Warcraft

If anyone has been considering joining us nuts in playing World of Warcraft Online, the game is currently on sale.

$5 for Warcraft
$5 for Burning Crusade expansion pack
$10 for Lich King expansion pack

For those with existing accounts, Stephen and I have set up a guild called "War of the Worgs" where all guild members will be running new Worg characters (available in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion).

If anyone is interested we will be starting and progressing the characters as a group on the Proudmoore server.  Let me know if you are interested.  This is not a hardcore group - just a bit of fun and games and stress relief. Contact me if you are interested.

Edited to add: Guild is Alliance only.  Guild portal (for joining us) is here

Humbling and inspiring!

Last week Claremont Public Library here in Perth, was destroyed in a fire. It was after hours so no-one was hurt, but I believe they lost everything in the building.

Staff from Claremont had been working through my Web 2.0 Basics course.This week I received the following email:

I work for the Claremont Library and we were doing the training on your blog. Thanks to lesson #2 we have learned to write our own blog. This skill came in handy to communicate after the tragedy of our library burning down. Our blog is http://claremontlibrarywithoutwalls.blogspot.com please check it out and spread the word.

Read their blog! I am humbled.  I honestly don't know if my workplace would have bounced back so positively from such a disaster. Claremont have taken the bull by the horns and turned disaster to opportunity; rather than  bemoaning "oh woe is us - our collection is our life" they have taken the opportunity to learn new techniques and new forms of communicating with their customers!  The workers at Claremont Library are inspirational!

Giving thanks

I'm Australian and not party to whole US celebration going on at the moment.  However there are a few things that I am thankful for ...

• My home is intact and I can use every room (first time since February)
• We have glorious Spring weather so I can use every room in my house without worrying about electricity bills
• My car is in getting fixed - so I will have a shiny new Salem again (first time since February)
• My car insurance comes with a free rental car so I can still get to work easily
• I stood my ground at a number of difficult meetings this week and although there were tears and feelings of frustrations, I won the concessions I needed.
• I now know my supervisor will stick her neck out for me. She is good people!
• I will no longer be working 30-50 hours unpaid overtime each week
  
• The implant I had put in my arm last week appears to be helping both my moods and my migraine. Its still early days but even with all of the work pressures this week, my migraine has been improving.
• My personal loan (first of three big bills I need to pay off) now has under $1000 to go.
  

The may have been a bad year in many ways, but it looks like it will end on an upward note :)

The cats in my life

Trubs
I have Trubs on the kidney disease approved kibble. It is unfortunately not Trubs approved. She will often sniff at it, growl at Abby and then try to take Abby's kibble.  I pick Trubs up, put her back at her own food dish and she glares at me before settling down to eat it.

We had a hot spell recently so I got out of the habit of warming her heat pad before leaving for work (the object was to keep the house cool during the day - not heat it further) but lately its been cool at nights again so Trubs is getting grumpy again at nights. I've also taken to feeding her on my desk, so I can keep an eye on her food so it doesn't get eaten by anyone else.  Trubs has taken this to mean that my desk is now hers, and she gets very nasty if any other cat comes up on the desk.

To be honest, she's been quite possessive about the whole house, which has Abby quite confused...


Abby
Abby has unfortunately been relegated to the bottom of the pack by the other cats.  Even Keifer seems to dominate her. So I've broken my own rule about not interfering in cat hierarchies and I've gone out of my way to cuddle her and pet her and bring her into the house and make her feel welcome.  She's on 4 pills a week to keep mozzie bites from becoming open sores (we've discovered she's allergic to them) but apart from that, she is joy to be around.

She's taken on the mantle of "mouser" and has been keeping the barns and outbuildings free of mice.  The girls next door have been quite appreciative as they buy food and hay for the horses in bulk and that is usually mouse-infested by this time of year.  Abby does eat the mice she catches, so she often isn't that interested in her kibble.

She's also completely uninterested in any of her toys or human-bought playthings. None of them are as interesting as catching and eating your own breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Keifer
Keifer is the ginger cat the girls next door adopted. He showed up one day as a half-grown cat wearing a large dog's shock collar.  Needless to say it was immediately removed and no-one has tried to find his original owner.  Monique loves him but she is a dog person, so Keifer gets left outside most of the time and fed when she remembers him.  He also hates the guy that has moved in with them, which is another reason Keifer is outside when the guy is home :( He's also found out I'm a much softer touch, have nicer cat food and no nasty people hanging around.

When I drive in of an afternoon, Keifer is the first to meet me at the car. When I call the cats for dinner, Keifer is at my feet (even though he doesn't get fed at the same time as the girls). Keifer is very small and seems always hungry so I feed him the girls' leftovers each day.  Mostly its stale kibble but occasionally there is the remains of stale canned food and very rarely I'll top it up with fresh kibble or some fresh canned food.

