Over the past week or two I’ve been doing some rather frantic work on my Photoshop class. I made it through the final lesson late last week, and this week, since the class ends on Friday, I decided to final tackle my Final projects. Note the multiple ‘projects’ there? If one wasn’t bad enough, they made us to two.

The first one was an inspiration in complete and utter lack of artistic talent. It was to be a montage of items, and I had to use a whole list of various techniques. I decided to do something with penguins, for lack of any other ideas, and poked around online (hooray for Google’s image search) until I managed to find enough penguin pictures to suit my needs. Then it was off to crop them and color them; to stick them all onto a lovely picture of an iceberg (well, it was lovely before I started with it, at any rate), add some little penguin footprints, and so on. I think the nicest thing I can say about that particular montage is that it is spectacular only in its sheer badness. No, you cannot see it. I think that once the class is over I will send it merrily off to the trash bin on my computer and do a silent little dance of joy when I hit the ‘delete forever’ key. I sent it off earlier this week and have heard nothing back from the instructor at all. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but considering the class officially ends tomorrow, at this point I really don’t much care.

The second project is the one that’s been driving me nuts for months. I was to create a fake magazine layout (again, using a set number of images and techniques). I had no ideas whatsoever, until Richard – likely having simply gotten tired of my whining about the whole thing – told me he was surprised I hadn’t thought of the obvious idea already. Do a layout involving knitting and cats, he suggested. Um. Oh. Well. Yes, that would make sense. I could wonder why I wasn’t able to think of that all by myself, but we all know the answer already so let’s not even bother going there.

So that’s what I did. And for all of my worrying and all that I was convinced that I would not be able to do this, I managed to put something together that didn’t look half bad. It is not, mind you, the loveliest of creations, but every single image I used for my fake knitting store ad came from pictures I took with my own little camera (plus one the instructor provided that we had to include), and I was able to muddle through most of the list of techniques we had to use without having to look them up in Photoshop’s help files. So I guess maybe I learned something after all.

You know the best part about finshing up the second Final project? It means that for me, the class is over. Over! And now I can install the game Richard got me for Christmas that I’ve been waiting to play because I knew it would become a massive time suck, and I do not have to pretend that I am the slightest bit creative with color or images or things like that ever again. Yay!

Today, despite having a million other things we’d much rather do, we got up and loaded up the car with all the recyclables, and drove them over to the recycling collection center, where we discovered that they moved things around, so we had to do a lot of peering into smelly metal bins to figure out where to dump our bottles and papers and cans. After finally figuring all that out, and then grabbing a quick breakfast, it was off to take care of those pesky taxes.

I think this is the first year in a very long time that both of us have had only one job (no thanks to the dot bomb), so there were a few fewer pieces of paperwork to sort through. Of course, despite our best efforts we did manage to leave a few things at home, as usual, so Richard got to make two trips back to the house to rummage in the files and track down the stuff we were missing. In the meantime, the tax preparer and I spent far too much time peering cross-eyed at the instructions for how to calculate the nifty tax break that we got from buying the Prius last year. Their software did not make it remotely easy, nor did it make it very clear just what we were supposed to do, and how we were supposed to calculate the relevant numbers (how does one extract the cost of just the fuel efficient piece of a hybrid car when the dealer not only does not provide a cost breakdown, but has no idea how the heck to get one because it is all an integrated machine, for crying out loud, and why were we calling him anyway).

We eventually figured it all out, and the computer did its magic and calculated all the numbers, and the end result was that while we ended up getting money back from the state, it was just a little less than the amount we owed the the feds. I suppose that means it all worked out okay, even though I admit to having had wistful dreams of getting a refund overall. Ah well. At least the taxes are now out of the way, and done nearly two months early, and once we get the state refund I’ll immediately write the check to the feds, and then it’ll all be done. Take that, procrastination gene!

Today was the usual mix of music practice and church, followed by some knitting. There’s enough of us yarn addicts at church now that we’ve organized a rather informal knitting and crocheting circle. We meet after church for an hour or two, braving the random ants in one of the Sunday school rooms (a room which seems to have the world’s most determined ants because no matter how hard anyone tries to get rid of them they always come back). This afternoon I actually got to show someone how to knit, which was actually kind of fun because it wasn’t all that long ago I was on the receiving end of the instructions.

