So this is my cubicle.  It’s not exactly… thrilling.  In fact, it’s blah.  I don’t do blah.  Any ideas on how to jazz it up a bit?  I don’t exactly have a ton of pictures of Mike and I (sad), so any other ideas are welcome.  Be creative.  Be colorful.  Bonus points for cheap and easy.  If anybody gives me an idea that really knocks my socks off, I’ll buy you a drink.

Today was my first day of work!  Of course, as with most first days, it involved a ton of paperwork and getting things set up.  Not super exciting, and I’m not completely clear as to what my everyday routine is going to be, but the people are really nice and everybody seems to know what they are doing.  So yay! for things looking good.

I normally would post pictures of my new work environment, but I could not find my camera anywhere in the house or car (more on that later).  iPhone camera + cubicle lighting = no bueno, so I’ll do that another day.  Let’s just say it’s very grey and boring at the moment- I definitely need some flair in there soon.

The REAL highlight of my day was the trip home- I met my friend Barrie when we both got off work, and we WALKED home.  Yeah, that’s right, we walked.  This is a major feat for this girl from Orange County who thought that her old 12 mile commute was the shortest she would ever see.  It took us 45 minutes to walk 2.4 miles (it would have been much quicker if we didn’t live on top of the Queen Anne Hill of Death, but it’s a good workout nonetheless).

Walking home from work is a total treat.  You get to see parts of the city that you never noticed before- like CounterBalance Park at night:

By day, CounterBalance Park is the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen- wood flooring, a few park benches, and not a piece of playground equipment or a hint of grass as far as the eye can see.  But at night these colored lights come on and it becomes something that is absolutely gorgeous.  I doubt I ever would have even known about it if I never got off my butt and walked.

To make the night even better, we had dinner at Barrie’s house.  Her boyfriend Dominic made us a fabulous dinner, and then we sat around and talked nerd.

Good times.  Gotta love the 1:1 person to MacBook ratio.  Makes me and my Sony Vaio feel like the uncool kids.

Tomorrow I have to go to work (yay!), which means today was my last real day to be an unemployed bum.  I didn’t get much bumming around done though- instead, I made a nice, late breakfast and cleaned the house like a mofo.

Oatmeal Brulee- Regular boring old oatmeal jazzed up with fruit on top (I have a ton of persimmons from my CSA that I needed to use before they got too soft, and they ended up being perfect in this application!) and some brown sugar, then broiled in their cup to get a crispy crust.  This was so good that I made some extras and froze them for weekday breakfasts on the run.

Mike eating the breakfast burrito I made for him.  Of everything I’ve ever made, this is probably his absolute favorite thing- I think it’s because I put bacon AND sausage in it, so he doesn’t have to choose between the two.  Mike is not a huge fan of making decisions.  I know you can’t tell this from the look on his face, but the burrito makes him happy.  Having his picture taken and then put on the blog does not, but I like to torture him.

Now we’re full, our house is clean, and I’m just waiting for my pants to finish in the dryer so that I can go grocery shopping.  Wish me luck tomorrow!

Hey-o!  Besides my recent job news, which is totally rocking my world on my last official day of freedom bumhood, I also wanted to share exciting news about my passion project- the Handicraft Cafe blog is up and running!

As many of you know, Handicraft Cafe is the online yarn store that I run with the most crafty person I know- my amazing friend Anne.  We have had our online store up for a few months now, and we’re getting a small following.  There are still glitches to work through, but all in all, we seem to be getting the hang of things.  And even though I’ll be working, Handicraft Cafe will keep chugging on- it’s easy to make time for things that you love.  (It’s much harder to make time to do things you don’t love so much, like cleaning the house.  Blech.)

I am THRILLED to have our blog being regularly updated now.  Of course we list special offers and information about our (incredibly awesome) yarns and exclusive patterns, but we also round up interesting articles about talented, inspirational crafters, trends in fiber arts, and other random, interesting things.  If you have any interest in crafts, knitting, etc, take a minute and check it out.  If you come across any cool ideas for entries or products, shoot me an email or leave a comment!  And of course, if you knit or crochet or spin, or know somebody who does, knock out some of your holiday shopping at Handicraft Cafe!  All proceeds go to a good cause- supporting our yarn habits!

I’ve been sitting on some exciting news, but now it looks like everything is officially official- I got myself a job!

