Another challenge I'm going to lose...

Looks like there’s no way on earth I’m going to manage to get this thing done in time to get it framed and sent off to Mom for Christmas. Maybe I’ll make it in time for Mother’s Day, though. Just got to keep plugging away on it…

See more progress on: Finish Mom's cross stitch project in time for Christmas

Plugging along...

Unfortunately, I still have quite a bit to go, and it’s a very large piece of work. My mom really likes ancient Egypt, so I’m doing a design I found of King Tut’s mask. It was originally going to be a birthday present (Nov. 2), but that came and went, and now I’m just hoping for Christmas. Guess I’d best step it up…

See more progress on: Finish Mom's cross stitch project in time for Christmas

The daily rundown, April 29

I had really high hopes of getting up early this morning. Unfortunately, once my girlfriend headed off to work, I wound up lying in bed for "just a few minutes" and didn't wake up until a little after 11. Once I did get up, I wandered over to my "office" and checked my e-mail. At least I thought I was going to check my e-mail. It turns out that the internet connection was down. I went downstairs and unplugged the modem and router, since rebooting is always the I/S department's best friend. I did notice that the cable light on the modem was blinking slowly, though, and that's just usually not a good sign. So I turned on the TV and, sure enough, there was no reception there, either. And, since I'm kind of a guest at the place, I didn't really feel that it was my place to call Charter and gripe about things, so I was kind of screwed. I did a little bit of stuff that I could on the computer with no internet service, then went and took a shower and got myself a bit more ready for the day.

By the time I had eaten a little bit of lunch and had myself ready to head out the door, it was just about time for my girlfriend to get home for lunch, so I figured I'd wait around and talk to her for a little bit. She was not having the best of days, and it was rather unfortunate that I was in sort of a chatty mood, probably because I couldn't get my chattiness out on the internet, at the same time that she was pretty much just wanting to be left the hell alone. I talked to her for a little while, then left her to have a bit of her quiet time. She stayed a little longer than usual, because she was going to have to work late because her co-worker called in sick again. She always seems to take up the slack for everyone else around that place and never seems to have any of the other girls cover for her that much. It rather sucks, I think, but that's the way it goes.

She took the application I'd filled out for the I/S job at her work when she returned, which helped because that way I didn't have to run down there in addition to the other things I was going to need to do in the afternoon. As she was leaving, there was a Charter truck out in front of the house. I waited for him to head down the road before checking, but there was still no connection. He seemed to be stopping at several different utility poles, though, so I guess the problem was a bit more widespread than just us, and he was trying to find where the problem lay. In any case, I finally headed out into the world at about a quarter to four.

I drove down 377 to Argyle and then took 407 over to Flower Mound. I was looking for the Washington Mutual Bank which I knew to be on 407, called Justin Road as you go through the city of Flower Mound. Unfortunately, they had a bunch of construction going on and that part of the town is made up of a lot of strip-mall type development, so I didn't really see it anywhere from the road. I finally pulled over at a RaceTrac gas station and went into the store to see if anyone knew where the damned bank was located. A guy who worked there told me the address that the gas station was, so I knew it was just a few blocks away and now I also knew that I was looking on the correct side of the street for it. He wasn't sure if it was back the way I came or further on, though, so I opted to go further on.

It was the wrong choice. I wound up driving through the north end of Flower Mound until I got to the Lewisville city limit. Knowing that I'd obviously gone a little further than I wanted, I turned back around and headed back past the RaceTrac, then started keeping my eyes peeled for the WaMu sign that I knew would be there. I pulled off into a shopping center with a number that looked close, but it was too soon. So I continued to the next shopping center, but that one's number was too high. So I drove back through the shopping center parking lots and finally found the bank, with very little in the way of signage, sort of sequestered away behind a gas station in the corner of a strip mall. I was kind of glad that I was actually closing the account, because I'd hate to have to find that bank again.

