Friday was my last day at the Accounts Payable job. I tried really hard to focus and get a lot of work done, but honestly there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do aside from training my replacement. My replacement knows what she’s doing so there was only $company-specific stuff I needed to teach her.
After work Michael picked me up (he’s the designated driver) and we headed up to Iron Hill Brewery in North Wales for a happy hour with my now-former co-workers to celebrate my new job and say goodbye. It was pretty busy, but a couple of my immediate co-workers in A/P were able to find a table in the bar area that 6 of us could squeeze into and have the other two pull chairs up to.
The happy hour was fun! I had a few of the Iron Hill American Pale Ales, we ordered a table full of appetizers and all just chatted about life, work and the job I’m leaving. I really am sorry to be leaving such a great group of people. This job was the first office job I’ve had for over a year, the first one where I actually had the time and met the right people I could connect with. Not seeing these people every day sure is going to be a change. Ah how this modern life plays with our relationship brains…
Oh and after ordering all those beers and foods my table-mates picked up the tab! That was really nice of them.
When we arrived at Iron Hill there was freezing rain and some snow, I decided to neglect this fact and just enjoy my evening, but around 7:30 we all decided we should probably get home in case it got worse. Michael expertly drove the 45 minute drive back to our house in the snow uneventfully, in the Civic! With a good driver that little Civic is an impressive vehicle.
Yesterday morning Simcoe went to the vet to make sure the cold was gone and get her first batch of shots. She was very unhappy during the entire visit (especially when they took her temperature) but she’s healthy and I only had a couple scratches when the visit was completed. She has to go back in about a month for the rabies and another vaccination, luckily this syncs up with Caligula’s annual vet visit so I’ll be able to toss them both in the carrier and torture them at the same time!
The rest of yesterday was spent rearranging furniture. The loveseat is now standing on its side in our livingroom waiting to be moved out into the garage (the plan is to put it in the magic room eventually – or give it away, anyone want an old loveseat with a brown suede cover?). My desk came apart pretty easily so we could move it down stairs and we hauled two bookshelves of books downstairs. After moving all that my new office was a bit of a mess:
(Oh geez, I didn’t rearrange the books to make us look smart – those horrible C for Dummies books are at the top of the piles!)
It took me about an hour to sort through all the books and put them on shelves, set up my computer and make the room look more livable:
Spiffy!
It actually turned out much better than I expected, I was worried the desk would be too big and make the room look cramped, but it’s just slightly smaller than the love seat and fits nicely where the loveseat was. Now the only problem I still need to deal with is the sun. All we have on the windows are plain white blinds and they’re not enough to keep out the morning sun (as I write this my poor monitor screen is paled in comparison to the sunlight attempting to come through the blinds). So I’ll be buying a couple curtain rods this week and some fabric to finally embark on my plan to make my own curtains for this room.
…which brings me around to the most annoying feature of this room, the closet. Right now the television (and myth box, and stereo, and PS2…) are in the closet (see here), which worked out fine for having this as a TV room. Now that the TV is going to be moved upstairs that big closet became a useless waste of space again. So after some thought I decided to put my sewing machine in there. I will have a little table for the sewing machine and plenty of space to keep fabrics and all the sewing stuff that I use.
Unfortunately they bumped the delivery date for our new couches to February 14th so the upstairs Michael office/new TV room is looking like a bit of a mess, but it should look great when we’ve completed everything.
After all this furniture moving Michael took me out to Sly Fox for a Reuben and a Black and Tan. Yum.
This morning I made some pancakes and sausage. Unfortunately we were out of eggs for pancakes so I had to improvise by grabbing a vegan recipe and tweaking it. I ended up with this:
* 1 cup wheat flower
* 1T baking powder
* 1/4t salt
* 1 cup prepared instant milk[1]
* 1/2t oil
* 1/2t maple syrup
[1] We stopped buying “real” milk for the time being, neither of us drink it straight and it usually ended up being a waste since we just used it for cooking. Instant powdered milk works fine for cooking.
I must say, they turned out pretty good! Using wheat flour adds a very nice taste to the pancakes.
And now for plans today. In about an hour we’re leaving to make the drive down to West Chester to meet up with a friend of ours at the West Chester Wellness Center so he can give us Shiatsu massages! This friend is one we met through our class in Shamanism and has been studying Shiatsu for quite some time now, but has just now begun really practicing on people. It should be an enjoyable afternoon.
Since we’re so close to DE down there in West Chester we arraged to meet up with