I’m worried about my ankle. No, it’s only a minor sprain, I can still walk and everything – but it was still bothering me this morning, meaning I’m unlikely to be able to resume training at full force until weekend after next. This puts my hopes of the Cinderella Century in severe jeopardy, and makes me worried about whether I’ll be able to ride every mile of AIDS Lifecycle 7. I intend to ride ALC 7 regardless (I can always sag if I need to), but it would be really nice to be able to ride every inch, rather than spending time in the SAG wagon.
The net of this is that I am systematically avoiding anything that might further aggravate the ankle. This includes weaving. And naturally, I am so full of natural patience that this doesn’t bother me in the least. (And if you believed that, I have a bridge over in Brooklyn…just perfect to go with your living-room furniture. 🙂 ) I have thus far kept myself busy by reading The Subtle Knife (the sequel to The Golden Compass) and by making chicken pot pie from scratch (a two-day affair, if you include all the time to make the pie crust, poach the chicken, saute and simmer the vegetables in the chicken broth, make the roux for the cream sauce, remove and chop up the chicken meat, etc.). Tomorrow I have a guild meeting, which means that Friday I will run out of patience. 🙂
So, and so. I can’t weave, but I can sew. Did I hear someone say “AIDS Lifecycle outfits”? If the ankle isn’t better by the weekend, I think I’m going back to sewing. No new ideas yet, but as I have four outfits mostly done already (champagne silk and red velvet, black and red corset-tutu, white duppioni wedding-tutu, hot pink cheongsam-tutu), I don’t have to get too creative. I think I will take a look at the fabrics I have on hand and see what patterns I can whip up. I will probably start by making the cloth-of-gold tutu that’s needed for the champagne-and-red-velvet tutu.
I have almost finished designing the new website for Balsam Hill. I think this is likely to take up a good chunk of my time even after I start up with Red Bricks Media – the agreement is that I will continue to contract with them until the website is launched, and even afterwards, doing versions 1.5 and 2.0. (Red Bricks has no issue with this, for a variety of reasons – I already discussed it with them.)
The net of this is that I will probably be working 40+ hours/week for Red Bricks and another ~10 hrs/week for Balsam Hill, for the next couple months anyway. Combined with training for the AIDS Ride and the weaving study group, I don’t think I’ll have time for much else. But I like the people at Balsam Hill, they really don’t have many options for replacing me, and I could use the money (four months of unemployment took a toll on my finances), so I think I’m going to do it. It’s an interesting project, anyway – Website design and deployment from the ground up. Rarely do you get the chance to design a website from scratch. It’s been a really fun time working for them.
So that’s the state of the Union, at least for the moment. I’m off to eat a well-cooked, well-deserved chicken pot pie, and then off to bed! Tomorrow is a whole new day.
