Tuesday afternoon I took the kids to the zoo. And I took the "big" camera. It's hard to take time to set up good animal shots when the kids want to keep moving, but here are my attempts.
gazelle
prairie dog
papa lion
This tiger was gnawing on and playing with this burlap bag. I'm not sure what was in it, maybe catnip. I don't usually see zoo animals actually moving, but I managed to capture him mid-jump. I'll work on the focus later...
Summer's here, the kids are out of school. But day camp hasn't started yet for Kevin. Somehow the county recreation commission didn't schedule day camps this week leaving Kevin without care. He's aged-out of other programs but the county has the teen camp for special needs kids. But not this week. Or the week right before school starts, either. Of course. Grrr.
Anyway, Dan and I are splitting the days to be with the kids. One of us works 7-12 and the other 12-5. That way we don't have to take so much vacation leave. Monday Dan took the early shift at work and I had kid duty. He called mid-morning to tell me the corolla, on which we just had $2600 of repairs made, gave him trouble on the way to work. Then he called at noon to tell me it won't start, when he's supposed to be driving home. sheesh. So I met him in the garage and he took the new car home and I got a ride home with a fellow Bowieite.
After the repairs a month ago, I got a customer service call from the dealership asking if everything was OK with the work done, and I reported we still had trouble starting it, you have to find the "sweet spot" with the clutch or it wouldn't start in the mornings. Can you bring it back in? Well, no unless I can get a loaner car. Well no, because we don't know what's wrong with it so you'll have to wait while we look at it. sheesh. I'll call you then, when we have time.
So, I called the lady in customer service back on Monday and told her it won't now start at all and it's stuck in a garage 20 miles away and what is she going to do about it? Nothing, apparently, that they don't have to. They work with a towing company, of course, that will come get the car, and take it to the garage. If it was the shop's fault, which it never is, they will pay for the tow.
Tuesday morning, I get a ride to work with the fellow Bowieite for the 7-12 shift and call the tow company when I get there. When the driver gets there I get him through security and over to the garage to get the car. Except he's in a flatbed truck too tall to get in so we push the car out of the spot and I pop the clutch on the ramp and get it started. At that point I could have driven it to a local shop, but didn't and sent it back to Bowie instead.
Dan and I are expecting the worst at this point, having to scrap around and get to work and care for the kids with one car and buy another car all at the same time.
When they finally get around to calling me, my "service tech" (service? pul-eeze) said it was the starter, which was fine when they checked it a couple weeks ago, of course. Which means they won't pay for the tow. And because I didn't go through AAA in the first place, I have to pay the overinflated dealer kick-back price. Of course. Total bill: $630. Better than another $17k, I suppose. But still. Maybe I'll call the general manager today and complain about the whole thing. Something is just fishy.
We had the best room ever. Too bad Fern wasn't with us. Somehow we scored a deluxe suite with a large kitchen area, living room area, two full beds AND a king bed in separate room; three of us in a room that could have slept eight.
When we planned this trip we talked about allowing Fern to invite a friend along, but as it turns out, this friend had a birthday sleep-over and Fern opted to stay home and attend the party. Come to think of it, it was the first time we went away with out her when she was not at camp or with grandparents.
Anyway, our semiannual trip to Great Wolf Lodge (Williamsburg, VA) was good. I missed Fern, but Kevin had his usual great time. I think the best time to visit the water park is first thing in the morning as soon as it opens. I noticed everyone seemed to be well-rested and in a good mood, the kids all seemed to be well behaved. And the lines are short. Later in the day, early evening, the kids are all tired and cranky and the parents, in general, are irritated with these cranky kids. We arrived about 6pm last night and Kevin and I stayed at the water park until about 9 when Dan brought us dinner. Kevin is never cranky, he's so happy to be there, he's polite and doesn't cut in line. At one point he even stacked up some of the tubes nobody was using.
Since our last visit they changed the door locks from key cards to electronic wristbands so you've got your room key with you at all times, no chance leaving it in your other pants. You need to have a wristband anyway to get into the park so this is a great addition. The clerks at the donut shop even scan it for a purchase. Cool. (I wonder why Williamsburg took so long to get them, the GWL at the Poconos had them when we were there in January of '07.) Upon check-out I let them know it was the best visit yet because it was the first time our room was ready when we got there and because of our room upgrade. I think they were glad of my complement.
