For various reasons, over the last several months I've locked all of my posts.  So if you want to know what's going on in my little world, please leave me a comment and clue me in if I already know you!

Ugggg... Why does my head feel like it's going to explode???  I've had this headache off and on for the better part of a week.  It's not migraine, but I can't tell if it's sinus or tension....

I'm not helping myself either by procrastinating.  As soon as this dratted grant project is done, I want to SEW and LACE.....  actually, I'd rather be doing either one of those right now.  I'd rather be writing documentation for the MdeG gown, too.   (WOW - I really don't want to do this grant stuff).

At least it's almost Thanksgiving....

Either an architectual firm or a bridal / custom dress shop.  I seem to be good at laying out floor plans and designs.  As to the other, I even had a store name picked out and when I've been sewing since I was little and designing gowns for my dolls from the fabric scraps of my mom's work, well the whole dress-thing kinda stuck with me.  

War of the Wings was a blast!  I had a lot of fun yesterday.  Got to talk to lots of people, play with lots of dogs (all that I saw were extremely well behaved, especially the German Sheppard trained with Slavakian commands!).  Site was a little dusty, but better than 6 inches of mud.  :)  The temps and breezes were great, too.  The wind kept the veils gently blowing and the banners flying all day.  Lots of color and pomp.




I'll figure out the dress thing later.  After a grocery run and 4 loads of laundry and a much needed nap, it's time to turn the thoughts to sewing those commissions together and some more MOL work.  Thank goodness school stuff is on auto-pilot.

My last post may have been a little premature.  I *might* be able to make WoW2 this weekend.  It's still up in the air, but things are looking better.
I took a break today from all things MOL.  I've been re-working the documents for next week's University, talking with the assistants, and figuring out how to make the Youth Combat process better for everyone.  I think I've spent more hours this week with MOL stuff than I have teaching.
So I took a break today.  And cleaned.  :)  My bathroom is spotless, the trash is out, the dishes are clean and put away.  I feel so much better when the house is clean.  :)
And tomorrow's Friday.  Yippee!!!  I'm still a little behind on the grading at school, but I got a lot done today, too.  Even after the unscheduled fire alarm. 
But things are looking better than they were earlier this week.

There's a very probable chance that I will not be able to make it to War of the Wings this weekend.  I wish I could, but life has taken over and I may not be able to make the trip.

Bright spot of the day #1: The new shoes are great!
Bright spot of the day #2: Whole-class labs are wonderful!  It's great when they're off and running on a lab with minimal interference/help from me.

Other than that, my head hurts.  YC and University are bearing down.  One of the forms has been revamped, now I just need to do 3 others, update the class handouts, update the new deputy offices (I have DEPUTIES!!!!!!  :D), and put together a simple, concise packet for YC stuff.

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT YC AND UNIVERSITY:  THERE WILL BE A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION THE LAST HOUR OF THE MOL TRACT TO FOCUS ON YOUTH COMBAT, NEW CHANGES, AND BASIC PROCEDURES.  THIS IS OPEN TO ALL MOLS (OLD OR NEW), MARSHALS, PARENTS, AND OTHER INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS.

Sorry for the caps.  Just trying to make a point.  Pass it along if you know someone who would/should be interested.

Been wearing my wrist brace since Saturday, so I've gotten no sewing done, no lace, and little computer work done since Saturday.  I think it's just the month of October....  If I could just skip this entire month and all it's *presents*, (weather change, bronchitis, allergies, exhaustion from the first month of school, etc) I would be much better off.  I really have never liked October.  Love Halloween, but I couldn't participate in the festivities the majority of my youth.  From sixth grade on, I was never in school for Halloween.  Missed dressing up in costumes

.....  Maybe that's why I do it now......

Baby brother has decided to move back to PA after his accident a few weeks ago.  He and Dad are going to retrieve his stuff in NC next week.  At least the family will be slightly easier to get together for holidays.

That's all I got for now.  Toodles

... go straight to hell when I get distracted.  I did make it shoe shopping yesterday, though.  Tried all of the department stores and finally found comfy shoes at Pay-less.  Even better: Buy 1, get one 1/2 off!  Even stranger:  I gain weight and my feet shrink.  Do you know how hard it is to find 6.5's anymore???  Might as well go shop in the Junior's shoe section if this keeps up.

Other than my shopping trip, I didn't get much done Saturday.  My CT started acting up from all the sewing I did on Friday, so finishing that project was out, along with any computer work.

