Work kicked my butt all week. By the time I got home every night, I could barely stand, let alone stitch. I just kept saying all week that at least I had the weekend. By Friday night, the headaches started and I'm still dealing with it (although I'm in an ebb now). I did stitch some Saturday, but it wasn't much and I switched projects again because I couldn't stomach my contacts touching my eyes.
I left off on Rapunzel at the row finish:
And sad but true, here is where I stopped:
Couldn't apparently even hold the camera straight. I'll have to try to fix that next time. We'll see if I make it through another week.
I was literally and figuratively all over the shop this week. I tried to keep going with Hook, but my contacts just wouldn't cooperate. I left off here last week:
And I got one whole day's worth of work done before my contacts started up again and I also decided that I'd just had enough of the sepia for at least a while:
Other than the changing lighting, you can't even tell the difference between the two.
For some weird reason, I did have a couple of good contact days (I guess I'm going to have to break down and go back to the eye doctor), so I started Faces of Faery 167:
Once my contacts went all wonky again, I decided to at least see if I could see the fabric with both sets of glasses on. This was kind of nutty, especially since Hook was 28ct and Faces is 32ct but, for the weirdest reason, I could actually see the 32ct! I even went back and checked and I still couldn't see the 28ct on Hook. Funny that. But anyhoo, I didn't get to stitch a lot because of work, but I did get some done:
This is literally gonna be the tiniest piece when it's finished!
I did manage to get caught up on Netflix (I'm not sure my Supernatural obsession is broken just yet, but I'm working on it). I did get Jessica Jones Season 2 done. I can't seem to make it through the other Defenders shows, but JJ I do like (but it might be David Tennant, be he bad or good, he is still brilliant).
I also managed to get caught up on Hulu too. Why is Once so good now that it's been cancelled? I don't want to give anything away for anyone that still watches it (does anyone but me still watch it...doubt it, but still), but Regina has the WORST taste in men.
I am also freaking out about X-Files a bit too. The AI episode is one of the scariest I have ever seen...like ever, but I keep watching the show on the edge of my seat because I know Gillian Anderson has refused to come back and I'm one of those weird people that ship Mulder and Scully hard, so knowing they either are both leaving or he will be without her is already killing me, and the season isn't even over with yet!
But I do have a funny Josh Dallas story (and there might be spoilers here)...so I got Thor: Ragnarok in last week from Disney Movie Club (I can't say I would recommend DMC unless you are a serious Disney pin or memorabilia collector...their prices are EXTREMELY high, but it's worth it for the pins (and now lithographs) otherwise). I wasn't going to watch the new Thor until the weekend when I could binge-watch all the Marvel movies together (hence the Supernatural disc making it out of the Blu-ray player). Thursday night I was feeling a bit wiry though, so I decided to see what was on Netflix. On the top of my list was a movie called Wind River and since it had Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen in it (who I think have chemistry, even though they aren't destined in the Marvel-verse), I decided to watch it, especially since Ragnarok has been sitting on my kitchen counter for a week and I had Marvel on the brain. Wind River was not my usual kind of movie, but it was great and I highly recommend it!
Now, I bet you're wondering what all this has to do with Josh Dallas...I'm getting there (and some of you may already know). After watching Wind River, I was in a serious Marvel mood, but I didn't want to watch Ragnarok out of order, so I started searching through the queue. I found a horror movie called Descent 2 and I seemed to recall that I had seen the first Descent and it was kind of scary, but the selling point was that Josh Dallas was on the picture (see, told you I was getting there). Obviously, it being a horror movie, I knew he was probably gonna die, but I just figured I'd turn it off when he did. Fifty-one minutes! It took 51 minutes before he died! I was pissed and crushed! I did turn it off at that point, but that far in and with less than 30 minutes left, I ended up just going back and finishing it. Turns out, in the last 10 minutes, they found him again and he had one final gasp and THEN he died. FUDGE!
So, in an effort to make myself feel better, I restarted Once Upon A Time. It took me all of 10 minutes into that to remember that Charming sort of partly dies at the end of the first episode and spends most of the first few episodes in a coma anyway, so I ended up turning it off. By this time, it is after midnight and I still had to work on Friday, but I was determined to feel better about Josh, so I said, screw it, it was time to watch Thor.