The tellers there were quite nice, though. I was greeted by three of them as I went through the door, probably because there was no one else there and it looked like there hadn't been for a while. When I told them that I was there to close my account, I was informed that it was "No Closing Accounts Tuesday." The lady who helped me, who happened to be both the closest and the cutest, was actually very helpful, though. She told me that they were actually looking at putting a branch here in Denton, but that doesn't really help me for the time being. Maybe if they follow through with that, I'll rejoin their bank. For now, though, I have to head off to some other financial institution. In addition to my money, she gave me her card and told me to have someone from my new bank call her if they had any problems with the cashier's check or anything like that. That was quite nice of her and beyond the call of duty, I think.

With my cash in my wallet, and knowing that I was out of rum at the house, I headed back toward a liquor store I'd seen on the hunt for the bank. Unfortunately, I found that the building was for lease and they had apparently just not removed the sign from the strip mall's collection of placards. That was sort of a bummer. I resumed my journey vaguely in the direction of home.

I stopped at another little strip mall because I remembered that I needed to buy some envelopes to ship some stuff off to Mom and a few other places. There was an Office Depot, which was really empty considering the size of the store. I thought it might be closed, but it wasn't. There just weren't any people shopping there. I guess the office types must do their business shopping earlier in the day or something. I found a couple of padded envelopes, and I also picked up a spindle of blank CDs that were on sale for about half price. I have a couple of spindles in my storage unit, but I have no idea when I'm going to be able to dig back there far enough to get either them or my DVD recorder out of the mess. When I paid, the girl asked if I had one of their rewards cards. I didn't, but I filled out the little form and got my card before I left. I doubt I'll use it much, but what the hell. It's free...

I continued back the way I'd come, heading toward the tiny little town of Corral City. I think that city was basically established primarily for the purpose of having a liquor store. In any case, I got there with no problem, picked out a bottle of rum for my very own, and headed back out on the road. I was thinking about taking the back roads back, but I figured I might as well get a little more used to driving on the freeways. It didn't look like 35W was all that busy anyway, so that's the route I took.

It wasn't all that jammed, which was nice. I made a nice smooth ride up to University and then headed back into Denton. I stopped at the Kroger shopping center, because there were a few stores there that I wanted to have a closer look at. One was the Denton Thrift. I wandered through that store for a little while, but didn't really find too much that absolutely grabbed my attention. They did have kind of an interesting selection of records, which I may have to go back and browse through later, and they also had some nice art prints, frames, vases and such at pretty reasonable prices, especially when compared to buying them at the downtown "antique" stores, which usually seem to me to be pretty much junk stores for the hoi polloi. In any case, I'll probably go back once I get myself set up a little better in my own place and such. For now, though, I just kept my money in my wallet.

I also went down to the JoAnn store that's down at the far end of the shopping center. My girlfriend told me that it's a tiny one, and she was pretty accurate about that. Even the old one I used to go to in Medford was about twice the size of the store here, but they do have a full selection of embroidery floss and a decent selection of cross stitch fabric and accessories. And they're a lot closer than Hobby Lobby and Michael's, so I may just wind up doing a fair amount of my little craft shopping there. Again, though, for now I just left my money in my wallet and headed toward home.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I got home, unloaded my little purchases, and checked my e-mail. Surprisingly, I already had a little welcome message from Office Depot's rewards program. I guess they must have been bored there at the store and put all my info into the computer already, which is kind of cool. I went downstairs and watched some hockey. The girlfriend came home and watched it with me. After the games were over, we headed upstairs and retired for the night.

The daily rundown, April 26

I got up fairly early when my girlfriend went to work. I think I was actually up at about 8:30 or so, which is definitely quite early for me lately. Unfortunately, I didn't take as much advantage of the extra time as I really should have. I got the cat fed and such and then plunked myself down in front of the computer and checked my e-mail and all of that good stuff. I had thought about driving down to Flower Mound, which is where the nearest branch of my bank is, so I could close out my accounts there and move them to a new bank somewhere here in Denton, but my lack of ambition got the better of me.

