Murphy's Law. I guess I should have posted my tirade earlier. Soon after I hit "publish" this afternoon, I got a call from my doctor.

1. their phones were on the blink since yesterday.
2. someone will re-fax my letter
3. someone will call me to confirm I got the fax

I did get the fax and the confirmation call and I did get the letter delivered to the disabilities lady in HR. Today was her last day. sheesh. She will leave it for the other woman in that office (the one with whom I spoke in the first place). She was out today. I might need more documentation, but it's up to her when she gets in in the morning. double sheesh. Isn't a headache everyday for two and a half weeks enough documentation? I reported all of this to my Assistant Division Chief who will help me out if I need more for HR. I'm beginning to get some real hope.

Two weeks ago I reported on my new cubicle in our new office building. I am happy to report I'm still getting headaches everyday. In addition to that, I'm extremely pleased to report the adjacent parking garage has a big crack in it from too much snow and ice piled in one place, and therefore is closed. But that's another story.

I finally got to see my doctor last Thursday (first appointment was canceled because of snow) so I can get a note to take to the disabilities office so I can get the headache inducing lights removed from my area. She said she'd have it written by Friday, Monday at the latest. At 3:30 on Monday I got a call from the office manager at the doctor's office telling me "the computers are messed up" and she couldn't get my letter to me until Tuesday. Tuesday at 3:30 I start calling their office again to inquire about my precious letter. The recording says they are out to lunch and lunch lasts an hour and a half. At 5 til 5:00 I finally get a call from the office manager, she has the letter and will fax it to me and rattles off the number. I want to check it since it's new in the new building but she says it's what the doctor wrote down and disconnects. It was the wrong number. I try to call back, but they are still out to lunch. When they are out to lunch, you cannot leave a message.

And they were still out to lunch until almost 2:00 this afternoon. When they finally answered the phone, I learn the office manager is not in today and no one else knows what's going on. And the doctor is with patients. I called again a bit ago, talked to someone new, she didn't know what is going on, will pull my chart and try to find the letter.

I'm tired of my head hurting every day. I'm tired of complaining about this with no results. I'm tired of not being able to get any work done. I'm tired of being tied to the small bit of "land" under this beach umbrella. I like my job, (when I can do it) and don't want to leave my agency, but my future here is a little too bright.

We had a two hour snow delay this morning—from the 4" of snow that fell yesterday—so I had some time to put up this batch hand-dyed fabrics before the kids had to catch their buses. A blend of red-brown to olive green. I'm thinking about making more to sell at our quilt guild's show next month. Should I? Whadiya think? What colors should I dye?

The windows in our church's sanctuary look out on the surrounding woods and with today's snow, it was a beautiful, peaceful landscape to behold. The worship service started normally, but, well, first, let me say I side with the bat.

The youth minister's son's baptism was postponed until after the sermon because not all the family's guests had arrived yet. That threw the organist off.

After about 5 minutes into the pastor's sermon I notice something flying around. I realized it wasn't a bird and nudged Fern and pointed out the bat to her. A few minutes later Reverend James noticed it too and stopped his sermon. We all sat in silence watching it fly in circles around the sanctuary. I wish he had just ignored it and continued with the homily, but didn't. Things went down hill from there when the congregants started throwing coats up at the bat.

What were they expecting to accomplish by throwing coats at this bat? Poor little thing, scared and lost, and now heavy winter coats. It finally got cornered and ushered out and James went on with the baptism, abandoning the sermon altogether.

The service was disjointed and gave me a sense of being incomplete, wonder what the rest of the day will bring? Oh yeah, snow.

Another quilt finished! This is Kevin's Autism quilt as it hangs in his room on the wall.

This is a close-up of the quilting I did in each block. I used mono-poly in a stipple meander in the background fabric and thread to match the star points in the centers of each star.

This is a sink full of hand-dyed fabric the women did at the quilting retreat. I love the colors! Click on any picture to enlarge.

The piggy bank has been washed and the money inside is no longer green. (see previous post.) I was thinking about opening a savings account for Kev while I was "laundering" the coins in his bank. One of the local banks has a free coin counting machine and I could let him take his bank to the bank and have the change counted. He'd love it. He likes putting the quarters in the soda machines when we let him. He gets the concept of money in slots, he's even deposited quarters in the slot of my sewing machine. I don't know if he'd get the whole concept savings accounts, however. I'll have to talk to Dan about it.

Speaking of Dan, he's started a new music blog, posting a song of the day every day, just click over there on the right to get there and listen. I love his taste in music, much more adventurous than mine, guess that's one of the reasons I married him. :)

I'm back from my 3-night quilting retreat. The car is not quite unpacked, but it's getting there. It took 7 trips to get the car loaded from the retreat center, and probably more than that to get it unloaded now into the house.

I got a lot done in addition to leading the mystery quilt and the fabric dyeing workshops. I'm so thrilled the ladies seemed to enjoy both activities. I'll post pictures of the quilts I worked on as soon as I get the car unloaded and the pictures downloaded.

I better check on Kevin, he headed off with a tub of paint and a brush. later.....

I was irritated this morning on my way to work when a woman passed me in the carpool lane. I had seen her first in my rear view mirror without a passenger and as she went past I saw the backseat was also void of any child seats, too. Solo in her plain white car wearing a ball cap. Then was doubly irritated when the woman in the blue car behind me jumped over to the carpool lane. I was going a bit over the speed limit, but apparently not fast enough. She, too, was solo. I saw the woman in the white car check her rear view mirrow and pull back into the regular lane and the blue car drive on.