So today, after a good night's sleep, I got busy:

•     laundry: cleaned, put away, summer stuff sorted and stored, and the rest of the closet organized
•     trash and dishes taken care of
•     loads of authorizations cards written, addressed and ready to be mailed, along with 3 other MOL-related envelopes (still have about a dozen or two more authorizations to take care of though)
•     revamped the Youth Combat authorization form so that recent mistakes won't be repeated.  Also reflects the Rapier program and the add-on weapons that are allowed in both Armored and Rapier
•    afternoon appointment

Still have several things to take care of, but I made a major dent in things this weekend.  :)

Taking today off was a good decision.  I made a lot of progress on my sewing project (which took most of the day), and I still have two days to finish it, take care of some MOL stuff, and grade papers during the race on Sunday.  Doing good.

Speaking of the sewing project.  Figured out that I screwed up when I cut the netting.  I forgot that it was quad-folded on the bolt at the store and treated it as a regular fold of fabric.  So the ruffly underskirt for the poodle skirt has twice as much circumference as it's supposed to.  I feel like such an idiot.  I didn't catch my mistake until I was halfway done putting the layers together.  At least I figured it out before I started doing the other three, as mine was the trial run.  I don't think it's going to make too much of difference, honestly.  Other than being an absolute pain to pin layers together.

At some point, I need to go shoe shopping for comfy black flats.  The ones that I wore last year died a slow and painful death, and my feet are screaming at me for wearing heels most of the week.  Think I'll try to fit that in tomorrow afternoon.

Hope everyone had a safe and comfy ride to Crusades.

Today went much better than yesterday.  Yippee!!!  Partially because I've decided to take Friday off.  Really good idea since we don't get Monday off (not even an Inservice Day, just plain school).  So I get to start the weekend early!

Slept most of the afternoon, early evening.  Which would explain why I have lots of energy now, and my dinner is in the oven at 10 pm.  I know, really bad idea, but I need leftovers for tomorrow's lunch.  :)

Got 6 of the 16 things on my To-Do list knocked off.  Spent lots of time writing emails tonight.  Finally got some administrative stuff taken care of for the MOL office.  Now I just need to get to work on the reports that are sitting here.  And the database has been updated to accommodate the YC Rapier stuff, so big bonus there.

Not much else going on.  No sewing news to report (sigh).

Today, I did something that I haven't done in a very, very long time.  I lost my temper....  In a professional setting.  Those of you who have seen me aggravated or slightly ticked off probably don't want to imagine what I'm like when I fully lose it.  It's not pretty, and I don't like myself when it happens....

But Dammit, why the hell can't doctors keep better control of their hours, schedules, patient's pain levels and TIME in general????  I understand that with doctors, especially those who work in hospitals, emergencies do happen.  That's ok.  But when a patient sits, and waits, for 45 FRIGGIN MINUTES before being called to CHECK IN with NO EXPLANATION for the delay,  I have a Major Problem.  Then to sit and wait for another 45 minutes to get called to go back to the room.  Tack on another 20 waiting for the doctor to make his glorified appearance, just for good measure.  All of this, for a patient-doctor visit that lasted all of 2 minutes.

TWO MINUTES.

I'm sorry, but I lost it after that.  Went ape-shiite on the Doc and the Office Staff.  Felt better slamming several doors open on my way out.

........  they're worse than spring time allergies.  Spring-time allergies (and summer) I at least know what meds will work and what to avoid.  Fall time?  Yeah, all of that goes straight out the window.  It seems that I'm now allergic to cold air masses, and my own apartment.  It started when I stayed too late at WH's baronial party 3 weeks ago.  I picked up a cough followed by massive amounts of Robitussin.  Then I switched to Mucinex and sudafed.  Now it's chloratrimaton and musinex, with lots of hot tea with honey.  I just can't seem to shake this thing.  The maintainance people are coming to change the air filter in the apartment, so maybe (hopefully) I'll wake up tomorrow being able to breath.



School is going well.  The kids are starting to spaz about their grades, since we have this new online system where students and parents can log in and check their progress, class updates, calendars, etc.  The program goes live this week, so the kids are a little worried about what Mommy & Daddy will see.  Plus progress reports come out next week.

My football team lost Friday night (boo!) but hockey starts this week (yea!).  Other than that, I'm just wiped out enough that I don't want to answer emails.

So I took Robitussin Night-time last night and it knocked me out solid. Woke up this morning feeling worse. So much for that....  Kinda hard to get much accomplished today when my entire head felt like a gooey marshmallow and I was coughing up a lung every 5 minutes.

Had a whole list of things that I needed to do since I had to avoid most of them last week.