Interspersed with bouts of tax-induced hair pulling, choir rehearsal, grocery shopping, and knitting, we have also been watching season 5 of Angel, which finally arrived on DVD from Amazon this past week. I think it is, so far, my favorite season of the whole show. As much as I love it though, it depresses me a little that when these DVDs are over there will never be any new Buffyverse TV for me ever again.

When I was in high school, I was a band geek. I played the oboe in the concert band and the woodwind ensemble (and once even in field show). I played the flute in marching band, for parade routes. During field show I played all the non-drum percussion instruments, xylophone, glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba (with four mallets, no less) and once even an eight-foot tall copper gong. And because that wasn’t enough band geekery for one person, and also because I happened to play piano, I was also in the jazz band.

The last one really never makes sense to me when I look back on it, for the sole fact that I have never been much of a fan of jazz music, and despite one might expect, playing it for four years did not make it any more endearing. Long drawn-out drum solos bore me to tears, and saxophone and trumpet solos leave me cold (although this might have more to do with the fact that pretty much every trumpet or saxophone player I knew who was given a solo had the big fat swelled head and ego to go right along with it). Being asked to ad lib on the piano terrified me. And yet I was in jazz band all through high school – all four years. Go figure.

The ironic thing is that even though I can only take about one or two jazz tunes before I start to gouge out my own ears, there were a few I didn’t mind, and an even smaller selection I actually really liked. And my very favorite of our repertoire, the entire time I was in that little ensemble, was “Birdland.” I have no idea who wrote it, nor do I know who did the arrangement we used. All I know is that I loved that song, and whenever the director asked us what we wanted to do for a performance, I’d flap my hand wildly in the air and ask to do that one. Of course, the rest of the band wanted to do other things, and over the four years players came and went. And when I graduated from high school I decided I’d had more than enough of jazz – both playing it and enduring it – and over the years I mostly forgot all about it.

NPR tosses little snippets of songs in between their news segments. On the way home from work yesterday I wasn’t paying much attention to what they were talking about until suddenly the music started playing. And I recognized that song from the first three chords. Birdland! They were playing my song! And I did a very un-adult like squeal of glee in the privacy of my car and turned the radio up really loud, and then might have possibly done a little pouting when the snippet was over and they went back to news and more mundane things.

It’s been lurking in my head all day today. If I let my mind wander those opening chords start up and if I’m not careful I find myself humming along. Birdland. It’s the way jazz should be. Oh yeah.

When I was younger, I was a Girl Scout. In fact, I was a Girl Scout from the first year of Brownies all the way through the last year of Seniors, and even earned the Gold Award to finish it all off. I was fortunate to have access to troops over the years that focused on keeping us girls active and learning. During the years I was a Junior, a Senior and a Cadette, my troop did long backpacking trips, went camping in Wyoming (memorable for both the funnel clouds in the sky and the fact that I spent four hours lost in a canyon because we thought it looked like a good shortcut), competed in camping skills (who else can say that they’ve won awards in both semaphore and Morse Code several years in a row?), made solar box ovens, sang, danced, wore neon green uniforms, and generally had a blast.

Part of the reason we did so much cool stuff was that my mom was the troop leader, and she didn’t believe in sitting around and just doing ladylike crafts all day. One of the things she emphasized to my sisters and I was that there was nothing we couldn’t do just because we were girls, and to that end, she made sure all the girls in her troops knew how to use tools, and how to do basic maintenance around the house. There were a few parents who were ever so slightly horrified when they found out that she had shown all of us how to find the main water and gas connections for a house; how to turn off the water for an individual sink; how to take things apart and put them back together, but we all pretty much ignored their dithering. There were also a few of the girls who had obviously been given the ‘girls don’t do that’ speech a time or two, and seemed to be aghast that my mom expected all of us to occasionally get our hands dirty.

One little girl in particular had a small fit during one meeting, when we were doing something with tools, and told my mom that she couldn’t use a screwdriver because she was a girl.

My mom, never one to mince words, retorted “Why not? It’s not like the boy holds it with his penis.”

