Please stand by, blog is experiencing technical difficulties....

The phone with the camera still won't talk to the computer. Actually, I think it's the computer's fault. Someone, send me a Mac. Or something. My internal Bluetooth is absent, an external one finds devices but can't talk to any of them, and the wire connection tells me there's a modem attached but can't recognize the phone. And I'm done fighting with it for tonight.

Anyway - two more socks are on the go, the complicated red one with the 12-stitch-by-8-row patter and a "plain" one in a fuzzy yarn that has one blue ply and one variegated ply - kinda cool. On the quilt front, "My Own Starry Night" gave me some grief when I tried to add more quilting - 20 minutes to do two lines, and 3 hours to rip it out again. It's now staring me down from the loft banister again. But it's got a binding and has survived a washing, so I suppose I can qualify it as a "finished" quilt even if it seems under quilted.

Maui is still increasingly naked. Dr. Bonnie took out his feeding tube because we got him eating, sort-of. I broke down and bought him "purple food" - Whiskas from the supermarket. It's what his old lady fed him, all along, and what we took him off of thinking it was causing his "food allergy" and fur loss. But after 6 weeks + of tube feeding exclusively veterinary prescription food, the fur loss is worse than ever, so we can't blame the purple food. So I dished him up some purple food, and he ate for the first time in almost a month. Yeah, sure - he's eating the feline equivalent of a diet of Twinkies, but he's eating. And he's happier without the tube, though it remains to be seen if he grows his fur back now.

Bit of a fumble, but nice recovery.

In some situations, customer care is everything.

Now, for those folks who work hard in my probably-too-often-frequented local dining establishments, I have nothing but respect. I don't think I've ever been nasty to a food service worker, even a bad one. I'm happy that I've never had to do such a job - not that I don't value it, but I think I'd be terrible at it and I've worked hard to cultivate a skill base that keeps me employed elsewhere. I really appreciate the folks who do such a job as waiting tables, and extra props to the ones who can make your average diner feel like their favourite guest of the day. It's a skill and it takes work. I try to tip well by default, cutting it only if there was a problem.

That said, I can be really put out by a bad customer service experience, particularly when it occurs during what should have been the highlight of my day. Such a thing happened on Valentine's Day this year. We visited a new, highly-hyped local upscale place, and suffered some - let's call it "really strange" treatment from our table server. Strange in that she wasn't unpleasant or rude, but seemed to just have completely missed the point of the leisurely-fine-dining restaurant she was working in, and wound up effectively shooing us out the door before we were half-done, quite pleasantly, mind you. The spousal euphemism and I were just standing there in the snow wondering what exactly happened to our special dinner out.

We stewed about this for some hours after we were home, at which point I puzzled out that we'd really been treated poorly, though with a smile. We were so stunned it hadn't sunk in right away.

So, I wrote a letter. I don't need to share the exact letter or tedious details of all that happened, but I addressed it to the managers/owners and clearly explained what happened and why we were offended. I didn't insult anyone and I didn't ask that anyone be taken to task, but let him know what might prompt us to NOT return and that perhaps it should be diplomatically and professionally discussed with his staff.

Today, the spouse gave me a heads up that said restaurant owner left me a message on the home machine, so I called him back from work, after lunch and before the dinner rush.

This gentleman was nothing but class. He THANKED me for my complaint. While stating that there was no excuse for the treatment, he did explain that he had some new and some temporary staff all on hand for Valentine's day and he obviously hadn't made the lay of the land clear to them, and he apologized for that. This is class from a manager, too - no blame, not stooping so low as to appease a customer with graphic descriptions of sanctions against his team, he completely owned the situation. I'm sure it will be discussed with someone, but I hope it's done in the way I intended (my letter actually was very constructive) and used as a learning task for the staff. I think from talking to him it will be.

On top of it all, he finished the call by telling me to watch my mail for the gift certificate he would be forwarding so we could give his establishment another shot.

Oh, and before I forget to mention - customer service fumble aside, the food was really very good, so I'm happy to take him up on his hospitality. Check this out if you're looking for special-occasion dining in K-W: Boa Nova Rodizio Grillhouse

Bad techie, work not for blogging....

So, by way of excuse, it was DEAD SLOW at work today. The US has their "President's Day" holiday and as 90% of our activity is generated by US customers - they weren't there. We were, and we were bored.

I sheepishly admit to finding other ways to occupy myself while waiting for an account executive and a product manager to coordinate a meeting, besides updating all my open calls to say "customer was away, left another voicemail".

About 3 intermittent hours of my day were spent catching up on The Yarn Harlot's blog archives. I admit it, I'm hooked on a knitting blog. I can't really describe the phenomenon, but this blog is so popular it crashes servers (and leaves thousands of knitters twitching when it does). Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a prodigious knitter, but also a very talented writer and humourist, and there's more than a bit of wry social commentary in there. I would love to meet her someday, I may have to join the local knitting guild in hopes that they get her to repeat her visit from earlier this year.

To my credit, my digression into wooly blogs kept me from getting roped into the intense and animated discussions going on around me on the topic of Britney Spears latest hair and bodyart choices. NOBODY had enough to occupy them today.

