general

It's been an interesting week. First, a picture of a pretty pair of glasses:



I'll explain their significance shortly. ;)

Starting last Saturday, I have been on a bizarre lucky streak the likes of which I've certainly never experienced before.

Saturday was my company picnic. The company is known (internally anyway) for being very generous with prizes at the picnics, so we knew a prize raffle was coming. When I arrived, I dropped my two raffle tickets into their respective bins (one of which intriguingly said "silent raffle" on it) and wandered off to enjoy the picnic (and wait for the prize drawing!).

The prizes that were announced at the picnic started at $100--gift cards for all kinds of places like Target, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble...--and went on from there. There was an iPod Nano, a 3-day Avis car rental, a stay at a downtown hotel, and the gift card amounts went up to $200, $250...finally, there was a 42-inch television given away. The other top prize was a $1000 voucher for Delta Airlines. They gave away three of them.

I won one!

So that was pretty neat! I got to work Monday morning and heard people twittering about the picnic and how I was one of the big winners, etc. Pretty soon, we got an email from corporate communications which turned out to be the results of the "silent raffle." The silent raffle was created so that the prize drawings/announcements wouldn't go on for hours at the picnic, and included all of the smaller prizes. They were all in the $25-50 range (plus I think I saw one that was $75).

I won a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card. [Side note: Remember that book I said I fell in love with at the yarn shop in Lincoln City? I turned right around and ordered it from B&N Monday afternoon. :D]

Wow, two raffle prizes! I was really lucky!

Then...today.

I have to backtrack just a bit to something I don't think I've mentioned on my blog. Just before my vacation, I was nominated for a "You ROCK!" prize at work. To get that, you are nominated by someone else at the company. Once they've gone through the procedure, you, quite literally, receive a rock. So the two women who nominated me showed up at my desk and gave me a rock and a nice certificate. I thought it was really nice of them to go to the trouble, so I've left the rock in a prominent spot on my desk and hung the certificate on my wall. Other than occasionally laughingly showing off my rock, I hadn't really thought much about it.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to this morning. I showed up (pretty much last) to my department meeting and was surprised to see the two women who'd nominated me and also someone from corporate communications. I had a suspicion that something was up, but had no idea what. Turns out I was chosen as the "You ROCK!" winner for the month of June--and I won a $100 Macy's gift card. They also took pictures of me, which will appear in posters throughout the company and in the corporate email that goes out every Thursday. I'd seen posters with other winners around, but somehow never really considered that I'd be on one of them! And I had NO idea there was actually a prize involved.

Are you counting? We're up to three prizes, totaling $1125. But I'm not quite done yet...

This one isn't so much a prize, but it kind of fits so I'll mention it anyway. I got back from the meeting just in time to run off to Lloyd Center to meet with a few knitters at lunchtime. Just as I was about to walk away from my desk, the phone rang. I picked it up and Jessica, one of the knitters I was meeting, said, "Hey, I have a 2-for-1 coupon for Jamba Juice! Want one?"

So--free Jamba Juice for lunch today. :D

Incidentally, every person I've related these events to so far has said something along the lines of, "You need to play the lottery this week!"

Nik and I had been amusing ourselves with this idea off and on today. (I'm a former math teacher and we're both very rational people, so the whole idea of "cashing in" on a string of luck is pretty funny to us.) Nik even went so far as to speculate that I'd actually USED UP my good luck and it was over now, so no need to buy a lottery ticket.

When Nik picked me up this evening, we were both hungry and I didn't feel like going home and cooking so we went out to dinner. We went to Micky Finn's, a pub a mile or so down the street from us. Wednesday is Pint Night and the rep from Blue Moon (tonight's featured brewery) was going around handing out raffle tickets to everyone and told us there'd be a drawing in around half an hour.

This, of course, caused further discussion of the whole luck thing. (Nik is wondering if there's a conservation of luck in force, and if so, who is having a really bad luck week to balance out my good luck?)

I'm sure you can guess by now what happened.

The Blue Moon rep gave out 6-8 prizes and kept calling out ticket numbers...nope, not mine. Not Nik's. Eventually, Nik made some crack about, "Well, this is proof." (We're still not sure what it was proof OF, but whatever ;)).

Numbers were called, people picked their prizes...then he announced that the next would be the last one for this drawing. (I'm pretty sure they do multiple drawings through the night.)

Guess whose number was the last one called?

That's where those pilsner glasses, pictured above, came from. :D

Crazy, huh?

I haven't found anyone with leftovers of the yarn I need (it was a longshot!), so I bought another skein from The Loopy Ewe. It should arrive by the time we get home from the coast. (I actually got an "it's been shipped" notification the same day I placed the order! It'll probably get to my house before I do.)

Yesterday, I drove up to Lincoln City to visit Nestucca Bay Yarns and run a couple of errands. Nestucca Bay is a cute little shop with some nice yarns (including lots of Cascade 220, Manos del Uruguay, many Rowan yarns, and their own handpainted yarns). I bought this:



Tara, who was working at the shop yesterday, and I had a nice chat. I think I've inspired her to pick up crochet. And she tempted me with this book that I now really, really want. It's all about crochet stitch motifs, which is way more fun than rows and rows of crochet. All different kinds of squares, circles, and other shapes! I already have ideas in mind for some of the things I saw in the book (I sat down and flipped through it for a good 15 minutes, at least). [As an aside, why doesn't Amazon have the book? Nestucca Bay had about 6 copies of it!]

I also rather liked this book.

After my nice yarn shop visit, I went off in search of a place to get a pedicure and found a great, tiny shop called Nail Extension. Two manicure stations, two pedicure chairs, and I'm not sure there was much else (other than a few shelves with products for sale). Bit pricier than I would normally pay for a pedicure but it was really nice, she did a beautiful job on my toes, and we had a very nice chat while she was working on me. Well worth the cost, imo. :)

I'm not sure if you can really tell the color, but here's a shot of my toes:



They're a deep purple that looks like midnight blue in certain light. Really pretty!

And finally, one photo that cracked me up:



This is my niece, Sydney, trying to beg me for the Nintendo DS her dad had just announced that she DOES NOT NEED for Christmas this year. Too cute!

I'm now officially on VACATION!

I don't go back to work until July 14th. YAY!!

Tonight, I need to put the finishing touches on my "secret" project so I can get the HSKS5 swap kit in the mail tomorrow. Pretty much everything else is ready to go. I can't wait for Narcissa to get her kit! Giving presents is fun. :D

I'll make sure I take some pictures before I send it off--once she gets it, I'll post about the secret project (both here and on Ravelry) and the yummy yarn I got for her.

Tomorrow...I have no idea what I'm doing tomorrow (other than going to the post office), and I'm okay with that! The rest of my vacation will probably be pretty busy, so one empty day is actually kind of nice.

YAY VACATION!!!