• Clean the kitchen
• Take out the trash
• Clean out the car from the event
• Wash, dry, fold and put away laundry (an improvement from last week, since the clothes never made it back to the closet
• Balance the check book
• MOL (update fighter lists, make deposit, tackle YC mess, choose Deputies, mail temp card pads out, update handouts for University)
• Cut out poodle skirt, underskirt, sew (at least I got part of it started
• Email folks

Not too bad, considering that I felt absolutely awful today and slept through all of the Nascar race (Close to 4 hours, since the race was at Dover).  Must have needed it though, I never heard my phone ring when my Mom called (it was right beside me) or the computer make noise when someone IMed me.

So the plan for this week, since the only appointments I have are 2 sessions of PT and the allergy shots, are to finish off the list above, clean the apartment (my grandparents are stopping by on Friday for dinner and the WVU game), play with the lace some more, and go to Games Tourney on Saturday.  Provided, of course, that my cold/allergies don't get worse this week.  There's some school planning that I need to do, too.  Need to make up a quiz and a test, get them copied, and work on lesson plans for October, but I'll do that stuff at school.

As soon as I start feeling mildly better, I'll add the gym stuff back in, too, since I haven't been doing any exercise since I got home from Pennsic.  Bad me.

Warning.....  Rant coming!

I'm going to try to keep this as vague and polite as possible, but pul-eeze people!  Nothing is harder on an MOL than an autocrat going AWOL the month before an event and not having the vaguest idea as to what kind of combat to prepare for at the event.  Even worse is when there is a "schedule" that nobody knows about except a very few people.

If you are running an event, and you want things to go smoothly for your staff and your guests, then by all means, COMMUNICATE.  We're not friggin' mind readers!!!!  If you expect and plan for the A&S to start judging at 9am, but don't tell anyone, don't friggin' complain when the artisians show up at 10:30 wanting to put their stuff in!

End of rant....  You are now returned to your regularly scheduled web-surfing.

Figured I'd at least post a picture of the lace that M. F. started me on last Saturday since I haven't been able to work on it tonight.


Went to bed early last night.  9pm in fact.  I don't think I've gone to bed that early since middle school.  But I slept great.  :)  And my cold/cough was much improved today too.  One more day, no appointments tomorrow (although I need to go get my allergy shots), then the event on Saturday.

For all of my blubbering and complaining about my job, there are moments that truly make me step back and remind me why I do this crazy thing called teaching.  Last night was one of those moments, and I was lucky enough to have more than just one in a span of two hours.

Last night was Back to School night, where the parents come in and meet the teachers in all of the student's schedule.  I had 3 parents confess that their child purposefully switched their schedule so that they could be in a class that I teach, 1 parent relay a statement from their child ("She's so cool!"), and 2 parents of former students (who now have younger siblings in my class) tell me that the older children really enjoyed my class and were rather excited to learn that the younger ones would get the same experience.

I am truly humbled.

The trip to WMH's Baronial practice/party/throw-down was fun.  Got to spend time with fun people that I haven't seen since Pennsic.  Most of the day was spent with M. Francesca teaching me bobbin lace stuff.  Had lots of fun, especially after she broke out the G&T's.  :D  I had to knock the rust off of what I knew from 7-8 years ago when a previous boyfriend took me to the PA Ren Faire and I spent an hour at the lace lady's "try me" pillow (much to his boredom). 
Met a bunch of people, too, and am slowly starting to put names to faces to LJs.  Aaahhh, the fun of LJs;  you read someone's LJ for awhile since they're linked to one of your friends, and it seems like you know them, then you finally get to meet them!
The temps yesterday were wonderful, if a bit cool after the sun went down.  Lots of folks broke out the extra layers around the campfire.  I hadn't planned on staying that long, so I was glad that I had a wool lap blanket that can double as a nice wrap in the car.  But, cooler weather is a nice break and fall is quickly coming, even if the cold air is playing havoc with me today.
The shoulder's doing much better, too, after a very kind gentleman worked on it for a while. 
Got back around 1pm today, and promptly started laundry and took a nap.  Then I dug out the lace pillow, and tried to make the bobbins and thread bend to my will without F's watchful eye.  I think I did pretty well, including the little fiddle-y bit where three loops all meet at one point!  I'm going to have to start taking pictures of the laces.
I never thought much about documenting a chronological history of my garb (and progress in making garb), mostly because sewing wasn't/isn't new to me.  I just do it.  But lace?  Lace is new, so I think I'm going to make a scrapbook like F suggested to show each of the pieces that I've worked on.

Now to just tear myself away from the lace pillow and work on the sewing stuff that I need to do.....