Week 12 - Sick then Productive

This week was a doozy! I was sick as a dog on Wednesday but recovered by the weekend and made up for lost time.

On Tuesday I kept telling Cindy I felt super tired, despite having slept fine the night before. I made it through the day though and headed to BW’s in Ashland, where I was meeting Andrea and Lori for their birthday dinner. I got there first and ordered my favorite beer. I wasn’t enjoying it but ordered my favorite fried egg sandwich and tots, only to not be able to eat them when they came out. Hmmm… clearly something was working on me and as the evening went on, I was feeling more and more unsettled. I took my sandwich to go and left a bit earlier than I’d have liked, making a bee line home. My intestines were in an uproar! I went right to bed and hoped for the best.

I was up at midnight so took some Pepto and emailed that I wouldn’t be in on Wednesday. I woke up once more but then slept until 9:30 – 13 hours! I took Immodium when I got up and sat like a zombie in a chair, not even knitting. That’s SICK! I took another dose at noon, napped that afternoon and was feeling some better. I wasn’t too broken up about missing UAAD at lunch but had really been looking forward to dinner at Green Flash with the water aerobics gang to celebrate Allison’s dissertation being done. Oh well. It’s not like I planned to have the runs.

I went back to work on Thursday but wasn’t 100% and was dragging. I made it through the day and actually got some energy back right before bed. Not wanting that to go to waste, I reorganized all my sock yarn. I was looking for a specific skein that wasn’t where it should have been and did find it in the very last tote so I guess it wasn’t wasted time. I slept fine that night and was feeling normal by Friday. Layton and I had Chinese buffet at lunch and I lived to tell. I then got a nice surprise when I remembered mid-afternoon that we didn’t have swimming due to spring break so I could go right home after work. Bad memory sucks but sometimes it does lead to happy things. : )

It was a dreary weekend and I spent it all at home. I had run out of time the previous weekend in my attempt to reclaim the spare room and had done zero cleaning. It seemed like every surface was covered with crap and everything else was dirty. So I spent the weekend clearing and cleaning. I made excellent progress and had stuff out the door - donations loaded in the car, junk into the trash and old produce (yes, I cleaned the fridge too) into the compost. As soon as something was cleared, I cleaned it too. Floors mostly but some counters and my hassock too. I even took down the deck Christmas tree, which until last week had been buried in a snow drift. By the time I started cooking Sunday afternoon, I was feeling good about things. And after spending hours cooking (homemade bread, bread pudding, carrot/raisin salad, turkey casserole and Brussels sprouts), I was an adult and got off my butt and did all those dishes. It was well worth the effort just to see everything looking so good after so long of looking like crap. Now to keep this up so I’m ready to head outside as soon as things dry out.

Week 11 - My Flooded State

What a week. Pie, floods and cats – so much drama! Despite Mother Nature wreaking havoc on Nebraska, it ended up a good week for me, which sounds so selfish but that’s my reality.

I started the week shopping at UNL’s warehouse for office furniture before work on Monday. Nothing like an 8:00 commitment to get my butt in gear for a work week. Nora was at work Monday but off for the rest of the week and I had a big to do list, which went swimmingly. I got all kinds of things done, including 7 hours of tedious data entry to end the week on Friday. I brought Pie to work on Pi Day because I’m all about pie (I even have a cat name Pie) and that was the icing on the cake for a super productive week.

But how can I not focus on the flooding? While it had minimal impact on me, it was so devastating and I found myself constantly checking the news and online for updates. Here’s a picture of day 1 of the floods and it’s what I encountered when I left for work on Thursday. The roads I’d normally take were under water but I was able to head north to get on the bypass and got to work only a bit late. The south roads were accessible by the end of the day so Wahoo’s flooding was done but not the rest of the area.

Fremont, where I was supposed to have spinning on Saturday, was completely cut off with water on all sides. There was no going to Omaha either, as all the bridges over the Elkhorn and Platte rivers were either washed out or under water so my attempt to reschedule my Saturday plans failed too. But I could still get to Lincoln so I put another plan into action.