Oh, and we put a couple hundred miles on the new car.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Over the last several weeks the van has been acting strangely, shuddering, the engine racing with no power, check engine light flashing. Wednesday night I didn't make it home after quilt meeting. Luckily I pulled in to a church parking lot before it died. I called the dealership and told the service guy the symptoms and he told me it sounded like I needed a new transmission and how much it would be. Ouch.
I hate lunch. I mean I like to eat it, but I'd rather just have someone give it to me than to have to think about it and plan it and prepare it and remember to take it to work with me and then remember to eat it.
I tend to not think about food until I'm hungry. (I think this is one of my major faults as a wife and mom—meal planning. I said one of my faults)
I went grocery shopping last night for the family, we were out of a lot of things since we were away for the weekend. I even put on my list "lunch stuff for mom" and aisle after aisle, nothing interested me. I forced myself to purchase single serving microwave soups and salami, but if I don't plan, I'm scratching my head at 1:45 every day wondering why I'm hungry.
We went to Birmingham for Dan's friends' wedding over the weekend. We stayed over an extra day and went to the DeSoto Caverns. The cave was the main attraction, but they built other things to do. Dan said it was kinda like what he imagined Grubby Gulch to be, if you remember your Lizzy McGuire days. I had more fun than I expected in the squirt-gun maze and ran out of water too quickly. I need to do that again.
The mini-golf was brutal. There was a creek that ran under the course and every hole gave you the opportunity to lose your ball in the drink. I did pretty well until the 8th hole when I lost my ball and didn't recover it until I ran back down to the 3rd hole. I wondered if I was supposed to play back up the hill again, or just walk. It was a good day even though it was HOT!
I'm sitting on the terrace of the Park Lane in Birmingham feeling quite stuffed. The food was too good. It was mostly hors d'oeuvres buffet style. The bride even chose to have a shrimp and grits bar. We don't get shrimp and grits in Maryland.
I can see the bride through the window dancing with her friends and the groom working the room. They were dancing a slow number a few minutes ago.
The cake became self-serve after the initial rush, and I was the lucky one to get the next tier servable by removing the support plate and crumbs from the decimated layer above. I was just trying to get myself a piece and before I knew it, there were six people wanting pieces next to me.
Fern was quick to find and hang with the posse of new friends, children and cousins of the bride and groom, and of course embarrassed to have parents dancing close by. Oh well.
This morning as I head towards AM's house for our morning walk I hear "Ma'am!" I look around. It's the lady who lives in the house with the pretty back yard. It has gotten so many beautification contest awards they've asked her to stop entering, or so I hear. I stop to answer her and instantly become mosquito breakfast. she tells me to watch out for the fox, she'd just seen it on the side of her yard chasing a squirrel. I need to be careful.
I look around and realize this is the house where I saw the deer running by on Tuesday. So I ask her about them. There are three, and she sees them all the time. They are comfortable in her backyard and often tip-toe back there and lie down. OK, she didn't say tip-toe, but she described how they carefully walk across the street and they live over near the railroad tracks. They come most mornings about this time. Hmm, I've only ever seen them once, and that was Tuesday, so it can't always be this time. At which point I slap at a couple mosquitoes and look around again for the fox and bid this woman a good day.
I meet up with AM and relay the exchange to her. She then tells me schools are closed today. We had some horrific thunder storms roll through yesterday, three separate cells, and a lot of schools are without power, so they closed the whole county. Monday is the scheduled last day of school, but the kids won't be attending. So are they going to make it up on Tuesday? She doesn't know. Later I found out they are not going to make it up, which I'm happy and sad about. They pushed Kevin's graduation ceremony from today to Monday and now he'll miss it. I'm very bummed. (See my husband's blog for pictures of our storm damage.)
We bought thank-you cards for him to give to his teachers. Now I just have to get him to write them out. I hope he can get this last thing done for him before the summer break.
Yesterday morning during my walk I saw a flash of brown, a big flash of brown, like the size and color of a great dane. I instantly feared for my life. I have dog issues, I'm not ashamed to admit it. It started when I was in kindergarten. My mom would visit a neighbor who had a german shepherd. It would be tethered to its doghouse and would bark incessantly and jump at me when I'd walk over there after school to find Mom. I was too frightened to walk around the perimeter of its reach to the house.
I froze in my tracks, looking where I'd seen the flash of brown and following the trajectory of where I might see it again. It was a deer, two deer, in fact, running through the neighborhood. They were pretty far from the woods, several streets away. Rabbits? yeah, they are a common sight, but deer, in our neighborhood, on the side close to the highway? Wow.
