Catching up
Becky
Yes, I know its been way too long since I've updated.  The end of one FY and the start of another is just an insane time around here.  Even my purse making has suffered.  Though I have gotten two others made.  A fourth one, of my own design, is in process as well.  Maybe I'll try to finish it up this week.  The biggest difficulty I've had with these purses is sewing through multiple layers of fabric.  My sewing machine is a very basic one and its not liking the thickness at all.  Anyway, here are the other two purses I've completed.


The first one was inspired by the Cheshire Cat.





This is a fancier one and I was messing around with a different sillouette for the pocket.





I need to work a little more on improving quality before I look at taking orders.  Already have a couple people who are interested.


In other news, I'm getting ready to start the kitchen facelift.  So I'm sure there will be plenty of blogging and pictures of the progress of that.  I'm excited about it and would have started already but I'm having a Halloween party and didn't want the kitchen tore apart for that.


I'm sure there's other mindless drivel I've left out but I'll think of it later and fill you in on it!


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I think I like this
Becky
I've been looking for some kind of crafty type thing that I might be able to do and sell on Etsy.  Thing is, I don't like things that take too long to make....and read "too long" as something much longer than a day.  So I picked up a purse pattern and material while visiting my sister.  I cut it out last Thursday evening and sewed it last Friday evening.  There were a few difficulties with it but it went together fast and that's a good thing.  And I have to say I am quite pleased with the end product.

 
I've already got a couple people wanting to know if I decide to start taking orders.  I need to work on the pattern though a bit first and make a couple more for practice.
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Realities of Dating
Becky
Let me tell you, dating in your 40's isn't an easy thing. I blame this on my parents. They had me when they were young so I have young parents....they're only 66. This creates a problem for me in the dating world.

Hang on, I promise you'll see the connection between my parents' age and my dating life.

I have certain requirements for the men I'm willing to go out with. Intelligent, sense of humour, honest, financially stable, no full-time custody of small children (hey, just being honest here) and within a certain age range.

I can't go too young in men. Younger guys just don't really appeal to me and by younger I mean pretty much under 40. I would consider someone 38 or 39 but they'd have to be pretty exceptional. My upper limit is about 55 and that's stretching it for me. See, here's the problem; I simply can not twist my brain around the idea of dating someone who's closer in age to my parents than he is to me! There's just something totally icky about that. Well, unless he's really old and filthy rich and willing to leave it all to me. I'm all for that! But I don't see that happening so I'm stuck with the 55 thing. This means my pool of eligible men is limited to a short 15 year span of 40-55. Let me tell you, that seriously restricts the options. If my parents had waited until they were in their 30's to have me then I'd have another 10 years worth of men I could choose from!!!

So, you see, dating difficulties are all my parents' fault.
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Life at the DD
Becky
I'm disconnected at home from the world this weekend. My FIOS line came down, literally. It was hanging in front of my carport when I got home from work Friday. So I have no internet or TV at home. This would be catastrophic it it weren't for the fact that there's a Dunkin Donuts less than 5 minutes from my house. Open 24 hours and has free wifi. So, I've been up here a couple times today to catch up and see what's going on in my life.

Really, I could have stayed home....there isn't a whole lot going on in my life.

But, anyway, here I sit this evening, hanging out in the DD so I can delete 30 spam emails promising to make various parts of my body bigger or smaller as the case may be. What I find interesting is I'm not the only one hangout with their laptop. I know why I'm here.....its a temporary condition for me. Trust me, I'd rather be surfing the web in the comfort of my couch with something mindless on TV instead of sitting on this really hard chair, listening to Musak and and noisy obnoxious children. But why are these other people here. Do they live in some bizarre dead zone where there's no internet service? Is this their only social life? Do they think of the DD staff as family? Maybe they're secret shoppers spying on the workers.

Or I suppose their internet could be down at home.
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Yes, I'm still alive
Becky
Life has been having its ups and downs lately. We'll skip the downs because that's just how I deal with them....ignore them and they eventually go away.

I'm still waiting to hear if the agency is going to approve my classes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Now that I've finally found the online degree program I want it would totally suck to not be able to take the classes! I haven't figured out how long it would take me to finish the degree. Some things take a little time to build up the courage to do. But I do figure I can complete the certificate part in a year. Who needs a life anyway. Oh, and for those just tuning in the degree I'm looking at is Evironmental Management and Occupational Health and Safety with a minor in Homeland Security.

Work is starting to ramp up as we get closer to the end of FY09 and the beginning of FY10. There's a rush to spend the last of the 09 budget monies and gearing up to start spending the 10 monies. For me this means a push right now to get a bunch of smaller abatement jobs done before 9/30 and the planning and preparing for a whole bunch of large projects due to start in October. 2010 is looking to be a very busy one for hazmat.

The house keeps me busy on weekends. I'm starting to plan some of the renovation work. I should be getting new steps off the kitchen this coming week. Yay for wonderful friends who do home renovation for a living!!! I think the kitchen will come after that. I've been convinced to strip and restain the cabinets instead of painting them. Haven't decided yet what I'm going to do with the counters. The design is done for the conversion of the roll top into a cabinet. Its not going to be exactly cheap or quick but that's ok. I'll end up with something my grandfather made but in a form that is actually useful to me. I think he'd approve.

I have about 4 hours to decide if I want to make a spur of the moment trip to Mass for the weekend. An old high school friend is there and has invited me up. Its my three day weekend so I'm seriously considering it. Would be good to get out of town for a couple days.

Been scoping out Craigslist recently in the search for an embroidary machine. Wow, even used they're expensive. Might just have to wait on that one.

