Change in Plans

Well ... we won't be moving to Seattle until sometime between September and November. Not May or June. Accenture can't start Noah until then, which has some very real effects on our projected income ... and where we are working, and how we are living.

Anybody want to sublet my place after we move? Heh? Or, you know, let me live in yours? While you live somewhere else, I guess? This is a quandry. We have some time to figure it out, though--August sometime.

All cost-saving and money-making ideas are welcome. Comment below, pls. And I'm already planning things like selling books and clothes and other things ... we live very low-cost, so looking for ways to lower cost is difficult. But not impossible. We will work it out. Positive thinking.

I've been wanting to dye yarn a grey-blue shade, and I looked at the nearly-raining still-winter sky a few nights ago and realized that was it. Yarn to come in some semblance of shade.

I keep singing Arcade Fire songs out loud, and they make no sense at all. "Come on Alex / you can do it / come on Alex / there's nothing to it" ... "All the neighbors can dance" ... "The crown of love / is now upon me" ...

And, yesterday, while cleaning our apartment in ways it has not been cleaned in some long, long time (with baking soda! mixed with rosemary essential oil! it smelled great in here--spring cleaning!!!), I took refuge in not one but two Saint Louis radio stations, KWMU the NPR affiliate, and KDHX the community-supported independent station. I know one of the DJs, I grew up listening to this, and I have positive associations with nearly every show of theirs. Yesterday I was all, "Mid-Day Jamboree! Wahoo!" And now I'm all "Songwriters Showcase!"

I'm sure there are good radio stations wherever I am, hopefully, but maybe there are not, and maybe I am lazy--whatever the case, hearing those two stations shout out their call signs is comforting wherever I am.

Oh, And Kelsey Keyes! Or, Increase Your Karma Now!

If anybody here has time on their hands, click through the links below ... and help out my friend Kelsey.

Karma! Do it! You don't need to know why! The more clicks the better.

MY BLOGS
http://kelseykeyes-kelseykeyes.blogspot.com/
http://kelsey-keyes.blogspot.com/

CARL'S BLOGS
http://kelseyanncloughkeyes.blogspot.com/
http://spiridontrepka.livejournal.com/2138.html

Robin
http://kelseykeyesrecipes.wordpress.com/

Christy:

http://kelseyannkeyes.blogspot.com/
http://cruellestmonths.livejournal.com/

Christine (yes, me)
http://beingamaker.blogspot.com/2009/02/shout-out-to-kelsey-keyes-and-food.html

Helen
http://kelseyanncloughkeyesrocks.blogspot.com/

Andrea
http://helpinafriend.blogspot.com/

Susie
kelseykeyesblog.blogspot.com

Agnes
http://happybirthdaykelseykeyes.blogspot.com/


OTHER SITES I'VE SET UP
Flickr
http://flickr.com/photos/56496703@N00/
http://flickr.com/photos/56496703@N00/3203836103/

Yelp
http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=HjfYmrBBTaXnlD_rAB1ViQ

Naymz
http://www.naymz.com/search/kelsey/keyes/2448114

LinkedIN
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/kelsey/keyes

Delicious
http://delicious.com/kelseykeyes

Brainify
http://brainify.com/Details/User.aspx?id=3562

OTHER EXISTING LINKS THAT ARE GOOD TO LINK TO

Skyline
http://www.skylinehighschool1999.com/

GSLIS
https://apps.lis.uiuc.edu/wiki/users/viewuserprofile.action?username=keyes

Accountancy
http://www.business.uiuc.edu/jdperkin/Accy304/Announcements.html

RateMyProfessor
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=757427

Knox
http://deptorg.knox.edu/newsarchive/news_events/2002/student_english_conference.html

Library Cards and Turmeric-Infused Trash

Yeah! Changing it up, "blog redesign," etc. Soon I will figure out the graphics stuff about what I'd like to see in my banner. I am perhaps surprisingly inept where design and computers interact.

And now Goodreads.com can tell you what I'm reading. And seeing it here will remind me to actually read rather than watch Project Runway and Legend of the Seeker. Put that Book Gem to use.

I got a library card today! This seems ridiculous, to have not had one in the public library system here AND have lived here five years. I found the textile area (746.42, oh yeah) and didn't leave for a long time. Eventually they will see me every week, I am guessing.

While "business plans" are something I have never dealt with in my life, except for that sport management skills book, wherein I read about them via flowcharts, I am probably going to write one with Noah sometime. About yarn. And dye. And etsy.com. And on and on.

You know, being a maker and all that.

I am also a maker of lentil soup and no-knead bread. Served together with some turmeric-infused yogurt. Somehow my jar of turmeric shattered inside its lid ... it's a latch-top jar, so maybe it fell and the force of impact messed with that part. I do not know. Noah sifted some out through my teeniest whole-leaf-tea filter. The rest is in the trash. Turmeric-infused trash, that is.