Anyone who watches Marvel stuff, or at least Thor movies, knows that Josh Dallas was the first Fandral, but because of Once, he got replaced by Zachary Levi (aka Flynn Rider, my second favorite Disney prince and technically, Josh Dallas also saved Rapunzel on Once, so he is technically Charming and Flynn (in a way), so there you go...although, just to be clear, Prince Philip is my favorite Disney prince and let's not go where Once took that mess). But ten minutes into Ragnarok, Fandral just gets killed very nonchalantly! I'm all like, "what the hell!". But not long after that, barely another ten minutes in, literally once Hela destroys Asgard's army, my medicine kicked in and I fell asleep.
But, when I woke up the next morning, I was still mourning all kinds of Josh Dallas characters, past, present and adjacent, so I got to work, checked his Instagram page in an effort to make myself feel better, only to discover that it had been removed! Seriously? By the time I got home, I rewatched Ragnarok (all the way through this time), then went on to Jessica Jones and tried to forget Josh until at least today when I could pull out my computer and watch fan videos of Snow and Charming on YouTube. I have definitely got to get that chart kitted up!
Ok, so maybe that wasn't a funny story, but more of an Asper story, but hey, since the happy couple are on my mind (and let's hope his missing Instagram page isn't a sign of bad times...his Valentine's Day message to Ginnifer was so sweet it was almost disgusting), here's a new vid I found to top off the night:
Well, it wasn't much, but I FINALLY figured out the big secret to fixing my contacts. I tried all the tricks they taught me throughout the years...the official cleaners and the unofficial ones like baking soda and cola and nothing worked. I had gotten to the point where I had just started wearing them long enough to get me to work, then putting on my glasses to get me through the day. But Friday night, I just decided, while I was washing my hands, why not give hand soap a try. The spots on them seemed grease-like anyway, like I was looking through vaseline, so why not? And sure enough, I could see out of those little puppies again, grease spots all gone! Granted, they are starting to cloud up again today, but I now know what to do and I think I know why it's happening. I've been using the knock off stuff for years, but only ever the Wal-Mart kind, not the Target kind. Apparently there is a difference. So I'll try to make myself go to the store this week and get the "good" stuff. Stupid gas perm contacts require very expensive juice, so I try to save where I can. Apparently, not all knock-off juice is the same and Target skimps more than WM...who knew? At least I managed a couple of days worth of stitching!
I left off on Hook here, where you could barely see the white:
And after muddling through a row of the white, I decided to move down to Killian's head, something I don't ever do in projects like this...I do typically go in order from top to bottom:
His head looks so tiny in that sea of future white.
I still need to order paper to print Snow and Charming on before I can buy thread and new scroll rods, but once I get them all kitted up, hopefully I will have the row done for Hook and I'll be ready to go on them!
I also got my new computer in this week and got it mostly built up with my stuff. I still think I need to probably split off a section and Boot Camp it (if I can get my hands on a Win 7 license, therein is where the trouble lies, but it's not totally impossible). I have too many Windows specific programs that I use for various things like editing pics quickly (Windows Picture It, which they haven't made in years...I have Lightroom too which swings both ways, but that is not an "in a hurry" kind of editing product). I like to use ProShow Gold to make photo DVDs of trips. ProShow is the ONLY software that doesn't have a limit of how many pictures you can use in a slideshow. That's a big deal when you take thousands of Disney pics. I have cross stitch software, family tree software, collection cataloging software, YouTube snagging software, British disc reading software and about a half a dozen others that I've used for years. I could probably find Mac comparable versions, but they won't be exactly the same and I like what I like. That's where Boot Camp comes in handy. I don't want to ask for more money for Parallels and I definitely don't want to deal with Windows 10 which Parallels is very friendly with now (besides, most of these programs won't work even in compatibility mode with Win 10). Boot Camp does fine with Win 7 and it's free, I just have to give up a section of hard drive space (good thing they sprang for the 2TB drive).
I'm gonna try to get to the doctor again next week too to get those stupid boosters so I can "officially" be a student of Arkansas State. Then I get to start the scary part of advisors and scheduling classes and then the "fun" part can begin. The hell I'm already getting from work now about school will probably triple once classes start, but that's OK because I'm ready for it since, when all is said and done, no matter what direction I end up going in, once I graduate, I'm out the door. I can stomach a lot of torture if it means there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Here's to a better week of vision, of work, of health in general, and of stitching, but my hopes aren't very high. As my new sticker on my new laptop says...Team FreeWill. There is something to be said for being a total fangirl...you can kick certain people directly in the teeth and they have no clue what you are talking about. I mentioned that I almost went with "damn the man, save the Empire!" and they thought I was talking about Star Wars. Seriously? I also have a button in my office that I bought in Disney World that has Scar saying "I'm surrounded by idiots"...it gets pushed a lot too.
