Lenny Briscoe and My Office Door
Here's what I've been knitting at work:
It's a Colinette "Absolutely Fabulous" throw, in the "English Garden" colorway.
I started it during finals week in December, and worked on it almost exclusively during the campus interviews, when we talked to the 9 prospective professors for the 3 positions we had open in the department.
It became part of department life -- I'd drag it along to the "casual conversations" with the candidates over morning coffee (though billed as casual, actually one of the scariest parts of the procedure), and I'd drag it along to the talks that the candidates gave in the afternoon, and it would provide a bit of conversation. It's SO lovely, and we liked watching it grow.
Unfortunately, towards the end of the proceedings, it was also serving as a measure of Just Exactly How Much Time we were spending on all this, and it got depressing. Even if one knits like a bat out of hell, knitting an entire Ab Fab throw JUST while interviewing candidates means that one really has spent a lot of time talking to the lovely candidates, when one could have been doing all the rest of the work that one has to do, but which has stacked up and will have to get done at some other time, like after the semester's over, when one would be liking a rest.
It's done now, at any rate, and it's fantastic, as all the Ab Fab throws are, and it's going to be very useful in my office in the summer, where it will be freezing on account of the air conditioning, over which I will have no control and about which I am tired of complaining to Physical Plant. It's hard to get Physical Plant to fix ANYTHING, I find.
For a while I was also having trouble getting through the door of my office in the summer, because the door would swell and become immovable. I called and called, and they'd send somebody who would do pretty much nothing and the problem would continue. The only way I could get into my office was by throwing myself against the door in one of those Law and Order moves. But I got tired of pretending to be Lenny Briscoe, so I started simply calling them every time I got to the office and making them open my door. I figured they'd get fed up with this eventually.
They did. I was sitting in my office one day, and a couple of them came by, intending to fix the door for all time. One of them came into the office and started closing the door after himself. "Don't do that," I said. "You'll be very sorry." "I know what I'm doing," he told me.
Fine, fine, fine.
Well we were stuck in the office, weren't we? Cause once one had closed the stuck door from the inside, one had no leverage, did one? The guy on the other side of the door wasn't so very good at the Lenny Briscoe moves as I was, and it took quite a while to liberate the worker who hadn't listened to The Little Lady, who spent the entire duration of the ensuing hoohah writing whatever engaging piece of scholarly research she was working on. I ignored them completely. I figured that there wasn't anything I could do to make the stuck worker feel better, really. Though looking back on it, I suppose I could have offered him a cup of tea. Might have made things worse, though. I just pretended I wasn't there.
They finally got the door down, and since it had humiliated them, they took it off its hinges completely (which is what they'd needed to do for about 4 years at that point) and they went off and they fixed it and it's worked ever since.
But. I don't think I can pull off anything so satisfactory with the air conditioning.
Hence the need -- the NEED, I say, for the Ab Fab throw.
Sam hadn't seen this, since I'd been working on it in the office, and he's quite taken with it. We need one around the house, apparently. Yes! Yes, honey, we do! All RIGHT!
But first, to my great glee, I have to knit one for a friend who's about to have one of those Big Birthdays That Mean a Lot.
Someday the world will have run out of Ab Fab throws to knit, and we'll all have moved on. But not if I have anything to say about it.
It's a Colinette "Absolutely Fabulous" throw, in the "English Garden" colorway.
I started it during finals week in December, and worked on it almost exclusively during the campus interviews, when we talked to the 9 prospective professors for the 3 positions we had open in the department.
It became part of department life -- I'd drag it along to the "casual conversations" with the candidates over morning coffee (though billed as casual, actually one of the scariest parts of the procedure), and I'd drag it along to the talks that the candidates gave in the afternoon, and it would provide a bit of conversation. It's SO lovely, and we liked watching it grow.
Unfortunately, towards the end of the proceedings, it was also serving as a measure of Just Exactly How Much Time we were spending on all this, and it got depressing. Even if one knits like a bat out of hell, knitting an entire Ab Fab throw JUST while interviewing candidates means that one really has spent a lot of time talking to the lovely candidates, when one could have been doing all the rest of the work that one has to do, but which has stacked up and will have to get done at some other time, like after the semester's over, when one would be liking a rest.
It's done now, at any rate, and it's fantastic, as all the Ab Fab throws are, and it's going to be very useful in my office in the summer, where it will be freezing on account of the air conditioning, over which I will have no control and about which I am tired of complaining to Physical Plant. It's hard to get Physical Plant to fix ANYTHING, I find.
For a while I was also having trouble getting through the door of my office in the summer, because the door would swell and become immovable. I called and called, and they'd send somebody who would do pretty much nothing and the problem would continue. The only way I could get into my office was by throwing myself against the door in one of those Law and Order moves. But I got tired of pretending to be Lenny Briscoe, so I started simply calling them every time I got to the office and making them open my door. I figured they'd get fed up with this eventually.
They did. I was sitting in my office one day, and a couple of them came by, intending to fix the door for all time. One of them came into the office and started closing the door after himself. "Don't do that," I said. "You'll be very sorry." "I know what I'm doing," he told me.
Fine, fine, fine.
Well we were stuck in the office, weren't we? Cause once one had closed the stuck door from the inside, one had no leverage, did one? The guy on the other side of the door wasn't so very good at the Lenny Briscoe moves as I was, and it took quite a while to liberate the worker who hadn't listened to The Little Lady, who spent the entire duration of the ensuing hoohah writing whatever engaging piece of scholarly research she was working on. I ignored them completely. I figured that there wasn't anything I could do to make the stuck worker feel better, really. Though looking back on it, I suppose I could have offered him a cup of tea. Might have made things worse, though. I just pretended I wasn't there.
They finally got the door down, and since it had humiliated them, they took it off its hinges completely (which is what they'd needed to do for about 4 years at that point) and they went off and they fixed it and it's worked ever since.
But. I don't think I can pull off anything so satisfactory with the air conditioning.
Hence the need -- the NEED, I say, for the Ab Fab throw.
Sam hadn't seen this, since I'd been working on it in the office, and he's quite taken with it. We need one around the house, apparently. Yes! Yes, honey, we do! All RIGHT!
But first, to my great glee, I have to knit one for a friend who's about to have one of those Big Birthdays That Mean a Lot.
Someday the world will have run out of Ab Fab throws to knit, and we'll all have moved on. But not if I have anything to say about it.
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