Now, I've seen enough cop shows on TV in my life to know the plain white car was an unmarked patrol car and was thrilled beyond belief when I got to my exit and saw the ball-cap woman had pulled over the blue car woman, headlights flashing. Ah, the joy!

I'm finished!

I finished the Retreat Quilt last night. I am such a perfectionist when it comes to quilting, I can't stand anything wrong, any seam not lining up, but this one, I just let it go. I didn't trim the batting off exactly the same width all the way round, I didn't even try to make it exactly straight. I sewed the binding on by machine, not a speck of exacting hand work went into it. I'm done and I'm happy.

And it's beautiful!


Close up of one block.


This is about a quarter of the quilt. It's 80" x 90" so I can't show the whole thing at once unless I hang it on a fence or something but it's too icy for that.

Well, I've moved in to my new office space. I got in on Monday and immediately got a headache, went out to lunch with friends and it went away. After lunch the headache was back. I hate these overhead lights. Right now I'm sitting under an umbrella which is propped up over my computer. Yesterday I wore a Panama hat. Any ideas for tomorrow?

To get the lights permanently turned off (like they were in my other office) I have to get the Services office to come by. They won't come by until they get a work order from the Disabilities Office. The Disabilities office won't issue a work order until I get a doctor's note. I can't get a doctor's note until I can get an appointment. I had one for today but the office was closed because of weather. Meanwhile I try to stave off headaches and get work done.

I'm almost unpacked, just a bit of little desk stuff to put away, but I'm waiting to do that because my drawer sticks and the fix-it guys are supposed to come by. I don't want to load up that drawer only to have to unload it when they come.

I've been finding interesting scraps of paper on and in my desk as I clean up to move.

Here's a list:
sponges
tomatoes
tractor battery
gas
lemonade

Here's another:
2 eggs
cake mix
can of pie filling
bundt pan - greased
bake 50 minutes @ 350°
__
German choc & cherries
spice & apple


This one is a to-do list (I hope I did this, I'm throwing this scrap away):

• add target to html url
• take out p
• and/or shipments in warning
• copy

This scrap is the most cryptic:
47.85 head
750 a.m.
345


What does it all mean?

I enjoyed my time at home yesterday morning, mostly because I got to work on my retreat quilt and the kids were having fun on their day off. (I am about half done with quilting the quilt!)

Then I got to work. We're moving to our new office building on Monday, so we have to get packed this week. It's hard to pack and work at the same time: I can't pack that yet, I might need it! or I can't pack that yet, it's got to be on top when I unpack. I've gotten rid of a lot, unearthed lots of "treasures" I'd long forgotten about, and wondered where I'll hang my maps since we have height restrictions now in our new cubicles, nothing can be higher than the glass in partitions. The style police do come by and leave "love" letters if you're out of compliance.

Wonder how many citations I'll get?

There is an inch of show on the ground and school is closed today! Sheesh. Maybe other parts of the county are in bad shape, but it looked like a two-hour delay out my window to me, really only a one-hour delay, but we don't seem to have such things here. Dan headed off to work and I've got the morning shift with the kids. They are still in bed at the moment so I've got quiet time to do more quilting on the retreat quilt. I finished the binding on the cat quilt for CG's daughter last night during American Idol, now I just need to sew the hanging sleeve down and put on a label.

Thank Goodness for broken water pipes! Well, only when they supply water to my office building and I get a day off! I've already loaded and started the dishwasher, took a load of neighbor girls to school, and worked on a quilt.

I have a thermometer in the van that reads the outside temp. It started out at 45°F in the garage and dropped down to 10°F by the time we got to school, the girls counting down the temp like the rocket count-down. They were disappointed it didn't go to single digits. I reminded them 22° below freezing was cold enough. It was interesting to me to "watch" their brains work, sure 10° was cold but 22° below freezing made the cold more real.

The quilt I'm working on this morning has been in progress for almost two years. I started it at quilt retreat in '05, I got the top done last year and got it basted a month ago or so. It is my "retreat" quilt because I needed a quilt for my bed at the retreat center, using a sleeping bag sacrilegious, somehow. The pattern is called "birds in the air" and each set of "birds" are of a different fabric, 56 in all. The background is a geranium print, thus the name of the quilt is Birds in the Geraniums.

Click to enlarge.

Here is a little "Trip Around the World" I made over the weekend from my new hand-dyed fabric. (click to enlarge.) I'm debating whether to put on a border to make it bigger. What do you think?

Ta Da! I finally got this set rinsed out. It only took almost three days. sheesh. I've got a pattern in mind and I'll cut them up tomorrow to start on it. Stay tuned!

Here are my blue-greens after the first rinse. There is still a lot of errant dye in there to get out, so it may take a few attempts to get the water to run clear. The rinsing is the not-so-fun part of dyeing fabric. Sometimes you think the water will never run clear and your hands will always look like you stole them from a smurf. Or, when the water finally does run clean you do a final wash in synthrapol and the water is blue again, way blue.

The furnace guys are installing the new 90% efficient unit today. There was a miscommunication about the humidifier to be installed. I thought it was included with the furnace, but it was only included when I bought a whole system: heat plus air. I didn't want the whole system now, (more like I didn't want to spend that much now) so the humidifier wasn't included. (So it is included with the air conditioner? No.) When I said I only wanted the furnace, I meant I didn't want the air, He thought I meant I only wanted the furnace.

It just made me very, oh jeez, I don't even know the word for it, tricked? What it boils down to, I think, is salesmen. I always feel I've been slimed. Dan and I joined a gym about 10 years ago, we wanted to, but after the whole sales process I felt like I never wanted to go to the gym again and canceled as soon as we could. Ever feel like this?