Today has turned out to be probably the best day I’ve had all year!

I’ve had up days and down days at work, but lately more down days. I get so little guidance, especially compared to what I’m used to. The lead on my little project is at best no help at all, at worst a nutjob who keeps distracting me with digressions. I’ve been starting to feel that what I’ve been working on the past two months is just totally the wrong thing.

Today I had a one-on-one with the lead of the TechLab. I tried to convey these issues professionally (i.e. without throwing the nutjob under the bus) and express my doubts about my project and my work, and he started shaking his head. Then he said, “Let me be honest with you. I wish you had the confidence of the guys – the male members – on the team. Because you are so much smarter than them.”

I started to protest this ludicrous statement (there are damn sharp cookies on the team). He held up one guy as an example of someone really confident – I started to say how smart this guy was and how much infrastructure knowledge he had, and he said, “You are so much smarter than him.”

When I told my friend K about this exchange, K said, “You are smart. You are one of the smartest people I know. And I know smart people.” Now I’m more bewildered than ever to be ranked so highly, because K does indeed know smart people, himself not the least among them – K is one of the smartest people *I* know.

Finally I told my husband. At first his response to the whole thing was tepid and non-committal because Xopher would never stake an opinion on anything inconclusive or subjective if his life depended on it. But then he clarified that while he didn’t know if I was in fact “smart,” he could definitely say that I am smarter than him. Now the ludicrous had entered the realm of insanity. Xopher is the smartest person who has ever entered my orbit (that’s an expression). “No, I just know a lot of shit, it’s different,” he said. I said, name one smart thing I’ve done. He said, “You got that mudroom added onto the house, which has greatly improved our lives.” I’ll admit I run a good life. Then he mentioned other things… Xopher never says nice things to me or about me. Having several nice things said about me by Xopher in one night, that alone would be the highlight of a day. But all of this consensus that, of course, yeah, I’m freaking smart, well! I’ve never felt so appreciated in my life.

I’m clicking on all cylinders, and tomorrow is my V-Day!

No, not really; I’m actually in a very good mood. Mondays are good for me. Tuesdays however never are. My Tuesdays are other people’s Mondays.

Anyway, I started a new, completely different bit o beadery:

And, this is my new aspiration: to have half a life as beautiful as this:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/apr/16/experience-ive-had-the-same-supper-for-10-years

I’m giving a book away, and want to save my favorite quotes from it before I do.

“Man likes any work that helps him forget his ghost’s bound to his body by a thread.”

“I thought me the qualm was a tale… I ne thought me the world would end in summer, under the sun in a clear sky, with the leaves new and the birds in song and a loving-Andrew in the hedgerow.”

“Otherwise I’m blithe enough. I’ve a full belly, and a roof over my head, and I’m heal. I have love now, and mayn’t do aught today to shield myself of death tomorrow.”

I pulled the plug on a piece of beadwork that I’d been at for a long time. I kept running out of white beads, and ordering just one more packet… I finally had to stop the silliness, considering I think the beads were coming all the way from China or Japan, and either buy a ton of them, or just declare the piece finished. I’m trying it out as an arty piece of window trim for my playroom. I used to call this room my office, then my office/studio, then my studio/office; now I just call it my playroom, because it has all my toys.

I can’t wait to go shopping. Wherever I want. Slowly.

I know, everyone else be all like, “I can’t wait to hug people!” And I’m all, “I can’t wait to shop somewhere with a better selection of whole wheat pasta.”

BECAUSE I’M A BAD PERSON, OK? We knew that, from a long time ago – I have the merit badge right here. And the business card.

I had actually been meditating on the following for some time before coming across the pointer to this research paper. I like to visualize the broad swaths of the planets where humans don’t live or else constitute a mere blip. Mountains, hills, deserts, national parks, tundra, HUGE tracts of land… Imagine the trees, the mountains, the photosynthesizing biosphere as the default, and us as the exception, a small collection of nattering primates that the great ancients suffer to live out our brief puny lives here and there among the constantly growing and shifting greenery.

Now here’s some figures to help you.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000th-earths-biomass-180969141/

Fry: It’s no use. I wanna cry but I’m just too macho.
Bender: I’ll make you cry, buddy! You’re a pimple on society’s ass and you’ll never amount to anything.
Fry: What do you mean? I was Emperor of a whole planet.
Bender: Good point. But here’s a disturbing reminder; everyone you knew or loved in the 20th century is dead.
Fry: These things happen.
Bender: Okay, Fry, grab a Kleenex for this one, ’cause there’s no God and your idiotic human ideals are laughable!
Fry: Phew! That’s a load off my mind.

Just another lunch hour hop in the life of rednoodlealien.

So, the Greener Shades dyes that I like to use have this big color card PDF, which is organized horrendously, sometimes with as few as 5 colors on a page. Unnumbered. I was always constantly flipping pages around, saying, well, do I like THIS one or THAT one – where was that one again?? Then of course I had to study the formula and translate it to a pound of mohair and hope I didn’t make a mistake, which I tended to do more often than not.

So I snipped all the colors and fit them all into two screen shots, and numbered them. Now I can see them all at once across my two screens. And, I typed all the formulas into Excel, with calculations to tell me exactly how many grams of each color to use to dye one pound of mohair! Now I can just look across my two screens, compare colors, and say, I want #142! Look it up in my spreadsheet, and say, why yes, #142 is .9 grams of Coral Reef Aqua, an excellent choice, madam.

Yes, as he brought with him the melting of the snow.

We get to enjoy those first fresh feelings of springtime all over again! Pass the awesomesauce!

Ramona, come closer, shut softly your watery eyes.