Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

It's been one crazy week.

And it's only Tuesday morning.

My bread didn't mix in the bread maker Sunday night, so I woke up yesterday to a lump of baked goo. No sandwich for Little Boy. After spending almost all weekend sleeping with the Mystery Illness (bonus! free fever!) I had neither patience nor groceries to make something else. So he got a pizza roll from the local bakery, picked up on the way to school.

Work's been frustrating: I've been trying to fix an analytical instrument for over 2 weeks, and it's one thing after another going wrong. And it wasn't broken to begin with! It's routine maintenance gone very, very wrong. Add in some strange advice from the manufacturer, and voila! small lab fire, little more than a foot away from a compressed oxygen cylinder. Fun. I had already been cussed out by the guy who comes to check the smoke alarms for asking why my fume hoods had gone down (i.e. why didn't they override the alarm shutdown for the testing?) just an hour before. It's always fun explaining to your senior scientist why an instrument that wasn't broken needs to go in for repair.

So we fired up the backup instrument. Another analyzer. It's not calibrating either. It needs maintenance. It's been used once in the last 2 years. So I'm maintaining that one today. Am I worried about a repeat? Oh, yeah. I'm not touching one thing more than is absolutely necessary right now. I have dead critters awaiting analysis, and people all over the Midwest asking for results. I can't afford any more instrument failures!

So I went home last night and spun. And spun and spun. Most of a bobbin of fine singles, intended for plying for sock yarn. It's a bit more tightly spun than I had intended (go figure!!) but it's the right grist, so I guess I'll see what happens. I finally had to set a limit for myself, or I would have spun all night. I was too keyed up to knit, even. Just spin. I'll take pics soon. It's pretty stuff, and I'm enjoying the color-play, the stripes on the bobbin forming as I go.

After spinning I took a whirlpool bath and went to bed. Slept like a dream.

What do people do who don't spin or knit or whatever? What do they do when they get stressed?