A big hearty thanks goes out to everyone for the faith they showed in me during my job hunting. I really appreciate the support from all of you and the outpouring of celebratory comments really made a happy time even happier. I really don’t know what I would do without y’all. And for the curious, the offer came from the callback interview last Thursday. It was a whirlwind romance there.
Tues: First round meet and greet.
Wed: They decide that want a second round ASAP and not wait until the rest of their first rounds were over on Friday.
Thurs: Second round 2.5 hours of tech questions and personality check to see if I would fit with the team
Fri: OFFER AND ACCEPTANCE!
I won’t name names, but the company provides an "online learning environment" designed expressly for K-12. I’ll be working on Systems Integration between the company systems and those of the school systems. The work sounds challenging and rewarding in the end.
I gave notice yesterday. Not to the evil-director, but to my manager. Haven’t talked to the director yet and honestly, I doubt he’ll even speak to me. He’s probably just as happy to see me go. The manager, on the other hand, did not look very happy at all. Kept running his hands through his hair as we spoke. Poor guy. Trying to re-platform and redesign with a continually shrinking staff. They finally hired a new Java Developer, probably to replace the guy who left in early June, who started yesterday. Meanwhile, they need to replace my buddy who left on Tuesday. Now they’ll have to find my replacement. Hehehe. Because of the whole .NET v. Java, there is no one already here that they can pass these duties onto. NMP. Anyway, I’m happy as a lark. The countdown has begun and I have until next Friday to stick it out. I didn’t take any time between the two positions, but I feel a sick day coming on this week 
Now that the drama of job hunting is over, I can back to some serious knitting.
Another pair of socks went down. I started the second sock between the first round and callback interview on Thursday. With the help of over an hour sitting and waiting before the last interview of the day together with a train that broke down on the way home that night (it was a really LONG day) wherein I didn’t get home until 9 (that’s why I didn’t show to the SnB ladies), I finished the sucker Friday. Details are over in the album, here.
Do I need to mention that I cast on for new socks almost immediately? Yeah, didn’t think so. Sunday night I pulled a skein of Jitterbug in the Mist and did the first couple of rounds for the toe, tucked the works in my purse and headed off to bed. By the time I hit Hoboken yesterday, this is the state of that sock:
I’m using US1 as the yarn is a tad thicker than my norm, very similar in texture, I find, to STR. I was up a little early this morning so after dressing, curled up on the comfy chair in my room and worked on the sock while watching the news. Here’s the sock as I waited for the train in my patent-pending dashboard shot
When I tucked the thing into my bag as I got off the PATH this morning, I was about an inch shy of the ribbing for the cuff. This baby is going down today. 
I’m not super thrilled with the yarn. If I used it again, I would give a US2 a try. The fabric is a tad stiff with the 1′s. Still, you have to love a small foot and a 52st sock for speed knitting!
Socks, contrary to popular opinion, are not the only things I’ve been working on. There’s Tina that I try to work on at least every other day. I’ve completed 6 of 9.5 repeats of the center pattern.
The Mystery Stole KAL did not have a clue this past Friday, which is a good thing. Thanks to all the studying and excitement of last week, I didn’t work on it until Fri/Sat. I blew through most of the two charts on Sunday. I’m a few rows of finishing the second chart and should have it done either tonight or tomorrow. (I’m making Tuesdays and Sundays spinning nights).
I really like the stole so far, but am just a little bit tired of the current strawberry section. I was tempted to just cut it a few repeats short but decided to keep going. Each week when the clue comes out, I take advantage of Adobe Photoshop and combine the two half charts into one and with the help of a highlighter, keep my place for each row. The system has worked so well that when I was prepping the Tina Shawl pattern for usage (I always photocopy and work from that), I combined the two half charts into a single chart and printed on one sheet. Fortunately the eyes don’t mind the smaller block size. I would have liked grid lines for the 10 marks like I’ve seen on other patterns, but adding with a fine point pen the stitch count for plain knits has made it much easier.
I think that’s about it for now. I’m in a wind down phase now at work. I finished and deployed my last big project this morning and actually documents the administration of this monstrosity called the intranet around here. I’ll have to find something to amuse myself
Craft on!