All my machine quilting skills can be summed up briefly: straight lines, or meandering. Before spring break I bought two books on machine quilting by Diane Gaudynski. I've been wanting to be able to do more than that because straight lines and meandering gets boring. I have a stack of quilt tops waiting to be worked on and I don't want to do the same kind of quilting over and over. I've been reading the books, but it's time to try it out. So, the other night I drew up a practice feather wreath and did something new.
This is my first attempt of quilting following Diane's instructions looking at the back of my piece:
Not too bad, right? That's because I had white thread in the bobbin. This is the top where I had pink thead:
Yikes!!!!! The pink thread shows every mistake, every wobbly line. It's not very encouraging to see this side. A year and a half ago I bought the mid-line Bernina 440QE sewing machine. It came with a stitch regulator, a BSR, a gadget that reads how far the fabric has moved since the last stitch so it knows when to take the next one and all the stitches are the same length. Consistent stitch length is a goal of quilters, so the BSR is a helpful gadget. I've quilted several quilts with it in the meander style and it is great. It's like learning to steer a car without having to learn how fast to drive. The faster you move the fabric, the faster it sews, you don't have to worry about the foot pedal.
Last night I drew up another practice piece and quilted it without the BSR so I had to steer the fabric and control the machine speed at the same time. Somehow, it worked a little better. Go figure. I'll keep practicing. I'll be comfortable enough one of these days to work on a "real" piece. Maybe.
Scene: Last night; middle school cafeteria; crowded; rows of folding chairs filled with lots of parents with cameras; chairs and podium on the stage.
I'm sitting on a aisle seat so I can get up quickly to take pictures when I need to. I don't know where Dan is sitting.
The orchestra sounds better than I expected.
My cell phone rings and I put my earbud in and took the call.
I enjoy three selections by the 7th grade band.
The Rest of the Story:
I'm at Tasker Middle for the 8th grade awards ceremony, Dan's at Ogle Middle at Fern's spring band concert. Both started at 7:00 pm. Kevin sat with the students on the front row. From where I was sitting I could see a little of him and he seemed well behaved. He got called up to the stage four times for awards in "most improved in science," "academic excellence in math and reading," "academic excellence with a 4.0 gpa," and perfect attendance. Each time he went up with little or no prompting, accepted his certificate, and shook hands with the administrators and returned to his seat like a pro. Dan calls me when the 7th graders take the stage so I can hear Fern play. Shortly after she was done I lost reception so I couldn't return the favor and Dan couldn't hear Kevin's name for his 4.0 gpa. I did take pictures, however. But I can't post them because the camera battery is on the charger at home. Doh.
I hate this time of year. Oh, I love spring, don't get me wrong. But I hate it.
Tuesday it was 85° outside and 70° in the office. Wednesday it was 55° in the morning outside and 68° inside. How am I supposed to dress for that? I still need my winter wardrobe for the office, or else I'll freeze. And when I go outside dressed like it's February, I roast. There's no winning.
How come if I microwave a pack of microwave bacon for 2 minutes and 45 seconds it's not quite done enough and I have to add 30 seconds 3 times so it's not raw in the middle, but if I set the timer to 3:15 it burns beyond consumption?
Dan was away this weekend so I held down the fort myself. It wasn't hard to hold down, gravity pretty much did it for me.
I let Fern have Mandy sleep over Friday night. I tend to be lenient when I'm on solo fort patrol, if Fern is occupied, then she's not as much as of a pain as when she's by herself. Saturday morning I dropped Kevin off at AM's for her oldest to watch and took the girls to Danny's bar mitzvah. There was no way Kevin could have sat through a two and a half hour service. Afterward, I took home three girls and collected Kevin.
At 5:30 AM's oldest and her cousin came over and I took the three girls to the Bar Mitzva reception party. AM and Mark were seated at another table and I didn't know anyone at my table so initially I thought I was going to hate the next four hours. But my table mates turned out to be lovely people, one even works here in my building. I'd never had the privilege of attending a party like this, except maybe my own wedding, and my children weren't there then. Havdalah was new to me as well. I stayed out of Fern's way so she could have a good time without me around, but I still spied on her when I could. She did a good job keeping other people between me and her a lot of the time, the rabbi even reported he'd seen her dancing a slow dance with a boy but I missed it.