Ok, enough rambling for now.
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An afternoon at the spa
Becky
Yesterday I went with some girl friends to a Korean bath house. Not a place I've ever been so I was looking forward to it. I have to tell you, it was fabulous! The Bade pool is like the ultimate jacuzzi. Its this big pool with all these areas of water jets around the edge of it. Each area focuses on a different area of the body and muscle set.

I suppose I should mention one little detail about the Bade pool before anyone rushes out to find their nearest Korean bath house. There are two Bade pool rooms...one for men and one for women. The reason for this is because clothing isn't allowed in the pools. So, if you have any kind of hang ups about being naked around your own gender, this probably isn't for you. It really wasn't a big deal. You don't notice being naked when everyone is naked. No one paid any attention and no one cared about less than perfect bodies. I mean, lets get real, I'm shaped like the Cheshire Cat!

I have to say my favourite area in the pool was the overhead jet. It was wonderous as it pounded down on my neck and shoulders. We spent time in the Bade pool, rotating around through the various jets and then moved over to the hot tub. From there we stood in the cold tub for a few minutes to cool down. After being the hot tub it was way too cold to actually sit in! Then we repeated the whole cycle again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It was fascinating seeing the mothers there with their daughters. Very cool to see girls being raised to not be ashamed or embarrassed by their bodies or finding nude women to be something odd.

From the Bade pool we put on the shorts and t-shirts they provided and made our way to the Poultice Rooms. This is the unisex area of the spa. There's a large open room that had families relaxing on mats on the floor and a snack bar area. Along one wall are the Poultice Rooms. Each room is a sauna made up of different minerals and such which is supposed to help pull the icky stuff from your body. I kept looking for the anti-fat room but I think they keep that hidden in the super secret area. We started in the red clay ball room. Picture a ball pit but filled with tiny hard clay balls instead of plastic play balls! You lay down on the balls, kinda sinking in to them. The heat from the balls feels great I have to admit but I didn't really care for the room because it freaking hurt walking on the little balls to get in and out!!! Next time I think I'll skip that room. Walking on marbles is not a good look for me. We also went into I think it was the salt room. It wasn't bad at all. My favourite room though was the cold room. It was literally like sitting inside a freezer, though, because I was hot from the other rooms it felt fabulous. I could have probably spent hours in there.

There were two rooms that made me seriously wonder about the sanity of people. One was kept at 156 degrees and the other was at 180 degrees. HELLO!!! I'm not trying to end up as a piece of beef jerky!

In the snack bar area they have these most OMG wonderful chairs that just seem to suck your butt right in. I have got to find out where they got these. I need a couple of them in my house. Then all I have to do is train the cat to do all the housework because I'd never leave the chair.

This was definitely an experience to repeat, totally worth the hour drive! Even worth driving in Virginia!
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Becky
Sometimes I wonder if I'm speaking a foreign language. It never ceases to amaze me what kinds of responses I get to emails I send at work. Now I work in a place where you'd think there'd be an extremely large number of highly educated people. You'd never know it though by the emails I get.

I sent this email today to someone.:
"We expect to open Deck 33 back up this coming Wednesday morning."

This is what their response to me was:
"Will deck 33 be open tomorrow (7/17)?"

You know, I didn't even know how to respond to this. The nature of our clients precludes me from just asking the person if they're a moron which is what my first reaction is. Ok, so my first reaction really was to just shoot them in an attempt to clean out the gene pool....but the moron thing was an immediate second. Honest.

I did respond though and I think I managed to answer their question while subtly calling them a moron:
"I'm sorry I was unclear. We expect to open Deck 33 back up this coming Wednesday morning."

They didn't respond back.....maybe my second email was clearer than the first one. Heh.
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Oh, and just to prove I'm a dork
Becky
I replaced the ceiling fan/light in my living room yesterday. A friend came over to help with the electrical wiring from the house wires to the fan. I'm smart enough to know where my limits are not to mention the Don Ho look just doesn't work for me. If you're too young to know who Don Ho is, well, I have nothing more to say to you. (I'm just kidding, I think) Anyway, after my friend got the wiring done and was leaving the last thing he told me was not to forget to remove the rubber stops that keep the fan from rotating.

I got all the rest of the fan and light hung and hooked up, turned the breaker back on and turned on the light. Success!! The light came one! I was so excited. Next was the fan. I pull the chain and...nothing. I pull the chain again just to be sure...still nothing. Hmmm...I pull it one more time because third time is a charm after all, right? Wrong. The fan isn't fanning anything. The lovely black blades are just sitting there mocking me. I text my friend to let him know the fan isn't working in the hopes he has some magical knowledge. Sitting down on the couch in defeat I stare up at the stubborn fan and notice this black thing sticking out from between the fan blades. Oh.......yeah........ummmmm, wonder if that's one of those rubber stops he told me to remove that I didn't. I climb back up on the ladder and read the label stuck to one of them. In big letters it tells me to remove before operating. I go around and pull all the stops out and then try turning on the fan again. Guess what!?! The fan worked!

Yeah, I am such a dork at times.
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Welcome to my insanity
Becky
I suppose I should say something incredibly profound in my first post....

....

......

Ok, I've worked all day and its after 9 at night. Profound isn't coming. You'll just have to settle for random babbling.

If you don't know me, I'm a middle-aged, happily divorced lady without kids. I work in HAZMAT (that's alphabet-speak for Hazardous Materials) for the government. The things I encounter on my job, well, trust me, you won't believe some of them. I just bought a house 2 1/2 months ago so you can join me in my adventures of home remodeling and repair.

Oh, and I guess I should warn you I tend to be just a bit sarcastic. No.....really.......its true.
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