Over the course of the morning, I did subscribe to a new Yahoo list, which is the North Texas Crafters list. I posted a little message to it, introducing myself and what I do that is crafty, but I haven't heard back from anyone else yet. The list at the moment appears to be comprised of myself and the list owner, but hopefully more folks will add themselves and we'll get a little community going. I also noticed that I got a reply back from my posting to Tribe.net, but apparently their e-mail notification system didn't choose to notify me, so I didn't see it until I logged back on and had a look manually. Oh well. I need to take some pictures of some of the stuff I've been doing and post it up there.

On the job hunt front, I did add a couple more items to my online resume on the WorkInTexas site, but that's about the extent. I got a notification from one of the agencies I'd sent my resume to that they'd received it and would be looking at it to match me with their potential job openings, which gives me incredibly little hope that I'm going to get anywhere from them. Which is sort of a shame, really, because the job I'd applied for with them seems like it would be quite a good match for me. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

From the band standpoint, I sent off messages to two new ads on Craigslist. One was for a possible Pink Floyd cover band here in Denton, which is made up of college-aged players. Not sure about that one, because I'd be old enough to be the father to most of them, but we'll see. And the other listing was for a dance rock band that needs a bassist and guitarist. I don't know precisely what kind of "dance rock" they have in mind, but I figure that the worst that can happen is a wasted trip to talk to them and possibly a couple of other people I know in the local music community. Not a bad deal, either way. The guy who posted that second ad wrote me back, asking me to call him after 4 PM, but I wound up having other things to do at that time. Hopefully I'll get back with him later, and we'll see what kind of music they're really playing.

After my girlfriend got home from work, which was in the early part of the afternoon, we had a bit to eat for lunch and each had a drink to "lay down a base coat," as she put it, and then we walked down to the site of the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival, which was going on this weekend. I was pretty astounded by the size of the thing. I had sort of expected a little outdoor stage with some folks sitting around on the lawn watching the band, but this was the size of a small county fair, with five real stages, as well as one small stage like I had expected to see, and probably a hundred or more booths selling food and various arts and crafts sorts of things.

We wandered through a few of the booths and such before stopping in front of one of the stages which was apparently the one where most of the UNT bands were to be performing. We met one of the girlfriend's friends and chatted with him for a while as we listened to some nice Latin jazz. The band switched over to playing more of a standard jazz after a few songs, though, and we headed over to see what was going on at some of the other stages. We made our way through the crowds of people and over to the jazz stage, which was pretty much the main stage for the event. We got there as one band was finishing up what sounded like a pretty decent set. It was pretty crowded, but we found enough room to lay out the little blanket thing we'd brought with us. I wanted to see Delbert McClinton, who was closing the night, so we kind of figured that we'd stay in that spot for the remainder of the evening, which we indeed wound up doing.

My girlfriend called her roommate and some of her other friends to see if they were going to come down to the festival. The roommate and one of her friends said they were, and they showed up after a while. The roommate was actually sort of funny because all he did was sat with his back against a big 50-gallon drum they had as a trash receptacle, facing away from the stage, and played his portable game system thing.

The first act that we got to see much of was a lady who went by the name of Annagrey. I'm guessing that her actual name is Anna Grey, but I guess they thought that naming the band that way was cooler or something. In any case, she was a singer in the vein of Sheryl Crow or something along that line, only fairly mediocre, really. I think a lot of the audience was just waiting to see Delbert, so the occasions when she tried to get audience participation or anything going wound up with lackluster results at best. But it didn't completely suck, which is always good. The bass player was halfway decent, although for the most part he just sat back and handled the groove. No real flashy solos out of him, and even his one real solo spot was more just sort of a funk groove thing, not a whole lot of trying to play as many notes as he could in as short a time as possible.

