Snow, Travel and More Crafts

We were up at Squaw Valley this weekend playing in the snow. My company had its yearly planning session up there during the week and then we got to stay up there through the weekend. What an excellent fringe benefit! My honeypot came up on Thursday night and we skied on Saturday. It was the most perfect conditions because it basically snowed the entire time I was up there, but amazingly enough, it stopped snowing for the entire day of Saturday and was relatively warm. Perfect!

Something I realized on our way home from there is that I leave for India on Thursday. Whoa, I haven't even begun to plan for this trip at all. Besides not having prepared my materials for what I'm teaching while I'm there, I haven't even begun to research where I'll be going and what I'll be doing with my 5 days off at the end. I'll be back on Feb 19th.

My honeypot lost the last hat I made him, so I've been working on this new hat design. I've never crocheted a hat from the center out radially before. I'm following the pattern in this new book my mother-in-law gave me for xmas. It's been a pretty great gift. I'll let you know how it comes out.

And What a Week it's Been

Wow, what a crazy week it's been. I felt like I was constantly running just to keep up with everything that came my way.
There were so many extra errands and so many more social events than normal for me. It was extremely fun, and also draining.
Last week I went to get the visa for my India trip and that took hours of standing in line.
There was this fantastic Girlz Night that I attended on Tuesday night. That was such a blast. It was a new group of friends and we hit it off really well. I hope I get to hang out with them again. An intriguing sounding movie called "The business of being born" came out of our discussions there.
Then on Wed morning we had an apt with our friend, who happens to be the real estate agent that sold us our Oakland house. There's a recently fixed up 4 unit place a couple doors down from us that we were interested in looking at. Slightly for investment purposes, and more for a couple friends that are looking to buy. This place was perfect. It's a reasonably priced spacious 2bd, has a huge yard and the entire building was recently overhauled. New foundation, new roof, new everything. It had been a rental previously. (If you're reading this Yar - what are you waiting for? We would be the perfect neighbors.)
I had two friends from out of town visiting this weekend. My Chicago friend arrived while I was at work on Friday and I didn't get to see him until Sat morning! I had dinner plans after work and a pretty large group of us went to Happy Shabu Shabu. The experience was interesting - the service not so great. Basically each person had a hot pot of boiling water in front of them and then you get served veggies and you make your own food! Sorta like Korean BBQ, except with boiling water instead of a grill. We had a 20 person group which might explain the bad service. The rest of the gang went on to the Cornelius show, and I went home. Before that my co-workers and I went out for drinks at 5pm to celebrate our success. we have about 1/3 of the staff, but we recently beat Zillow in unique visitors per week. It's a huge milestone and really demonstrates our growth, and our potential. Woo Hoo!
Saturday my Chicago friend, my honeypot, and I walked up to Rockridge for a lovely breakfast. Then we all went our own way and I bought supplies for the party we threw that night. It was a lot of fun with hours of gaming. The games went on until 5am! (I thought I was too old to stay up that late. he he he)
Sunday I finally got to see my other friend in town from DC. She was at the shabu dinner on Friday, but she was so far away I didn't really get to talk to her much. We had plans to hike but were both so worn out from our previous nights (she wasn't able to attend the party due to another show she went to) that we chose to walk around 4th ave and browse. It was a lot of fun. I don't really browse anymore. I probably didn't much before either, but I never do it now. Except yesterday. There's quite a bit of unique/weird stuff down there so it was good times. After our shopping experience, we went to Jupiter and had pizza to fulfill my friend's craving and some other friends met up with us. Then we went home, hung out and played some more games. It was fun.
Today I got up and went out to breakfast with my friend from Chicago and finally got some more time to hang out with him. Then I went to work and he prepared for his travels back.
Tonight I had dinner plans, but everybody was just too tired, so it pretty much fell apart. But that's ok. I'm tired. I'm really happy to be home and just relax a bit because I'm leaving for another adventure on Wed afternoon.

Our company has an off site planning week at the start of every year to figure out which projects are most importnat and make a tentative schedule for the year. This year we're all (60 people plus significant others and families) are going up to Tahoe on Wed through Sunday. My honeypot is coming up Thurs night and it sounds like it might get a little crazy. I expect good times!

