kaylarudbek

 How can you tell if you’re blocked from Bluesky?

 I still miss the gray and silver Cross pen with my name engraved on it that was an award for being a National Merit Scholar, and the blue rosary that I had as a kid with the smooth sky blue sort of oval beads. I lost both I think back in college and I suspect that they were stolen (I had a lot of things go missing freshman year). Also my Advent wreath/candle holder which I haven’t seen since I moved to Virginia over a decade ago, and my Electricity and Magnetism textbook which was lost in my move to Virginia. 

I bought myself a very nice blue and silver rosary this last week, and it has smooth beads that look like silvery blue pearls, Oddly enough the Our Father beads are miniature Miraculous Medal style (missing the text on front) and the joining piece aka the Memorare piece is a Miraculous Medal with front text in Latin.  

(and yes I have my great-grandmother’s rosary in its Notre Dame case, two olive wood ones my brother from a visit to Jerusalem, two gifted from my mother and one of those is dark blue spike crystals and one is green St. Patrick’s themed, one from Padua that my dad gave me, two plastic ones from my grandparents which I think we had up at the cabin, but I wanted to replace that lost blue one as I like different textures at different times)

I suspect that autistic people tend to gravitate towards having prayer beads as they are a great fidget and meditation tool. Bead textures and sizes and overall feel and sound are important (everyone likes looking at the flashy crystal beads but they aren’t always the most comfortable in actual use, although they are good for meditation before falling asleep as they are spiky enough to keep me awake for a while longer before falling asleep)

Also, apparently some people made/make rosaries with uranium glass beads which glow very nicely in the dark (but I would test them with a Geiger counter first and I probably wouldn’t give one to a kid or a cancer survivor).  

yeah, reverting back to folk Catholicism in order to spite the MAGA heresy and make the chaplain blow a gasket (I’m halfway tempted to start a collection of challenge coins with saints and pagan deities and display it at work).   I have also bought various saints’ medals and I need to put more charms and medals onto my silver bracelet..

(And why have I had mild to severe nausea for the last couple of months? If I was 5-10 years younger I’d be taking a pregnancy test)

So I didn’t get the position that I had applied for and I will be working with the person who did get the job.  My annoyances are:
1) not notified that I didn’t get the job (I’m a contractor although the contract is long-term, I haven’t received any complaints so far)
2) person hired has less legal experience than me (at least going by attorney bar number which is an indicator of experience level; if they had hired someone with more legal experience I would be less annoyed; at least person hired has a different technical background which is probably a good match for the job, but I am still concerned that they don’t have enough experience)
3) serious questions about technical decisions being made at high levels 
4) serious doubts about the morality and loyalty of the high levels 
5) sick and tired of wondering “who goes Nazi” about my coworkers 

So I started putting my resume out on LinkedIn and doing the “easy apply” route tonight.  Wish me luck and a better match for my skills, experience, and technical background. 

I should also start learning Mandarin, Japanese, and/or Korean as these are going to be the languages of STEM for the 21st century. 

I had a dream a few weeks ago about applying for Ph.D programs in chemistry, and saying flat out during the interview when they asked why I was going back at my age, “the only reason I am applying is to get my ticket punched so that I can apply for different legal jobs than I currently can” (patent law specifically will call out the technical background desired in the job description e.g. electrical engineering or biochemistry background).   I woke up before I got a response from the professor interviewing me so I don’t know if that was persuasive or not.  

Anyone have any recommendations for a sunrise alarm clock that I don’t need to read the manual for every time I want to turn the alarm off or snooze it? I dislike my current one so much that I’m going to donate it to Goodwill or GreenDrop. I don’t want anything that needs an app or subscription to keep it running, either, or anything that is connected to the internet. 

 From Reddit: 
https://www.reddit.com/r/craftsnark/comments/1nee9tz/mega_thread_for_the_do_not_buy_list/

 I want to start knitting All the Things, including: 

1) https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/aurora-cabin-shawl 
2) https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/shawlography
3) 
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/boardwalk-mosaic-shawl (I bought the exact yarn in the exact colors for this one, need to go find some size 3 and 4 needles and what’s frustrating me is that I want to use the same brand/cross section of needle as some of my new are square cross section, some are round, and I want to stay consistent within the project) 
4) https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/geogradient-shawl without the fringe on the edge (I hate fringe and anything reminiscent of the late 1960s and the 1970s in clothing styles or home decor, except maybe Gunne Sax or Jessica McClintock. I lived through it as a kid and I have no desire to repeat the ugly experience.  Too many of the designers were on hard drugs and making very bad decisions, and probably raging narcissists to boot.. Space Age retro is fine, 1980s neon is ok depending on the color scheme). 

My current “easy” project is frustrating because the yarn is a single ply with a bit of thick/thin texture and it keeps on breaking at the thin places  Two breaks so far, two different knitting patterns tried, and I may just give up and use it for weaving instead of knitting  So I may go back to working on the cotton sweater to have an easy project and then try to make some progress on the Paradise Point shawl which needs to have Knit Companion going with horizontal and vertical sliding highlights in order to figure out where I am in the pattern.  

 I should go take my weekly medication shot and then go to bed. I had to stop it for a colonoscopy earlier this summer, and as it builds back up in my body again post procedure, I noticed my spending habits changed again, and I keep on questioning myself now, “do you really need that?” and “what are you hungry for? Or are you thirsty, or need electrolytes?” I find myself wanting to take time and purge out my house of all the things that I don’t really need anymore. 

More plotting today at brunch with M and I’m still not sure what color combo to use. 

 

The 80s Called option would be black/white/charcoal gray (Ash)/ light blue (electric blue)/hot pink (Pucker) in Knit Picks Stroll (I have enough gray, would have to order one more of black and white and hot pink, might have to order two more of the light blue) https://www.knitpicks.com/electric-blue/p/26406 and https://www.knitpicks.com/ash/p/23696 and https://www.knitpicks.com/pucker/p/26401 with black and white 

The five elements (classic European) option would be white/red/blue/green/yellow so Knit Picks Stroll white, poppy or strawberry, serene (or maybe the electric blue), grass, and treasure https://www.knitpicks.com/serene/p/N3830 
https://www.knitpicks.com/grass/p/29771 https://www.knitpicks.com/treasure/p/28182 

https://www.knitpicks.com/poppy/p/29770 
https://www.knitpicks.com/strawberry/p/28179
 

I would need to order 1 white, at least one yellow, then 2 skeins each of the other colors.

 

The five elements (classic Chinese) option would be white/red/yellow/black/green so swapping out the blue for the black. 

With a massive heat wave coming next week, trying to decide if:

1) should I warp my loom and get some weaving practice in with cotton yarn?
2) should I get out the cross stitch projects and work on those?
3) should I go find my summer sweater knitting project on the needles?
4) should I start some new projects (cotton knitting, embroidery)?

To be started: 
various projects from https://cozybluehandmade.com/ 

or https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/boardwalk-mosaic-shawl 

oodles of patterns in my Ravelry queue 

in progress: 

https://www.ravelry.com/projects/search#by=kaylarudbek&view=thumbs&sort=completed&status=in-progress%7Chibernating 

 https://theimpactproject.org/the-impact-map/

If you have a passport in your married name, apparently you don’t need a certified copy of your marriage certificate (at least this is what the Virginia DMV rep told me on the phone). I will try to get my REAL ID with passport and other documents and see if it works.