1. Work/Programming
I “met” the new team today.. as in we had an on-the-phone meeting. One person is in England (but is leaving the company at the end of January), one is in Australia (but is leaving end of um.. December(?) I think) and honestly I’m not exactly sure where the rest of them are. The meeting was interesting. This group is working on a lot of things I don’t know about. I will watch it to see what’s developing.
It was pretty funny to get introduced by the new bossman.. and then he said “Monica will be doing {these things}” and then he asked if he’d missed anything.. and I got to immediately announce that I’d be out of the office Nov, Dec, Jan and part of Feb for Maternity leave. Even funnier since bossman had just gotten done talking about how the team really needs to focus on big-huge-giant project that only has 101 days left to complete.. and I’m pretty sure I’ll get back just after it’s done. Yeah.. I’m totally focusing on that.
I did get a chance to chat with the new bossman on Thursday and he’s amiable to me working from home the last two weeks before my due date. I still need to talk about end-of-maternity-leave work at home days.. I think I’ll talk with him about that next week. I did mention to him that I plan to try to keep up with emails becuase I don’t want to come back to the office and have 6,000 emails in my inbox. He asked if I would be ok if he called me on urgent matters. Urgent as in the company thought we’d be completely off the old system and onto the new system by end of the year.. so they laid off the rest of the team.. and after December it’ll be only me… and one other gal.. and I’ll be out on maternity leave.. and she doesn’t know how to do the things that I know how to do. Yeah, that kind of Urgent issue.
Apex training is still going well-ish.. I’m still unamused to be learning something by having someone read powerpoint deck to me. It sounds like everyone(except one person) at the company who knew anything about Apex has left the company.. so it seems like a good thing to spend quite a while learning. I have decided to ask teh Intearwebs for additional training resources and go through those as well as this class. At best I become a useful resource.. at worst I have a new high demand skill to add to my resume. Win-win.
2. Home
Fearghus left for Great Western War on Wednesday morning. While he’s gone I’m working on some cleaning and clearing. At the moment I’ve gotten the kitchen 90% done (just need to rearrange the pantry and put some cooking equipment away). The dining room is 100% done(honestly there’s not much to the dining room so that was easy). The living room is probably 90% done (I just need to vacuum but I don’t feel like it). Our bedroom and my sewing room is next on the todo list. I think I’ll tackle our bedroom first. Mostly that just has piles in it that need to be sorted and put away.
The sewing room is a much bigger deal. First off it’s a unbelievable mess. The last few sewing projects have been hurried and ran one after the other so I haven’t been doing a good job of cleaning up after myself. Then there’s the issue that again I’m faced with the task of turning my sewing room back into a guestroom/baby room. Which means I need to empty all of my sewing stuff out of the room and put it… somewhere. Honestly I have no idea where. It’s times like this where I really regret that Bay Area homes don’t have basements.
Initially the baby will live in our master bedroom with us and we’ll have a few guest in town (my parents after the baby birth and possibly F’s brother and sister-in-law after that), but eventually I’ll actually need to make that room into a full fledged child’s room. The initial plan is to get a Co-Sleeper so that the baby can sleep near us. A changing table and chest of drawers are still on the to-be-acquired list.. but I don’t know where the money for those is coming from 😀
I really also want a rocking chair.. but I haven’t found the perfect chair yet.. I think I may just have to do without.
3. Health
Weight continues to decrease. Down another pound to 338.0 this morning.
Teh Intarwebs says there are a few weight loss plans which focus on managing your blood sugar as a path to healthy living. The plans I’ve seen so far are very vague as to exactly what blood sugar numbers you should be aiming to achieve.
But it goes like this.. too much carbs/sugar cause your blood sugar to spike too high. This triggers the release of insulin. Insulin tells your cells to suck up the blood sugar and store it away as fat(it also prevents your body from burning energy from fat as it tells the body there’s plenty of sugar in the blood already). If your blood sugar spikes too often and for too long your cells become deaf to the insulin message. This is diabetes (or insulin resistance). Instead of sucking up the sugar and storing it away as fat your cells just leave it in the blood making your blood more and more toxic. AND since the insulin is floating around in your blood your body is unwilling to tell cells to burn energy from fat. So.. the plan is keep your blood sugar lower so that you don’t get a huge insulin response… so that your body can get back to burning energy from fat sooner.
