I Had To Consult The Manual On This One.

I was unclear as to whether last night's planned dinner out with co-workers would count towards my goals in "The Sheep's Social Experiment." You know...what with my not actually doing it and all.

But it wasn't my fault! There was a glitch. In hindsight, it really isn't all that surprising. We are a not-for-profit agency that works closely with the courts and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. It was highly unlikely that we were going to be able to get five people in the same place at the same time without having to make it more complicated than it really is. Anyone who does this kind of work for any length of time loses the ability to do anything without a plethora of seemingly meaningless steps and procedures. There was every likelihood that we would run into some organizational difficulties.

But, I think I'm still good on overall points in this endeavor.

In the credit column, I have the following:

I was willing to actually go despite my natural tendency to want to hibernate. It is a little known fact that the common New England Sheep is prone to eating three times her own body weight in leftover Halloween candy then hiding in a cave for the winter months.

I also made it to the first stop in the going-out process by arriving at the office starting point with good intentions.

My shoes matched.

There were bonus points for the application of lipstick.


The debit column looks like this:

Points were lost due to the ease with which the glitch could have been solved. It was really just a matter of changing the timing a bit. The Sheep was fully aware of this as she is a part time employee and not so heavily affected by the whole "government time" virus as her full time counterparts. But if no one else was going to bring it up...

There was a large deduction in overall point totals due to the speed with which I went to the "oh, darn it all to heck, I guess this isn't going to work I suppose we should all just give up on this and try another time so sorry I'm devastated I guess I will ease the pain by just going home and catching Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs like I wanted to anyway" place. The very least I could have done was not skip merrily to my car...

After perusing the often passed-over section of the handbook known as "unwritten rules, " I learned that I was eligible for the appeals process and a potential increase in overall points for not simply going home and heating up a frozen pizza. I went to a local sandwich place and got a tuna sub. That is partially eating out and I had to talk to people and wait with people in order to gain sustenance. I'm working on my letter to the judges later this evening.

Overall, though, I'm more in the credit column than the debit. If we can all just ignore the fact that I invented the system in the first place then it is safe to say that this was a highly successful social experiment!

Honestly, I don't know why I thought this whole thing would be so stressful. Aside from all the math you have to do at the end, being a Sheep About Town is really not all that hard. And I still got to sit on the couch in my jammies with my tuna sub and some very interested looking cats.

Nice!!!

Despite being all tired from my exhausting social calendar, I was up bright and early this morning to attend to the grocery shopping that a social butterfly such as myself was unable to complete last night. It was then something of a fiber-fest as I really need to get a handle on some of the projects I gots to gets done. Much of the day was devoted to the Feather And Fan scarf in order that it might feel better about its having been so shamefully ignored during the course of the week. In essence, it is a longer version of the same thing I showed earlier so pictures really didn't seem necessary. I'll wait until a day when I am all desperate for material...

I kitchenered the toes of a sock and did a bit 'o the end weaving. Now, I've sworn to myself in no uncertain terms that there will be none of the "here's one sock and even though I still have to finish the other I'm going to post the picture just like it's an FO" business. But it is too pretty!

See what I'm saying? It had to be shared.

I also broke out the drum carder and blended some black corriedale with some metallic gold. Some of you may recall that Amy, The Stylist Who Must Be Obeyed In All Things, requested another pair of handwarmers. Her yarn needs were highly specific. So much so that my only option was to custom spin it for her. She wants a very close fitting handwarmer, but likes the pattern I used for her last pair. My thinking at this juncture is that I will spin up a bobbin of singles and knit with that. Despite my tendency to overspin, I'm guessing that I will not get the finer yarn I need if I ply it. And Amy is neither a spinner nor a knitter, thus she will not really notice that this will not be the most balanced of yarns. She's really just looking for the gold sparklies. She was pretty specific with regard to the sparklies.

And when she who does my highlights requests sparklies...I make sparklies happen!

I'm really pretty pleased with myself. I've fired up the wheel for the first time in months and there has been holiday gift progress. And I got credit for being social without having to really interact with the rest of the human race on any great level. I'm just filled with the self-esteem here! Is there nothing I cannot do?

Any suggestions for my next great outing?

SA