She heard from more than one set of parents about that one, since there are an amazing number of people out there who feel that their little girls are far too delicate to hear the ‘p’ word, but the point was made. If a boy can do it, a girl could too, and none of the girls in her troop were ever allowed to use their gender as an excuse. It’s something that has stuck with my sisters and me into our adulthood. There are a lot of things I don’t know how to do – and an awful lot of those do tend to be traditionally ‘male’ tasks, like building and carpentry and electrical work. But I know that my only stumbling block is that I just don’t know what I’m doing, and not that I *can’t* do it just because I’m a girl. After all, I’ve rewired lamps. I’ve replaced faucets and showerheads. I’ve taken apart plumbing (although in retrospect it didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped). I’ve sanded and finished and painted and built things. The only thing that stops me from doing more is simple lack of know-how.

So when my knitting friend told me about Ladies Night Out at a hardware store in Vacaville (Meeks), I was intrigued. I liked the concept – training classes specifically geared toward women – so last night I headed off to see what they had to offer.

They had three sessions – one on drywall (taught, I should point out, by a very enthusiastic woman), one on toilets, and one on moldings – and you could attend two of the three. Since I think I know everything I really want to know about drywall (after spending an entire day hanging it for the Habitat for Humanity project last summer), I decided to check out the toilet session first, then attend the molding session next.

The whole thing was amazing. Hardware stores (much like many mechanics) are still, too often, places where sexism lurks and is sometimes encouraged. A woman walking alone into a hardware store is more likely to be given the proverbial pat on the head, and there are a lot of hardware stores where there is still the assumption that if you’re female, you obviously don’t know what you’re doing, and everything has to be dumbed down. Not, mind you, that I’ve run into that at our favorite local hardware stores (what, doesn’t everyone have a favorite hardware store?), but I’ve seen it – and experienced it – in others. And I think, in a way, this Ladies Night Out was geared toward trying to change that.

There was a large crowd of women – and yes, even a few men (mostly husbands, I suspect, of some of the attendees). They provided us with dinner, and there were a few employees wandering around throughout the evening passing out door prizes – things like work gloves, knee pads, portable CD players, little tool kits. The grand prize of the evening was a huge combination tool that looked like it sanded and drilled and screwed and did a lot of other really useful things. And the sessions were led with the assumption that we were all smart people who knew what we were doing, but just needed a little help. The guy who led the toilet session walked us through how to take an entire toilet apart and put it back together – including replacing the valves, seals, and so on. The guy who led the molding class got into animated discussions with a few attendees on which nail gun was best for which project, and which compound miter saw would be most useful, and seemed to just assume that we all would be at home around both. It was informative and energized and most of all, so very refreshing, because they treated us all like we were just ordinary people, and not like we were ‘girls’.

Among all the adults there was one little girl in attendance (likely a daughter of one of the other attendees). She sat in the front row during the session on toilets and clutched a rather raggedy looking stuffed animal while she watched him take things apart and discuss the pros and cons of the various types of valves and seals and parts. She had glasses and a pony tail and she was probably about 8 or 9 – maybe around the same age as the little girl who told my mom she couldn’t use a screwdriver because she was a girl, all those years ago.

I was glad to see her there.

Back when I was a database nerd (back when I traveled around the country and worked for big soulless companies who didn’t care if I lived or died as long as I churned out billable hours) I used to routinely be given tasks to do that involved things way outside my scope of knowledge. My very first ‘real’ project – and bear in mind this was when it was still a small organization (and therefore possessing of a soul, and nice people who actually cared) was on Microsoft Access – a project for which I was given the software a full two weeks before actually meeting with the client because I had never used Microsoft Access before this in my entire life. Somehow I scrabbled through a ‘Teach Yourself Access in 20 days’ book in about one week, and spent a lot of time frantically pouring through online tutorials and help sites and code samples, and managed to keep one step ahead of the client throughout the project and thereafter became labeled an ‘expert’. Another time I was sent to a project and found out later they’d told the clients I was an expert in database tuning, and really, while the things I could do with AT-SQL were the stuff of visions, a database tuning expert I was not. So I spent another few frantic weeks scrabbling through anything I could get my hands on, including reading the server manuals cover to cover and somehow staying just enough ahead of the game to get their databases running in tip-top shape after all, and from the reviews I got after the fact, it turned out that no one was the wiser. No one, that is, but me.

