Resurface

Yeah, yeah, yeah...I know it's been forever or four months since I've posted, but I have a good excuse. Kind of. Um, you probably don't want to hear it, so I won't bore you to tears.

So when we last left our heroine, she was getting ready to celebrate a birthday. I survived birthday 34 and had a great "birthday week". T gave me a pink Razr phone and we had dinner at this very nice Italian restaurant for dinner. For his birthday, T got satellite radio and a kick-ass party for his 40th! I have pictures, but I'll post them later. (Keep reading...you'll see why...) Oh, and Lucinda won the lucky prize drawing for some stash yarn - let me know where to send it! (It was great for her to come by T's party too!)

Thanksgiving and Christmas were both fun - busy going to both families. Santa and Uncle T got the nephews an air hockey table for Christmas and "Ms. Claus" aka Techygeekgirl got to put it together with some help. They loved it, so it was well worth the two hours and 300 screws! T got me a pink iPod for Christmas, which I absolutely love and use all the time. (pretty eclectic music going on though...) I didn't finish my Christmas knitting of the scarf for Kerin or the sweater for Little A. I did get hats made for all of T's nieces & nephews though.

We went to my cousin Katie's wedding over New Year's weekend which was fun. It's been a while since we've had the ENTIRE family together (there's over 50 of us now!!). On New Year's Eve, we attended the party at Busch Stadium for the Mark Munsell Foundation. (Mark's wife Jill is a DG sister of mine and I was at their wedding, so it's dear to me - a great organization!) There was over 1000 people there and a great band - Glorious Blue. We'll be back next year!

2007 has started well. We have had a couple of decent snows this year, which has made the crazy cold weather worthwhile. I haven't had to shovel much, so that's good. Valentine's Day was fun - we went to a great Greek Tapas restaurant in U City called Momo's. It was so tasty....we'll be going back again soon. I got a putter from T too. It wasn't very romantic, but incredibly thoughtful!! Now I just need to get my

I am still with the same consulting company as a pharmaceutical packaging/process engineer. They have gotten me all Techy-geeked out though! I have a laptop and a Treo for work, then with my iPod and Razr phone, I am a walking Radio Shack!

I was assigned to a chemical company in STL for a while as a staff engineer, but I was able to be reassigned to another project involving packaging. It's for a company in NC. I was scheduled to travel to Raleigh-Durham every week for 4 months to work on this project. This week is Week 2 of the project and I'm only staying through Weds. (Most of the tasks I need to do won't be ready until late March or can be done from the home office, so I'm going to work there for a couple of weeks.)

Raleigh is a great town. I went out exploring last week and saw Duke (worry, it makes Wash U look like a community college!) and I saw where the Durham Bulls play AAA baseball for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. I also found all the great malls and some really cool places to eat. I like to find the local places and stay away from the chains.

I also got to drive to SC to visit the integrator for the packaging line - that was an adventure! I definitely like NC better than SC. To get there I had to drive west through Charlotte and then south to Duncan, SC that is between Greenville & Spartanburg. On the way I saw:

- Lowe's Motor Speedway (only sits 100,000 NASCAR fans - it's so FREAKING huge - that's a big part of Waffle House Nation!)
- Dale Earnhart Blvd. (got a picture too!)
- Bass Pro Shop
-Lots of Waffle Houses AND Mr. Waffles(there were 2 Waffle Houses at the exit where I was visting - one on each side of the highway!)
-4 Harley Davidson Dealerships
- Wendy's - they have vanilla Frosty's AND breakfast now. They are soooo missed in STL!

It was a long trip, but it was fun to see new places.

I have found a couple of yarn stores in Raleigh, though I haven't gotten a good impression of them yet. I visited the one store last week right at closing time and the ladies in there were pretty curt with me, even though I told them I was from out of town and had sought them out. I didn't expect them to stay open for hours for me, but at least say "That's great and we're really sorry we are closing now. We would love to have you come back and see us during our regular hours." NOT: "Yeah, that's great that you are from out of town, but we're closed. We've been here since 9:30am and we're tired. Look up our website if you want to know anything about the store." I think I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a long day, as the store looks like they carry some great stuff. If they are rude to me again though, I'm not going back. The other store was in an old house in Cary, NC (suburb of Raleigh) and I might try them again. I'll be venturing to other locations such as New Bern, NC, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Athens, GA.

I am getting some knitting done while I'm travelling. I finished Kerin's scarf and almost finished Little A's sweater - only the sleeves are left. I finished knitting the sweater for T's new nephew, now I have to block and seam it. And I'm almost finished a scarf for me to match my green coat. Next up is a pair of booties for a friend of T's.

So the pictures are either on my camera or on my computer at home, so can't download them yet. I promise I"ll get them going ASAP.

And I promise I'll update more often than every 4 months!