I am quite happy that over the last months he's stopped being scared of his own shadow and is actually walking around the yards as if he belongs, rather than fleeing at the slightest sound :)  I'm also happy that he looks disappointed when he's given stale kibble because it means that he's getting enough food from the his owners' now. Also I think he's finally understanding that he will be fed everyday; he doesn't have to beg for it and scoff everything in sight within 2 seconds of seeing it.

He is however, with this new-found confidence, lording it over Abby.  When they meet on the path, they touch noses and its Abby that will crouch low and present her belly.  i don't like that in our yard, and especially not in our house.  So I've been locking Keifer out while feeding the girls, and making a definite display of ignoring him and picking up Abby when I get home.  I don't know if this interference is helping or hindering to be honest. 



Bandit
Bandit is Alison's cat.  Alison is the friend I stayed with in Canberra for the week I was there.  She hates that Bandit always sleeps with me when I'm there instead of with her.  The furry ball of contrariness has quixotially settled down in the new house and hates being forced outdoors.  She's developed a much nicer attitude to life and is much more snuggly and ready for pats.  She used to be much more aloof before Lothario joined the house.

Lothario
I hadn't posted this before because I don't want to believe it.  Lothario was taken from Alison's place a week before the move. One minute he was there and the next he was gone.  She had turned her back to prepare dinners for the cats and dogs and we thought there would be no force on earth that would get between that cat and his dinner. We were wrong.

George
For the past few months I've had a lanky tabby intact male hanging around.  He's got a great temperament and is such a loving cat, but he is intact and he sprays. If I open the doors for the girls to go out and then I go back to bed, I will wake up to find him curled up on the bed.  When I get home of an afternoon he will be asleep in the sleep-out area. He thinks he belongs here.  Unfortunately, every time he manages to sneak into the house he will spray in every room.  He took to stealing Abby's food and then spraying over her entire feeding area.  The day I flew to Canberra he sprayed the wash basket of freshly cleaned clothes as I was getting them off the clothesline.  He would fight with Keifer in my ceiling at 3am.  In short he was a pest.

When I got back from Canberra, he sprayed the next morning all through the kitchen and my wardrobe.  I put him in Trubs cat carrier and took him to Cat Haven (a we-try-hard-not-to-kill shelter).

Two weeks later he was back.  Now Cat Haven is nearly an hour's drive from here over the other side of Perth. If he's back its because he is owned by someone here.  Someone who cared enough to bring him back, but doesn't care enough to have him neutered, micro-chipped, collared or even fed.

I've been very pointedly keeping him out of the house. To the stage that I've felt under-siege and can't leave the doors open for the girls to go in and out for themselves.  Then he stopped coming around a few days ago.  On Friday I received a leaflet in my mailbox.  Have you seen George? My son's one year old male cat is missing. If you see him please ring, my son loves him very much.  Underneath in pen was written: He is now micro-chipped and scheduled to be neutered soon.

So basically people that are simply clueless as to how male intact cats behave and just how far male cats consider their territory,  I haven't seen him this week so I wonder if he's found a new family to terrorise or if he's finally at the vets getting The Snip ...


So that's all of the cats.  I don't think Trubs will ever get along with Abby but I love them both and they are both on the bed with me when I wake up each morning and that's enough for me :)

Life Update

OK here's all the info that was left out of the last update ...

After each design was finished the words "and then the migraine got bad again" should be inserted :(

I tried stitching a gorgeous little design for Claire's birthday on 40ct linen and discovered that I could not see the holes.  I literally could not see where to put the needle :(  I figure the migraine is affecting my eyesight - or the tumor has enlarged and is now pressing on my optic nerve (it was a bare 1mm away from it at the last MRI) - or I'm just too tired from work - or my eyesight is going ..... or all of the above.  At this stage I'm looking to outsource this project and see if I can find someone else to stitch it up for me as I think Claire would love it!

I stopped stitching for quite a few weeks in between projects, wishing my eyes would stop hurting and the migraine would settle down.  Then I realised that my stitching is part of my meditation and relaxation program. I need to stitch to ease the migraine. 

In between each of the canvas work pieces I keep trying to stitch on Kay's RR but my eyes give out after half an hour and then they hurt for the rest of the day.  I'll give it another couple of weeks and hope that my eyes settle down otherwise I may have to send it on unstitched :(

Kay and Sisu - let me know how long I can keep Kay's piece before you need it sent on regardless of what I have or have not managed to stitch on it - please? I don't want to put anyone else's stitching rotation out. The next rotation after this isn't sent out until 1 February.