I've had Jay, the husker cat who needed emergency surgery at the end of January, in my spare bedroom recuperating for way too long. Had we not had the winter from hell with snow on the ground for the entire month of February, he would have been gone after a couple of weeks. Well the same rain storm that started the snow melt and resulting flooding also made it possible, finally, to send Jay back to campus. Andrea came over after her shop closed and we took the spare room bed apart, got Jay into a carrier and released him back on campus. How's this for camouflage under a bush at the library? I treated Andrea to lunch at Green Flash as a thank you for helping me, after which we hit Aldi. All good.

With Jay no longer in residence, I began reclaiming my spare room. He'd lived under the bed for every minute that he wasn't eating or using the litter box so I started with cleaning that. The floor and the lids of the under the bed boxes he sat on were disgusting but with those cleaned, I was able to put the bed back together with fresh sheets. The rest would wait for Sunday so I settled down to watch The Matrix and crochet. Yes, I said crochet.

I was inspired by someone who bought yarn from me to start a knitted afghan. I started one with 2 strands of brown acrylic from the auction cones I got years ago and a 3^rd strand of random pastels. Because I love brown and pastels. But when I went downstairs to search in my deep, dark stash for the acrylic, I found an afghan that I started decades ago made of pastel acrylic scraps. So I brought that upstairs and decided I should finish that using the smaller balls before I do more on the knitted afghan. So I'm crocheting away. I seem to be wanting to do projects other than socks lately so this doesn't really surprise me. But it surprises everyone else for sure. Anyway….

Sunday was a gorgeous day and with all the linens from the spare bed and mine, I did 6 loads of laundry. The backyard was a soggy mess but I braved the squish to hang everything on the line. It was glorious! To celebrate the long overdue arrival of warmer weather, I dyed some sock yarn and added that to the clothesline. I am SO happy that winter is done. Can you relate?

Week 10 - Winter is OVER!

I feel pretty old getting excited about the weather but with the brutal winter we've had, I was super excited when the weather broke. There were hints of warming early in the week and by Friday it was above freezing. At last! Then on Saturday it rained and ridiculous excitement ensued. Having been stuck inside for the past few weekends, it was exciting just to go to the bank.Not even the water I had in my basement could curb my enthusiasm. 

The problem was a downspout that was frozen into a snowbank and blocked. I dug in the garage for the plastic downspout I'd bought and was able to get that under bend where it was spilling out the back then started trying to dig out the downspout. Well, I cut a hole in the top of it while trying  to chip it out of the ice and water immediately started coming out of the hole. Whatever! With that under control, I started cleaning up the basement. The shop vac was in the wet so I used a broom and squeegee to get the water to the floor drain in the laundry room. It immediately started drying up so I headed upstairs for, you guessed it, some knitting.

I never got much more done on Saturday and ended the day watching The Matrix, which I'd been thinking about lately and then there it was on Prime. Can my firestick read my mind? I'm beginning to wonder since I never googled the movie. With Saturday shot, I had some catching up to do on Sunday. The sun was shining and there was more melting going on but there was still a foot of snow on the ground so I found a solution to hot being able to get to my clothesline.

I needed the weekend to recuperate because it was not a good week at work. Everyone was miserable about the training room decision, which ended up being all the boss' idea with zero input from anyone affected, including the person everyone was blaming for the fiasco. There was a mutiny on Wednesday afternoon and the decision was reversed, which lead to brainstorming, measuring and trips to inventory. Mary and I ended the day Friday clearing out one of the storage rooms in the basement. We got rid of tons of stuff so it's down to just the stuff that must be kept, which isn't much.

I guess I didn't matter so much that I'd missed swimming Wednesday night (stayed late working on Plan B for the training room) because I certainly got a workout Thursday morning. The last snow of the year (hopefully) was Wednesday night, which left me shoveling 6 inches of snow Thursday morning so I could get to a 9:00 meeting, which I made just in time.

Otherwise, it was an uneventful week. In case you're interested, here are a couple of pics of my new office. We had fun with paint to perk up the drab gray that's everywhere. Fun, n'est-ce pas?

BTW, when is this daylight savings time crap going to end? It serves no purpose anymore and just messes with people's lives. And I for one do not need to sun to be up until 10:00 in mid summer. Time to write congress!