I loved doing all the writing of code. That part of my job was the thing that would wake me up at night from dreaming stored procedures; would make me lose track of time at the office when I was neck deep in a procedure so convoluted that I would lose track of where it started and where it ended. But the part of my job that eventually led me to quit (aside from the whole being bought by a soulless corporation and being treated like a nameless peon thing) was the part where I felt as if I was forever hanging on by my fingernails and no matter what I did I would never quite catch up because no matter how much I learned there was always far more I was somehow supposed to know (by virtue of being ‘sold’ as an expert in those fields) but did not, and I got really tired of feeling as if I was always one step away from a rather spectacular failure.

In my current job we’re in the process of revamping our intranet, and somewhere along the line it became known that I know HTML, and so I became part of the revamping team. And then there were other software programs tossed into the mix, including a certain proprietary online information management system, and then, because there is only so much one can do with this particular system from their web-based editor, yet more proprietary software was required. It showed up in the mail, I installed it, and then spent a few days reading tutorials and pouring through knowledgebase articles and white papers and bookmarking pages full of hints and examples and code samples, and doing my very best to figure out how to make changes to objects in a software I do not yet understand very well. And today for a short moment in time I started to feel that old panic welling up inside me – the feeling that I was doomed to always feel one step behind the rest of the world and that I was never going to feel like I had this all mastered again.

But then I found a way to make it do (mostly) what I was hoping it would do and all the pieces fell into place, and even though I am not an expert in these new systems by any stretch of the imagination, what matters is that I know just enough, and there will be time for me to work on all the rest of it when, and if, I need to know more later. And a little thrill went through me when I sat back and looked at what I did – things that maybe the regular non-code nerd might never even notice because all the hard stuff always happens behind the scenes, and I thought to myself that there was a reason that I was good at what I did, in that other life, and that even though I have no desire to ever go back there again, sometimes it is good to have these little moments of nostalgia when I can actually see what those managers saw when they billed me out as an expert in software I’d never touched – because they knew that I’d always figured it out before and by golly, I’d likely do it again. And what do you know. I did.

We fully intended to get our taxes done this weekend but I never got around to sorting through the pile of forms to make sure we have everything (to avoid those mad dashes back home to find some crucial bit of paperwork which we’ve done before, mid return preparation session). So that will have to wait until next weekend. I also fully intended to take all the piles of paper and empty bags and bottles and cat food cans to the recycling center, since the piles have long since outgrown their containers and the looming mountain of squashed cardboard boxes has been eying the cars threateningly for the last few weeks every time we pull into the garage. Guess what else is also waiting for next weekend?

So instead of doing important adult things this morning, we went out for breakfast and had highly adult food (like chocolate chip pancakes) and then we got our hair cut. I have been looking forward to that for quite some time because my hair was getting long and awkward and despite my best efforts I shall never be able to trim my own bangs as well as a professional. We left lots of our hair behind but it felt wonderful to do so, and then we went back home because I had a headache and I took a nap while Richard (who is the coolest husband ever) drove off to the store and bought a birthday present for my older sister. I had already figured out what to get her and had found some likely candidates online, so I could show him pictures, and I have to admit that I was sort of tempted to keep it for myself when he brought it home instead of wrapping it up to give to my sister because her new electric skillet is prettier and shinier than mine. But one must not covet one’s sibling’s birthday presents, so I wrapped it up and scrounged up a birthday card (note to self – buy more birthday cards) and we packed her present and my youngest nephew’s birthday present (now two weeks overdue) into the car and headed up to Napa for the birthday celebration.

