Long Time No See

Wow, it's already January 8th, and still no first of year post. FAIL. Of course there are many reasons for my fail, and most of them are my own. I desire to put pictures in my post. A roadblock to pictures is that I can no longer view Flickr from work. I would talk to someone somewhere about this situation, but I suspect that my desire to be able to update my personal blog from work is a problem they would be less than sympathetic to. Of course, if you check out my Flickr you'll also find that I haven't uploaded any photos lately. I have slews of photos that need to go up. Hell, I still have slews of photos that need to get copied from the camera to the computer. I've just been filling my time with other things. I'm sure I'd be more motivated if I could play with those photos at work, but even still, it hasn't happened and that's that.
I've completely undone all the work that I had put into knitting a sweater/jacket for myself, and started over. I had knit 1.5 sleeves before realizing that I had misread the pattern from the start. I've re-finished the one sleeve and started another. I fear this warm weather gear will not see completion before we run out of cold weather here. It's still pretty fun to knit, it's just going to be a lot of stitches. I feel my hands and brain itching to knit a pair of socks just so that I can finish something quickly.

We had an excellent Christmas (despite some last minute car repairs on the 22nd) and a wonderful New Year's Eve and Day. I hope that you and your families did as well. We spent quality time with family and friends, and it was terrific. I only wish that I had one more week of goofing off before having to get back to work.

I read the Golden Compass books or His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman. I found them to be a quick enjoyable read. I think it took me 4 or 5 days to read all 3 books. I suppose that I should admit that I spent several hours a day a work reading; once I got into the story I just couldn't put them down. I will warn you that the ends of book 1 and 2 both are horrible stopping points. I would not recommend getting to the end of the book before you have the next one ready to go. Jeff is currently reading them, although in his line of work he doesn't have the luxury of reading and not getting busted. Next in line to borrow them is Tim. So if you want to borrow my copies you'll have a bit of a wait.