And after a day at work, of a literal five hours of voice-typing and index-reformatting (loop "move left, move down, tab" in my scraggly voice), I am amazed by voice typing as an entity and am also tired of it. Or perhaps more tired of index-reformatting. Freelancers, beware: format your work correctly. I have no sympathy for incorrect formatting. Honestly, no sympathy at all.

Neverwhere or Fabric, huh? Where to start.

Making What?

* yogurt again

* dyeing yarn again

* headway into new apartments in new cities

* headway also into what to eat, when, how: I finally started using the power-flow timer thing, like plant grow-light timer, for my crock-pot dry-bean cookery: turn on at 1pm, turn off at 4pm, and since they're just beans, the time spent soaking before cooking probably won't kill us

* tofu pasta bake with friends--yes, it sounds awful, but it is intensely delicious, and perhaps using four cloves of garlic in the tofu cheese was a little much, given Noah's reaction when I came home: "Garlic! Ahhh!"

Perhaps in my next life (which is not so far away) I will be making things with fabric and yarn and dye, selling them, healing this injury, cooking good food, living calmly, maybe teaching or tutoring or freelance editing part-time. I should learn to be a better blogger. The artist bloggers are all so hip.

Oh Ye Booyahs

Sentences like this make me first laugh then desperately want to be asleep (taken from the good folks here):

Mr. Cramer, the host of “Mad Money,” barely had time for his usual shuffleboard games at the Elk’s Lodge near his home.

The lodge “is a booyah-free zone,” he said, using his trademark exclamation. “I was not able to get away from the booyahs this week.”

Nor, sir, have I been able to get away from the booyahs for a long time. Oh ye booyahs, persecuting me for my many, loud personal contributions to this economic crisis. Pain is not felt for ye.

Also, I played shuffleboard in middle school gym class for a while and loved it. LOVED it. Anybody besides this dude that wants to play shuffleboard, call me up.

Other news? I am talking with a new surgeon dude who will hopefully not be a terrible person who disrespects me for twenty minutes and then expects me to say, "Yes, please cut me up in a procedure with a 20% complication rate of nerve damage." I did a lot of dishes this week. I found an old, wonderful friend online after losing touch for five years. I am planning to wear a t-shirt and pearls tomorrow, or some such outfit, to an organic wine tasting with friends to be followed by frozen treats and hot chocolate sauce. Some things are really bad; other things are not so terrible; and every day that passes makes more of the bad things a little farther away.

Green Spinach and Green Shirts and Greener Towns

I decided to cook saag paneer ... with tofu instead of paneer, having leftover tofu and lots of spinach and some kind of comfort food association with curried spinach. So I took a vegan saag paneer recipe and added yogurt to it. Can't be vegan for the life of me.

Well, no grad school yet, thinking surgery might be a good idea, got a lawyer (!) who seems nice and wanted my case, and ... you know, not sure what I'll be doing in three or four months, but I know we'll be living somewhere with lots of water and trees. And kayaks and lattes and local berries and, and, and.

Moved offices at work today, to my first single office ever, and I pretty much hate it. I have had seriously great office mates, and the silence is deafening, and it is as cold as a meat locker, and dark enough that my plants will surely die. Glowing, huh? It should make voice typing easier, though.

Enough typing for today, however. Unofficial and Noah's out drinking; I inadvertently wore green today and felt stared at by all U of I alumni at work. No, I am not taking body shots today or drinking colored beer. No, no. Just like green.

I Have to Stop Having This Kind of a Day

Was not offered admission into UW's PhD in English program. This makes moving to Seattle considerably more complicated.

I'm betting on things being okay eventually, though. Me and the pan of brownies will make it through.

I Might Be Okay, Actually

I'm keeping my job! I'm protected under FMLA!

Oh I'm breathing again. Breaaaaathhheee.

Still Got the Check, But No More Claim

My worker's compensation claim was denied on Thursday evening, after a great meeting at work about this very thing earlier in the afternoon. Totally shocked me and the insurance case worker, but to no avail, claim is denied. They're paying for everything up until Thursday, which is good and reasonable, but ... the only reason they denied the claim is because the independent doctor they had me see read my EMG results and said, "no pre-existing condition, and not work-related"--with no explanation. I'm talking to a lawyer.

So, imminent medical bills, not sure what this changes for me at work, not sure that they won't try to let me go ASAP, which I would fight, and this is all back to terrifying.

It is good to be back in OT--they'll be making me new splints for my thumbs, for the de Quervain's tendonitis there, and I have a new stretch, and I got to use their magical heat packs again. Three times a week and then two times a week--I'll see lots of them. My main therapist there says there's a 50/50 chance that OT will work it all out, or that OT will help and I'll still need surgery. So we're doing intense OT for a month and reevaluating.

Now, to make yogurt, to dye yarn, to make a plan for myself titled "how to survive: eating, sleeping, and thinking well." Surely we can make it until July in Seattle. Right?