As it turns out, this was the same boy with whom she was on the phone for 75 minutes Friday night. My teeth almost fell out when I found that out. I was perusing the cell phone bill Sunday and saw the calls. I had wanted to check the number of text messages she used on the way home from the party on Saturday. She and the girls were talking about how much fun they'd had, and after a while I gathered (yes, I was eaves dropping!) two of them were texting another boy from the party on the car ride home, one being my daughter. Giggling never lies.
Anyway, Sunday. I took the kids to church, and to Five Guys afterward. Fern got soup from Panera, instead. I've entered a new level of bribing Kevin. Instead of promising him Five Guys if he goes to church, I promised him Five Guys after church if he'd let me check his teeth brushing. See how sneaky that was? He's not good at brushing his front bottom teeth well enough and he doesn't want me to inspect. Now he lets me check his teeth and he goes to church. Brilliant.
In the afternoon I did some yard work. I got the shrubs around sidewalk trimmed, and used the wagon to haul over some mulch JustMe offered. The wagon broke after the second load. Ever since the break, I've been trying to work out in my mind how I can rebuild the wagon. It was a beautiful Radio Flier when it was new. My parents gave it to us for the kids. Now we use it for yard work, except not any more. The trucks are still in good shape, it's just the deck that needs replaced. And since I won't be carrying kids, it doesn't have to be pretty, just functional. I need to get more mulch, I've got more beds that still need attention. But what's another year of neglect, anyway?
I took Fern and Mandy shopping for a new bathing suit and then went to a Mexican restaurant for a late supper. The girls have a Spanish final this week so they ordered their food in Spanish. Kevin even ate a taco! Then I let Mandy spend the night again. And for some reason there is a 98 minute call to that same boy. Maybe Mandy has something to do with Fern's propensity to talk a lot with him? Hmm. I'll have to inspect her phone bill some more to determine a correlation.
Monday I taught Fern how to drive the lawn tractor and mow the lawn. At first she was going too fast relative to her ability to control her mowing so I made her keep it in 2nd gear. I mow in 4th. Her legs were too short to reach the break so I scooted the seat forward for her. I'm hoping with years of practice, she'll transfer the knowledge to driving a car. When we let her. When she's 20.
Dan got home at 2:00 and I'd promised Kevin I'd take him to the pool so we all went. I already posted about that. Not some of my better posts, but what do you expect tapping out one letter at a time on an iPhone while getting sunburned poolside?
This morning on my walk with AM, in a neighbor's trash pile, (Tuesdays are trash days) I saw a piece of wood, a perfect new deck for my wagon project. wahoo!
Fern at the Bar Mitzvah
Fern with AM's son and Danny.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Now, an hour later the shade creeps closer and is welcome.
I'm sitting in a lounge chair poolside at our pool club. I know water is too cold before July, so I didn't even bring a suit. I have to retrain my eyes so I can spot Kevin among kids because he's grown three feet since last summer. I also didn't bring a book to read. Since I've been quilting a lot I don't have books in the queue. It tends to be one or the other with me.
The pool club had to take a lot of trees down so shade is at a premium this year, I already miss it. Especially missed are the trees around the parking lot. And the grounds look so bear now.
I need your help. Study the picture below or click to enlarge. How does it look, does it flow? Is the arrangement pleasing? There are nine rows of 11 blocks. If you were to rearrange any of these which would they be?
I think the block at row 7, block 1 (from the left) needs to be swapped, but with what? And 6-9 is out of place too, but what block belongs there?
I'm trying to retrace my steps and figure out what I did with my work ID badge. Can't leave home without it.
Well, apparently, I did. I couldn't find it this morning so I had to get a temporary badge today. Which is a pain because I have to stop at the guard's booth first, then go to the badging office to get one to use for the day.
Yesterday I left work. I had it then, I used it at the badge reader to get out of the building.
I went to my massage therapy appointment and I'm pretty sure it was still clipped to my pocket when I left.
I took money to Fern so she could have a snack during tutoring.
I got gas in the rental car.
I went to the dealership to turn in the rental and pick up the Toyota. I could have bought two HD LCD TV's for what the repairs cost. But hey! They gave me a new battery, yes, GAVE. I guess I can't be too mad at them for the other lapses in customer service. Did I tell you they wanted $40 to install two light bulbs? sheesh. Granted, changing an auto light bulb is a smidge more difficult than changing your garden variety household incandescent bulb, but not $40 more difficult. I'm pretty sure I had my ID badge there and hadn't left it in the rental.
