Word of the Month: “Damp”

No really, it’s damp here. just about every day for the past week, it’s rained. I’m damp and feel like I’m about to start growing moss. NOT HAPPY! Even better, all the rain lines swooping in suddenly have wreaked havok on my sinuses, so it’s been one slow steady headache for a while. Ick. /sighs at more rainclouds incoming

This past two weeks have been chaos, as per usual these days. In WoWness, Brewfest came and went, but I got a Brewfest Kodo, and the Brewmaster title (now why can’t it say “Brewmistress?! Srsly! /pout), so that was good. Wrenn’s now rockin’ the 2 piece T8 bonus, which is also excellent. The guild finally got raid-happy again, and we’re now back to where we were progression-wise a few months ago when a bunch of the regulars went off in new directions/left game/vanished. We downed Ony in 10-man, and I would have loved to have been there for a 25-man kill with another guild, but the game decided to lock up whenever I rezzed outside when we wiped. Bleh.

Tonight, we step back into Uldar for raids again, and I’m hoping that at some point in the next few weeks, I can work on that whole 700 quests in Kal and EK for Loremaster crap. Sitting at over 600 for EK, but just over 400 for Kal. Gah. >< Then there’s the tracking down the few extras in Outlands (okay and almost two whole zones, since I totally skipped out on some of that while leveling Wrenn). So yeah, I have some plans for her in place, just need to get to them.

In knitting news, I managed to clear out just about every project that I had on the sticks. o.O Finished the stole, blocked it, and it’s wonderful. I just haven’t taken pictures of it. I finished all the baby stuff, packed it, and sent it on it’s way. In fact, it should be there today, according to FedEx. But, I forgot to take pictures of them before I shipped them off. And because I was working myself up for another project, I needed a fast distraction, so I knitted up a kitty ear hat, and, you guessed it, haven’t taken pictures of it yet. I’m sucking on this whole taking pictures thing as of late. /sigh At least the baby stuff was promised to have photos taken of them once they got to their destination. The kitty hat and the stole are all on me. Dammit.

So the thing I was working myself up for, knitting-wise? Socks. Again. Except this time, I decided two at a time was the way to go. Okay, one really long-ass circular needle it is! Two balls of yarn? No sweat! Oh wait, it’s black yarn, and I have a dark apartment. No matter! We’ll get through this! Um, “Magic Loop” method of circular knitting? Hmm never done it before but bring it on! Oh and while we’re learning a new needle method for something I’ve not really ever completed successfully, using yarn that’s causing eyestrain, with twice the number of steps since we’re doing two at a time on one needle, let’s start these from the toe-up instead of the way I learned before which was cuff-down! Whee!

For non-knitters, translate all of that to “standing on the roof in the middle of a bad storm, on one foot, replacing shingles while discussing quantum physics and playing a grandmaster in chess.” That’s where my brain is.

Fortunately, so far, I seem to be okay. I got past the cast-on for the toes, got the increases done, and am working on the body of the socks now. Nothing fancy, just simple stockingette. Using some KnitPicks Kettle Dyed (in, yes, black), and they’re looking good so far. Once I get past these, and they come out okay, then I’m breaking out the good stuff. There’s some Fleece Artist that I have that’s just begging to become some lovely socks to wear. Mwhaha!

At the same time, I’d like to knit another stole/shawl, this time in something a bit larger in size. I could have added another skein to the feather-and-fan that I did, but I wasn’t sure how far it would block out. I’ve got a better idea now, and have a few ideas in mind, so we’ll see what shakes loose in the next few weeks. I also need to work on a gift or two, plus Anne’s requested some more fingerless mitts, just in something that’s a little more “tough” to handle being used while someone’s in a wheelchair. She knows another lady in her apartment complex that would love some as well, so we’ll see how that goes.

In non-knitting and non-WoW news, …well a bunch of shit happened, some good and some bad. I’ll happily share the good, which is Mom has started work on the addition to my great-grandparents’ house that she’s currently living in. It was built in the early to mid-1930s, and they’re going to make the addition blend in with the current house: Arts & Crafts/Mississippi Delta Farmhouse. It’s gonna look good and we’ll be taking pics of the whole process.

And that’s about it for right now. Store’s decorated for Halloween, I still need to find my vampire teeth (made from dental materials and yes, I can bite someone with those and have it hurt like hell) (can also eat with them in too, which causes quite a few double-takes), and figure out what other than the kitty ears from DragonCon and the teeth I’m going to be wearing here at the store since I’m working that day.

Bottom line, insanity continues as it’s normal pace, with occasional bouts of sprinting chaos, and flash floods of water. Pictures to come at some point when the sun is shining again.

