New Years' Resolutions

Wow. I can't believe I actually put off updating this blog for almost six months. Whatta slacker I've been!

Hence the title and subject of this post: New Years' Resolutions. Because it's about time I made some. Time to make some (Life) changes and set them into motion. And hopefully some good things will follow. :)

I've always had trouble setting and keeping goals. That's got to stop. I'm thinking if I take the time to write some down now, and check in frequently, that I may actually make some headway and good things will get accomplished.

OK. Time to get started. Here goes:

1) Do a better job keeping this blog up-to-date. Enough said!

2) Stay in touch more frequently with the people who matter the most to me. Just treated myself to a brand-new address book (with Lesley Anne Ivory kitty cat artwork - couldn't resist!) and I'm starting my contact list from scratch. No more sending out cards (ie. birthday and holiday) LATE. No excuses. Also will help me rely less upon the internets and more on the hand-written art form of notecards.

3) To elaborate on the last item: will try to write and/or call friends at least once a month. Minimum. No more life of a hermit for me. No sir-ee.

4) Make sure I haul my butt out to ALL my SnB groups (I keep tabs on at least 4 different ones - YES 4 - in the area) at least once a month. Will aim for all meetups if possible. Can no longer afford to let my chronic fatigue rule my life because if this keeps up I won't have one at all. Inexcusable!

5) Do more scrapbooking this year. Haven't kept up with that in a while. If the budget can afford it, maybe I can make an Archiver's Scrap Mania night once a month. Getting out of the apartment every so often will kill two birds with one stone. A win-win. :)

6) Read one Jane Austen work monthly. JALS (Jane Austen Ladies' Society), an online club I just signed up for, is having a read-along starting this month. Persuasion is the first. I'll just keep going from there...

7) Spend as much quality time with my kids mentally as I do physically. The space in my head is constantly being "rented" so much by work-related coworker crap that I'm really not home when I'm home.

Now Matty, my 14 year old Himi, is having some issues that need to be investigated such as avoiding the litterbox and progressive weight loss. No more "checking out" at the home front. I'm off duty from now on.

8) Look in to furthering my veterinary career. Tech-ing, that is. Not doing the going-back-to-school-to-become-a-vet thing. Torturing myself with science classes I'll just struggle with anyway and wind up with oodles of debt is just not in the cards. But I need to do SOMETHING because I'm beginning to feel both stale and burnt. Blech!

9) Clean up my finances! Tweak my retirement plans and contribute more to them. Go back to watching the Suze Orman show every weekend because I don't know enough on my own and reading about it just frustrates me to no end. Pay off my outstanding debt - BAH!

10) Start, and FINISH, more knitting projects. So much I want to learn and make. Like socks. And cables. Not to mention, so much yarn and so little time - HA! And this includes
FINISH MY WEASLEY SWEATER. Gotta finish it sometime. I ain't getting any younger. :P

OK, well I did actually just finish my "V For Victory" scarf last night. I started it back in September for the WWII Museum for Veterans in need. But since Veterans' Day has come and gone (I didn't realize that it needed to be finished by then to be sent out with a group of scarves - OOPS!), I'm not sure what to do with it right now. Will look into it, now that it's done, before I go back to work next week from vacation.

Well, that should be a good starting point. Just need to check in and tweak the goals on a regular basis, but that is also going to be a goal in and of itself. I haven't been very good about it in the past but I hope to change that with this milestone year.

Milestone because, in March, I turn 40 YEARS OLD!

(Don't worry -- I don't dread it. I think it's going to be GREAT.)

Time to finish my 1st post of 2009 with the obligatory Funky Bunch picture. Hee!

Mindy the Sleeping Polydactyl Beauty

Feeling Worn and Torn

Well, it's one more week until my CVC Central conference trip and it can't come a moment too soon. Work is truly wearing me out. Or should I say, the ATMOSPHERE is wearing me out.

The irony is: it's been REALLY SLOW. Hardly any patients at all. YAWN.