Week 9 - Only an Inch

Finally, a week without a snow storm. We did get an inch overnight on Saturday but it was light and fluffy so I swept the driveway in 10 minutes and it immediately started melting. Not that it was warm, just sunny. The high temp on Sunday was 4 degrees and that was pretty typical for the entire week. OK, it did get out of the teens on Friday and the high of 31 felt downright balmy but then it was right back to frigid. But only another inch of snow so I'll take it.

Anyway, with my new office ready to go and no blizzards to deal with, it was a pretty normal week. I had meetings galore and trained both Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, even adding an extra class that got cancelled on the snow day last week, which meant Tuesday went right until 5:00. Thursday's class got over early enough that I was able to go to Innovation Campus for the new data engagement group. This is masquerading as a user group but was just an excuse for geeks to drink. Being mostly introverts, the conversation was left to just a few of us. I will not be wasting my time with that again. I went home for a quick dinner then it was off to the City Council meeting.

Andrea has been going to these for months, trying to get the municipal codes changed to allow backyard chickens. I hadn't been able to go until this week so went to support her. I did put my 2 cents in when they asked for comments but they didn't make any decision, saying it would be back on the agenda for the next meeting in 2 weeks. I guess I'll be back. At least the lighting was good so I could knit.

Friday was the only night I swam, having skipped on Wednesday for no good reason, and I needed it. It had been a good week but at the end of the day Friday, we were informed that our training room was going to become file storage and we'd have to find a classroom elsewhere on campus to train in. And why was this happening? Because our old office, which was more than big enough for the files, was going to be dedicated cubies for the work study students. Yes, students who work ~10 hours/week will get their own cubies instead of sharing a couple so the files can be stored there. Moronic! And no one will stand up to the person who made this ridiculous decision. Oh well. I swam my frustration away.

I had no plans for the weekend beyond reclaiming my house. Now you'd think with so much time spent inside lately due to snow, my house would be spotless. Not only was it dirty but I hadn't even put away the dishes or laundry I'd done last weekend. So first up on Saturday was neatizing and some long overdue cleaning. I got right to it and by the end of the day, I'd made a huge dent. I did a bit more on Sunday and ended the day with a cooking marathon. I made sausage/potato soup for food day on Tuesday, a strawberry/rhubarb pie to take to knitting, sausage and peppers for lunches and a big batch of pasta. 

All in all, it was a good week and next Saturday it's supposed to finally be above freezing and it's going to rain. I can't wait for this weather to break!

Week 8 - Yet More Snow!

Monday was a holiday for everyone but UNL. Presidents' Day is one of the ones we give up to get the week after Christmas so I headed to work on roads empty of traffic. Since the library was closed, we didn't have knitting so I swam on Monday night - a rarity for me. It still felt nice to be home before 7:00 on a Monday. I went straight home on Tuesday too, which is my usual night to go right home, and the icing on the cake was that UNL called a snow day for Wednesday on Tuesday night. Such a gift! Not having to set an alarm was lovely.

We got another 6" or so but adding that to the snow from the previous weekend and there was almost a foot on the ground. John came to the rescue again but brought his dad with the monster snow blower. They had my driveway cleared by early afternoon and the sun was blazing by then so there was some melting going on. I needed to go to the bank so called my hairdresser and she could fit me in. I had a productive errand run and got a long overdue haircut. All good.

The snow day put our new office installation a day behind. They were supposed to finish installing on Wednesday so that was bumped to Thursday. My day was busy anyway with meetings galore plus a Husker Cats meeting after work so I wouldn't have gotten much moving done anyway. I packed cleaning supplies and took two laundry baskets to work Friday morning, determined to be completely moved by the end of the day.

I had decided in the wee hours (yes, I was thinking about the move when I couldn't sleep in the middle of the night) that I should just move everything from drawers and overheads without going through it and then handle the surfaces, including all the plants on my window ledge. Now I've been in my cubie for ~9 years so I have accumulated a lot of stuff. Stupid stuff. Anyway, I had everything moved and cleaned my old cubie before I left for lunch. Once I got back, I started going through the piles on my new, much larger desk (cubie really) and had filled a recycle bin and was pretty much done by late afternoon. I even got to reply to some emails before I left to swim. All in all, it was pretty easy. Brook was 100% moved too. A week later, Cindy still isn't done. That would drive me nuts but like I say, value the diversity.

