Just a touch more stitching

I keep trying, but something is blocking me from being able to stitch...be it work, be it work-related headaches, be it worrying about the next school semester, or just be it my OCD with Once (which is ironic considering I'm stitching a Once stitch), I just can't bring myself to work on Snow and Charming. Most nights I've been getting home so late, I have no energy for anything but staring at the TV. But I did get two more days in last week. I left off here last week:

And I cleared out most all of the blue and started on their hair again:

I does kind of look like a lot of work, but considering it's such a small project, it really isn't much at all. I could probably easily finish the row in a week, if I had a week of regular stitching time. I would really like to finish at least the first row before classes start back up again. Maybe this week I'll knock it out.

I'm technically "supposed" to be on vacation from Christmas to New Years, but since I can't take vacation because there is no one to cover me, I will have to come in every day and work some...at least do my daily duties (because no one else can). I keep saying that they are going to be in trouble when I drop dead, but no one takes me seriously. There are things that only I can do and since they aren't major duties, they aren't in any manual, just in my head. Job security, yes, company security, not so much. Despite it all, I am quite loyal to this place (obviously, because I do put up with a lot), I just wish that the feeling was mutual.

But on a happier note, I'm not a Christmas person at all (Halloween is more my bag), but for those who are, I hope you enjoy your holiday and have a great time with your families! I plan to spend the day alone with my pups, stitching and watching Once. It probably sounds sad, but it makes me happy and that's all that matters. And I'm not big on spending time with my family anyway, at least 97% of them. For an Asper, Christmas was always my nightmare...all those people, food I hated, people staring at you while you opened presents and having to react to things you didn't want (and my mother was the WORST gift giver...still is). And because I came from a divorced family, as a child I had to go through it multiple times with parents, grandparents, my aunt...ugh. Now, I just don't participate at all, although my mother still asks every single year, just like Thanksgiving (another holiday I don't like because of the food). Home alone is best for me. It's just another day off work for me.

Stitched Again - But Don't Get Excited

I had all these fantastic stitch plans last week which, of course, work ruined magnificently! They must have secretly decided, that since I'm not in school this month, I need to "make up" for all the hours I missed (technically, since I never dropped below 50 hours per week, I don't think one could say I missed anything), so I've been working my hind-end off and, by the time I got home, I had no energy to stitch. But I did get some done Saturday. I ended up with a headache on Sunday, so unfortunately, nothing to report there.

So here is where I left off last week:

And, as paltry as it is, here is Saturday's progress:

Here's hoping this week will be better. I don't have many weeks left before school starts back up again and I'd like to at least have row 1 finished.

But speaking of school, my programming teacher is still M.I.A., but someone else graded the final, it got dropped from 100 pts to 90 pts (not sure why), and I got a 67.8 on it (yep, you read that right, I got a D on the final! I'm still not sure how THAT happened...I figured that whoever graded didn't give partial credit like she did). It dropped my G.P.A. down to an 89.0 (which is a B). But I knew I still had those two bonus point problems that weren't graded, so hope wasn't lost. They only got one graded before the cutoff, but it was enough to bring me back up to a 90.0 (which is back up to an A, thank goodness!). Granted, if the other bonus point problem would have been graded, it would have been higher (and it kind of makes me mad considering the hours we worked on that mess), but still, I'm not complaining, I got my two A's in the end!

Surprisingly, I did find out that my English teacher just nicked my paper on citations and not content. It's hard to make them understand that I am of a certain age and of a certain ilk and have acquired a certain amount of knowledge from life that came from reading, watching and absorbing. I didn't need any information for this paper from sources because it all came from my brain. She had trouble buying that, but it's true. I have more knowledge of animation than the average bear because I wanted to be one for half my life and I can talk technical details about Sleeping Beauty like nobody's business! I figured she'd have a field day on content considering my subject matter. I am an "old school" Disney princess girl after all and she's the middle type. But she even said I had some very valid points. I was shocked! I know a couple of you guys mentioned you might want to read it, just drop me a message and I'll send it to you (I don't mind, what am I gonna do with it now?), but just know you might get offended if you are a middle type Princess person and definitely is you are a "new style" Princess person...or maybe not. She mentioned she wasn't offended at all and that I was focused more on the Princes than the Princesses. I hadn't really realized I was going more in that direction until she pointed it out, but I guess she was kind of right.