Time flies, but in a good way

Christmas of 2007, my mom came to visit me at my house in Atlanta, instead of me going to see her at her house in Oxford, Mississippi. I was freelancing at the time, and not exactly the happiest with where my career had taken me. I’d been semi-content at the ad agency I’d worked for, but once again, not completely happy. Freelancing was paying the bills, but Mom knew that I wanted a job I loved, not one that just kept my mortgage paid. In that, she and I are a lot alike.

We went out to eat one night, and while we were chatting and waiting for our food to arrive, she brought up my dissatisfaction with my job. “I hate seeing you in something that you just don’t enjoy, and, well, I need to ask you something. Just hear me out first, then give me your impressions.” As it turns out, her store that she had opened for almost a year at that point was doing well. Well enough that her business partner, a friend from high school, had said “I want one in my town now. We need a good manager for this one since it would be 3 hours away from you and you can’t watch over it. Think of someone.” So Mom asked me, what did I think about becoming the manager of the second store?

For the next 5 seconds, this is what went through my head: it would be in a town I had visited (my mom’s mom lived there til she passed earlier that month) but never lived in. I wouldn’t know anyone other that some relatives I hadn’t really ever talked to often and weren’t particularly close to. Even Mom’s business partner I’d only met a handful of times, but I’d liked her each of those meetings. I had a boyfriend who was moving from Michigan to Atlanta in February to be with me, and we’d have to sell a house in a starting-to-crumble housing market. Then there was the actual packing of a house, finding a new place to live, moving two states, and did I really want to quit my career as a production artist/graphic designer?

“How soon does she want me? I can leave in two weeks.”

Yep, I was burnt out on design work and ad agencies. I was burned out on Atlanta and the horrible commutes. I was burned out on just about everything my life had at the time, with the exception of my cats, my friends, my boyfriend, and my family. The only thing keeping my sanity together at the time was World of Warcraft, where I could chat with Jared and other friends in-game, and dreaming of what would happen if I won the lottery. Not practical to getting into a happy place career-wise, but the economy was starting to tank, and advertising is one of the first things to go when companies are trying to stay afloat. That meant that ad companies weren’t hiring and even the freelance work was starting to get dicey.

After Mom realized I was serious about wanting to accept the job, we got started talking about what all it would entail and what I’d have to do to get ready. I told her I was 90% sure I wanted to take the job, but wanted to talk to Jared before I said “yes”. He and I talked later, and I told him about the offer. “But I know you’re moving down here to move in with me, and I hate to move right after you get here to yet another strange town and this one’s smaller than Atlanta.” “First, I’m moving to be with you, not the city of Atlanta. Second, I live in a small town now. I like small towns. This works for me.” So I called Mom and said dependent on the salary being something that I could live with, I’d do it.

The next few months were hectic: Jared was in a wreck where his truck got totaled and he got not badly hurt, but enough he had to delay his move down til the doctor said he was okay. There were trips to Meridian from Atlanta to talk to Mom’s business partner and scout locations for the store. Salaries and budgets were agreed upon. Packing started. The freelance job I’d been on for 6 months at that point was notified of my impending departure, right about the point they started cutting back on their freelance hours. The house was cleaned up, repaired, improved, and put onto the market with an amazing agent who worked miracles. Finally, at the end of May, after locating an apartment a couple of blocks from the soon-to-be new store, I came home from the freelance job and asked Jared how he felt about moving in a week instead of 3, since we now had a buyer for the house. He was fine with it, so the really frantic packing started, complete with freaked out cats. We were loading the moving van while the buyers for the house were there with the inspector. Two days later, we were unloading a moving van in the new town.

In 5 months, I’d changed careers, said goodbye to a town I’d had some great times in, said goodbye to friends, and dove into a new life. I’d gone to school for a career that I was now not going to use for anyone other than myself and my mom, and that infrequently. I spent the next two months frantically getting the last details done on the store, ordering merchandise, hiring staff, re-learning how to work in a retail store (I’d put myself through college working specialty retail, aka gift shops, so it was perfect training), and trying to learn the ins and outs of this new town. Finally, on July 28th, 2008, just a little over  7 months from when Mom asked me to listen to her idea, we opened the doors to the store. Later that week, the public school teachers found us and we were off and running. August 13, 2008 we had our Grand Opening celebration, and I spent most of the day overwhelmed by the support we were getting from the community.

It’s now been just over a year since we quietly snuck open, and officially a year since our Grand Opening. Everyone laughs that I remember the dates so well. May 31st, we moved into the apartment. June 7th, we met with the art vendor to plan out the purchases from him. July 25th, we got our last approvals to open. July 28th, we opened and haven’t looked back since. I look back through the notebook I was scribbling hurried notes in (“call fire dept inspection”, “pw for CD?”, “contact radio station/newspaper”, “::completely illegible scribble, underlined 3 times::”) and it seems a lifetime ago, not a year.