In other news, I won a door prize at the Arelate Designs booth at the October Online Needlework Show and I treated myself to a couple of small Passione Ricamo designs and some Lilipoints designs at Colours Down Under Friday night (they were ordered back in April).  The rest of my tax refund went straight into the bills fund.

The good news is that although I've had a few setbacks, the bills are on track to be completely paid off by October 2011.  The next bill is my personal loan, which should be paid off by February, the last bill bill being the $5000 I owe Debbie for helping move Stephen and my goods & chattels to Perth.

Unfortunately the big plans for losing weight and de-cluttering my life have been derailed - but its all a journey.  I figure its like juggling, you get one ball moving well and then add a second ball, when you have them down quite confidently you add a third ball.  And then you drop them all, pick them up and start again.

the big issue that seems to be knocking everything over is the migraine.  It was supposed to be history now, but it is still here. Stress at work is not helping and both my supervisor and I are at a loss at to what to do about it.

I'm running a state-wide training course in social media and online tools for public libraries in Western Australia.  Course is here if anyone is interested ... If you have any constructive criticism, please let me know!

I'm paid to work 3 days per week. During that time I'm expected to run this course (which NSW State Library said took 8 people full-time, other State Libraries had similar manpower), plus all the cataloguing for my library, plus cleaning up the library database plus everything else I used to do that filled my time.

So I'm working 60-70 hour weeks and being paid 27 hours, The rest is supposedly being accrued as TOIL (Time off in Lieu) but all requests for taking that time have been denied until at least the first of February.

We wont mention that my base wage of 27 hours does not cover my expenses (I regularly eat only one main meal a day).

My supervisor is trying to deflect the heat from inside the organisation because I'm not managing to get everything done.  Meanwhile I spend hours a day (on my days off) helping library managers and workers in my library and other libraries playing advocate, mentor, encouragement, support system etc.  You know all the things currently being denied to myself and my supervisor {sigh}

So yeah a little stress. A little draining.  Any and all advice gratefully received. It's driving my supervisor mental seeing me through this and not being able to help.  And it hurts me to see the amount of flack she is taking - she doesn't deserve that!  So yeah, any thoughts (legal ones please - I'm not allowed to physically hurt the other managers in my organisation) let me know ;)

Stitching update

How many months has it been this time :)

Back in July-August sometime I finished a JAR designs Christmas project as a model stitch for Colours Down Under. It was a great little project - stitched up in under a week (it took me nearly three weeks to get it beaded though!)  Unfortunately I didn't realise until recently that the batteries in my camera were low when I took photos of this one - so I'll put up a better picture when the I next see the bell pull in Colours Down Under shop.

After that, I stitched the little Inkcircles Halloween design from the 2010 JCS Halloween issue. I stitched it on a piece of Colours Down Under handyed 32ct jobelan. I have enough of the same piece to do up Inkcircles Masquerade when that chart comes in.  I originally thought that the Halloween freebie was a companion piece from Masquerade, but now I realise its actually a small piece of the whole design - oh well. 

Edit: This was completely wrong!  I received a copy of the chart as a surprise in the mail today - thank you so much Tracy!!!  And now that I can see it closely - I see there are differences, the Halloween small is indeed a complementary chart!

I stitched my version with Glow-in-the-Dark thread for the moon, but my little camera isn't good enough to photograph the luminescence, so you'll have to take my word for it that the moon looks awesome in the dark - especially as the branches look like assisi work :)

Then as a break, I started some canvas work needlepoint. Big chunky 18ct plastic canvas!  I've stitched up four of the Needle Delights Colour Delights series so far.

Tangerine was the first I stitched. I adored the different threads and the different types of stitches used!  

Cocoa took two weeks to stitch - my doctor had me on a completely caffeine-free diet for two weeks. That included no chocolate, so I stitched Cocoa instead. 

Pumpkin was so much fun - I loved that it started in the corner and radiated outwards. This was the first one that i didn't need to double check I had it the right way up.

Bubblegum (gasp its pink!) I survived :)

I've now stated Indigo. Its another concentric one like Tangerine.  I'm halfway around it and discovered that I've already turned it 90 degrees but meh - no-one will know I hope.

Each of these have had small issues, one chart didn't specify which thread to use in one of the rows, another kit had a couple of threads left out. Indigo has a Watercolour and a Waterlilies the same colour and I used the wrong one, so had to frog and use the other.  But these are small inconveniences. 

All in all - I'm having a lot of fun with these and I think I will do a heap more and eventually finish them into a wall hanging. I have a lot of different black fabric (black wool, black cotton damask etc) from my sewing days, so I thought I would use that to make the wall hanging from - each of these colours (even the indigo) will stand out on the black.