I went back to the gas station to put gas in the Toyota.
I went home to wait for Kevin to come home from swim team practice.
I went to pick up Fern from tutoring and took her to softball practice, but it had started raining so it was canceled. Today is the HSA test, the High School Assessment in algebra. I hope all the tutoring "takes" and she does well and she doesn't have to take the class over again. She'll be bored out of her skull if she has to repeat the class. So bored, she probably won't turn in any assignments and get low grades again. sheesh.
I drove home. This is where my mind gets fuzzy. I think I still had my badge on my pocket and told myself to take it off, I didn't need it at home. But did I? Did I take it off? Where did I put it? I normally drive the van, but Dan had been driving it this week while I took care of the repairs on the other car, so at that point I couldn't have put my badge back in the van where I usually keep it because Dan had the van at golf league.
I did some Girl Scout badge sewing and talked to a new client. Her daughter is in a troop in a different service unit from the troops I've been sewing for, which means the mom will spread the word about my service and I'll potentially have more clients from the troops there. My ID never came into question.
So this morning, it's not in my bag, nor in my jacket pocket. It's not clipped to yesterday's clothes pocket. It's not visible on the kitchen counter. Not on the bathroom counter, not on the bed-side table. Not on the sewing table. I'm going nuts, I tell you.
Where did I put the silly thing, the ID with the horrid picture of me?
I guess it's time to round-up yet another weekend.
Today I got in to work late because the courtesy van didn't pick me up until almost 9:00 when I asked to be picked up at 8:00. The Toyota is in the shop for general maintenance, you know, all that stuff that you're supposed to be doing all along but haven't, which includes a new clutch. We dropped it off Sunday night and by 3:00 yesterday afternoon I still hadn't heard what the status was. I didn't hear back until after 6:00 what was wrong and how long it's going to take to fix, and how much it was going to cost. Two days and many car payments-worth. They'll give me a complementary loaner, but I'll have to pick it up on Tuesday because the rental counter closes at, you guessed it, 6 pm. Sheesh.
I teleworked yesterday since we only had one car. I actually got a lot done. I had a report to do I'd been putting off. Weird part was, I was comfy-cozy at home and didn't even do the blog thing. I feel like I'm shut off from the world sometime when I don't read my blogs.
Sunday Dan was under the weather so Kevin and I went to church, and later we went with my neighbor to the fabric store. Much to our pleasure, mine and my neighbor's, not Kevin's, they had a unannounced sale, fabric was 30% off. I didn't go too crazy, I just got four pieces. One was a planned purchase, three were spontaneous selections.
It's that season, end of the school year, when I'm getting a lot of Girl Scout vests to work on. Moms are trying to get their daughters' vests caught up before the end-of-the-year awards ceremonies.
To sew badges on, I use clear thread, large needle, and a zig-zag sewing foot, not the the same gear as with quilt making. Two weeks ago I sewed like crazy on the new red quilt and finished 2/3 of my blocks, but got tired of them and welcomed the break of the badge work. But the vests kept coming and my quilt project kept calling me back. Over the weekend I switched out the badge sewing gear for the quilting gear and finished the last 36 blocks last night. Now I can start laying them out to sew together. But in the mean time, it's back to vests. I've got two Brownie vests in the queue. I've already gotten about 20 new clients since January so I can't complain, I am getting paid.
Kevin had another Special Olympic swim meet on Saturday, this one up north of Frederick, MD. I volunteered to help when I got there because it wold have been a long boring day if I had nothing to do. Kevin swam in three events: 25 free, 20 free, and 25 back stroke; and got a third, second, and first, respectively.
I took a new camera with me to the meet. It's not a new camera, just new to me. A friend just bought a Nikon D3 and I'm playing with his old Nikon D50. When you carry a big camera around, you get asked to photograph things you hadn't planned on. (Iamnot posted about this very thing sometime last year.) I'm not really happy with all the photos, I didn't expect a learning curve, there is one, but here are the better shots.
Kevin ready to swim
Finishing the race
Kevin getting his second place ribbon.
Waiting to Swim
Just after the swim
Look Ma!
These two were my attempts at capturing the beauty of the raindrops on the wild grape vines. I'm getting tired of this rain, by the way. Which photo is better?
Note to reader: I started this post Tuesday and didn't get a chance to finish, so now it covers two days.
