Please Hold All Your Questions Until the End of the Tour
Monday, Sept. 01, 2008 at 8:17 a.m.
Hi kids, Happy Labor Day! I�m currently at work (of course) but I�m listening to a documentary of the Salem Witch Trials on Netflix while I�m typing this entry. Actually, I should take a picture of my desk to show you just how I�m so set up here:
Check that out, huh? I use the laptop as my desktop, but I�m able to have two monitors, then. I can watch (sort of) a movie on the laptop but still do work on the big monitor. God, it�s just the shiz-nit. And I�m getting paid for this. Now, let�s do a tour of this corner of my desk. The Dilbert� cartoon (which is of course, compulsory in all offices) has the Pointy-Haired Boss saying �Don�t feel bad if you only got a 3% raise; I got 2% myself.� In the next panel, Alice questions, �Can we fell bad that 2% of your pay is bigger than 3% of our pay?� In the last panel, the Pointy-Haired Boss replies, �Don�t get all mathy on me.� This was a gift from the Hubster and his desk calendar the day after I had my performance review and got a � you guessed it � a 3% raise.
Below my monitor are an obligatory Happy Buddha and a stack of sticky notes, as well as a sticky note on my monitor that reads �Pay Attention!� � something I have difficulty doing when I�m typing a diary entry while listening to a documentary. *grin*
On the cube wall above my monitor is a cartoon that shows a person behind a desk and another person who appears to be on fire. The caption reads, �If you ask a question that the Help Desk thinks is dumb, we will set you on fire.� Next to that is a magazine cover with a picture of Hugh Laurie as House . . . Now, I have been in lurve with Hugh Laurie since I was 15 years old. That�s 22 years. He�s mine, I tell you. Mine. Back off. Below this clipping are two buttons, one which reads �Don�t Panic!� and another which reads �Whining� with a big red bar going through it. The �Don�t Panic!� button is an artifact from the Hitchhiker�s Guide to the Galaxy computer game from . . . oh gads, who did those? You know, Zork and all those text-based games where you get eaten by a grue?
Then there�s a cartoon about eating too many sunflower seeds (which I used to do before Weight Watchers, but I don�t want to just throw the thing away) and a wedding picture and a snapshot of my best friend�s daughter.
Also, the obligatory big cup of Diet Coke�, the tissue box, the little paper clip dispenser, and if you look close you can see a pair of knitting needles poking out of the pen cup. They�re a size 7, which is the best for knitting dishcloths. However, I don�t have any dishcloth yarn in the desk right now. I�m currently working on socks. More on that later.
The little pillow, of course, is to prevent me from breaking my own nose when I die of boredom and my head goes crashing onto my desk. No. I lie. That�s the pillow for my arm when I�m using the mouse. I�ve had that pillow since I got my first car at 17 (twenty years!) and I needed a pillow for my left arm on the door handle. It was hurting my elbow.
Man, 20 years. I should probably wash that thing.
So that�s one corner of my little cubicle. Wasn�t that fun?
The socks I mentioned earlier are the Jaywalking Toe-Up Socks I�ve been working on for a couple of weeks:
Can you see why they�re calling �jaywalking� socks? Don�t they look like a zebra crossing? Anyway, I had worked on these for a few hours yesterday, turning the heel, but then I had to rip back everything I had done because the foot wasn�t quite long enough. And if there�s anything I hate, it�s socks that are too short in the foot. Oh well, each sock is a learning experience. Someday, I hope to aspire to the Swedes and their knitting practices. If you read a Swedish knitting pattern, it just says, �Make a heel.�
That�s it. No explanation, no breakdown of rows in the heel, just �make a heel.� �Make a toe.�
Someday, God As My Witness! I will be a Knitter!