Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Another day of cold...

It turns out I only have about half of what I needed on the skein I had left.  The tiny scale the Hubby got for beer making comes in handy when it comes to knitting.  Lucky for me I picked some more up when I was at work though this means there will be some more pink things.  It might become that scarf I was thinking about.

There is a homeless guy that usually hangs out close to one of the libraries near my house.  I think I might knit him some fingerless mitts too.  Since I don't know what colors he likes or his hand size I feel there will be some ribbed fingerless mitts in the future.  I was feeling this pattern, though I will be working it in the round and will add a thumb or two.  His won't be pink though, even though I have a whole new skein of it.

I made the other half today.  I think I like it even more with the correct ratio of cheese.  None of the cheesy flavor was lost.  I kept the amount of seasoning the same, so it was twice as much as it normally called for.  I think it was a good call.


I'm hoping to get this post out quickly so I can use my hands for knitting.  I was talking with the Hubby that I need to cut back on the salt because my hands are being all puffy.  He was confused how those things were related.  I explained about water retention and all that.

I'm waiting on my new anti-bacterial lotion scent to finish setting up.  I used a gravity mouth bottles in the color blue.  I thought blue would be a nice winter color.  I have found that with the combination of essential oil and lotion it goes through stages.  It doesn't have much smell to it on the first day when you add it, so you have the chance of adding too much.  Once they have time to sit and combine it gets more potent.  The next day it will be really strong.  After that it will calm down a little.  At that point is where you judge if you need any more oil or not.  It is a good thing to keep in mind as well that the more oil you add the more 'watery' your lotion will feel.  I added too much to one and it feels really thin to me now.
Though speaking of winter colors.  I have come up with a fun lipstick color combo that I think is perfect for winter.  I put on a base coat of tea rose and then a thin layer of berry me on top.  It is kind of like a frosted berry look.  I'm really liking it.  I also want to try some of the lipsticks from BH Cosmetics, they have been getting good reviews online and are very affordable.  As you can tell I'm a bit of a lip product junkie.  In high school I had at least two kinds of lip balms with me at a time, I didn't get into lipstick until after college.  I've also just recently gotten into eye liner and BB cream.  I know it is a bit later than everyone else, but I'm okay with that.  I have been in love with nail polish for as long as I can remember.

I have a small rant about some restaurants and their rules.  In general I like to be able to order off of the kids' menu.  A lot of places like to give you a giant plate of food and sometimes I don't want that.  I know I could take some home, but sometimes that doesn't work out.  Most of the time I tend to finish everything on my plate, even if I'm too full.  I don't need seven huge pieces of fried fish and enough french fries for three people when half of that would do.  Sometimes we are on the motorcycle and those Styrofoam containers just don't cut it.  The kids' menu sometimes means that you also get more variety.  One of the places by work offers a kid's combo that is a 12 oz. fountain drink, and dessert.  Everything might be smaller but you get more for a better deal.  I haven't sat down and done any serious math, but it seems like a better deal for me.  Some places only let you order off the kids' menu if you are twelve years old or less, or have one of those with you.  Some websites also won't tell you this when you are looking at their menu so you plan what you might want and then not get to order it when you get there.
I don't understand that.  A quick look on the internet shows that a lot of other people don't understand either.  If you got a full sized meal for cheaper then it would make sense, but you get less food for less money.  Some times you don't need all that food and want a little less.
I did a bit of a search online but couldn't find anything about profit margin.  I know things are highly marked up.  The Hubby used to work at a pizza place and he figured they paid about $.06 for every $2.50 soda cup they filled.  That leads me to believe that it isn't really about the money.  In any case, less dinner would mean that I would be more likely to order more drinks or dessert.  Add-ons are good for anyone.  Would they rather get my extra three dollars on dinner or my extra five (or more) on dessert or more drinks?  I think the second sounds pretty good, especially with the markup they put on alcohol.

