Finally, an update!

Well, let’s see, I hardly know where to start . . . .

The last week and a half has been absolutely insane in every way possible, from a very sick boss to two drunken nights (okay, only one was really drunken, but I’d like to project a certain rep, ya know?), and the completion of a four-year (3-1/2 for me) project. I’ve done just about everything you could cram into ten days and not fall down and never get up.

A week ago Thursday my boss became suddenly ill at work. That ended up with one of us taking him down the street to the emergency room while I stayed at the office to wait for his doctor to call. His ER visit turned into an overnight stay. Fortunately, they weren’t able to find anything wrong with him, but unfortunately he continued to be ill for several days afterwards. That was Thursday.

Friday and Saturday nights were the second “Les Femmes de Vin,” a two-day wine event for charity which featured 28 of Napa Valley’s female vintners and upwards of 15 local restaurants. Friday night was a sitdown dinner Gala with a wine tasting and both a silent and live auction, and Saturday night was a large wine tasting with munchies from a lot of really wonderful restaurants. Now, I didn’t attend the first one of these events two years ago, but this time I went quite enthusiastically—a little too enthusiastically, as you’ll soon see.

My assignment was to work the check-in desk, but we were also able to partake of all the offerings each night. Because of the silent auction on Friday night, I didn’t get to eat dinner, only some of the leftover hor d’ouveres from the wine tasting. Each table had several different wines to choose from; however, there were also lots of bottles of wine left at the tasting stations. Well, I was not about to pass up the opportunity to try some really fantastic (and pretty much out of my price range) wine, so off I went trolling for whatever looked good. By the time the evening ended, I think we had 25 wine bottles at our table. But I found some REALLY good wine.

Honestly, I don’t know how I made it home, but once I was in the door, I became DEATHLY ill. I don’t think I have been that ill from alcohol since I was in college. I did make it to the bed, and when I woke up the next morning, I felt like crap. At least I was smart enough to throw up in the shower, so there wasn’t a huge mess to clean up, and I can't imagine how sick I would have been on Saturday if I hadn't thrown up and gotten some of that stuff out of my system. So I spent most of Saturday trying to recover enough to go BACK and do it again that night.

Saturday night was much nicer. I had invited some friends, and we spent the evening trying different wines and eating lots of good food, everything from your basic Chinese eggrolls to crème brule, salmon, and prime rib. Oh, it was yummy!!! I didn’t drink nearly as much, and I had a lot of fun.

All in all, it was a great two days, we raised a lot of money, and everyone had a wonderful time. But those two events killed over half my weekend for me, so I started off Monday not quite as rested as I usually am.

My boss was working from home as much as he could and only attending the meetings he absolutely had to for most of the week. Seeing as how we had the dedication of Founders Plaza at Stiles Park on Wednesday night, I pretty much was in charge of everything—not like I wasn’t going to be anyway, but you want your boss to think he’s in charge most of the time, don’t you? Monday wasn’t bad, but Tuesday became the day everything seemed to fall apart, lots of last-minute emergencies that pop up with no notice. But everything was taken care of, and Wednesday night we had a lovely event with about 170 people to officially light the Beacon of Hope for the first time. We had BBQ and beer under a tent next to the park, and at about 6:45 p.m. the last surviving member of the group of five founders that made the Oklahoma Health Center reality gave the signal to light the Beacon.


It’s truly magnificent. The sky was clear as a bell, the high winds from earlier in the day had fallen away to a comfortable breeze, and the evening went off without a hitch (okay, there were a few minor glitches, but when isn’t there?).

To say my boss was estatic was putting it lightly. I swear on Thursday he was floating. He left the sweetest message on the office voicemail, thanking me for all my work and everything that we had done to help him in the last week and how much he appreciated it all. It made me cry.

And there’s my dilemma. Here I am looking for a new job, and he says something so very sweet to me, and I felt guilty as hell, and I still do. I know I need to look out for myself, but it’s hard NOT to feel guilty when he’s having a hard time—I feel like I'm gonna kick his puppy.

As for the job interview I spoke of previously, after two weeks I received a call for a second interview with two more people, one of which was a former boss of mine at my last job. That will be next week. I had all but written this off because it had been two weeks, but I guess they’re in no hurry to fill the position. So we’ll see what happens. Actually, the two weeks has really been a good thing, because it’s gotten it off my mind and not I’m not obsessing over it nearly so much. If it happens, great; if not, I’ll look somewhere else.

And yes, there has been knitting in the last couple of weeks. I decided I needed a little inspiration, so I started a new project—


This is a basic cardigan sweater pattern from Ann Norling, “The Basic Cardigan, #13.” I’m using Lion Brand Woolese Thick-n-Quick in Color #138, Cranberry. This is not the first sweater I’ve attempted, but I swear it will be the first one I complete. It’s actually knitting up rather quickly, but since I’m a slow knitter and don’t knit every night, it may take a little while. I would like to have it completed by December, but we’ll see. Anyway, this yarn is really nice, and I think it will be a nice, heavy sweater, almost a coat. I’m knitting it extra long so that it will fall below my rather large rear end, but the pattern is easy to adjust. Actually, it’s mostly a guide that allows you to make whatever adjustments you wish. The pattern comes in many sizes and yarn gauges, so it’s a great beginner pattern. We’ll see how well I do with it.

So anyway, this weekend is all about rest and quiet. If I get really ambitious, I'm gonna throw away all the dead plants on my porch and decide whether or not to plant pansies and mums. I’m also going to see how much I can get done on my sweater, and I’ll post more pictures later.