A failure to Communicate

I am so bewildered by younger people and their obsession with smart phones.  They prefer to communicate by texts and email or a phone call rather than talking face to face.  I do appreciate the convenience but I do not feel I have to be available to the world 24/7.  I see people in bathroom stalls still yakking away on their phones.  That is way too intrusive for me.  What is so important that you can't end a call, do what you have to do and then call back?  From the conversations I overhear, none of them were vitally important unless spreading gossip is now vitally important.  I see more people at baseball games with their faces turned down towards their phone than out to the field.  The one that got me was the one watching the game while at the game.  Said he needed the play by play to know what was going on.  Huh? I had a case at work where the person in the next cubicle sent me an email rather than turn around and ask me the question. 

So if they would do that, why am I surprised that he wouldn't tell me that he was going back home to India for three weeks?  I guess I expect common courtesy from people. But I should know by his actions he isn't courteous.  He is rude most of the time.  I will probably have to pick up his work during his vacation because he hasn't done very much  work at all.  I also know that when I go on vacation, he will not be taking up the slack.  After all when I was sick and there was a rush project, he waited until I came back to do anything.  He said he had been working on it, but when I asked what he had started writing so I could take it out of the plan, he said he hadn't started writing.  The rush project was to write about 35 documents.  So he was working on it but hadn't written a word.  All the source documents were provided so that wasn't an issue.  Could someone explain how you could be working  on a writing project without writing something?  Perhaps he needed three days to figure that out, that there were 35 documents that needed to be written.  Personally, I think he is very lazy and incompetent.  He got a PhD from a school that needed the money, on someone else's dime and with others help, as he once admitted to me.

I did start the last sock for the Tour de Sock, the cabled brioche stitch one.  I did some of one sock but I think I am going to take it out and perhaps do one for charity later. They will be a very warm sock and thick.  I don't even know if they would fit under my hiking boots.  I need some mindless knitting, so I started a plain stockinette sweater.  I just want a little rest before I start the Ravellenic Games.  I have plans to do three shawls during the games.  Plus I do have a Kal going on with the Unique Sheep.  I've done the first two clues so far. 

The color  of the shawl will go from the darkest color, a mix of a dark blue and black through a medium blue with some green notes to a green with some blue.  The color is called Aurora Borealis and I am using a 70/30 merino silk blend.  So far it's been an easy knit, maybe about 9 hours in it so far.  The Kal is called the Spirit of Guernsey designed by Janine Le Cras. I expect the pattern will become available after the Kal, either from the Unique Sheep or Janine.  It's on a 24 inch circular right now and I think there are 3 or maybe 4 more clues.  It's a Pi shawl so, you basically double the number of stitches at each increase row.  And there's an increase row as you knit double the rows, so there's one at row 2, row 5, row 10, row 22 etc.  Elizabeth Zimmerman has several Pi shawls in her books and there are a few available on Ravelry in honor of her 100th birthday.  Janine is doing this to honor her hoe the Isle of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. 

I am going to sign off now, get knitting and preparing for the Games.  After all there is a mass cast on Friday night.  Bye.