Out of energy, if not enthusiasm

It has been a really, really long day. I think I said that about yesterday, too...

I very nearly have all of the cleaning done in our main room at work, and just have a few tidying up things to do, and the rest of the laser cutter to clean.

Yep, I am cleaning out the laser cutter.

Normally, every weekday morning I would take out the honeycomb table, and clear the debris from under it. Once a week, I would clean it with window cleaner (good lord, I have no idea what toxic combinations that caused), and would daily clean out from under the plaform. Awful mess, really, as the residue from the plastic and wood coats the lid and every surface inside.

Now, during the last three weeks of classes, I don't think I was able to do this more than twice, even though I have the first hour set aside for maintenance, there was always either someone needing to do a really quick cut, someone who arrived early, or someone who stayed very late (those DASH hours, you know). So it only got done two times that I can recall for certain, maybe another.

Yes, it was very, very, very nasty under the table.

It was so nasty that I sprayed foam cleaner on the entire surface of the metal platform, and let it sit while I went to my office to get one of the green kitchen scratchers that I bought to clean up the popcorn messes. I scrubbed and scrubbed, and created a black sludge that made me glad I was wearing gloves. Yuck! I went through a ton of paper towels to wipe up the mess, and still did not get all of the marks cleared up.

I am saving under the platform and the sides for tomorrow... It will be very dusty, and gross, but not sludgy like the stuff I cleaned up today.

So that is part of the reason why I am out of energy.

After getting home from work, I made dinner (my son's favorite: chicken and pasta), ate dinner, cleaned up dinner, and threw a load of jeans in the washer. After putting the stuff in the dryer, then doing a little more web browsing, I finished the first thread of the cartridge pleating on my celery green, watered tafetta underskirt. If you are unfamiliar with cartridge pleating, a strip of 1/4" gingham (woven, not print, 2 inches wide) is sew to the waistline of the skirt, and two strands of thread are used. Sew 1/2" from top, skipping every two squares in a straight line, from one edge to the other. The second line is sewn 1/2" below the first, following the same skipping pattern across, so the stitches line up exactly vertically. When finished with the lines, pull up to the right waist size, and sew to a waistband. If you've ever fan-folded a piece of paper, this is exactly what the two threads do, quickly and evenly. To picture how the skirt will be sewn to the waistband, you would simply place the waistband on top of the pleats, and sew each peak and valley to the waistband, with the peaks hitting the middle of the waistband. Lots of hand sewing this way, but it is well-worth the effort, and no pattern is required.

The plan was to put both lines into the skirt, and pull it tight to see how loose the pleats need to be, and if the length was going to be okay. I would love to be doing this right now, but my legs ache, my hips ache, and my back aches. So I am going to go to bed right after South Park...