The weekend blizzard - yes it was really a blizzard - started with icing on Friday night. It was OK on the highway after swimming (I'd rather wait and have less cars on the road so rarely skip swimming due to weather) and when I drove into my garage, I closed the door with no intention of leaving my house all weekend.

I woke up Saturday to a snow sky and a sheet of ice over the entire world. It started snowing right after lunch and it snowed and snowed and snowed. It was still snowing and blowing when I went to bed. We already had a bunch of snow on the ground so this was just adding to that and the winds made some serious drifts. John came, again with his dad, and dug me out for the 3rd time in a week. Worth every penny! 

I spent the entire weekend sitting on my butt, knitting and streaming. I also had a long chat with my Auntie Margaret, which was wonderful. Other than the bare minimum of laundry and making some comfort food, I did nothing else. It's hard to get motivated when Mother Nature is blasting you with winter over and over again. The weekend ended with 15+ inches on the ground and huge drifts and piles of snow from all the shoveling/snow blowing. Did I mention the brutal cold? They were forecasting -11 for Monday morning with wind chills in the -30's and barely warmer for the entire forecast. This snow is going to last forever! Grrr.... and Brrr.... I'M OVER IT!

Week 7 - Workshop and Socializing

What a week! We got yet more snow, did the winter workshop and I had 3 social engagements to boot, not including the Wine & Dine on Saturday. It went by in a blur.

The weather was so miserable Monday afternoon that everyone skipped knitting. That's some serious weather but it was nice to stay home and cozy while the snow flew.

Good thing it wasn't a ton of snow because the Winter Workshop was Tuesday. We all went in early to set up and it went swimmingly. Good attendance and everyone seemed happy with it. I would have loved to leave early but Anne, Rene and I were meeting Amanda for dinner at BW's in Ashland so there was no point leaving before 5:00. We had a great time catching up and the food, as always, was great. I didn't get the loaded tots. Shocking!

Wednesday was spent getting ready for round 2 of the workshop on Thursday, this time on East Campus. We had some set up issues but it was a good thing they'd prepped 2 rooms instead of 1 because the ceiling started leaking in our first session so we moved to the other room for the rest of the day. I had lunch in the cafeteria with Darla, which is always nice. I need to make sure to make more lunch plans with her now that she's back in Lincoln. Having come in early again, I left directly from East Campus when the workshop was over so was home in Wahoo just after 4:00. I was so exhausted that I sat like a lump and went to bed at 9:00, barely reading at all before falling asleep. When I woke up at 4:00, there was no falling back sleep so I got up and streamed/knitted until it was time to get ready for work.

I got some sad news on Friday night via Facebook of all things. My friend Kate died! Her boss, who I know from Husker Cats, messaged me that he had bad news and I thought it would be about a cat. I was shocked to hear it was Kate. Anne and I had had a lunch scheduled with her at the end of January but she cancelled. I'm wishing I had pressed to reschedule. Kate was a total sweetheart and one of the kindest people ever. I will miss her.

The Wine & Dine was Saturday and when I stopped at the library that morning, there were lots of things still up in the air. We had no snacks for during the social hour. Denise called the caterer, who said he'd take care of it but that would cost way more than our usual CostCo cheese tray. We also hadn't heard from the woman who said she'd decorate. I left the library at noon with candle holders to wash, worried that so much was still undone. I shouldn't have worried because it all went fine. The appetizer spread was elaborate and delicious, the meal was also a cut above normal and it was snowing again so people stayed in the bar after dinner, which was a first for me. I got home at 10:00 and was ready to relax.

Relax I did. We'd gotten about 9" of snow so I called John and he said he'd be there at 3:00 so I showered and got busy inside. It was a typical chore day with laundry and such but it was lovely not to have to shovel. Alas, it was the first of several times John would be shoveling me out but I'll leave until next week. This is the winter that never ends!