Monday was pretty easy, considering how hard they ran us at work. They're trying very hard to make up for the holidays and the snow days, but boy does it make for a tired body when I get home. The reason it went easier than days have been going is that when we got there to start this morning, the guy was there from the company that makes a lot of our machinery, finishing up fixing the broken x-ray machine. It now works like it's supposed to, so work is much easier again. At home, a bit got done on various needlecraft things, like a bit done on some socks, a bit done on afghans, and mostly, sad to say, I just vegged out.
Tuesday was fun. Quentin didn't have to work New Year's Eve, but I did. Second shift got it off. Tyson's motto for the employees is "Safety First," and in giving second shift the night off it accomplished two goals. One was not to have to worry about where to get enough people to run the lines - Christmas Eve was a nightmare because a lot of folks called in. They expected pretty much the same thing Tuesday. Plus there was the concern that working second shift and then sending them home at the normal time (about 2 AM) would mean they'd be on the road to head home along with all the nimrods getting drunk at various parties and then driving home from them. So, they scheduled Saturday to make up for everything and finish getting caught up. More money on the paycheck is what I say.
Oh yeah, and more seed catalog perusing to be done, and the spreadsheet just gets bigger and bigger with "wants" that are going to have to be pared down to "needs" after the duplicates are gone. Especially since I just got the Farmer's Seed & Nursery catalog today to add to the collection. Erk. The thing is, my spreadsheet means going through catalogs several times, if they have more than just veggies. I have pages in the thing for vegetables, berries, fruit trees, nut trees, annuals, perennials and "decorative" stuff. I love flowers almost as much as growing food, and that covers the last three pages in the spreadsheet. The annuals and perennials is kind of self-explanatory. The "decorative" page is for all the oddball flowering stuff or just plain green stuff that's permanent but not small - things like lilacs and forsythia and bridal wreath bush and things like that. All the ornamental bushy or climbing things that I like and want to have around for just pretty stuff to look at. You know what I mean - all the things that have no purpose for growing on the place other than primarily looking nice. Sure, they'll provide safe havens and food for wildlife (which might keep them out of the garden, too), but for the most part, they're meant to just look pretty every year.
I also have a catalog from Horticultural Products something or other (HPS) around here that I want to go through for supplies. Mainly because their seeds are primarily flowers, and they are meant mostly for production nurseries, as the seeds come in no less than 250 to 500 per packet, if not more. I don't need THAT many of something until I get a good-sized greenhouse or hoophouse set up and grow LOTS of seedlings of all kinds for sale as well as produce for the farmer's market and/or farm store. But until that point, they've got some seriously good prices for various supplies like the cell pack flats that I want to get so as to make starting seeds off a bit easier.
And New Year's Day was so nice. The last holiday off we'll get for several months. Oh, there's other paid holidays, between now and July 4th here in the States, like my birthday and my hire date anniversary and Easter. I'll get paid for those holidays anyhow. And the first two I could take off if I wanted and still get paid for them with the holiday pay (or do the smart thing and work them and get paid double for the day). But the next real holiday off that the plant won't be working won't be till July. There will be days off between now and then - days when it's too cold outside and the plant shuts down for the temperatures, or sick days or there's an appointment or something that has to be done during work hours. But not generally a day like New Year's.
So much potential to the time ahead. So many plans to make and work on accomplishing. The chores and then some got done, despite it being a day off, just because they could be done on a day other than the weekend. So we picked up a pizza from Pizza Hut to bring home for late lunch/early dinner and went with that. Then we needed naps because we were so full and warm, lol. But I still got some work done on my spreadsheet and some knitting done, so the day wasn't a total chores only day as some have had to be. Between putting away laundry (waiting since Sunday, ack!) and doing dishes and burning the trash and dealing with the sawdust toity, and making a water run to fill jugs and ... the best part of the daylight hours. We had to run to Harrison for the pizza, and while there, stopped at a store called Cato's.
It's a women's store, more fashion-type stuff than anything, but the only store in the area that carries plus-size clothes without having to go all the way north to Branson or west over to Fayetteville. I found me new jeans. I needed a pair badly. The ones I've worn to work for the last couple of years are not only a bit too big (I'm not a 24W any longer, thank goodness), but they were starting to wear out to the point that the waistband had started to separate from the rest of the pants. They were gotten used anyhow, but they've outlived their usefulness as work pants. Now it's time to have them become my weekend jeans and the new ones be my work jeans. (And I'm down to a 20W, yay me!)