I did come to a realization though, I was beginning to think that maybe I'm just not cut out for programming (and I thought I'd take to it like a duck to water), but I think it's because all we are programming are math problems. The "real world" isn't like that. I will NEVER understand why colleges don't teach "real world" situations. What good does it do to teach us how to program trig problems when we will NEVER use them? It is SOOOO frustrating! But I will know better next semester whether I stay in this program or switch majors to either C.I.T. (which is basically what I do for a living now) or maybe computer-aided design (where I could use some of my old art hours as electives and not lose them). Time will tell. I would love the design, but there is no money in it. I still have my science classes to get out of the way (my only remaining basics), well besides Oral Comm and apparently now Philosophy (I've always said I would be HORRIBLE in a Philosophy class because I'm too opinionated), so I might start working on getting those out of the way and take a "computer break" for a while to "think" about things and decide on the best path. The whole Astronomy thing was a nice idea, but at my age, it might be too lofty of a dream. And I do have to admit, I enjoyed the writing in English a HECK of a lot more than the computer stuff. That's not good when you are a Computer Science major (but it's not like I can do anything with an English degree, so there you go).

Stitch Progress

Yes, you read that title correctly, I stitched this weekend, although not much! I also didn't finish working on my new blog either, but with school out now, it was the first weekend in forever I didn't have to spend the the entire weekend on a stupid computer in the first place! But I also didn't spend it cleaning either. I think I just needed a "decompression" weekend.

But anyhoo, last time, I left off on Snow and Charming with just a touch:

And got a bit deeper into it.

I was getting bored with the blue, so I hopped around a bit, but I figured I'd get back into the blue just to keep it cleaner. I also took my Once needle minder off of Hook for this project and bought a new one for Hook...a swan. Very apropos, I thought.

And once I got caught up on my new-found YouTube Once Upon A Time Response obsession, I was able to stop watching OUAT for quite a while this weekend (although not completely). I haven't been able to do that all semester. I think my OCD must be stronger when I'm more stressed. And, considering my Programming teacher has gone MIA, I should be more stressed than ever. Our last two assignments (which were IMPORTANT bonus points that I desperately needed) and a really crap final still haven't been graded and the deadline for final grades to be posted is the 13th. My GPA for CompII is already listed. No responses to emails, no responses from department heads, no one will tell us what is going on or when (or if) we will get our grades for programming. Wonder if I'll get lucky and they will just go with the midterm grades...at least then I'll keep my A.

I did realize something though...one of my teachers had a stroke mid-semester and got replaced, the other got a mysterious illness and disappeared at the end of the semester and, as a side note, every single new coastal location I visited this year got wiped off the face of the Earth by a hurricane. I wonder what that says about me?

Oh well, maybe I'll have time to dink more with the blog next week.

Pardon my construction

I've decided to jump on the "new theme" bandwagon and give them a try.  It's BEYOND time I upgraded anyway...I just have to tweak a few things to get them the way I like them.  Honestly, I was going to change my background picture to something similar to what I had, but the blue forest reminds me of Once, so I'm not too much in a hurry to fix it, at least not now!

So stay tuned, things they are a'changin while I'm on school break!  Oh, and if anyone has any ideas, doesn't like anything (you CAN'T hurt my feelings, so be honest), or actually likes it, let me know!  I'm all ears!

Done, Done, Done!!!!

I am done for the semester! I managed to get through English II with an "almost" perfect score. She docked me on my final paper because of citations, but I still had a 99.6 average, so it didn't hurt there.

Programming was a whole other ball of wax. Our teacher got sick last week and still hasn't graded our last two bonus points, so I'm not sure how much of my A is there, but our final was today and I blew through the first three pages like a pro, but the last three problems, the ones that counted the most points, were complete Greek! It wasn't something we had ever covered and, if I had to guess, I'd say someone else had to finish the test for her and didn't know what level we were at.

No one that I knew of in the class, even the brilliant ones with perfect scores, could work those problems, so we'll see how it goes. If our teacher gets better and grades the test, it might save us and I might manage to keep that A after all, but if another teacher does, at least my current score is high enough and the final counts less enough that it could do it drop me to a low B, even if I failed it. But a B is a B, and I can live with that. It kind of sucks that held on to that A by the skin of my teeth all semester only to lose it at the last second, but I'm just glad to be finished for a few weeks!

As a side note, I found a new "world" on YouTube that I never ran across before...viewer responses to shows. I checked out a few before I landed on this one guy, who is sooo NOT the Once Upon A Time kind of person, and it is HILARIOUS watching him watch each episode of the show! It's not the whole episodes, you have to pay for his Patreon page for that (which I might do if he finishes the entire series), but it's enough of a taste on YouTube to keep me interested. He LOVES the show and exclaims after each episode "this is my new favorite episode!". I figured I'd be bored to tears watching someone else watch my show, but I'm not sure why it's so cool watching a newbie to the world gets so obsessed with it, especially the "not" Once type, but sometimes he gets me laughing so hard, I just about pee my pants! It's just neat watching someone else from a different world enjoy the show the way that I do.

But once this week is over with, I'm SERIOUSLY cleaning my house from top to bottom, and then it's cross-stitch city until January when classes start again. Oh boy.