On the way my mom called to ask us to pick up candles, so we swung by this tiny little market that’s just around the corner from where my older sister lives, and picked up the coolest birthday candles ever. I wouldn’t have even given them a second glance except that they were out of the normal birthday candles, and then I saw these and thought they would probably work better than loading up an ice cream cake with 37 candles anyway. The candles were individual letters of wax, and they all spelled out Happy Birthday! (with the exclamation point) and they were colorful and sparkly and fun. The only downside was, as it turned out later when we stabbed them into the aforementioned ice cream cake and lit them, they tended to melt a *lot* faster than normal candles and so by the time she blew them out they did not resemble letters so much as strange hieroglyphics, but in a warped way that made them that much cooler.

We gave my nephew his present – a set that included a hat shaped liked a dinosaur head and two squishy slipper feet shaped like dinosaur feet. The best part about it was that when you moved the head around it roared, and when you stomped the feet they made crashing, stomping sounds. And the best part about *that* was even though the electronic roaring and crashing noises weren’t too loud, my nephews more than made up for it by stomping around the house (do I even need to mention that their downstairs is hardwood flooring?) as loud as they possibly could to go while pretending to be big scary green dinosaurs. Thank you, Amazon.com, for suggesting it. And I am not the slightest bit grumpy about the fact that it does not come in adult sizes. Really I am not.

Today has been a day of warm fuzzies. It started with tracking down the perfect Javascript code snippet that I needed to transform an insanely long list of items into a series of nifty nested, expandable lists – a code snippet that turned an otherwise dull HTML file into something which garnered many a ‘cool!’ from various members of our company when I sent it off to the entire organization this afternoon. I am not a web designer by any stretch of the imagination – I know HTML and I can read Javascript enough to be able to modify an existing code snippet (although I couldn’t write it from scratch to save my life), but my limited skills were enough. I expect that this fairly simple HTML document (now with nifty expandable lists!) will gradually morph into something more complicated as the months progress, and I have a sneaky feeling I am going to be stretching the limits of what I know how to do with web pages, but that’s okay. It’s fun.

The second warm fuzzy came when I got home from work, and found a package waiting for me. Last month I signed up for knitting Secret Pal, and shipped off a package to my own Secret Pal earlier this week. So today I got a surprise package of my very own, in which I found what she assures me is a very simple pattern for socks, a skein of superwash wool (so it is machine washable!) yarn in the loveliest mix of blues, and an abundance of dark chocolate, just to round it all out. I have decided that this is the year I will get over my intimdation with knitting socks (it’s the heels – they scare me), and my Secret Pal decided to spur me on with a little temptation. Yum.

And if that weren’t enough, when we got home from choir practice, there was a message waiting on the answering machine for me. Remember that curriculum I sent off a few weeks ago? They did the review of all the submissions today, and apparently I kind of blew them away. The guy who called wanted to set up a time to go over a few edits, so I did that this evening – and the edits, such as they were, were mostly just grammatical. It felt pretty nice to know that I’d done such a good job – especially in something I’d written. I love to write, and I know when it comes to this sort of thing (non-fiction stuff) I’m good at it. Really good. But still, I was the least experienced one in the whole group and I’ll admit I had been feeling a little apprehensive about whether or not I’d managed to do what they wanted. No need to worry – I nailed it.

Don’t mind me, I’m just a little giddy right now. First I got that code thing working, and then I get this rather lovely virtual pat on the head. I think I’m entitled to have just a little squee fest today.

I went to Curves this morning, even though my mom is still sick. I used that as an excuse all last week (well, I did go last Monday but only because I found out she wasn’t coming while I was parking outside the gym, and it seemed silly to just go home at that point) but I decided I couldn’t keep on skipping the workout indefinitely. On the way home I stopped by the store to pick up some milk, since the dregs left in the carton currently sitting in our fridge had started to coalesce into something that shouldn’t really be ingested anymore.

They were pretty empty, it being only about 7 in the morning at that point, but there were huge displays of red and pink – balloons, candy, hearts, and flowers. And as I walked up to the registers to pay for my milk so I could go home and have myself a healthy breakfast (thus foregoing the not uncommon stop by the local coffee shop and bakery) I noticed that one of them was framed by a giant red heart. A big sign hung from the top designating that register for Valentine’s Day purchases only.

