Oh, my achin' feet!

A long and, unfortunately, exciting day in the mailroom of our newspaper. Not exciting as in, "The Publisher's Clearing House van is outside!" or, "Why are the police here?"

No. It was exciting as in, "There are scorpions in the donut box!!". The kind of excitement that drives up your blood pressure like mercury in August.

When the papers come off of the press, it is the job of the mailroom staff to run them through a large and noisy machine. This machine is usually called the inserter, but it goes by other names as well. Blower, Ethel (because the press is Fred), and @#$&, to mention but a few. The inserts are those birdcage liners favored by advertisers everywhere: slick, shiny booklets of eye-straining photographs featuring surly models and overpriced merchandise. Seven bucks for a pound of cherries? Sheesh.

Anyway, we had five of these monsters, and only three people to run the machine. The rest were catching, stacking and tying. Well, they would have been, if @#$& had been functioning correctly. Whoosh, whoosh, stop. Whoosh, stop. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, stop. All morning. I began singing under my breath in an attempt to make both of my eyes roll in the same direction. Old pop tunes, new and vulgar lyrics. A filthy version of "Lollipop" was especially entertaining. Not to mention distracting.

At least it doesn't happen every day. Not even every week. And anything is better than a repeat of the Night of the Fire. I actually got to yell, "STOP THE PRESS!" Flames were shooting out from under it, so my advice was warmly welcomed.

Last night's gospel jam was not as...organized as we had expected, but it was fun anyway. There's even a chance they'll have one next year. Repeat business, hooray! Speaking of business, the Main Street Association is planning a concert series on Tusday nights, and we might get to play! Short notice, being it's tomorrow night, but who cares? A chance to make music is never a bad thing.

Halfway through the foot of Manly Sock #1. Huzzah!

OOH!! Himself took me to a yarn shop yesterday! I...oh, crud. I don't have it with me. I got a whole bag of yarn. There's some really nice, soft wool in a fruit punch heathery shade. The label has a picture of the Mona Lisa on it, if that helps. I also got a skein of 80%wool/20% mohair singles in a colorway called "New Mexico". Pink, bronze, terra cotta; a nice blend of colors. The stuff just screams "felted bag"! I also snagged a hank of plain off-white wool for a dyeing technique that I want to try. All of the plain white that's in my handspun stash is earmarked for J's stockings.

Wanna hear the really cool part? The store was running a promotion. Take a penny from the dish and pop it in the gum machine. Match the color of your gumball against a chart to find your discount. My pink gumball netted me a 45% savings! Super cool. And I got to eat the gum, too.

*Sniff, sniff.* Mmm, banana bread! Warm, with butter. Gasp! Get thee behind me, Sugar! Think salad, silfert. Be strong. Have some more coffee. Besides, banana bread means crumbs on the knitting, and we don't want THAT!