Domestic Geek

Man, I've slept almost all day - got up around 2pm. Was going to go into Rapid City today, but I wasn't feeling like it. I watched Captain America: Civil War that I had purchased in iTunes a couple of weeks ago and never got around to watching with everything going on lately.

I was going to work on my Broncos cowl, but I couldn't find a size 7 needle (remember, mine broke last weekend) and I was getting depressed trying to find one since my craft supplies are totally disorganized. I did manage to come across the project below that I started a while back. Guess it's next - Crafter's Manifesto by Satsuma Street (on Etsy):

---

With the economic recession this country is facing and the layoffs, fewer hours and no usual end-of-year crunch (and the resulting overtime hours) at work, I've been really contemplating how I would cope if I suddenly lost everything. We've managed to squeak by if one or the other of us lost a job, but as we both work at the same company now, if it goes under, we're royally screwed. It's one of the reasons I've been wanting to find employment elsewhere. The problem? My whole industry is in the same boat and nobody is hiring anyone new.

I watched Kit Kittredge: An American Girl last night (totally didn't know it was about a girl in the Great Depression) and then this morning came across the above quiz on Bug's blog, An Indian Summer. The quiz asked things like "Do you own a weapon?" or "Do you grow your own food?" or "Can you get around to shops and work by bike, public transportation, or walking?" Sadly, my answer to a lot of really important questions was no. I can't grow food where I live now. First, I wouldn't trust anything that came out of this measly dirt plot to be edible and the raccoons would destroy what little harvest I could manage. Where would we go if the park owners suddenly closed up shop and ordered us all to leave?

I sit here looking at all the unnecessary crap I own and feel guilty for not saving money. Marcus and I have already cut out a lot of needless bills such as only having basic dish service and no home phone. I was doing good there for a while of weeding out stuff I don't use or need anymore, only to replace it with more. Marcus and I want to move eventually, but I don't want to move all of this junk.

How would I cope if I no longer had Internet access or electricity to operate my computer. I have all of my recipes stored on here with very few of them printed out. I pacify my emotional turmoil with shopping for needless crap or getting Starbucks. There at the peak of job dissatisfaction, I was getting 5 chai lattes a week.

I know I'm rambling, but I guess what I'm getting at is I need to set new priorities and get my life into a manageable state. We really are facing a time of great turmoil and transition. I am worried about the future of the America we all knew and loved and feel that this globalization movement will take away our freedom we enjoyed as Americans. This sudden "bailing out" of everybody and his cousin is going to collapse our dollar. I fear we're in for some rough, unpleasant times.

Yesterday I got myself a copy of Office Space at Best Buy. There were two different packagings, and since one had a digital copy enclosed so that I could put it in my iTunes, I went with that one. "Bonus," thinks I, since we rip our DVDs to put on the AppleTV anyway. Well, not so much. The stinking code enclosed with the disc doesn't work. Man, I am so pissed right now. See, I tried to do things the legit and legal way. Stupid movie companies piss me off. Well, the only date on the form said it might not work after 2010. Grrrr.

Heh, now I know why I didn't want to go to work yesterday. My intuition must have been warning me that the chick I am having issues with decided to show for a couple of hours. Yeah, she's the last person I want to see on a day I volunteer to do extra work. I had a relatively peaceful 6 hour shift today, though. A lot of my filing in the Archive Room is now caught up.

Depending on how this week goes, I'm going to try to take the whole weekend off next weekend. I have much to do and would really like to have two whole days away from work. Of course, if I don't put any OT in during the week and the weekend is the only time I can get some extra hours, I'll probably take them.

I stopped by the Great American Quilt Factory and found my final piece of fabric I need. w00t! Now I just need to clean up the mess I've made recently in my craft room and get quilting!

When is enough enough? I saw an ad in a magazine today for the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. Um, how about Hollywood get off their collective asses and come up with an original move idea. I'm so sick of old stuff being regurgitated. Seriously.

I watched a movie called Surf's Up last night. It was ok, but definitely not one of the better animated movies I've ever seen. I know they were trying to do it in a documentary style, but it was a bad documentary style. I wasn't impressed.

I've had the most interesting day today. Since Marcus was out mountain biking with Mike, I decided I was going to go browse a couple of my old shopping hangouts.

My first stop was Album Memories, an independent scrapbook store at 64th and Monoco St. in Commerce City. The woman that owns that store is one of the neatest ladies I've ever met. She and I have a lot in common and she even used to be a pizza manager. I haven't been to visit her since right after I lost my job last July and I was kind of afraid that she'd no longer be in business. Fortunately, she was still there and open, so I stopped in. She doesn't have the biggest variety of things, but she does carry things I don't see in the big chain stores. She's also the biggest Sizzix dealer in the country and she does the best demos of what those products can do. I'm in love with the new machine that's out and want to get it. Unfortunately, I don't really have the money to spend ($100 for the machine plus the dies are extra) on something crafty like that. I will one day, though. Those things are freakin' cool. I noticed that there is a die to cut out those cardstock embroidery floss bobbins that I use to wind my cross stitch floss. Anyway, I felt really good and positive after leaving her store. Talking to her about how different and better my life is now than when we last met really made me grateful for where I am now.

The next stop was Black & Read, a cool independent music/book store over at 80th and Wadsworth. My purpose there was to get some used Stephen King books and start working on my summer goal of getting and reading all of my missing King novels. I love browsing that place. I also found an Orson Scott Card novel I was missing. I was chatting with the guy at the counter while he was ringing up my purchases about Stephen King. He was quite knowledgeable about the dude. He asked if I had seen King on television recently in his band. I hadn't, although I knew that King performed in a group consisting of other writers. The woman behind me told me the group was called The Rock Bottom Remainders, so I made a mental note to look that up when I got home. I didn't realize Dave Barry was in it, though. I was watching some videos they had posted on YouTube of the band interviewing with Steve Martin. I'll have to watch more of that at a later date. Funny stuff.

When Marcus got home later in the afternoon, I was telling him about how I had a list of missing King books that I had made that I took with me when I was looking for books. He asked if I kept a database of my books or something and I told him that I had gotten the bibliography off of StephenKing.com and had made myself a checklist in a table in Word. He then asked if I had ever heard of a program called Delicious Library made by the company Delcious Monster. I hadn't. It's an Apple award winning cataloging program to keep track of books, music, movies and games. The company and program are the product of programmer Wil Shipley, founder of The Omni Group, makers of some really cool Apple Mac apps such as Omni Graffle and Omni Outliner.

He told me the program uses an iSight camera as a bar code scanner to input your items into the database. I was intrigued and so I downloaded the trial and I'm hooked! I can't believe how freaking awesome this program is. First off, the interface is really slick. It looks like you're looking at a bookshelf. The icons are relative in size to the actual item they portray. You have the ability to keep track of who has borrowed your stuff via your address book. You can group your stuff into collections (similar to playlists in iTunes). You can view similar items to one you select on Amazon. I'm just blown away by this thing. There is a third party program called DeliciWeb that allows you to publish your library to a web page. You can see a test file over at the Domestic Geek Library. There's also a third party program to bring your iTunes Library into it. I'll have to wait until I raise the $40 to purchase a license before I can try that one, though. I want this software so bad!!!!!



Anyway, I guess that's enough about my day today.