I was wrong. It didn't work.
Kevin was napping before I even got home yesterday. (See yesterday's post.) He woke up around 9 pm despite several attempts at rousing him earlier. And he was still awake at midnight.
He's going through some new OCD thing, I guess. We have to be in bed just right, heads on pillows just so, arms under the covers, or he'll "fix" us, Dan mostly, but still. It's annoying because he's not letting us sleep and frustrating because he doesn't understand not to do it. I wrote out a script of rules.
Bed time is at 10:00 pm. I will be quiet when Mommy and Daddy are sleeping I will not turn on the lights. etc.
These scripts usually help direct him to appropriate behavior, but once he's worked up, he doesn't always comprehend the rules he's reading.
Freshman Orientation
At 8:30 Tuesday morning I took Kevin to the high school to meet his teacher for next year and to tour the school. There are 45 CRI students at Bowie High School separated into four classes and I recognized many of them from Kevin's other schools, Special Olympics, day camps and after care programs. It becomes a small community after a while.
In addition to academics in the CRI classes, there is a big vocational program. Job skills and work etiquette are taught from the beginning. Several of the first-year students even work at NASA in the rocket lab cafeteria. In Maryland non-diploma track students stay in school until they are 21, so for six years they get a lot of on-the-job experience, and often have permanent jobs by the time they finish school.
Students who are independent and show aptitude in special areas can take elective classes with the general population, like art, cooking, and music, but it's not required. There is not the integration with the rest of the school Kevin had in middle school, every quarter he had different class.
I got a good vibe from the tour even though the school is so large, so I'm not too worried at this point, but my baby's going to high school. That in itself has inherent apprehension.
Last night Dan went to the Orioles game and I took the opportunity to try to get Kevin back into a cycle of sleeping when he should without Daddy distracting him. I ran a lot of errands with Kevin so he couldn't nap and when we got home directed him to homework. It kinda worked, he went to bed around 11 instead of 12 or 1:00.
I'll take one victory at a time, no matter how small. Although I wish victories were bigger and came more often.
Kevin was up past 3:00 Saturday night. And let us know about it. Sheesh.
Sometime after 2:00 I promised him Five Guys after church if he'd just go to bed. Eventually he did.
I knew he'd take a nap when we got home from Five Guys which would then push his bed time back to some ungodly hour, again. I hate that.
Time for a preemptive strike. I camped out on my bed, where he like to take his naps, and attacked the backlog of laundry, matching socks and stacking underwear, while watching episodes of Lost on DVD. Every once in a while I'd hand him a stack of something to put away and he finally gave up on the nap idea and played computer games, instead.
I started at the beginning of season one of Lost since I hadn't seen it in a while. If you keep up with the show, you know we've learned things this season that blow "normal" TV out of the water. If the series hadn't done that already. So yesterday, I watched the first five or six episodes and I noticed that all those early comments, seemingly innocent at the time, have deeper meanings and are clues for the future. It's just like reading all the Harry Potter books over again after you've learned the end of the story and all those clues Harry and gang glossed over in the early years pop out at you like someone took a highlighter and marked up your books.
I started to head downstairs around dinner time but got shooed back up. I was served surf and turf dinner "in bed" and then I finally came downstairs for real to watch the Survivor finale at 8:00.
Kevin did have somewhat of a normal bed time, about 11:30, so the strategy worked for the most part. And, this is the bonus part, he won't (oughtn't) have that domino effect tonight and take a nap as soon as he gets home from after-care. He's off to high school in the fall and they have a start time of 7:30 which means he'll have to get up an hour earlier. Yikes. We'll have all summer to practice getting up early, right?
Friday, May 09, 2008
I'm thinking about putting a taxi meter in the van.
Wednesday: 5:00 Fern to algebra tutoring 5:30 pick up Kevin from after-care 5:45 pick up supper for said children 5:50 deliver said supper to Fern at tutoring 6:55 pick up Fern from tutoring 7:00 take Fern to softball practice 8:30 pick up Fern from softball
Well, I'm really rounding-up a lot more than the weekend, it's been a long time since I've been able to sit down at a computer and blog. I've been away from the office, too.
At the crack of dawn on Thursday I took the Acela to New York with a colleague to do some usability testing on a new instrument for work. After the last interview, I headed to SoHo for an appointment with Lina for a new haircut. I needed to get the mess fixed from the last cut I got. The new do is fab. I guess I'm too old to talk like that. The new haircut is great, especially a day later after all the stylin' was washed out. When I went to pay I was told my bill was five-twenty. $520? I don't even pay Nick, the owner, near that much. I say out loud "$5.20?" After a consultation with another clerk I was charged the proper amount.
