Domestic Geek

When I picked my Ravelry username a few years ago, I had many monikers I used on the Internets. Since then, I've dropped most of the others and am just DomesticGeek most places. I saw that I could change my Ravelry username, so I typed in DomesticGeek and found that someone else already had it. Somebody who signed up AFTER me. *sigh* I have a Google Alert set up to tell me when it finds the phrase "Domestic Geek". I used to be that I only got hits for my own stuff. Now there are 3 other bloggers that I get returns for. It's weird. At first I was a little insulted. I was like, "How dare you use my name!" But, seriously, cyberspace is a huge place and there is room for all. I can't sign up for everything out there just to make sure any time you see DomesticGeek on the web that it is me. It's still weird, though. Kind of like digital doppelgangers. If you're curious about the others, just Google Domestic Geek.

Do you ever have the feeling that you life isn't RIGHT? That you've going through the motions of living, but you're really not. That this isn't where you're supposed to be and this isn't what you're supposed to be doing. That's me, for most of my life.

The problem is, I don't know what I want to do or what I'm supposed to be. I just know that now is wrong.

Part of the problem started when I was very small. I was never able to express to people what I wanted to be doing, so I'd do what I was told. Also, when I did know what I wanted to do, I wouldn't stand up for it. One thing I remember in particular was that I wanted to be a Brownie. My friends were Brownies. My mother made me join Bluebirds, instead, because my sister could join, too. She wasn't old enough to join the Brownies. Mom got super-involved in Bluebirds/Camp Fire Girls. It became more about her than what I (or maybe my sister) wanted. I wanted to quit long before I was allowed to do so. I just kept going to keep the peace and it felt then like I do now - just playing along.

I think I got to a point where what I wanted to do didn't matter, so why try to figure it out. I'd just be disappointed. I even took this same mindset to college. I really didn't want to go, but since I didn't know what else to do and it was expected that I'd want to attend college, I went. I picked music because that was what I had been doing. The problem was, I knew this wasn't going to be a career. I wasn't that good at playing to make it professionally, nor did I really want to. So, I got a teaching degree. I made an excellent teacher's assistant. The year I spent doing that was awesome. I loved helping the teacher, giving private assistance to struggling students, taking care of the mundane bullshit so the teacher could actually teach. The bad thing was it didn't pay a whole lot (couldn't have supported myself on it) and then schools started tightening their belts. The next year I tried being an actual teacher and realized I was in a place I didn't want to be. Several separate instances occurred that made me realize I needed to quit, so I did. It was the first time in my life I ever did something that was right for ME. Problem was (and still is), I didn't know what I really wanted to do.

I thought I was close when I got my graphic design degree. I loved school and the whole creative process there. Too bad that doesn't carry over to a work environment. Doing design for other people sucks. They take your initial great idea and change it to a point that you're no longer proud of or want your name associated with it. Maybe I could do it if I could find someone willing to pay the salaries that they used to, but these days the job pays peanuts. Now I'm stuck in a prepress job that I hate. It pays more than the design work did, but not as much as I want to make. The job pretty much has no future. If I stuck it out a few more years, I may make another $5 an hour, but I honestly don't see the company lifting its raise freeze any time soon. Plus, with more magazines going digital and lots of companies looking to cut their costs, the print industry is going to undergo major changes, too. Since our company resists change, I'll be surprised if they stay in business.

The little voice in my head keeps nagging me to figure out what I want to be. I hope I do it soon.

Happy WWKIP Day (or World Wide Knit in Public to the uninitiated and open to crocheters)! It's actually turned into a week-long event, so you've got until the 20th if you want to join in.

Don't know if I'm going to get much knitting done today, though, as...

It's also the 20th Annual Estes Park Wool Market. As soon as I wake up enough and find my coat and umbrella (it rained quite a bit last night and is still at it), I'm heading up. I can't wait to see the alpacas and angora bunnies.

OK, I'm actually talking about pillows. Marcus just loves that line from Planes, Trains & Automobiles so much that we quote it all the time.

Anywho, the pillow I bought 3 years ago finally got to the point that it was no longer comfortable. I got good use out of it. In addition to being slept on every night at home, it's been to Tennessee, Missouri, North & South Dakota, Colorado Springs...just about any place we've traveled in the last 3 years, I've taken that pillow with me and loved it. I wasn't really wanting to try to find another water pillow at this time. Since I use Marcus' pillow when I nap, I knew one like his would be sufficient. He uses a Sealy Posturpedic Extra Firm that he got at Sears. I've been putting off going there because I really hate shopping and I hate shopping at Sears even more. Unfortunately, I also needed vacuum bags, so I gave in and went in as I drove past it on my way home today. Good thing I procrastinated — the pillow was 50% off. SCORE!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who can never find the end of a center-pull skein.


www.nataliedee.com

I saw some tweets last week about the Google Pac-Man game they had on their homepage to honor the 30th anniversary of the game. Many people were lamenting how much time they had wasted playing it. Fortunately for our company, our department is not allowed to use the Internet during the work day for non-work activities (we have to log in to a firewall to get to the Internet and those logs are reviewed frequently). Other companies were not so lucky. Apparently, more then 4.8 million work hours were wasted by people playing the game.

I'm sitting here enjoying a strawberry banana smoothie that Marcus made in our new blender. He's been looking for ways to get more fruit into his diet and he found a smoothie recipe he liked on cooks.com. After he procured the ingredients, he asked me if we had a blender. We did, but sadly, it's the one I bought back in college (sometime between 1984-1986). The poor thing didn't have much power when it was new and smoothie making was definitely a strain for it. The final straw was the sparking it made. Every time Marcus used it, I crossed my fingers that it wouldn't start the kitchen on fire.

Sunday, we went to Bed, Bath & Beyond armed with my 20% Off coupon that I got in the mail. He had already done his research before we went and he wanted a Cuisinart Blender/Food Processor combo (he hates my old food processor and wants to toss it). We picked the BFP-10CH PowerBlend Duet™ model because it had an additional $20 mail-in rebate. $60 after coupon and rebate isn't too shabby a deal!

Tonight was the first chance we had to try it out. Worked like a dream! Can't wait until summer when I can make watermelon smoothies. Yum!

I finally caved today and bought myself my first eBook. I vowed a few months back that if a digital edition of something I wanted was available, I wasn't going to bother getting the hard copy of it. I'm tired of the dust they collect and the space they take up. I felt like doing to some light, cheesy reading, so I purchased the next book I had yet to read in the knitting mystery series by Maggie Sefton, Fleece Navidad (I'd put one of those Amazon Associates links up like I used to, but I can't thanks to the feud between the state of Colorado and Amazon). The books in this series are corny and predictable, but they're basically set in Ft. Collins and I like reading them.

I downloaded the Kindle app for my iPhone and the application for my Macbook and I'm all set. Reading on the iPhone is a little rough, but will do in a pinch. I totally enjoyed reading with my Macbook in bed. I do that while surfing blogs all the time anyway. Someday, when I've got the funds to get one, I'll enjoy reading on an iPad.

I hope that more reading material becomes available digitally (magazines, etc.). I know some people just love the feel of turning pages, but I'll gladly give that up to rid myself of the clutter.