The trip to India is official - I leave on the 31st and arrive back on the 17th and I'll get 5 days at the end when I'm not working. Also, I have a plane ticket into New Delhi and out of Mumbai.

Latest Craft Project - 4 Color Crochet Hat

My mother-in-law gave me this fantastic crochet book and some yarn for my birthday. The yarn is really nice and the book is awesome. I chose a pattern and made this hat this past weekend. I'm really happy how it came out. I've historically avoided patterns because they can be too restrictive. With this project it really helped me learn the correct name for various stitches and the end result is something much nicer than I might have come up with on my own. (It's hard to see the difference between the orange and red in this picture - but you can see the difference in person.)

WFH

That's WFH (working from home) for those who don't know the vernacular.

We are permitted to wfh at my job. And I haven't really taken advantage of that very much before. But I'm starting to now. I've begun to see how glorious it is to skip the commute into work and the random interruptions of my concentration. And then there's the magic of having my cat nearby, either on my lap, on her special pillow next to my computer, or occasionally, on my keyboard. On the downside, I miss working in a group. And we've got a pretty great group at my work. Also, there's some coworkers who don't really work when they are wfh, so they give it a bad reputation. I'll be going in tomorrow, I need to have some discussions with folks that just won't cut it via IM.

I recently found out that I (probably) am going to India in February. I'm really excited to go there. It's been the place I've wanted to travel to for quite a while. The unfortunate thing is that after going to New Zealand, I don' t have much vacation to use. But I'm going to try my darndest to get at least a week off, after working there for two weeks.

Some updates for those who are wondering:
I'm no longer doing calorie restriction. We went to Houston and it was impossible to maintain while I was there. Then I never picked it back up again.

I still love my Roomba, though she hasn't gotten as much attention as she did when she was new to me.

Stormy Weather

Storm details here.

I can hear constant sirens as various spontaneous accidents occur. My favorite is the 18 wheel truck that got "blown over."

The California Highway Patrol closed the eastbound Richmond-San Rafael Bridge after a gust of wind blew over an 18-wheel truck around 8:30 a.m. Story here.

I suppose I should have known something was up when Stella began insistently meowing at around 6am. She wouldn't stop for hours. I tried to comfort her, but she wasn't having any of that. I think that she was thoroughly freaked out by the storm. Our house is shaking and twisting with the force of the wind and rain.

I drove to work across the bay bridge because there were some important meetings today, but when I got there (after thoroughly getting wet after walking the two blocks from the car parking lot) there was no power. There were several blocks where huge trees had come down, and most stop lights that I drove near were out. I stayed at work about an hour and finally came home.

The wind on the bridge was so strong that it was a struggle to stay in my lane. There is so much water everywhere (and accidents too). I hydroplaned a couple times while driving. Thankfully most people are driving really slow.

I'm glad to be home!

In other news I recently bought a new laptop battery on ebay. It arrived in a couple days and it's so amazing to have my laptop work without being plugged in! I love it. (Previously it couldn't last even a couple minutes without wall power.) I've had this laptop for 3 or 4 years now, so it's not so surprising that the battery lost it's ability to hold a charge. I wish I had bought a new one earlier.

Well, enjoy the stormy weather.

Kitty in a Cage

What do you think of this kitty's access to the outdoors? It's pretty strange, isn't it?

This cage seems a little wrong to me. I guess it's safe. And it was on the second floor, so they won't be interacting with any other animals through the bars. Okay, I changed my mind. It's not so bad. It's way better than not letting your cat out at all. That's just wrong. Would you be happy if you never got to see the outdoors again but could smell it on the shoes of your owners? Me neither.

My honeypot and I went on this fantastic long walk. He brought his camera along and took a bunch of interesting pictures. I saw this and requested a photograph.

We've been thinking through home improvements over this fantastic break, and we've come up with quite a few. My favorite so far is fixing the slope of the back room (formerly a porch) and putting a balcony on top of it (on the second floor). That would be nice because it would give us a great outside space where we could see amazing sunsets with some privacy.

Also, does anybody know about bamboo? The blue variety specifically. I think I'm going to fill up all the big pots I have with blue bamboo and make a live bamboo wall around our side yard. It'll make our small outside space nicer to no see the neighbor's house. What do you think about this idea?