I got a message from a coworker (with whom I seem to have, whether I like it or not, a like-hate relationship with) telling me that it was my turn to have a night off and that if I was needed I would be called in later. Good. No bullsh*** from her to deal with. But it threw off my body clock again...

No matter where I go to find employment, there always seems to be someone who takes innate pleasure in trying to bully me in order to make themselves feel better. I'm not imagining this: it's TRUE. It's the untold secret of workplace social culture. The fact that I'm also not much of a workplace "player" makes things WORSE because people don't know me very well, nor do they have an interest in doing so because I don't play "the game". At least, not by their rules anyway.

Anyway, we've been at this since May 2007 when she came back from a birthday vacation on the "outs" with one of her closest friends at the time. She's treated me with the hot-n-cold contempt that the friend was doing to her apparently. They had a major fallout, hate each other now and said friend (who also happened to be another coworker) eventually left for another job, but it had nothing to do with their fight.

To make a long story short, she still takes out her anger and frustrations on her MySpace page, making veiled references to me on occasion through her mood updates or survey bulletins. Unfortunately, neither of these features can be deleted from your account and I have a hard time ignoring them as I am in touch with a lot of nonprofits I like to keep in the loop about.

(For the record: she became a contact of mine BEFORE all this nonsense happened - me being naive as I was when I first started working there...)

So, being tired of all the negativity I've been reading, I'm ditching the old page for a new one since there are other contacts I'm no longer in touch with anyway and starting fresh. No sense in being proverbally chased away when I have as much right to enjoy the Web as much as anyone else. I plan on finishing this transition shortly before I take off next week. Maybe I'll do the same for the Facebook page too. She's not on there, but there's just so much clutter....

OK. I feel better now that I've gotten that off my chest and can move on to better things. :)

TWILIGHT: OK, yes I am now officially addicted to reading the series that I've held off reading for so long. It was like that with Harry Potter, too. I kept holding off on reading them because I got weary of all the (over) hoopla, that I think I held off just for the sake of it. But, at least the whole series is out now and I can polish them off consecutively without having to wait for the next installment to come out. Hmm, good thing or bad thing?

Started the first book, Twilight, this week and am halfway done. Working on my Twilight knitting swap project too. Bringing it to SnB tonight for some pointers on how and where to pick up stitches 'cause I'm still dense when it comes to reading knitting patterns. :-P

Here's what I'm working on:



Of course, followed by the obligatory kitty shot. Heh.

Lesson Learned from the Past

Well, pink sock had be euthanized with a good old-fashioned frogging. It was just too warped looking, even to stuff with catnip and call it George. Yes, that UGLY. So now it's an official Ravelry UGH. RIP.

Got a new schedule change at work. Now I'm supposed to be in 3 hours earlier and leave 3 hours earlier, which may wind up to be curse rather than a blessing. Now, instead of dealing with one set of strong personalities I get to deal with a completely different set. And ALL the stupid-ass politics that come with. Which includes a CLIQUE. ACES....

But I am getting ready for my trip to Kansas City MO for the CVC Central conference and making some professional connections with other member of IVAPM (International Veterinary Academy of Pain Management) so I'm totally psyched. Getting my travellables together, hopefully my knitting project for Twilight Knitting Swap and got me some business cards for networking.

I happened to have found some old photos that were taken before I left NY of my little neonate Emily before she passed on. These pictures are wonderful but come with a twinge of sorrow attached. If she had survived (she had become septic and none of the doctors I knew would help me with her because "Mom abandoned her for a reason") we would've been able to celebrate her 5th birthday this upcoming October.



I decided to make this one the cover of my new business cards, courtesy of MOO. They did a wonderful job, I think.

The one thing I learned about this whole experience is to become a better advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves. I've seen better neonatal kitten rearing resources out now that weren't available when I had Emily so I'm going to be making a library and be better prepared, just in case I get blessed again with another kitten raising opportunity.

Playing catch-up ...

