Domestic Geek

I was up early to get to work early and get out of town on time, so frankly I'm exhausted. Nothing major happened on the trip from Rapid City to Denver except that the TSA bitches made me throw out my almost empty toothpaste tube. Figured it would be ok since it was almost empty, but they go by oz. marking on tube I guess, not is what is actually in it. Denver didn't make me toss the very same tube last time I flew. Oh, well.

About all I can muster today is Project 365 photos and I'm hitting the hay.

Here's the Chocoholic fabric that arrived Wednesday that I ordered from Polstitches Designs to do Joan Elliott's Angel of Cross Stitch pattern:



Here's a view from the plane as we were pulling away from the gate in Rapid City to fly to Denver Thursday:

Well, it's November 1st and I'm going to once again attempt to complete NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). It wasn't until I was looking at my blog last night for something that I realized it was ready to happen again. I don't know what happened last year. I just suddenly stopped after 4 days. I went back through my Facebook timeline to see if something triggered it (like the previous year's health issues), but nothing. Oh, well...

A lot has changed in the past year — I'll try to address a lot of that over these posts. There's also a lot of things I had put on hold (some without realizing it) and I'll try to address some of those, as well. All I know is I want to get the old blog back up and resume posting regularly. I miss this outlet. I'm going to update the Expression Engine CMS this month and try to get the commenting system issues fixed. Then I want to get my CSS skills back and dive into some HTML5. My web skills are rusty and it's time to break out the oil.

The biggest and most important change this year was that I finally found a job in South Dakota. It was the ultimate catalyst to get me out of my comfort zone and away from the soul-sucking job I had in Denver. When my boss there quit for the 2nd time, I was killing myself to try and keep the department from sinking. I was working 60-70 hours per week, my office mate was a dumb ass, my new boss totally inexperienced, they weren't looking for anybody new to hire and I just couldn't do it anymore. Funny that they finally hired 2 people to replace me and now I hear my old boss is back. I'm not going to post where I work now or what I'm doing, but I took a huge pay cut and at least I'm back in a field for which I actually went to school. While I'm pretty sure this won't be a long-term gig and I do still have dreams of my own business (which I may one day share), at least it is good for right now. I am going to have to find some additional income, though. I was working at night for my former company while they were getting their newbies trained (managed to keep that up for 2 months), but even that became unbearable.

So, as of August 1st, I became a South Dakotan. It's weird, because I've never lived in any other state. Seeing South Dakota license plates on the old Baja for the first time was a little strange.

The second biggest thing is my father passed away on October 16th. He's been in bad shape for well over 2 years. While I'm sad that he passed, I am glad he is finally out of pain and hopefully in a better place. I will be flying to Denver on Thursday for his service at Fort Logan. After that, I really won't have any ties to Colorado other than Marcus is still living there. I can't wait for the day he can cut ties there, as well.

I'm also going to attempt Project 365 once again to get it knocked off my 101 in 1001 list that I started up again. The photo below is from the Long Draw prescribed burn about 5 miles southwest of Hill City:

Almost forgot about NaBloPoMo - I can't believe we're in November of 2015 already. Seems like just a few days ago I was struggling to get all the posts in for the last go-round. Well, Project 365 was a bust yet again. I'm going to begin once again and see how far I get.

I wish I could say things are different from last year, but sadly, they are not. I decided on the drive up to South Dakota yesterday morning that things are going to change by next year's NaBloPoMo. I'm stuck in a rut of my own making. I bought myself this journal at BAM in Rapid City - i used to journal everyday. Physical writing is good for the creative soul - time to start up again.



I'll try to blog better the rest of the month. I had to come back to Denver today and Daylight Saving Time ended, as well. I'm tired and will have a rough night sleeping alone as Marcus and T will be at Homestead North the whole next week.

Well, here it is - the last day of November. Can't believe tomorrow starts the last month of 2014. From here on out, Project365 gets tougher because I have to follow my chart to figure out which photo # I'm posting each day. First world problem, I know.

Anyway, I broke down and bought new shoes yesterday. I've been putting it off because I hate shoe shopping and for some reason, stores don't seem to carry 7.5 men's wide shoes. Also, they closed the Famous Footwear location on Iliff/Peoria that I used to prefer. They were running a Buy 1/Get 1 + 20% off if you have the app promotion and of course I could only find one pair. Turns out they'll now ship you a 2nd pair if they don't have them in stock. Yay! Now, once the 2nd pair gets here, I'll have a backup and won't have to go shoe shopping for a long time.

One of the reasons I wanted new shoes is I haven't been on long walks with Marcus & Mr. T since well before I got sick back in August. I promised them that I would take a walk around Bible Park once I got new shoes, so that's what we did today. Marcus was in heaven since it was below 20°F and the park was almost empty.

Marcus put some leftover turkey and mashed potatoes in Mr. T's food this evening. I think he's in a Tryptophan coma - he's been like this for quite a while. He's also groaning and belching. I think the poor guy ate too much too fast.