my wheel-y chair {which probably doesn't help my static electricity problem much...}
2. Using our super-powered gigantor stapler {hmm...I may have to name that thing}
3. Filing things {filing = something got done!}
4. Opening mail {with our blue, whale shaped letter-opener--it's pretty much awesome}
5. Signing for deliveries {the power!}

This is another one of those conversations that Miss T. and I have often--I'll do one of the things on the list above (or the much longer list in my head) and say, "I don't know why, but I just love doing [insert random thing here]."  

"It's the little things, Jenny, I keep telling you!" from Miss T.

After a bit of a pity-party weekend, I have decided to look for reasons to be happy.  Easier said than done, but today has already been pretty darn great.  Let's hope I can keep it up!

Hope you're all having a lovely day!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

5 Things I Have Learned At Work This Week

1. People use the strangest capitalization, especially in price quotes.  {Really, is it necessary To Capitalize Every Word In The Sentence?!  I think not.}


2. If you want to fax in an order to Chipotle for lunch for just you, it should be done at least a half hour early.


3. If you're feeling nice and want to help everyone in the office fax in an order to Chipotle for lunch, it should be done at least an hour and a half early.  And you should be prepared to pick it up and cover everyone upfront because they will most likely not have cash on them that day.  {Guess which option I chose this week?}


4. A French accent (possibly French-Canadian--is there a difference?) can be extremely difficult to understand.  Especially if the Frenchman in question is saying his name.  {Oi.}


5. Reading while you eat is apparently bad for you.  It distracts you and messes up your digestion.  {Or so I'm told.}


There's probably more things I could put on here, but that's all I feel like putting on here at the moment.  Sorry for not keeping you all better informed about my life.  Really, I go to work, come home from work, and don't do much else.  I'm starting to make a dress that will hopefully be done by Easter (cross your fingers), so I'm sure I will have stories about that soon.  Sven and I can only play nice for so long...


Happy Saturday everyone!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Just Call Me "Sparky"

I am currently sitting next to our open door.  Hasn't the weather just been fabulous today?  (At least for us Arizona desert rats--don't worry, a coworker and I have already had this discussion twice.)  I love it.


Moving on.


So, I have a story for all of you!  (I know, get excited.)  First, you need some background:


Background Item #1: A lot of the doors in my office require a key card to unlock.  It's just a little box/number pad thing on the side of the door, you hold your card up to it, and voila!  It opens.


Background Item #2: For some reason, I am always static-y (there's really no good way to spell that) at work.  Whenever I get out of my chair, the first piece of grounded metal I touch will inevitably shock me.  I've just accepted that fact.  Consequently, I have gotten into the habit of tapping the metal wall of my cubicle with my forearm every time I leave it.  (Why my forearm, you ask?  Because zapping your fingers every time hurts.  I have learned by experience.)  I realized the other day that it makes me feel like a clownfish--my cubicle is my anemone, making me immune to other shocks.  (Yeah, so my only knowledge of this subject comes from "Finding Nemo"--don't judge.)  Now back to the story already in progress...


So, last Wednesday it was pretty quiet at the office.  A lot of the actual office people were gone at some big meeting, so it was just me and a select few there.  I decided that I needed to go back to the lab to ask someone a question.  So, I left my cubicle {critical mistake #1: I did not tap} and headed on back.  When I got to the key pad, I committed {critical mistake #2: I actually touched my card to the box.}  Guess what happened?


A huge spark shot out from me (I'm assuming--weird) straight through my card and to the box.  Instead of blinking green and unlocking the door, the little box made a weird noise, the light turned red, and it didn't unlock.  My initial thought: "Maybe it was just a fluke.  Let's just try it again."  I tried it again.  "Hmm...nope, not a fluke.  Well, crap, I think I shorted out my card!"


After standing there for a minute deciding just how dumb I wanted/was going to look, I finally turned to the guys next to me and said, "Umm, can one of you open the door for me?  I think I broke my card..."  One guy tried it--it still didn't work.  Another tried his card--didn't work for him either.  (Now I'm thinking "I broke the door, not my card!!")  So, we frantically set about to find a manual or something that would get the stupid thing to work again.  Enter Miss T (as I will call her), the office manager and One Who Knows Everything (or just about).  She called our cable/electrical guy and told him the problem.  Here is pretty much the conversation that I heard:


"Hey, [person], we have a bit of an emergency here.  The doors aren't working and the only thing we can correlate it with is that Jenny was walking around and had a bit of static and she kind-of shocked the box.  {Bless her, she wasn't blaming me outright.}  Can you come and fix it?"


Meanwhile, we found out that not only was the main lab door not working, but all doors locked with this box were not working--even the ones outside our building (on the gates).  Sheesh!  Luckily, our guy was just finishing up another job and got over to us pretty quickly.  While he was working, I made signs for the doors ("Currently out of order--use another one instead") and had to keep telling people what was going on ("Um, I had a build-up of static electricity and when I touched the box it shocked it and stopped working.")  Yeah, good times.  I got razzed and told that I needed to attach a grounding wire to my pant leg.  Haha.  Actually, I really was laughing because it was ridiculously funny (even though I felt totally guilty).  He got it all fixed pretty quickly--like 15 minutes or so--and everything was back to normal.


As he was leaving, I just had to ask: "Did I really break all the doors?"


Mr. Fix-It: Well, it was some sort of static...something.  I don't really know what it was.


Me: I DID break all the doors!


MFI: It looked like kind-of a freak thing.  Like the sort of thing you couldn't do again if you tried.


Miss T: Oh, don't tell her that, that's a challenge!


I guess it's one way to break the ice with a new office full of people....