Pick one decision you've made in your life-a move, job, or relationship.  How would your life be different now if you'd made a different choice?
I had made a decision after I got fired from my last job, rehired, and then the place went out of business.  The best part about being rehired was that 'not rehireable' had been put in my 'permanent record' there.  Near the end of that job I got a lot of reading done but also got yelled at a lot.  People would storm out after getting super angry that is was the sixth time they have looked for something and we still didn't have it.  I would have given up after the second or third time.  After all of that drama I vowed to myself that I would never work retail again.
I was unemployed during the snowmageddon and I was pretty happy about that.  I would watch the quickly accumulating and just smile because I didn't have to shovel it or even care how much there was.  I wasn't having any luck finding any graphic design jobs, so that was a bit of a bummer.
One of the craft stores I like shopping at was closing two locations and opening a new one.  The new one was actually close to where I worked my other job.  I had remembered seeing signs that it was going into where the Circuit City had been.  I had applied to work with them in the past but had never heard anything back.
Though I thought I was going to be working at the new location they started me at one of the old ones.  Not only did they start me there but I was also a manager.  Okay, I was really a Part Time Seasonal Key-holder.  This meant that I didn't get manager pay but had manager responsibilities.  It was a lot farther than I wanted to drive, but it was something.  The hubby kept reminding me that it looked bad to be unemployed for too long.
It wasn't until the last week I heard anything.  I was figuring that it was going to be a temporary thing.  While we were still working on breaking down some of the fixtures and taking a lot of stuff out to the dumpster I got a call.  The lead manager wanted me to work at the new store.  They asked if I wanted to be a manager-like-person over there but I declined that part.
Though I gripe about how the job is now, it was pretty fun when I first started.  The company had not gone public and everything was running a lot more smoothly.  It would be weird to close with only five employees and we would wonder why there were so few of us.  Now if there were five of us we would be impressed by how many there were.
I have made some super awesome friends there.  If I had never worked there I would have never met one of my bride's maids.  She and I had been on some awesome adventures and I got her into Geocaching.  Another person I met, Dennis, makes some wonderful dresses.  He is even thinking of working on some designs and trying out for Project Runway.
Another good thing from sticking it out for as long as I have is that I have made an awesome friend from Florida who I helped to feel welcome.  I was the first person who came over to her house to hang out.  She invited me to her wedding but it was in December and in Florida.  December is a time of the year where it is really hard to get any time off if you work retail.  If it had been local I might have been able to go, but I had to miss it.  It was peacock theme and the pictures of everything looked great.
One that the Hubby would agree with is that that I would have a lot less crafting items right now if I didn't take the job.  I used to go craft shopping if I had a coupon and if I had a very specific thing I was looking for.  This meant that I went once at month at the most.  I would miss sales and sometimes not even know one happened and I was fine with that.  Now that I'm there many times a week, I just can't miss those sales.  It doesn't help that I am one of the two people who puts the new signs up.  It is really hard to ignore sales at that point.  I also was spending beyond my means when I first got there.  I have railed it in a whole lot now, but it was pretty crazy then.  I would also have more money if I hadn't done that.
I don't think I would have learned about rawism if it hadn't been one of my co-workers.  Sammie was a vegetarian sometimes and a vegan other times but decided to be more strict.  She wasn't happy that she couldn't seem to really commit to veganism and decided to become a rawist.  After that I found a few YouTube channels that are about the lifestyle and they usually give a lot of recipes or show what all they ate in a day.  Sammie had made FullyRawKristina's Holiday Salad for our Black Friday potluck.  I loved it so much I had it made for my wedding.  Megan Elizabeth also has a good channel with a ton of recipes if you are interesting in looking into it more.
I also get to talk about weird foods with some of my co-workers.  I shocked one of the newer people because I was the first "white person who likes smelly food."  I thought that was hilarious.  It was also pretty funny because of how much I like kimchi and ow much two of my Korean co-works hate it.  One of them was the one to tell me about Lighthouse Tofu.  They have a few different kinds of Korean tofu stew and the menu looked very similar to one shown by some YouTubers who actually live in South Korea.
The newest Education Coordinator came over to my house at one point after we closed the store for the night.  I wasn't sleepy and wanted more social time.  She tried the vanilla smoked porter that my hubby had made.  It was my favorite so I wanted as many people to try it as I could.  I know that was less for me, but I felt like showing off.  That was quite a very long time ago, but she still talks about that beer.  I am also one of the few people who she can have girl-talk time with.

Though I might have more money and more space in my house if I hadn't taken this job, I feel like I would also have a lot less friends.  This isn't saying that I wouldn't have made some awesome friends if I had taken a different job, but I am glad to have made the friends that I have.


Today's count: 2,154
Monthly count: 30,514
Prompts used: 20
Words from titles: 92
Pattern words: 1,387
Pictures posted: 3 (counting only finished objects)

1 comment:

  1. There's no way I could work in a craft store or a bookstore-I'd spend my check on craft supplies and books! I used to work in a grocery store that was next to a craft store, and that was bad enough! :-)

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