Thursday, it turned bitter cold. It was horrible for the temps, to the point I said the heck with TV for the next several days and decided my computer games and books were good enough entertainment (along with the boys doing kitty playtime) until this arctic mess passed us by. But it also would give me a lot of extra time to work on my seed spreadsheet, and time to knit, so no worries that I wouldn't be busy, said I! Bored a bit maybe with no background racket to keep me company, but extremely warm under all the blankets (the house was in the mid-50sF, which isn't too bad, but the wind chills outside weren't helping it to stay feeling all that comfy in the living room after dark), and I'll take warm and bored over cold and entertained any day of the week. Plus I got my Territorial Seed catalog as well, so even more fun to play with, catalog-wise.
So Friday, work was great. Lots of things went wrong elsewhere, so my department had a fairly easy day. It was kind of boring, really. After work, I headed to Harrison and the Home Depot. Knowing that the weather is going to turn REALLY horrible over the next few days, and seeings how the water jug on the kitchen counter developed ice in it over Thursday night, I decided to get a roll of insulation as cheap as I could get it (on a budget, after all), and somehow tack it up over the kitchen windows to help keep some heat from leaking out in there.
Especially since Quentin decided long ago that he "just knew" this winter wouldn't be that bad, no matter WHAT the Farmer's Almanac said about how it would be a bitterly cold winter. I ended up with a roll of R13 and had to nail the stuff up because the blasted staple gun wouldn't put the staples through three inches of insulation like darling hubby swore they would. Good thing we had some long nails. Mind, nailing it up isn't as good a stapling it, and causes the paper to tear a bit if you aren't careful, but it's at least holding it onto the wall. Well, onto the framing around the two kitchen windows anyhow. I don't really notice a major difference in there right now, as it's a basically unheated room other than what drifts in from the living room, because we don't really use it much at a stretch like the living room and bedroom. Though if it does the trick, I may be getting another roll in a day or so and putting this post up Saturday night and spending Sunday daylight nailing up more insulation over windows.
Mainly I'd do that because the weather is supposed to get REALLY bad over Sunday night and Monday. We are talking wind chills in the 0F to 25F BELOW ZERO level. I haven't had to deal with wind chills like that since, oh, I left Michigan! That is just too freaking cold to be doing anything but sleeping in my book, or huddling in bed fully dressed and calling it done. Wouldn't surprise me a bit with those wind chills if school is closed for the day and work as well. After all, even with tarps and other things that they put on the poultry trucks in colder weather to protect the birds from freezing to death until they arrive at the plant and get killed out, at those wind chills, not to mention the extra wind chills from the trucks moving along the road at a good clip, the birds wouldn't last five minutes on the trucks.
So I have a feeling Monday is going to be a get bundled up to go out and run the vehicles for a few minutes at a time and then come back and huddle under blankets with hot tea or cocoa or whatever warm drink you choose. We'll see then. But in the meantime, Friday saw me also sitting down with the granny afghan after I did the kitchen windows and had supper, and adding another four blocks to it. Poor thing is kind of getting neglected lately, but it's coming along a bit at a time. Though the temps we're supposed to get this weekend make me wonder just how cold the house will get. We didn't get that cold last winter, and it was pretty cold. This winter is just plain freaking BITTER. So far, we've managed to stay halfway warm. I'm concerned mightily about this temp drop we're about to get, but I'm going to do my best not to fret.
NO BOOKS THIS WEEK BECAUSE OF WEATHER, SORRY!!!!
But there is now a recommended product of the week which I can throw in the mix.
Click Here!
This product is from Earth4, and the product will help you to build your own solar panels. It looks pretty interesting from what information I got. Take a look!
But there are pictures .... which I was going to put up a couple of weeks ago. Ooops.
This is from the last snowstorm, standing on the deck at the front door and looking down the footpath to the parking area. You can see where we'd trampled a path, but at this point, the car and van were still having to be parked down the road.
My latest pair of socks, color is Blue Ragg. Very, very warm and comfy!
This is some of the acrylic yarn I got to make socks with. Color Blacklight, Red Heart Yarn.
The other acrylic I got, Red Heart in DayGlo. Both are a lot more neon than the photos show, but I don't want to blind y'all!
And this is the granny afghan under construction. I only had three rows done at this point, I'm finally up to about four and a half. Long ways to go to finish it and put a border on it!
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