It’s a good plan.. it means smaller meals throughout the day (to keep your blood sugar from spiking/plummeting) and eliminating all things that spike your blood sugar from your diet (simple carbs, sugar). It’s almost spot-on what I’m doing now for the Doctor’s proscribed not-a-diet-eating-plan and only slightly off of what I did two years ago to lose 60 lbs. On the plus side.. I’m not hungry. On the minus side.. I’d kill for a cookie.
OMG. So much to do and so very little time to do it in.
4. SCA/Projects
Tullia reports that their Royal Highnesses who are stepping up at 12th night are doing an early period reign specifically playing around with Kentish and Merovingian fashions… and that I should prepare to have my brains picked. Nice. I’m thrilled to have someone interested in the details I’ve been able to dig out. Now I just feel bad that I’m not further along on my Anglo-Saxon projects.
On Saturday a few gals are coming to my house to work on their cotehardies. I think they’re all at the “cut it out and sew it together phase”. It should be fun.
Project list:
1. (done) Need to paint the Queen’s Champion Symbols on the shield (deadline Wednesday before Great Western War) I finished the painting on the Queen’s Champion Shield for Fearghus on Tuesday night. I didn’t get a picture of it.. Oh well.
2. Bob’s Waffenrock (deadline 12th night, though sooner is better). Need to nail down exactly what he wants on the waffenrock, get measurements and start putting this together.
No progress on this yet. I need to contact Bob and see if he can stop by on Sunday to move this forward.
3. Chevrons for trim for Miach and Sciath (no deadline) Sooner is better than later and at this point I just need to finish it.
4. Sylvie’s Anglo-Saxon tunic (soft deadline Cynaguan Coronet, Oct 26). This is in process. I’m hand-sewing it together on my bus commute. Sleeves are done I just need to add the gores. Frankly this project has much lower prioroty than sorting through Baby stuff and prepping for hte Baby.. so it may not get done.
5. Baby garb. It would be nice to have baby garb before I have the baby.. but that may be wishful thinking.
6. Anglo-Saxon Fillet (no deadline). I’ve received materials for this in the mail.. but I can’t start on this until I finish the things above.. or at least 1-3.
5.
Now that I have a job again.. and it looks like we’ll be in California for the foreseeable future we’ve had a few people ask if Fearghus will go back to fighting in Crowns and Coronets.
Regardless of whether anyone thinks we could win or not, it is on my honor (and at invocation we both solemnly swear) that if we should be granted victory on the day we would rule justly. To *us* this also means that we have to feel that we could give our rule our best effort and utmost attention.
First off, Fearghus does not and has not ever contended in Mists Coronets. He and I both feel that it’s not honorable to “double-dip” by fighting in both coronets. Beyond that it is a very sticky situation to fight on one side at a Mists-Cynagua War and then enter the list for a coronet for the other side. Because of this, regardless of physical location, Fearghus fights for Cynagua and will only contend for Cynaguan Coronets.
Second off, with regards to the upcoming Cynaguan Coronet, Erik needs to come first. At this time we’re not sure how much time/effort will be left over after putting Erik first so we discussed it and decided that Fearghus will not be contending in this next Cynaguan Coronet. At this time we don’t feel that we can give our best attention to Cynagua or to the West if we were to win. We will re-evaluate this decision for March Crown.. and then again for Cynaguan Spring coronet.
Thank you to everyone who has asked about this. Please let me know if our reason are unclear.
Future:
October 9-14: Great Western War (F will be going, I will not)
October 19: FREE WEEKEND!!!
October 25: Alton Brown Tickets
October 26: Cynaguan Fall Coronet (daytrip)
November 2: FREE WEEKEND!!!
November 9: Collegium Occidentalis (maybe not)
November 12: Induced labor?
November 16: TBD
November 18: Baby’s Official Due Date
November 23: TBD
November 28: Thanksgiving Weekend
December 7: Boar Hunt (maybe)
…
January 3-5: 12th Night, Concord CA? (maybe)