focusing on plans and making progress on goals

I am certainly on night shift these days. This is probably good as I am doing most of my non-work stuff (including reading e-mail, boking travel, etc.) in the mornings, and don't settle down to actual work until I've been up for a number of hours. As a result it is needful to keep working late into the night, to get a reasonable number of hours of work done each day. This, of course, results in my sleeping in (because plenty of sleep is a goodness), which, in turn, means that it takes until the "day" is well advanced before I actually start working. Funny how completely my schedule turns from one extreme to the other, in such a short time, too--I spent the first half of October fully on day-shift, getting up by 06:30 every morning, and often noticeably earlier than that. Have I mentioned recently that I love having a flexible schedule? It is nice to be able to switch back and forth like this, because some days I do have more energy first thing in the morning, and others I really do have more energy late into the night.

So, booking travel? Yup. I now have three more adventures planned between now and this job ending with the end of the year. I'll be meeting blamebrampton for some Italian sight-seeing next week. The last weekend of November I will fly to Stockholm for their St. Cecila music and dance event, and the first weekend in December I will fly to the UK for the Fintheath Yule Ball. Yes, that is correct, two SCA events, two weekends in a row. At first I thought I'd only get to do the one in Stockholm, because the one in the UK cost more than twice as much for tickets. But then I noticed that if I fly Thursday night instead of Friday during the day I could get tickets which were only €10 more than I paid for the Stockholm trip. Yah, €55 to €65 is still a bit much for a weekend, but I love dancing, I haven't made it to very many events this year, and I'm worth it.

Since I didn't land the job for which I interviewed a couple of weeks ago it is now looking likely that I will have a few months off between this job ending and whatever is next starting (I've got lots of things to apply for in the next few weeks, but they are all August start, not January). The prospect of a summer vacation is very appealing, and I'm looking forward to it. I just hope that my savings is enough to see me through the vacation and still move to wherever I wind up going. At this point the tentative plan is to rent a van and move my stuff from Italy to Edinburgh to clovis_t's house sometime in late December. I will then use his place as a home base and do some travel (details to be determined later!) while I keep applying for jobs, and try to get thigns written up for publication (yes, the PhD research should have been published long since, it hasn't been, but I'm doing better than one of my FB friends, who hasn't published 9 years after competing his PhD). If I'm not yet done with stuff for this job I can always return here after getting the stuff to Scotland and meet with my boss to finish up.

In other news: I have determined that it is possible to do nålbinding with both hands at once. I got the idea from a friend who knits two socks at the same time, doing a stitch on one and then on the other (I think). She says that this way she doesn't have to count or remember what she did to ensure that they are both the same. Since I learned the Finnish stitch from a left-handed person I first learned to do it left-handed. But then I needed to teach some right-handed friends who weren't able to follow what I was doing. Therefore I worked out how to do it in my other hand, and can work with either hand, now. So the other day I tried, and it turns out that it is possible to have one thread on one hand, and the other on the other. Take a stitch on one side, pull it through, and then start the next stitch, leaving the needle between the thread and the thumb to hold it in progress. Then grab the other needle, take that stitch, pull it through, and start the next, leaving the needle between the thread and thumb to hold it in place. Return to the first needle. Repeat. It helps if the two needles look very different, so you remember which one is for the left hand, and which for the right.

However, so far I've only done a little bit with this technique. I don't know how it will go when there is a better part of a sock hanging off of it. I'll try to remember to report back once I know.

I've also done a bit of sewing this week! I haven't touched the underdress in progress in ages. I generally prefer to stitch when I have company, and for months now I've been doing nålbinding instead of sewing when I have company. But with some upcoming SCA events I decided to look and see if there was any hope of finishing the underdress any time soon. It turns out that when last I left it I'd completed: finishing the neck line, attaching the sleeves to the body, and assembling and hemming all of the sets of gores I'd cut. So yesterday I hemmed the body piece and cut the slits in the body rectangle to take the gores, and started sewing the first one in. This means it needs only those four skirt gores attached, two small square under arm gores cut and attached, and the sides sewn shut to make it usable. I'd also like to cut and assemble two more sets of skirt gores and set them in, but it isn't needed, it would just make for a fuller skirt.

Work progress has alternated between plugging along and hitting interesting snags. Today's snag was odd enough that I've sent an e-mail to an international mailing list for users of this particular geology modelling program in search of help. No idea if anyone out there has tried this technique, or if they will be able to offer a suggestion to make it work, but it is worth a try.

Oh, today was Tuesday, wasn't it. On Sunday I chatted (IM) with a local friend I've seen all of three times since moving here and she suggested we meet up on Tuesday. I completely failed to contact her again today to make it actually happen (to be fair, she didn't contact me, either--no wonder we never actually see one another--this is what happened all of the other times, too). No wonder I have no local social life, when I can't remember that I'm supposed to contact people to do things with them. Somehow it was easy when I lived places with a local SCA--just show up to dance practice, fighter practice, or other meetings, events, or activities, and I'd see people! Often that would lead to other plans to do other fun things with people. Yes, yes, I can remember what it was like to have local friends I saw. My social life is rich, and rewarding, on line. Not so much so in person this year...

I love an excuse to invent cookie recipes!

Today I had a friend drop by and visit. This is the first non-house guest visitor I have had at my apartment since the first week I moved in, a year ago, when a couple of colleagues came over for lunch to help me celebrate getting a place so close to the office. It was nice to have company—while I love many things about living here, the lack of local human interaction is one of the things I won't miss. In honour of my guest I tossed together a batch of cookies. She liked them enough to ask for the recipe, so I thought I'd share them with everyone. As is often the case with my baking, there is only a hint of sweetness in them—just the way I like it.
( Cookies for Lyn )