It’s a wonder my eyes did not roll right out of their sockets, but I successfully avoided any hysterical laughter in the middle of the store. I imagined that later in the day that register would be doing a brisk business as hordes of desperate men randomly grabbed one of the many glittery, sugary, perfumed treats from the shelves in the hopes of appeasing their wives or girlfriends and proving that they really do love them despite having put the purchase off until the last possible second. Ah, romance. I could just feel it in the air. Or maybe that was just the feeling one gets when one has worked out on an empty stomach, and one has had absolutely no coffee at all so far. Hmm.

On the way home from work I swung by Ben & Jerry’s to pick up a few scoops of Dublin Mudslide as a little Valentine’s Day treat (we don’t really bother with this holiday beyond maybe a card or a goofy stuffed animal). I stopped by a post office to mail off a package to my knitting secret pal (because what good is an obsession if you don’t have an international circle of friends to support your habit?). Richard made jambalaya for dinner tonight and we ate it while watching the reunion show for Extreme Home Makeover – a show we both really enjoy (and one which usually has me in tears by the end because I cannot help the fact that I am a girl and happy endings sometimes make me cry). We discussed plans to go to the zoo next week to see the lemurs. It’s been a nice day for a Monday.

This morning I got up far too early for a Saturday and headed off to pick up a friend before heading down to Santa Clara for Stitches West. Last year it was a little closer, since it was in Oakland, but apparently they outgrew the convention center there and had to find larger accommodations. A bit further, yes, but still within driving distance, giving us lots of time to chat on the drive down.

We got there in time to get our tickets and then join the rapidly growing line waiting for the doors to open. One of these years I am going to actually sign up for a class or two, and maybe make an entire weekend of it, but for now, we stick to just the vendors’ mall. Or in other words, this morning, we drove all the way down to Santa Clara to do a little shopping for yarn, at what was basically the biggest yarn shop on this side of the country.

While eating lunch we ran into a few people we knew – the mother and daughter duo with whom we’d done a field trip to that incredible yarn store in Walnut Creek last month. And they told us that they had taken the train down this morning – and not only did they take the train, they sat on a special knitting car, where they had lessons and prizes and got free yarn! We’d had no idea this was even an option (and as it turned out it wouldn’t have worked for my friend’s schedule anyway) – it sounded awesome. But at least we know what to look for next year – less driving, more time to knit and chat with other yarn-obsessed people, and lots more fun.

I was a little more restrained this year than last year, even though I did make a few impulse buys (but oh, it’s such pretty, pretty yarn that surely it is worth it!). There seemed to be more booths this year than last; by the time we’d made our winding way through the entire hall we were worn out. By the time we were finished it was getting difficult to maneuver through the crowds, so our timing turned out to be pretty apt.

One of my finds was one of those collapsible tapestry bags, which came in quite handy later on in the day to carry the rest of what I bought. When I got home, I left it in the kitchen for a little bit, and you’d have thought it had been marinating in catnip for days by the way the cats reacted. Between Rosemary and Allegra they managed to tip it over, and then they were both all over it, rolling on it, rubbing their heads on it, purring like mad. Good to know that they, at least, approve.

My fifteen seconds of fame has apparently been extended (now I figure I get 30 seconds). An email from Bev yesterday morning started it, with the rather cryptic (well, to me) note congratulating me on my article in the Enterprise. Um. What article? I went poking around and, surprise, it turns out that the two papers are owned by the same company, which means the article about us wacky online journalers was on the front page in Davis too, on Monday. I had no idea they were going to do that, so I didn’t manage to track down a paper copy (ah well – my mom will get only the one).

********

They came out to replace the back passenger window in the car on Tuesday. Since then, there’s been the distinctive sound of air whistling into the car every time I go more than about 20 miles per hour. I’ve tried rolling the window up and down, figuring maybe it just hadn’t been closed all the way, but no luck. So this evening I broke down and called the number the insurance company had given me for the glass company, figuring it just needed to be fixed.

The person I spoke to on the phone, however, didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in helping me. The gist of the conversation was basically that since the car was vandalized (even though the only thing they did was break a window), this was just one of those pesky side effects I was just going to have to suck it up and live with. He was, in fact, actually kind of rude about it.

Sigh. So I guess the next step is to call the insurance company back and arrange to take the Prius in to a body shop, to get it taken care of. Very annoying.