A new graduate!

I'm sorry but I don't have any stitchy updates to report this week. Life has been so incredibly full and busy lately! So busy that I'm desperately missing my stitching time and I'm wound pretty tight right now. Following our Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family (which btw was great!) I was out every evening after work until this past Monday.

The day following the holiday was a big one for us - my youngest son graduated college ! Chris is the first of my boys to receive a post-secondary diploma and we were all pretty exicited here. The graduation was held in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre. It's a fairly big venue but apparently the spring convocations are held at Scotia Bank Place which is home to the NHL Ottawa Senators and holds a significantly larger group than ours. However I thought the NAC was a much nicer spot for the graduation. Although my DH was unable to attend the convocation, he was pleased to hear that there was actually a pipe organ playing the processional and that it was a friend of ours who was playing. Chris' brother Dan and I went early since seats were general admission and managed to get one of the box seats which have a great view. My camera has a 15X optical zoom so I was able to great some great pictures. Chris' Dad was also able to attend so following the ceremony we were all able to meet up for drinks and a mini celebration of our own. So here he is... a graduate from the Algonquin College Class of 2008 receiving his diploma in Small and Medium Enterprise Management. Chris, we are all so very proud of you!!

Chris hopes to manage his own business some day but in the meantime is getting valuable experience in retail right now. He is working full time as a supervisor in a retail chain and hopes to work his way up to management at some point.

The next day I was back in Ottawa after work to take Chris for dental surgery. He had an evening appointment to have his wisdom teeth removed and needed a ride home after having been put out for the procedure. He came through very well and only one of the four areas is bothering him a bit. I stayed with him at his place until one of his roomates arrived home so he wasn't alone. Plus I needed to give instructions to his roomie regarding medication since Chris was still acting rather silly following the meds. Then it was another late return home.

Thursday saw me back in Ottawa again for choir practise and then it was out again Friday for a Partylite party at a friend's home. After pulling an overtime shift on Saturday , it was back into Ottawa this time with Dan who was attending a birthday celebration at a friend's home and of course Sunday again for our church service and a concert that evening.

By the time Monday rolled around, I just wanted to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed all day. We all know though that as responsible working adults we can't do that (Why Not?!). So I trudged back to the lab. Now my charge tech is away on union business for the next three weeks so I'm doing her job and my own. Murphy's Law being what it is, when I walked in the door on Monday they informed me that one of the chemistry instruments was down and they were unable to use it. Who gets to fix it?.... you guessed it- me! After troubleshooting for a couple of hours on the phone with technical service, we discovered the problem. One of the internal parts had been hit and was bent. The only way that could have happened was if someone had actually hit it. When I asked the other techs about it, it came out that yes, one of the new grads had knocked the part when she was doing maintenance but was afraid to tell anyone. With the part replaced we were back on track but had to work an hour overtime to catch up with everything.

Now I'm up to 9 hrs overtime with my shift the previous Saturday. Then I was foolish enough to return to work on Tuesday. Now what?.... the computer hard drive in Chemistry has crashed and we are without the computer which operates our analyzers.Back to manual procedures and reporting and another 4 hrs overtime working with IT to try and get the computer up and running. It was a temporary fix which we had to complete yesterday following work which led to another hour overtime. During all this time I had another instrument go down which resulted in service from Montreal having to come and repair! Could anything else possibly go wrong?! You know I should never have voiced that thought! So I'm up to 14 hrs overtime since last Saturday and I already know I have to put some in this coming Saturday after my shift to help train some of the nurses on some new point-of-care equipment. The government will love all the extra tax they can collect on my paycheck this week.

I'm off today and Friday and only just crawled out of bed an hour ago. With any luck I can actually pull out some stitching today! I've told my DH not to answer the phone if he sees the hospital number come up. I'm not paid to be on standby and the other techs can call service for help the same as I can. After all, when Louise and I retire in 2-3 yrs, they have to be able to do this on their own and they need the experience once in awhile.

I really want to get my Peace tree finished by next week so I can work on getting it finished for a Christmas gift. I'm fast losing interest in some of my Halloween projects and fear that some will join my UFO basket. My eyes are already wandering, looking for new projects to start. I've just received my first order form San-Man Originals Secret Shop. The items offered for sale in their shop are only available if you are on their newsletter list. They send out a newletter every few months which contains lots of goodies for purchase, along with a free chart. However there are limited quantities for a lot of the items. By the time I check my email and find the newsletter, a good portion of the items are already purchased. However last month I happened to be at home checking my mail when the newletter arrived. There were so many cute little Halloween goodies! I placed an order and hooray!... finally I was able to pick up some of these little designs. I don't know if you can still subscibe to the newsletter since their main webpage seems to be closed.

When the order arrived in my mail last week I was so surprised. Inside the envelope, the order had been placed in a lovely little fabric bag tied with ribbon. Inside the bag I also found a number of Halloween stickers. I was thrilled with my order and hope I happen to be home again when her Christmas newsletter arrives. All of the items are very reasonable in price and the charts and frames are really quite cute. I've posted a few pics below to show off some of what I received.

At this point I think it's time I got showered and dressed since we will be heading into Ottawa sometime this afternoon for choir practice. I hope you are all having a great week and are doing lots of the stitching that I don't have time for right now. I'll leave you with a lovely fall picture that my son Daniel snapped last week on a road tour we took of the Long Sault Parkway along the St Lawrence River.