(Actually, I have more portfolio stuff to do, and I’m going to get awesome cover letters written for The Summit Group, Crowell, and Love Communications. I don’t suppose anyone reading this has an in at any of those places? No? GOSH.)
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Friday Unrelated Information
1. My baking spree continues: Today it’s peanut butter cupcakes from the latest Martha Stewart, and I have cinnamon swirl bread, chocolate granola (scroll way down), and “world peace” cookies planned for the next few days. I’m going to weigh 900 pounds by the time I get another job.
2. In my new routine, I totally forgot that Monday was Groundhog Day, Candlemas, and a Druidic holiday: Imbolc, the beginning of the end of winter. Time to start seeds! (Read more about them all here.)
Dickensian
I’ve been watching a BBC miniseries version of Bleak House this week (yes, I got it for the title) and it’s awesome. I don’t have a lot of patience with reading Dickens, but watching it is great. According to Wikipedia, Bleak House is “held to be one of Dickens’s finest and most complete novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon.” After just the first two installments, there’s already been a Mr. Krook, the bad landlord, a Miss Flite, the crazy bird lady, and someone named Mr. Guppy. And a minor character will die of spontaneous human combustion! Really, what more could one ask for in a miniseries?
Wednesday Work Tunes
I thought I’d start a feature of some Depression-era songs, if only to remind me that it could still be a lot worse. The song I wanted to feature first, though–“Hard Times Come Again No More”–wasn’t written in the Great Depression; it was written in 1854, by Stephen Foster.
I’m sad to admit I don’t know much about the economic situation leading up to the Civil War, but I think the fact that it was 1854 is enough to qualify the song for inclusion here, even if there wasn’t a recession on then. (No vaccines, no painkillers, slavery was still going strong…) And the lyrics are still meaningful, I think:
Let us pause in life’s pleasures
And count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor.
There’s a song that will linger
Forever in our ears:
“Oh hard times, come again no more.”
Tuesday Project Roundup: Why Yes, I Do Have A Lot Of Spare Time Lately
The tan sweater is still in pieces, but I’m hoping to have it finished in a few days. I’m done with anything related to job hunting by 3:00 or 4:00 every day so I’ve been watching movies on the computer and knitting until Mr. Isbell gets home.
I’ve also been cooking like there’s no tomorrow: I’ve made two loaves of bread, chocolate pudding, and cinnamon rolls in the last four days, and am trying to decide what yeasty baked good is next. Because, hey! I’m home to oversee the risings and the second risings and the bakings, so why not?
Keeping It In Perspective
In addition to pulling together a portfolio and biting my nails over my long weekend, I started reading about Ernest Shackleton’s 1915 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition:
There is nothing that makes you think, “Wow, it could be worse” faster than hearing about people stuck in the frozen Weddel Sea.
They were for all practical purposes alone in the frozen Antarctic seas…Nobody in the outside world knew they were in trouble, much less where they were. They had no radio transmitter with which to notify any would-be rescuers, and it is doubtful that any rescuers could have reached them even if they had been able to broadcast an SOS….
Thus their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity. If they were to get out–they had to get themselves out.
And in a nice cross-media tie-in, I watched Encounters at the End of the World Saturday night. (Highly recommended, especially for Werner Herzog’s voice-overs.)There are crazy scallops underneath the ice in Antarctica! And seals make weird clicking whistles underwater! The world is a cool place, and I’m not trapped in the ice. It could be worse.
Friday Information
To just jump right into the information: I was laid off from the agency yesterday. They were as pleasant as they could be about it–gave me a few contacts at other places, some vacation pay as severance, and offered portfolio help. But still.
On the bright side, I have lots of fabric and yarn piled up, so I won’t have to buy more of that for a while; I can now go to the grocery store in the middle of the day; and Toby is really enjoying playing in the box that I used to take all the stuff from my desk home.
So let the search for a new job begin. If anyone reading this needs a freelance writer, let me know at karen(dot)kaminski(at)gmail(dot)com. I have some great skills–knitting skills, sewing skills, writing skills…
Two Happy Things
1. There are magnolia trees in front of Kingsbury Hall*, and last night I saw that they’re starting to bud. Spring is coming–the early-blooming magnolias know it.
2. The Married to the Sea comic site, which is updated daily, also makes me happy. Here’s a favorite:
*The magnolias were the highlight of the performance for me. A radio play does not make for gripping staging, and I would think that holding a script would make it easier for actors to deliver their lines, not harder. There was a good pro-science crowd, at least.
Why I’m Not Going To Grad School
I’ve had two classes to go to this month–dance class and sewing machine class. I reported on swing dancing a few weeks ago and predicted success at the end of the four week class. Well, let’s just say we dropped that class and will re-take it before graduation. We missed last week at the last minute to go to the Utah Democratic Party inaugural celebration, and last night Mr. Isbell and I looked at each other and said, “Let’s not.” (To make us sound less like lazy quitters, the class was HUGE, so we weren’t sure we could pick up what we missed; and our original plan was to take it with another couple, which we still want to try to do.)
But sewing machine classs was going well, and tonight was going to be my final class. Except while not at dance class last night I got a call from my friend Sean saying, “Scopes Monkey Trial! Kingsbury Hall! Culture!” After some confusion, it turned out he had scored tickets to the one-night only LA Theater production of “The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial.” So I’ll be skipping class tonight*, too.
Apparently, I’m still 21 and think skipping classes without consequence is AWESOME. Hey, let’s go get a bagel instead of going to Music Theory!
*I can still go to the Saturday morning session of sewing machine class, so I won’t miss vital information about using a walking foot. Otherwise, I would have had to say, “No Monkey Trial.”
Tuesday Project Roundup: Piles Of Projects
Which pile should I start with? The pile of quilt fabrics?
Turning this into a quilt shouldn’t be too daunting, because the final product will consist of just long columns of these fabrics, like this or this. I just need to get started. (I decided against making a doll quilt to practice, because most of my motivation on a project comes from anticipating the final result, and, well, Toby already got his new rug.)
This pile of yarn will be that owl sweater I’ve been talking about since November:
And then there’s this pile, which is the sweater I’ve been working on for ten weeks now. It will look like this someday…
Maybe I can blame Toby for impeding progress. I had to snatch the pieces from the jaws of death right after I took this.