Yay!  Looking for a job in this market has not been the most enjoyable activity, so I am extremely thankful to have finally gotten something.  And, because it always seems to work out this way, the job I ended up getting was the first thing I applied for- of course, there was a lot of looking, applying and interviewing elsewhere before this worked out.

I am extremely excited about this development.  The job is exactly what I want to be doing (writing stuff for people), exactly where I was hoping to end up working (in the heart of Downtown, right by the Convention Center and all the good shopping), and I really clicked with the team when I interviewed, so I’m feeling good about the whole situation.  Plus, they were flexible (and nice!) enough to not have a problem with our extended trip home during Thanksgiving, even though it means I’ll be taking 3 days off a week after I start.

So send me good vibes to match my high hopes.  I’ll need them!

I approve of this past weekend, mostly because it was cash-flow positive.

On Saturday, Mike and I spent most of our day going through our rather large book collection and deciding which ones we could bear to part with.  We sorted through 18 boxes of books.

After we decided on 7 boxes of books that we would sell or donate, our remaining collection looked like this:

Still a lot of books, but much more managable.  Now we only have 11 boxes worth of books!

To reward ourselves, we went to Veraci’s Pizza, aka the best freaking pizza we’ve ever had.  Veraci’s has been a regular at the Seattle Farmer’s Markets scene for years, but they just opened a real restaurant last week.  They still don’t have the logistics of the ordering process down pat- only 1 cash register, long lines, etc- but the product makes it more than worth it.  Just look at how many people were waiting in line.  At a sit-down restaurant.

That line went out the door.  Delicious.  Plus, they messed up and gave us an extra half a pizza by accident.  Free breakfast!

Later that night, the garage sale mastermind herself and I met up for drinks and dessert to celebrate some recent good news.  It took our waiter about 10 minutes to greet us and take our order, so in order to preemptively apologize, he told us that our desserts would be free.  Score again!

On Sunday, Mike slept in while I schlepped books in front of Barrie’s building.  We manned the “store” until 2 pm, at which time I re-schlepped the remaining books back into my car and over to Half Price Books, where they were more than happy to buy what we couldn’t already sell.  Total take-home: $201!!!!

After I came home and collapsed for a bit, we went to grab dinner with our friends Kate and Max.  They are big fans of Ivar’s, where you may remember we earned ourselves a hefty gift certificate after a not-so-great review.  We didn’t want to pass up the chance to cash in part of our gift card, so we joined them and had a free dinner.  These two are a good fit for us to eat with- Max and Mike geeked out over car talk while Kate and I geeked out over yarn talk.  There was nary an awkward silence in sight.

Total take home this weekend: $201, 1 free meal, 1 free dessert and 2 free pieces of amazing pizza, and significantly more space in our garage.

Sometimes Mike (my Mike- I need to be specific in this because there are so many Mikes in my immediate family) gets frustrated with me because I always need to have things planned out in advance.  I like guidelines.  I like instructions.

Today, my dad sent us a bunch of caramels (from HookedonCaramel.com).  He also included instructions on how to eat the candies.

I wonder WHY i’m so neurotic.

Thanks Dad, we love you!

It’s been rainy and cold here lately.  So what do you do to fight the chilly weather?

You eat the biggest bowl of pho you can find.  Or, if you’re me, you get the $5 lilttle bowl and think it’s the perfect size.

Then you go look for a rice cooker at Ranch 99 Market and find the coolest store ever:

A bidet store!  Highlight of my weekend.

This is how I watched the election results come in last night:

This pic is super blurry, but you can still see how happy everybody was:

Meanwhile, on the streets of Seattle… (I didn’t make it out for this stuff, but stole the photos from people who are way cooler than me and can stay up much later than me)

Remember what I said about how I love watching people who get excited about things?  I love this guy:

I have never in my life seen people in my age group who are actually proud of their country and excited to be American.  It makes me feel much better about my interior design debacle a few weeks ago.

Big fat obvious YAY: We did it!

Big fat obvious BOO: California FAILED by passing Prop 8.  Thanks to fear and closemindedness, Californians just told the country that they care more about rights for chickens than equal rights for all humans.  And that is coming from ME.  (Obviously I voted yes on Prop 2, but still, if I had to choose between the two, I pick people over chickens any day.)

I celebrated the national election results with an amazing group of knitters last night.  We cheered, we cried, we laughed.  I’ll post pics tonight once I get them from my friend who was smart enough to bring a camera.