Well, don't know why the widget I tried to have put on this site showed up as a blog but I'm now writing a real post so hopefully that will get bumped. :)

Back to work this week after a reprieve. I think I need another one because it's even MORE stressful now than it was when I was last there. BAH! Thankfully I just started a 6 week yoga class. Hopefully that will help things.

Making progress on my Training Sock. I took it out with me to the 1st Annual Durham Stitch n Pitch at the Bulls game Wednesday night. Have no idea who won because I was more enthralled with "wrestling the porcupine" than I was watching the game. And the bag of knitting goodies the organizer had put together for us. She rocks!

Now, either I'm REALLY a beginner at this sock knitting thing or the pattern is written a little wonky. But no matter, it's looking OK. It's good practice. And a future cat toy. Heh.


And it's NOT going to be Nicky's if he doesn't stop looking away from the camera EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to take his photo - ARGH!

Demo - Personal Cause Widget

My New Knitting Project - Wrestling the Porcupine!!!

Happy 4th of July!

Last night I did something I haven't been able to do in a long time, and WAY overdue I may add. I got to make it out for my Thursday night SnB and see some old friends that I really missed and make a new one that was kind enough to shows me how to start off my FIRST EVER sock. With DPNs. Which I've NEVER done. Yay!



As a tip from another new knitter friend from my OTHER knitting group, I downloaded the Training Sock Pattern on Knitty by Kate Atherley to just get a feel for the basics 'cause I have no clue what I'm doing. Perfect patten for me. Heh.

Just before anyone asks, yes I belong to more than one SnB. They're like cats -- you can never have enough. ;-)

So I got the scrap yarn, pink stuff from the ol' stash-a-roo. Check. US size 7/4.5mm DPNs. Check. I'm good to go. The best part is I don't care how many messups I make because that's what this is all about. When it's done, it's getting stuffed with catnip for my little miss anyway.


I think the next thing I'm gonna try to work on is something for The Snuggles Project, of which I'm a member. They've got some basic snuggle patterns I'm gonna look through and I've found a couple of shelters in their database that accept snuggles. Now, I'm getting psyched!

That will be my knitting goal for the week. If I'm lucky in the upcoming weeks and months to come, I'll be able to control the body clock better and make it to more weeknight stuff because I need to de-stress and have a life.

I'm also trying to plow through my laundry-list of library books. Still working on An Inconvenient Truth but since the new Sookie Stackhouse book is way overdue, I'm trying to finish that up first. Charlaine Harris write a Southern Vampire series which, except for the last book, is pretty good. So far, this new one's a good one. I think it's called From Dead to Worse but I don't have it directly in front of me so I can't confirm. HBO is turning it into a series this Fall. OK, now I want HBO on top of Planet Green and Showtime. Time to upgrade the cable package!

One more major thing on my to-do list is to follow up with some comments and suggestions from my petitions on Care2's Petition Site (see sidebars widgets, DID YOU SIGN?!?!?!?). Actually, the feedback is mostly from the horrific website I'm trying to get shut down. I'll keep you all posted. Fingers crossed!

Doing Better, One Step at a Time

Did get to go out for SnB on Sunday and glad that I did. Got to meet up with some good friends and make a couple of new ones. I have some time off to enjoy this week so I might actually get to see my Thursday night SnB peeps too. That would be awesome, since I haven't seen them in a good 4 to 5 months when I last had time off.

Well, I'm happy to report that the work badness that occurred last week has resolved better than I had hoped it would. Can't go into any details because it's too personal but I'm looking forward to (I'm hoping) some improvements all around. Strangely enough, I feel a lot stronger and more in control of things in general. And I've gotten to the point where I'll be putting up with a lot less happy horses*** from people whose behavior I deem unprofessional or just downright unacceptable.

OK. I've said my peace here. Now onward and upward! :-)

Now that I've some personal time to recharge, time to look into compiling and finishing my "laundry list" of things to do, including some quality time at the ZOO - HA!

And to finally finish reading Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. I keep getting reminders from my 43 Things account asking how my progress is. Oops!