Friday, March 4, 2016

Week 8 - Yarn Auction Fun

Starting the day off at the gym for a 6:30 Power Pump class means I have to do all my prep (clothes and food) the night before and still be up half an hour early, which puts me on the road at the time I’m normally getting up. Since I have knitting Monday nights at the library, it makes for a very long day but feels like a good start to the week so I try. Having missed it the previous week when I called in sick, I was ready to go this Monday but when I went out to my newly repaired car, the battery was dead! I called AAA but since it was a holiday, they said their regular person wasn’t available so they’d “put it out to dispatch,” whatever that meant. And the waiting began. Someone called at 7:00 to say they were on their way and my car was running by 7:30. I threw on clothes without showering (ick!) and headed to campus. The bill from Friday’s work was still on the front seat so I called my mechanic and said I’d be dropping it off. Checking the battery, hoses and such was the very thing I’d asked them to do that they’d clearly not done. They were very conciliatory and agreed to check it all as well as replace the battery. Fast forward to the end of the day when I was presented with a bill for $500, which added to what I’d spent last week exceeded my $1,000 limit that I swore would have me buying a new HRV. Well, the is absolutely the last money I’m putting into my trusty Fit.

With that drama over with, I was ready for some normal life with zero drama. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. My cousin and I were going to Paint Yourself Silly for my birthday and we were 20 minutes into creating our masterpieces when she told me she has some irregular cells and so was having a hysterectomy the next week. Wow! Despite that, we had a great time and ended the night with some illicit ice cream and a promise that I’d visit in the hospital. Wednesday was pretty normal but then Thursday more drama reared its ugly head.

Anne and I had decided we’d bite the bullet and pay the big bucks for tickets to Scotland on United. We’d exhausted all the possibilities for a cheap flight so Anne would be using her miles and I’d be paying big bucks. She came over to my office after 5:00 and we got her miles account on one screen and the paying version up on the other and after 2 calls to United, we hit enter, getting seats next to each other on all the flights. Anne got a confirmation email immediately but I didn’t. After waiting 10 mintues, we gave up and headed home. Well, I arrived home to find an email from Chase saying they’d denied my purchase suspecting fraud. Really? Fraud on an airline ticket? Wouldn’t that be pretty darn easy to figure out? I called and they took the block off, saying that they’d conference in United and call me back. Well, they called back to say the hold time was too long so I’d have to call myself and wait on hold. OMG! You can imagine how unhappy I was at this point but what could I do? I waited on hold for 40 minutes and finally had my ticket. Enough drama already! But was it over? Nope.

The next morning I emailed our flight into to the travel agent who’s coordinating the trip, who immediately replied to say since we were getting in so much later (in order for Anne to use points, we opted for a 2 layover flight that gets us to Shannon overnight then had a regional flight to Edinburgh that arrives just after noon) than most of the people on the trip, we were on our own to get from the airport to our hotel. I immediately saw red and whipped off a scathing email. If transfers are included in a trip and they haven’t given you a time constraint up front, they damn well better be included! The woman waited until the end of the day to respond and said she’d work something out. Damn right! With that settled, I was ready for swimming and the weekend.

I was going to an auction in Fremont on Saturday, lured by a bunch of cone yarn and what I really wanted – a yarn tree to hold cones. I started a new pair of simple socks to knit while waiting to bid and got there at 9:15. I grabbed an empty seat next to 2 lovely ladies from Fremont and proceeded to have a fun morning yucking it up over the stuff up for bid, and putting an occaisional bid on something interesting. By the time Andrea arrived at 12:15, I’d spent a whopping $4 and had bought some fun, albeit unnecessary, items. Andrea bought lots of stuff and I scored a couple more, including a fabulous 50's saimese cat TV lamp, before they finally got to the yarn ~3:00. I had already sorted out the cones I wanted and talked to the ladies hovering near the yarn to encourage them not to bid it up since there was plenty for all of us. I bought the 16 cones I’d set aside for $1 each and then scored the fabulous yarn tree for $10 so was very pleased. By the end of the yarn bidding, it was going for $2.50/shelf of yarn, which one woman bought all of for $25. When the shelves were bare, I bought a plastic snap together one for $2.50 – my final score of the day. I was pretty tired and hungry so Drae and I went to HyVee for an early dinner then hit Goodwill. By the time I got home and it was almost 8:00. It was a long day but fun and I had all my treasures to sort through. Check out my fabulous new yarn tree and lamp!
It was gorgeous Sunday so I headed outside early, starting with emptying the car so I could then load it back up with recycling. I broke down a bunch of boxes in the garage then pulled the cases of boxes from the basement that had gotten wet. Then I took down the last of the Christmas decorations and did some general neatizing in the yard. When I went inside, I got all my chores done then started cooking, ending the day with a week’s worth of food ready to go and my first steak on the grill for dinner. Yum! I had totally redeemed myself after sitting on my butt knitting at the auction with a day of super productivity. And I would be in good shape for the work week, which is a lovely thing. And to top it all off, it truly seemed like spring was coming early, with flocks of robins eating the crabapples off my tree and V’s of geese heading north. I know we could have a foot of snow in a week but still. I’m going with spring fever. : )

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