scifiknitter

When we visit my dad and stepmother, we watch a movie almost every night. As a person who rarely gets out to a movie theater, was very, very bad at getting Netflix disks watched and returned, and who lives 20 miles from the nearest video rental place, this is an opportunity to catch up with films that I never saw in their heyday. On the screen this past week: “Sleepless in Seattle”, “Red October”, and the extended Swedish version of “The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo”. When the cry went up from the masses (well, from me) for a light and fluffy comedy, my dad chose “The Graduate”. I think that my husband and I were the only two people left in our generation who had never seen this movie. I remember great reviews and it was tagged as a comedy, so I settled in to round out my cultural education. Oh, my goodness. I think this movie is one of the least cheery comedies ever. It can’t help it, though. “The Graduate” is an excellent example of the movie that has not aged well. The hero of the tale...

I kind of kept to my new year change resolutions. Got out to work earlier. Got home a wee bit earlier. A traffic snarl near the scene of a house fire and the necessity of obtaining gas were delaying factors. Then I got gobsmacked by one of the many end-of-year accounting scenarios playing out this month. So supper was served an hour and a half later than the plan. Tomorrow’s another day to try, try again.

It’s been up and down, but I’m happy to say that 2011 finished with a sharp up-snap, and the yo-yo is in hand, ready to go for another year. On the work front, my agency faced possible defunding that would have put our continued existence into question. In the end, the funder has budgeted flat funding for us in 2012, not even cutting the amount they give us. Yes, there was wild dancing on desktops when that news was announced. Well, maybe not dancing, but morale is up, up, up and everybody is sleeping much better at night. Helping on the morale front is that we have a new boss, and this time it’s a promotion from within of a well-liked and respected colleague. We have problems galore - oops, I’m supposed to call those nasty pimples “challenges” - but we ended the year stronger, not weaker. My job is changing for the better as well. I applied for a couple of positions in the course of the year. One would have taken me out of the agency, and another would have kept me in the agency, but ...

I am relearning why it is very satisfying to knit a basic sock. Round and round in knit stitch means that the sock grows at the knitterly version of breakneck speed. I am knitting this without any pattern other than the recipe I carry in my head. This is also very, very satisfying. I dyed the yarn by painting a sock blank, which consists of 2 strands of sock yarn knit loosely into a rectangle. Once dry, I wound the blank into 2 balls of sock yarn. These should knit into 2 identical socks. Bonus: the dye did not penetrate completely in the peach sections, resulting in a speckled-with-white effect that is quite nice, and something found in some very pricey sock yarns *ahem Opal ahem*.

Late last year I blogged about what was very good news in our household: the passage of a bill creating the North Country Power Authority (NCPA). The story of this project has become the stuff of novels since then, and there is probably not going to be an ending where the hero strides into the sunset, basking in the glory of a quest achieved. If there is such an ending, my husband is very unlikely to be that hero. The complexities of human behavior are so much a part of the story that I am putting aside the urges to label causes, cast blame, point fingers. We’ll stick with irony and bemusement, and lift a glass to the prospect of a new year swept clean of the obsession of trying to save a project. A brief synopsis: We start with the successful passage of the bill enabling the NCPA. There was a team of people who worked to accomplish this, and there was a plan. The NY State legislature would not have enabled a dream; they passed the legislation because it looked like the new entity had...

I’m home again after three days of traveling. I’ll be taking off for more travels Saturday morning, but that won’t be for work. That will be to visit people I love, and R. will be driving, and I’ll be knitting Christmas presents. My head is sorting out all kinds of new information. I’ve taken another step towards adding exciting new duties to my job. Both ongoing and new work associates seem quite confident that I will do just fine. My karma with the universe seems to be solid. At the beginning of two four-hour long drives in the dark, I filled my pink McGill travel mug with coffee, and both times the cashier told me the coffee was free, and to drive safely. I did. Now to pay the bills, so that I can enjoy the vacation that starts Saturday morning.

I love filling in the bubble next to the name of my husband on the paper ballot. He’s running unopposed, but it’s still a little thrill to vote for him. I was the only person today to ask to see my ballot on the scanning machine before pushing the button that cast my vote. Second happy moment: seeing his name on the ballot scanner.