Babbling about the weekend

Well, we finished watching Tin Man over the weekend.  More terrible writing and cliché situations and things where they just really should have thought it through more thoroughly.  The underground place where criminals and other low-life went to live seemed a lot like a Chinatown.  The shape-shifting turncoat redeemed himself, but the only other dark-skinned character remained the evil witch’s faithful servant to the end.

Justin and I agreed that they should take the idea and give it to Joss Whedon.  Half of the characters, including the most lovable and innocent ones, would die in the end.  Parts of it would be absolutely terrifying.  And it would turn out so much better in the end that we’d thank him for it.

We’ve also started watching Battlestar Glactica.  Justin found the 2-part mini-series that brings you from the older series up to the new one.  I don’t feel like looking up the details on that one, but I’m sure you’re more than able to find that information if you need it.  Wikipedia:  The Source of All Knowledge.

Anyway, we watched the first half of the mini-series and I really enjoyed it.  It’s gritty sci-fi, like Firefly, but without the witty, light-hearted banter.  It’s tragic, like . . . lots and lots of stories.  War of the Worlds, Independence Day, I am Legend, Titan A.E. *Grin*  It’s humanity fighting for her life against something she created.  It’s television that doesn’t pull punches.  And it’s fascinating—an enemy that fights against the tools of war, for the total annihilation of life, and can hide itself perfectly within the population.  I’m really looking forward to seeing where this trip goes.  I really have no idea.

I really had a lovely weekend.  I got home Friday afternoon and poked around the house for a while.  Justin was working from home since no one else from his office was going to be actually in the office that day.  I sat and worked on an Excel file that should help us create a functional budget, as well as show clearly where we are with our debt and our savings situations.  I’m trying to have it all set out clearly so we can really start pushing down on the debt and packing away money for travel and such.  It’s been a mess so far, and I’m trying to make it work better.

Saturday we cleaned house.  I mentioned needing to dust, right?  I dusted for 4 hours.  Along with washing windows and tidying and getting the house looking great.  Justin cleaned the bathrooms until they sparkled and you could eat off any surface, if you didn’t mind the addition of ammonia to your meal.  He vacuumed, I dusted.  He put in a fold-out drawer at the kitchen sink.  I dusted.  This house hasn’t been this clean in a long, long time.

So on Sunday, we rested.  I worked on sewing projects.  I have several pants and a skirt that needed mending, and a couple pillows.  I sat watching NCIS while hemming the legs of a pair of pants, pinning the seams back into my skirt, and sewing the stuffing back into the pillows.  And then I sat for many hours pulling out the stitching along the hem of another pair of pants.  They’re made of this really flowing, slippery fabric and each leg is about 3 feet around.  They’re very flouncy.  The hem came out once before and I did a really bad job of sewing it back up.  The fabric gathered and one leg ended up shorter than the other and it just wasn’t good.  I’m hoping that by undoing all my previous work, I’ll be able to get it to work out much better.  I worked on pulling stitches for hours.  I finally went to bed with about six inches left to go—about 30 minutes of work.  I plan to finish unstitching tonight, iron in a new hem (the pants were too long in the first place) and manage to get a neat, clean seam started.  I might do it all by hand, since it’s such a difficult fabric.  But I’ll find out once I get started whether that’s going to actually work better or not.

It’s going to be another long week.  I’ve been working on a complicated project at work.  A project where again and again I find myself completely out of my depth.  I don’t have enough training to understand all of this yet.  Thankfully there hasn’t been much a time crunch, but if it’s not finished by the end of today, things will get dicey.

We had another meeting this morning about the RIF (Reduction in Force) situation.  There’s still no definite information on what’s going to happen with us here upstairs.  So far as I know, the people downstairs in production are still going to be on furlough for several weeks in the middle of summer.  Across the whole company, from what I understand, we’re losing 1,200 employees.  Each department is looking at a 10-15% reduction.  I’m really not sure how that works out, other than losing 2 or 3 people from my department.  Possibly.  We’re still standing on the gallows, waiting.  Just waiting.

I’ll come back and rant about this sometime.  Not about the RIF, exactly, but about the reason for it.  But not today.

I just saw that the beautiful Amy, the fantastic woman who greatly improved my older brother’s life by agreeing to marry him, linked to my post about organizing (Organizing categories and the Landing Strip).  Thank you, Amy!  I appreciate the promo!

For anyone new and reading this because of the link, I’m trying to start a small professional organizing business.  It’s been very slow-going.  But hopefully things will start to pick up soon.  More news on that as it happens.  But now and then I’m going to try to post about things that I’ve organized around my own home and ideas I have about that whole thing.  Feel free to drop me comments or emails with questions and thoughts about that.  Most of the time, obviously, this blog is just about me rambling on and on about whatever’s going on in my world.

Okay!  I’m pretty much out of time on my lunch and I’ve got to get this up and posted.  I hope you’re all having a fantastic day!  I’m still sitting here waiting for the rain that was supposed to start falling on Thursday.  (Who stole my rain?!  Give it!)  But hopefully the weather over all your heads is beautiful today.

Cheers!