I came home to find the object of my adoration being even more adorable in the kitchen, having IM'd me earlier to say dinner was on for 6. Unfortunately, I also found the sick cat missing even more fur than he had been missing when I left him. Yes, Maui, though slowly recovering a tiny bit of weight, his spirits and a bit more of his freaked-out attitude, has developed an aversion to his own fur and is pulling it out and leaving it in heaps all over the condo. He's at least not ripping his skin raw as well, as far as we can find, but he's looking awfully mangey. I'd post pictures but I had to rebuild the Windows box last week and it's not set up to talk to the camera phone again yet. Maybe by the time I do that, I'll have a completely naked cat.

It is an interesting property of Siamese that the darker fur grows where they're cold. Well, if he strips all his fur off, his skin is pink - then it turns this blue-black colour after a while. I thought the first bit was a bruise, but the skin turns dark where it's cold, too, apparently.

Off for some homemade lasagna now! I may work on the picture upload thing if I can get the last 1/3 of my computer assignment done.

Planetary Conjunction

Syzygy is, I think, a really cool and under-publicized word.

I was able to use it today not only in a sentence but a short essay. It was my entry for a contest I hope to win.

I won't know for a month and I'm not telling any more that that, because it's a members-only contest, so it either won't do you any good, or if you're a member too, I don't want you stealing my cool word.

Wikepedia has a page discussing the etymology of syzygy.

Kindred and Sisterhood....

Don't read my blog today, I'm a Valentine humbug. Alison, did you get your dead rat?

Go read YarnHarlot's Feb 14 post instead - she ROCKS. I have nothing to add to that amazing essay on real, whole-wheat, LOVE with teeth.

Happy Heart day, now somebody go clean a bathroom!

Stash moratorium may fail quickly....

So at the moment, a second pair of flip-top mittens have been finished, and I was staring at my yarn bin wondering what to do next, having nothing on needles for the first time since October.


As Yarn Ho stashes go, this one isn't bad (yet). My fabric stash is still bigger, volume-wise and probably square-footage-of-fabric wise. And both still fit in one closet. I'm a long way from SABLE yet (Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy - got that one from YarnHarlot though I don't know if she coined it). BUT, I had decided in the name of economy and the fact that I can only make one sock every couple of weeks or so, to back off on yarn shopping.


But then.... I was checking out Blue Moon to see if they had posted about mailing the first installment of my Rockin' Sock Club. And I spotted this yarn.

(I admit to borrowing the pic, but I've linked to them by way of credit!)

Now, normally, browns aren't my colour. But this colourway is variegated with chocolate, tan, cream... and a bright blue. Chocolate, tan and cream like the shading on a Siamese cat. And blue, like bright blue Siamese eyes. The name of this feline colourway?

.... get this .....

Lucy.

They made a yarn the colour of Siamese cats, and named it Lucy. All together now: "Awwwwwww!"

I may just have to get me some of that.

(For the one or two of you who may be reading and don't know, my first two Siamese were named Lenny and Lucy, and both died in 2003).

Email post testing

Blogger has this function, supposedly, where you can email in a post.

This might be handy for travel. or quick updates from someone else's
B-Berry (one of the few gadgets I am actively avoiding getting).

This is a test message, from a very slow workday - I'm on one of those
remote connections to a user system that takes 30 seconds to refresh each
keyclick.

Continuing Chemo Cat, and This Is Not A Sock.

Well, of all the many things I really wanted to accomplish this weekend, I managed these:

Flip-top mittens for the SO made from that yummy Colinette Jitterbug yarn. They look a bit wonky either when not on a hand or on my too-small one, but they mostly fit Adam. The pic was just before I sewed on the buttons and button loops to hold the tops back.

My other accomplishment.. well, two actually, including the lasagna that's getting ready for dinner .. was keeping Maui fed through another setback.

My poor mangled cat is a chemical cocktail right now. Right around the time of his first chemo dose a couple of weeks ago, he had some very disturbed intestines, so to speak, so he was taken OFF the Leukeran and put on metronidazole for 8 days and fenbendazole for 6 - antibiotics and anti-parasitics respectively, thinking that his problem was possibly infection picked up or agitated out by the surgery.

Now, 3 days after finishing that course, we were back on the Leukeran, and found Friday night that he has an infection around the insertion of his feeding tube. Some nasty, smelly muck had his tube, his remaining fur, and his collar all glued together.

So, another call to the vet and some after-hours pick up of emergency antibiotics, and we've stepped up the saline soaks of his insertion site. The poor guy has lost his appetite again so we're back to using the tube, and all he wants to do is sleep. And bless his fuzzy little butt, he's being really good about all the abuse - he's pretty tolerant of wet compresses being smeared all over him and he's even purring and crawling into bed - which he's never really done - to stay warm and comfy.

So, the poor guy now has 3 or 4 pills a day instead of 2 or 3, adding azithromycin into his mix. But, hopefully this is a temporary setback and I'll soon be able to report some weight gain (him, not me).