More of the Same, with Some Pictures to Share

Well, first things first, here are some of the personal physical changes made in the past couple of weeks. These first two pics took place today. I started this morning with hair that reached my butt.

I will end today with hair that barely reaches past my shoulders. I was hoping to keep it SLIGHTLY longer than this, but as it is, I was just able to donate the length to Locks of Love. (For those who don't know, Locks of Love is for folks who've got healthy long hair to donate at least 10 inches to the making of wigs for kids who've got chemo-induced baldness.) It's a great cause! And I hope they're able to do something with the hair I donated. Not a hair that is currently on my head has ever been dyed or permed or such. Plenty of split ends were gotten rid of today, though. *chuckle*

Now some pics of me with glasses. First, my OLD glasses. The ear pieces were starting to wear out, the "chocolate" color of the frames was getting worn out (literally, wearing off the frames). And the lenses were scratched beyond belief. (The eye Doc was rather astonished that I could still see out of them! Said he's never seen such a precise, incredible pattern of swirly scratches on the lenses. *grin* I reminded him that I've been wearing this pair for 4 years.)

This is me with my new pair of glasses. Please disregard the double chin visible in these pics. *wry smile*

My new glasses, and my old glasses. To give some idea of the difference in the shape of the lenses and frames. (Tori, the new ones are more rectangular, while the old lenses were more oval.)

And last but not least, with contacts instead of glasses. I went with clear contacts this time, instead of colored. Maybe someday I'll put in one of my pair of green contacts (from 4 years ago) and show what I look like with green eyes. *wink* For now, my usual "everyday" blue.

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As for what's been going on around here, not a heck of a lot, really! The weather has been reasonably beautiful. We've had some clear, sunny, WARM February days. We've had some cloudy, gray, cool February days. Prefering the warm ones. Today we woke up to thick snow, but it's stopped by now. I doubt we got quite the 4 inches that were being predicted, though. Supposedly this was supposed to be the worst snow storm of the winter so far. Not nearly so. But the snow falling first thing this morning weren't your individual little snow flakes. We had whole danged cotton balls falling from the sky. And BOY is it warm! It's actually about 35 degrees out today, which means it's a GOOD thing the white stuff isn't still falling, else it would actually be sleet instead of snow. YUCKY!!!! The roads are crappy enough as it is. And I've gotta get the kiddo to hockey practice this evening at 5:30 on Ft. Weinwright. Not looking forward to making the drive, today. *sigh* (At least now I've got a temp pass to use the back gate for the duration of the hockey season so I don't have to go all the way around to the front gate.)

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Hockey has tapered almost to nothing. We've got 2 more games and 5 practices (including tonight's) before the end of the season. The kiddo's rather peeved, all in all. Her coach really dropped the ball for the team this year, refusing to let the girls participate in tournaments and not schedualing more games because he's already tied up with his two other teams. (Yeah, the guy said he'd take on 3 teams this year, but he's not shown up for half of our team's activities, or has held off schedualing us more activities because he's tied up with his other two teams. Our girls are feeling rather jilted. Rightly so. (Scott, the two assistant coaches, AND the team manager have all 4 said that they'd have been willing to act as head coach for the team if the team had gotten to go to a tournament in Anchorage. The main coach didn't even give us the option, though. *sigh*) So, a practice tonight, a game Saturday. And only 3 more events in the next 3 weeks.

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School is still..... going. I've got to call the homeschool program and set up an appointment to meet with the special ed teacher now that we've gotten Tays medical appointments all taken care of. Tay's not fighting so much lately, but she's still fighting somewhat. She seems to enjoy her therapist (L.) though, and is looking forward (for the moment) to her appointment tomorrow. We're just moving into the Westward expansion of the USA in History, and Tay's getting into the section on Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea. She's rather happy about that. (FWIW, my Dad's sis-in-law -Aunt Norma Sue- told Dad not too long ago that Clark's wife was the sister to one of our great grandfathers. Cool!)

I brought home 3 books on Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea and the Westward Expansion yesterday, and 2 of the three books include activities and crafts. I've told Tay that if she wants to pick one of the crafts, I'll buy her supplies to make that craft. (The exceptions being: making a full-sized Tipi, and making a brownie "soddy." That is, a sod house made of brownies to show the manner of stacking the sod "bricks" and the roofing of such. I don't think we need brownies in the house. *grin*)

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Gardening wise.... Well, a whole lotta dreaming, but not much "doing" going on. The FIL FOUND my box of seeds! So I've been able to go through and figure out what I need to buy more of. Now I only need to actually BUY more. Basically, I need more spinach seed, more eggplant (if I want to bother with that again), more Black from Tula tomato seed (again, if I want to bother), more Anna Swartz hubbard squash, more radish, more beet, and more green beans. What I really need to do is decide which seed company I want to buy from (SSE like last year, or Territorial Seed Co.) and see if they've still got what I want, and how much it's going to be. I know it won't be as expensive as last year ($100, last year!). I may add another pack of Sunset Runner beans, since I've only got 1 pkg left from last year. (I ordered 2 and used 1 and didn't get any returns.) Still, it won't be a big order this year.

