The one where I smack my forehead for falling back into old habits

Normally at this time of night, I’m ensconced on the couch with my knitting and the cat is all curled up in my lap. Then I realized it’s been a while since I updated, so I thought I’d post something. Besides, my wrist is sort from all the knitting I’ve done today, or maybe it’s because I shoveled my back deck this afternoon. During the winter, I don’t use the deck, let alone the back door, so I don’t bother shoveling it. Today it was sunny and gorgeous and warm, which I don’t trust in Northern Ontario in March – we’re due for another cold snap! – so I thought I’d take advantage of that to clear the snow. There’s only about two feet of snow, but it’s two feet of snow that’s thawed, been rained on, refreezed, snowed on again, and repeat from the top. It was definitely crusty, but not the kind of crusty you would associate with pie – soft and flaky [1. Mmmmm... pie! ]. No, this was a hard crusty, crunchy and heavy, like you would associate with the crust on a creme brulee [3. Mmmmm... burnt brown sugary goodness! ] – you have to smack it firmly a few times to break the crust to get at the stuff underneath.

Okay, now I’m hungry. Awesome.

In all fairness, it’s been a busy few weeks.

The Family Day long weekend was lovely and relaxing. I’d get up in the morning and change out of my night pajamas into day pajamas, and then spent the day knitting, watching TV, or going to the gym. It was the first Family Day I didn’t have to go into work because some major systems update/server migration absolutely needed to be done and since the library was closed, it was an ideal time. I’d also like to mention that both times I had to do this? Whatever we were doing ran into unexpected obstacles that required a tech who wasn’t in because it was a holiday [3. The official techs were located somewhere in the States, and I walked through it here in Ontario. The tech were usually someone over in the IT department who were smart enough to say "Hell to the no!" when I asked if they were going to be available. ]

Then there were the Olympics, of which I need to say no more. Y’all know how it turned out. I did participate in the Knitting Olympics and successfully finished a pair of mittens for my sister.

I lack just enough modesty to say these are pretty awesome, considering that I designed the pattern and knit them up in just 17 days. In retrospect though, because I can’t resist the urge to punish myself for my lack of modesty, I should have made the pattern on the back a mirror image on each mitten instead of the exact same pattern. Normally that’s not a problem because the motifs are symmetrical, but these are asymmetrical and should have been flipped between the two.

Last week I was in Toronto for a conference where I:

• Ran myself ragged for five days. Sit-down meals were a rare luxury, and food was mostly eaten on the fly. Fortunately, I seem to have made it through with no ill effects except for a desire to catch up on my sleep, while my boss is suffering through his annual post-conference cold.
• Sat through a session about programing with Perl, which is complete Greek to me. I compared it to looking at a lace chart which makes no sense at first, but once you know what all the symbols and lines mean, you know what to do. Actually writing and editing the code is like learning how to knit, and one day I will get there. [4. When I made this analogy to a group of the coders, they gave me blank looks, much like I assume I was giving them during the session. ]
• Had fly-by visits with three groups of friends, with whom there is almost no overlap. Julie, who also shared a room with me, knows some of my Sudbury friends, so I was able to combine some of those encounters.
• Didn’t get to the Mexican restaurant, which has been our conference tradition for the past few years. Instead, we went out for delicious Thai food, so I’m still happy.

I will begin the following post-conference story by telling you up front that my sister and her friends are fine, the place they are staying has very minimal, if any, damage, and she will be coming home sometime next week.

Saturday, the last day of the conference, my mother was supposed to come up and we were going to go for lunch before heading home. However, she hasn’t been feeling well, I was exhausted, and the weather was kind of craptacular. I called home to tell her not to bother coming in, as I would be heading out after the session I was presenting [5. Oh yeah, I also was a co-presenter in a session. ]

Mom: “I hadn’t planned on coming because I need to be here in case your sister calls.” (My youngest sister is on holidays in Chile with some friends and they were staying in some kind of conservation area.)
Me: “Why? What’s wrong”
Mom: “Have you seen the news?”
Me: (blood running cold) “No – what. happened?”
Mom: “There was an earthquake in Chile, between Santiago and where she is. It was bigger than the one in Haiti. We haven’t heard from her and we don’t know how to find out if she was okay.”

Everything after that was a bit fuzzy. I think I suggested she call the Red Cross, but I don’t remember what her response was. My mom sounded pretty calm even though I knew she wasn’t, and I managed to hold it together until I got off the phone and burst into tears in front of Julie, who then offered to go to breakfast with me instead of going to the plenary session like she had planned. I called my mom back and gave her my cell number, and told her to text me if she heard anything (fortunately, my sister had taught mom to text before she left.) During my session, I got a text from her telling me that they had heard from one of the other girls in the group, and that they were all okay, except the power had gone off. You can imagine how relieved we all are that they are okay, and that the greatest hardship they suffered was that they didn’t get to watch the gold medal hockey game Sunday night because they went to see the penguins. Yeah, I kind of hate her too.

When she gets home, we are confiscating her passport and not letting her leave the country until she is at least 40.