So, did things turn out the way I wanted them to? Overall I’d have to say yes. We have a store that everyone who comes in is in love with. We’ve made the artist community and teachers very happy. I’ve gotten to know some wonderful people. And I’m a lot more content with my life than I was in Atlanta. The stress is still around at times, but it’s good stress. It’s the stress of knowing you’re going to have at least 100, but probably more like 200 teachers coming through the store in the next week and a half getting ready for the city schools to go into session, and you just got finished restocking after the county schools came through. We have slow days, and I get stressed by them, but then the fast and frantic days happen and I get stressed by them. More times than not, these days I’m laughing and smiling. Panic attacks are few and far between instead of a near-daily occurrence. And I’d bet my blood pressure’s gone down too.

So time flies. Life happens. People change. And sometimes, you have to walk away from everything you’re doing to find out what really makes you happy. Thanks Mom. Thanks Jared. And thanks to all the friends that supported this and listened to me fret that I might screw up. You guys rock.

Rest, I can has it?

Thursday was a lot of running around. The store did great, the teachers are all coming in and getting their stuff for back to school, and Mom was in town. Granted, her car was in a local shop getting repaired (catalytic converter decided to quit), but it’s a decent mechanic and everything looked to be done on time for her to leave on Friday. We even went out for a nice supper that night, along with Jared. Yey free food! The downside was that the raid was frustrating on Thursday night, but that happens sometimes. There were a few too many odd things happening by the end, so on our last attempt at Malygos, when we made it to phase 3, landed on the red dragons, then had them vanish under us, land on another set of dragons which proceeded to vanish even faster than the first set, letting us all plummet to our deaths… yeah we called it a night. Too much weird stuff.

It’s a good thing I went to bed early tho. I needed the rest. Turns out Friday, with all the running around I had to do, plus the store being swamped by returning teachers, meant that I was drained by the end of the day. By the end of the day, Mom had gotten home, Jared had gone to the eye docs again and gotten his new computer, and the store had it’s best single day ever since we opened just over a year ago. I’m still in shock over it, but thrilled. And to add to the happy, my friend Anne finally got the box of knitted goodies I’d sent to her earlier in the week, so now I can share pictures!

I’d made for her a shawl and some fingerless mitts from patterns found on Ravelry, a lovely online community of knitters, crocheters, spinners, and dyers that has a wealth of information. So since Anne whimpered that no one ever sends her knitted goodies, I rummaged on Ravelry and found some patterns for some things I thought she might like.

First up was a pair of fingerless mitts. On Ravelry, they’re called “Nalu Mitts“, since “nalu” means “wave” in Hawaiian. Me, I never can remember that, but I remember “wave” in Japanese is “nami”, so I keep calling them the “Nami Mitts”. Hey, it’s my brain, work with me here! I’d made a pair of them in blue and love them. They were perfect for working on the computer when you’re just a bit cold but still want to feel to type. Since Anne gets a sea breeze where she lives which can get a bit nippy sometimes, I asked her to pick a color from a range I gave her. She picked “spring green”. To me, the yarn is a spring green. She swears, now that she’s seen it, it’s moss green. All I know is she loves the gloves, thus, I’m happy.

The other item I knitted was something called a Sunday Market Shawl. This one came about because Anne saw a ball of Noro yarn on my Flickr page, showing the various colors in the ball. She drooled on it, said I needed to knit her something with that yarn, and I eyed the one green mitt I’d already done. But since the pattern for the shawl said it was great for those evenings when there’s a light nip to the air but you don’t want to wear a full jacket, hey, I’ll knit that instead! And in the yarn she’s drooling on! Awesome! It was an easy enough knit, and once again, she loved it. It was amusing when she called to say she had the box, cos she was under orders to not open it til she called me. Once I gave her permission, she chatted away as she opened it, then nothing but “Oooo!!!!!” for the next two minutes. I finally looked at Jared, who was with me at that point, and grinned. “I think she likes them. I think I broke her.” She finally said something coherant at that point, and we got on with the talking. ::grin::

So yeah, Friday was good. Saturday? Eh. We cleaned up the mess at the store, putting everything to rights again, and tried to figure out what all I have to reorder today to have back in stock for the next wave of teachers. As the day went on, the headache got worse, and the tummy decided it had had quite enough tyvm, so I had to back out of raiding that night to go to bed early and try to not be sick. Sunday was grocery shopping, laundry, and me baking two batches of bagels: one for me, and one for friends next to the store. This morning when I dropped the bagels off, they cheered and were petting them, last I saw.

I’m hoping this week will be as busy as last week was. It’s making me feel better, and not quite as worried as I was back in the June lull. We’ve got one year under our belts now, and people are beginning to rely on us for their art and teacher needs. Now if I could only get more book shoppers in! (Darn you, Books-a-Million!) This weekend I have off, and I might end up face down in the bed for most of it if this week’s anything like last week. Whee!

Oh dear… I still have to look at orders for the community college kids and art supplies! Gah! /flail