Saturday, June 23, 2007

Ten years ago...

Ten years ago, I had just graduated from college and was driving cross country to settle in to my first job in what I had affectionately referred to as the armpit of America. I was a synthetic organic chemist way back then, which basically meant that on my performance evaluation, if I hadn't blown anyone up that day, I was meeting expectations. Let's just say that I didn't always meet expectations.

This week, I was back in the armpit, commuting up and down Route 1 and marvelling at just how unwilling New Jersey drivers are at letting you in their lane even when you're signalling. I was struck by how how weird it was to be back in the same place starting a new job once again. Only this time, it was ten years later and Hong Kong wasn't in the midst of being handed back to the Chinese and I'm not in any particular danger of hurtling hot silicon oil and shards of glass at anyone.

Lest you worry, no, I'm not moving to the Garden State... I was just there for the training.

The point being that I started my new job this week! It's going well - or at least as well as one can expect when all you're talking about is the company vision and how to log in to your computer. But oh, how I missed the pizza. As much as I love the food in LA, I still haven't found pizza here that rivals the pizza at D'Italia's. Sigh.

Anyway, having travelled to the east coast two weeks in a row now, I have managed to get in quite a bit of knitting time what with 10 hour airport/airplane wait times each way. So, I cast on for Coachella earlier this week, ripped it out a third of the way through, and then cast on again on Wednesday and finished it today. Here it is blocking and I'll try to get a pic sometime soon when it's dried and I can find a bra to wear underneath it.

And since I haven't posted WIP pictures in about 30 thousand months, here's the texture stitch I had mentioned before for that hank of irresistible STR Purple Rain. Also, you may notice that there's no pooling of any sort at this sock's 68 stitch size... happy dance!