I also passed some of the pepper seed onto 2 of my coworkers who'd expressed an interest in trying to grow some peppers for themselves. The flavor of the peppers, when dried and ground, is NOT "just" like paprika. It's a bit different. Very pungent, very "spicy" but not hot at all. It's not a hot flavor, just a sweet, heavy, assertive flavor. Good, and I think a good alternative to paprika, but NOT paprika. I hope to get a good bit more this coming year. Enough to actually grind a jar-full next year, if not more.

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Work has been rather quiet for a couple of weeks. Not a heck of a lot going on, thank goodness. And the "brown-noser" co-worker has been keeping her mouth to herself (at least where I'm concerned) lately. Which is good. However, a couple of other coworkers and I are about ready to take our concerns about the activities this woman engages in (on work time, or at work but not officially on-the-clock) and talk to the Union Rep. This other woman (the brown noser) does little to NO work based on our job description and almost all of the things she DOES do are "extracurricular" weeding and reorganizational activities that she's "given" by a couple of the reference librarians. These are jobs that the rest of us have been chewed out for daring to offer our time to (when you get sick of shelf-reading, you'll offer to do just about ANYTHING else), but the Brown-noser does these activities to the exclusion of all her "reguarly assigned" activities. And yet, those of us who DO engage in our "regularly assigned" duties, but don't follow directions to the very letter, get chewed out. (If we spend more than 45 minutes shelving a single cart of books, even Non-Fic, and we spend any of that time out there straightening, we're chewed out for taking too long. One coworker who shelves very quickly was chewed out for taking TOO many carts of books during the course of the day. We're supposed to spend time shelf-reading, but we're chewed out if we do because we weren't shelving instead. If we shelve books to the exclusion of shelf-reading we're chewed out because "our" shelf-reading sections look like crap. If we dare spend a little time checking in books instead of shelving (esp. when the shelves are bare of books TO be shelved, but the table is full of books yet to be checked in), we're chewed out for daring to think that maybe we should check-in for a while in order to have materials TO shelve. However, if the table gets full (which invariably happens at the same time as the media bin being an over-flowing mess) the person who IS supposed to be checking them in gets chewed out for NOT getting enough done.

(The person who's job it is to check in media AND keep an eye on the check-out desk in case of a rush of people is also the person who's supposed to be checking in whatever books are on the table waiting to be checked in as well. Unfortunately, the media bin is only ever overflowing with media -which takes priority to books- at the same time that the table is full. It's impossible to stay on top of BOTH, so occasionally after 5 pm (at which point none of us pages are assigned to be "back-up") one of us will sit at the check-in computer and attempt to just check in books. I've been chewed out for daring to do such, even though I didn't have any more pressing matters to take care of, the shelves were empty of books to be put away, I didn't have a cart-full of books to put away, I had already shelf-read during the day, AND I didn't have pick-up duties.) It just seems as if we just cannot win with our boss. And the worst part about it is that what the Boss does is rather bitchy, but I can't figure out if she really realizes how bitchy and micromanaging she is. Sometimes she seems completely oblivious to how overbearing she is, other times she seems to be purposefully ragging on us just because she can. Sometimes she'll even do something totally nice, and then within 5 minutes say something totally overbearing or contradictory. It's frustrating. And at least 3 of us agree that we'd love our jobs if we were simply allowed to DO our jobs without the micromanagement and bossiness of our Boss (and Brown-noser).

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Oh, FWIW, the father of that little neighbourhood boy (I say little, M. is taller than I am!) died almost 2 weeks ago now. My understanding is that M's mom moved back in a while back and has reassumed her responsibilities for her children in the course of the illness and death of her ex-husband. (She has had some nasty drug issues that resulted in her being a very "flakey" mom, when she was around at all. Maybe the illness of her ex-hubby got through to her, I don't know. Anyway, the kids are still living in their home here in the neighbourhood.)

The premature baby seems to be doing well and I've completed an afghan for her. (What little we hear is that she's progressing reasonably well, that the hospital hopes to send her home about the end of March, which is just prior to the day she was actually due to be born.)

Anyway...... I've gotta get off the computer. We've gotta get a bit of school work done, and this post is definitely long enough.

Have a Blessed Day!