When Delbert finally started playing, the roommate left. For whatever reason, he doesn't like Delbert McClinton, but he thought the somewhat less entertaining (in my opinion) opening act was good enough to sit through. A little backward to my way of thinking, but I guess it's a case of different strokes for different folks. My girlfriend, her friend, and I all had a good time watching Delbert play, although he didn't wind up playing the one song they both really wanted to hear ("Have a Little Faith in Me"). We nevertheless had a very good time, including the fun of watching some of the people who were in attendance. There were a couple who managed to get their own little nicknames, although they'll never know them: Turkey Leg Girl and the Stripper were the two that readily spring to recall.

Turkey Leg Girl was a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old, although I'm certainly not a great judge of that sort of thing. She looked like your typical little girl, but for some reason, when McClinton started playing, she decided that she had to stand up and dance while alternately holding and eating her big ol' smoked turkey leg. Of course, she was right in the spot where the girlfriend and I had the best view of the stage, and she was munching down these huge mouthfuls of turkey as she was turned facing back toward us. By the time that I thought about taking a few pictures of her just for posterity, she had already moved on to annoying some of the other members of her little group and was probably off blocking someone else's view of the show. On the plus side, she knew how to dance far better than I do.

Which is definitely not something that I'm going to say about the Stripper. This was a fairly attractive girl, probably in her early 20s, I'd guess, although I might be guessing a bit older than she really is. In any case, we noticed her dancing after the band had started. She was doing a fair number of moves that would probably not have been at all out of place in a strip club, but she had absolutely no sense of rhythm whatever. She was dancing very fast to a couple of slower ballads, and the faster tunes, which she seemed to be enjoying more, just caused her to be somewhat out of sync, as though she had the right tempo, but had started about a quarter beat behind everyone else. She continued dancing most of the evening, although we did notice that her mom was leading her back along the exit aisle at one point. Mom was looking none too happy, and we all figured it was because Stripper was rather wasted. Nonetheless, they returned to the scene a short time later. I'm not sure what became of her as the evening's entertainment came to a close, because the people were pretty much clamoring to get out, and it became difficult to see anyone not one or two people away from you.

Other fun events of the night included my first funnel cake, which was quite good, albeit very expensive. Not surprising, considering the carnival type atmosphere. We walked home after the show and then the girlfriend's friend had to head home to do some work on a school project. The girlfriend and I sat around and destressed for a bit before heading off to bed, looking forward to seeing another entertaining show the next night...

The daily rundown, April 25

So I've decided to write a little daily entry on here, in addition to my updates on some of the 43Things.com goals that I do, and possible other entries as I see fit. So, what's happened over the past 24 hours that's really of any interest, even to me?

Yesterday was mostly just a stay-at-home day. After the girlfriend* went to work, I checked my e-mail and such. Nothing very interesting going on. I was going to head up to the market and get a copy of the Denton Record-Chronicle to look through the ads, but I wasn't feeling all that ambitious about it. I did update my resume and such on the WorkInTexas.com website, and it wound up giving me a match for a Systems Admin job in Corinth. I checked the "how to apply" section and it was just an e-mail in your resume type deal. So I wrote a little cover e-mail and sent it to the appropriate address. I probably should have spent a little more time on the intro e-mail, because I think I kind of downplayed my skills and concentrated too much on my shortcomings relative to their job requirements. But, what the hell. The worst they can do is turn me down for the job, which isn't necessarily that horrible.

In between adding stuff on that website and sending off my C.V., I also read through a few days' backlog of e-mail and finished organizing my 43Things.com list. I moved a bunch of stuff down on the list that I'm not going to be able to do right now because the necessary items are stuck somewhere at the back of my storage unit, and it's going to take me a while to dig them out. Also, I moved down some of the long term goals and some of the things that are just going to take money. Can't throw money at any of the goals until I actually have a job, after all.

