At least we're out of the football thing for a few days.‡ Now we can talk about me.
[SUMMARY: I don't know about y'all, but I'm all about some me.]
As you may recall, I moved to a new office last week. Several of my co-workers have commented on my stunning view of seven or eight major pay parking lots here in downtown Denver, but the real feature is this:
Yes, I can see a crane from my window.§
No, that's not a thumbprint. It was foggy and rainy and damp on Monday.^
Of course, there was Wednesday.
This is what it looks like at 5-fucking-30 in the ay-em¶:
7:30 am...
6:30 pm%...
[SUMMARY: The whinging never ends.]
And Mini Bonding in the parking lot.#
[SUMMARY: Neither does the dork.]
When I was in on Saturday (and don't think I won't whine about that if I feel the need), the red Cooper was there too. I wonder if the red Cooper lives nearby. I wonder if the red Cooper's driver would like to have lunch some time.
[SUMMARY: The red Cooper is my new best friend!]
On Thursday and Friday I had the RMMLF Mineral Title Examination seminar. A waste of time, resources, money, fuel,†† energy, space... honestly, the materials are good, but the live presentations left something to be desired. Most of them.
See, they kept every speaker to twenty minutes and they tried to keep most of it really, really basic. And they talked about LR2000‡‡ constantly.
Let me break it down for you, knitta style:
Say you shelled out $600 for a two-day knitting symposium. All your LYS owners and a couple of notaries from across the country were slated to talk about your craft. They give you a big ol' book full of tips and tricks and patterns.
Then they say, "If you've been knitting for less than a year, raise your hand." You look around. About four people have their hands in the air.
Then they say, "And how many of you have been knitting for more than ten years?" You look around and more than half the room have their hands in the air.
You may think at this point that they're going to say, "Well, then, we won't be teaching you to cast on, we'll assume y'all know the knit and purl and we'll get right into some theory and design and such. If you noobs have questions, track down one of the many OKE's§§ out there and they'll be happy to help you."
But no, they explain that you can see how mixed a group it is, and they're going to try to address issues that will be in the interest and purview of each level of expertise, but because that's so varied, everybody's going to get screwed.¶¶
[SUMMARY: Really. That bad.]
Then they tell you that, in the interest of keeping on schedule, they're only going to let each person (even the Yarn Harlot) speak for only twenty minutes.
The first seven people tell you knittinghelp.com^^ is a really excellent resource and you should familiarise yourself with it. They tell you it may take some practise to get the hang of it, but it has lots of good information. Each one tells you this for twenty minutes.
[SUMMARY: I'm not kidding. That bad.]
Thank the katzen in himmel you have your knitting.##
I can't tell you how it happened,††† but the running jokes over the two-day lawfest were "meth lab" and "LR2000."
I was working on Brother's socks. After a few rounds, he was drafting out my yarn for me. I said, "Thanks!"
He said, "I don't have anything else to do."
[SUMMARY: Seriously. That bad.]
Hell week is over, technically. I'm still helling, but at least I'm not helling at 5-fucking-30 in the ay-em.
[SUMMARY: There is no statute of limitations for whining about being at the office at 5-fucking-30 in the ay-em.]
And tomorrow, there will be yarn pictures.
Y'know... to make it all better.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Why does everything look so much worse on the Innernets? On my monitor, my pictures are crisp and clear and my video doesn't look like it's raining on my camera.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): I reserve the right to go fantasy dork on you. It's my blog and I'll dork what I want to.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): It may not be great for my professional career that every time someone says, with that little edge of sarcasm, "Oh, you got a window. Nice view," I get all squirmy and go, "Oh, but look at the crane! I have a thing for cranes."
"Really?"
"Oh, yeah."
*longpause*
"Well, good for you then. We'll see you later."
^FOOTNOTE (careted): Last Monday. OK, yesterday too. It's good -- I like rain and fog anyway, but if your Monday is drippy, at least you don't feel like you've lost your weekend to the rain gods.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Yes, I'm still whining about that. I figure I've got another two or three weeks of dropping the "5-fucking-30" thing into casual conversation.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): All the same day. I'm not done whining yet.
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): The same bemused construction worker has walked by every. single. time. I've taken a picture of the red Mini. He's started giving me a wide berth and won't make eye contact anymore. Would it make things better or worse if I explain the Mini Bonding thing?
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): And, y'all know, I'm in the petroleum business. I'm usually a great advocate of keeping-Marin-busy-and-in-sock-yarn-through-irresponsible-use-of-hydrocarbons.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Land Records 2000, the Bureau of Land Managment's dbase system wherein we find much of what we may need on federal lands and minerals and other groovy information on surface authority, patented lands, mining claims, USGS resurveys... you know. Stuff you use every day.
§§FOOTNOTE (is it curvy in here, or is it just me?): When we (Brother and I) were down on the Ice (Antarctica), freshman workers were Fingies (FIN-jees), or FNGI, which stood for "fucking new guy on the Ice." Second-years on up were OAE's, or Old Antarctic Explorers. So OKE: Old Knitting Explorer. Yeah, that may have been too far to go to explain an inside joke that you will never have to know again. Of course, you realise I will now have to drop OKE regularly enough to make the last 100 words worthwhile. My blog, my rules.
Do I seem abnormally surly to you today? Must be the sunny weather and nine-hour workdays.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (seriously paragraphed): I may be paraphrasing.
^^FOOTNOTE (carets are good for your eyes): This is our LR2000 analog, for those of you scoring at home.
##FOOTNOTE (totally pounded): This applies equally to the fictitious knitting symposium and the actual Cirque du Mineral Law.
†††FOOTNOTE (it's looking like Calvary Hill around these parts): Not because it's a secret, because I don't really remember. There was also moss involved. I *really* don't know how that happened. Old. Feeble.
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