I did a little bit of organization around the computer room here, but not all that much. I did dig out my cross stitch stuff and did a little work on the 4th day of Christmas, which I'm now way behind schedule on. I don't really know if I'm ever going to be able to get myself caught up on that kind of thing now, but I at least managed to get a little bit of stitching done. I also posted messages to the cross stitch list on Tribe.net and my own little cross stitch forum on StumbleUpon. Thus far, however, no replies to either of those messages. While I was on Tribe, I also updated my profile to indicate my new residence and all.

One thing I found while organizing the room was that I actually did have the battery charger for my camera sitting in one of the boxes over in the closet. I thought that was one of the numerous things buried down in the storage unit, so I wound up ordering one from Amazon.com a few days ago after my camera started telling me the battery was low. Now I either need to deal with having an extra or I need to return the one I ordered. Decisions, decisions... It is nice that I'll be able to take pictures sooner than I expected, though.

As it started getting toward evening, I wandered downstairs and had myself some leftover turkey curry for a lunch/dinner sort of thing, and I turned on the hockey game, Montreal vs. Philadelphia. That was pretty much the end of any productivity for the whole evening for me. My girlfriend got home from work and after changing her clothes joined me to watch hockey and Battlestar Galactica, which is sort of a Friday tradition in the house. Her roommate was sleeping, though, and the friend who usually comes over had an important paper to finish, so it was just the two of us. We finished the evening watching the Stars beat the Sharks in overtime. I'm pulling for the Sharks, because they've always been one of my favorites. Of course, the Stars are the hometown team around here, so I'm sort of the outsider, but that's all right. However this series goes, I'll wind up rooting for the winner to go the rest of the way in the West, at least. If Montreal wins the East, I'll have to go with them to win the Cup, as they've been my favorites for as long as I've been watching hockey.

After the game, we came upstairs and I figured I'd check my e-mail before retiring for the evening. There was one message of particular interest to me. It was from my ex-wife. She had written this: "You need you to close out the joint checking account at [the bank]. As per our divorce agreement we were supposed to close all joint accounts. I think I have given you plenty of time since I discussed this with you. As I am authorized to close this on my own, I am asking you to do this within two weeks or I will do it. I am still liable for this account and would like to remove all ties I have to you. So if I haven't seen evidence of this by May 9th, 2008, I will go to [the bank] and close out that account."

I find it rather interesting that she didn't seem to think that the specifics of our divorce settlement were all that critical when our house sold for over a hundred thousand dollars less than we anticipated and I let her keep 90% of the portion of the profits that I was entitled to by that same settlement. And she didn't seem to feel that need to remove "all ties" to me when she asked me to give that reference so she could get into her new apartment, or when she needed to have some free work done on her computer. But, she is technically right that I should have closed the account earlier. I didn't because it was the account that I had all of my automatic bill deductions linked to, and to which my direct deposit paychecks were posted. But, since I'm now between jobs and such, it seems like it's a good time to do it anyway. And, since she's choosing to be a pissy little bitch, it's a good time to do just like she wants and cut all the ties to her. So, I sent her a similarly terse message saying that I'd do it on Monday, then I sat here and drank a bit before heading off to bed. Not the best night ever, but life goes on...

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* I refer to my girlfriend by that sort of impersonal sounding term not because I feel impersonal, but because she doesn't have her name posted on all of her websites and such like I do. So I don't really think it's my place to go spreading her actual name over the internet. Just so you know...

A few more cross-stitch postings to my website...

I posted a few more pictures of my completed cross stitch projects here. I had planned to do a little more work on the site this weekend, but working a 24-hour straight shift from Thursday morning to Friday morning kind of messed up my weekend pretty severely. I'm still hoping to revamp my page about the Colosseum, since that still seems to be the main reason why people visit my site. That'll have to be one of my projects for this week...

Cross stitch projects...

I posted a new page to the site. Nothing too terribly fancy, but it's a photographic catalog of my completed cross stitch projects. I need to post the remainder of those photos to Flickr so I can link to them on there. That should be done later today...