I headed uptown to Times Square to the TKTS booth to meet my colleague to pick out a show to see. Whilst considering our choices, a man with two tickets ($76/seat) to August: Osage County offered them to us for $50 total. The show is pretty new, we'd never heard of it, but this man "swears" it'll win the Tony next month. (He was dumping the tickets because of a Rangers' game, or so he says.) Anyway, we took them and enjoyed the drama, although it was over three hours long and we didn't get back to the hotel until almost midnight.
Friday: another interview for work and lunch and the train home. Friday night, Kevin had more swim team practice, he has a meet on Sunday, and I spent the time cutting fabric for another quilt I'm working on. Yes, another quilt. No, I never finish anything, just start, start, start.... It's called ADD, thank you.
Saturday I took Kevin to his activity and went over to the Honda dealership to look at the Fit. I'm very tired of the 20 mpg my van gets, so I'm dreaming of a more efficient car. The Fit is a compact station wagon, the trunk holds at least two bags of golf clubs and a couple suitcases, that and cruise control, what else do I need?
In the afternoon, I fired up the newly tuned-up lawn tractor and mowed the front yard. I dumped all the clippings around the trees instead of bagging them. It's a lot easier, but I still get stuff all over me. And in my hair.
Sunday after church I mowed the back yard. As I circled back around for another lap I noticed gobs of bunny fluff. At first I thought I hit a rabbit, but then I couldn't remember actually hitting it. And, there was no blood on the fluff. Alas, I'd uncovered a nest. The babies are about 3 inches long with brown fur and long skinny legs. I tried to be careful not to touch the area so the mom would come back and take care of the young'uns. I tried to take pictures of the critters, but I just got blurry fur. They sure do move around a lot. I showed Fern later and she thinks there are about seven future flower eaters in the nest. My words, not hers.
I wanted to get the Living room and sewing room vacuumed, that meant I had to pick up and put away the erector set that Kevin had so graciously placed dumped all over the room. I cannot just scoop and dump, I have to put every part away in the proper compartment, every little nut, every bolt, everything. (Again with the ADD/OCD!) This, of course is the slow way and Kevin comes down stairs to check on me before I'm finished. Oh well, all this work for naught. i prepare myself for the undoing of my work. But it doesn't come. He doesn't get upset I'm cleaning. I'm floored. I'm so floored, I'm still trying to get up. I'm seeing a tremendous change in maturity in him, with this incident and the legos on his bedroom floor last week, I'm just amazed. He is even doing his homework with out balking, Dan says he sought it out earlier today to do. Oh, and he is 70" tall, now. Last Tuesday, Dan and I met with his teacher for his annual IEP meeting. She, too, has noticed great changes in him. Who is this child and what has he done with my son?
Monday I played golf, already wrote about that. Today and the most of the rest of the week, I'll be in a pre-retirement class. More time away from my computer, another thing to keep me from blogging. Darn.
Here are some quilt blocks I've done with the fabric I cut on Friday night. What do you think? So far I have 63 blocks done and 36 to go, but I'm kinda tired of it so I'm taking a break.
Dan and I joined AM and Mark as a team for a charity golf tournament. I had two for the highlight reel, I think it'll be on ESPN later. Maybe not. The first one was a long putt for birdie, then I had the longest drive for women, beating out the woman who usually wins by at least 20 yards. The prize was $50. I didn't even realize it was the hole for the contest until after I teed off. I would have totally choked it I had known. It was a beautiful shot, right down the middle of the fairway. It's shots like these that keep you coming back for more, because the rest of the holes were disappointing by comparison.
I'll round up the weekend later, remind me to tell you about The Boy. But now I need to get some aloe on my sunburn.
It drives me nuts when bag boys at the grocery put gallons of milk in plastic bags, as if it's not easier to carry smooth jug handles than it is to carry thin plastic bags that cut into your fingers. Not to mention, it's a waste of plastic bags.
I hate that.
Picture of the day
"Bleachers" at the Roman amphitheater in Pula, Croatia; no kissing under these.
For months I'd been looking forward to last night. It didn't go down as I'd pictured but it was still enjoyable, nonetheless. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Thursday night Dan and I went to the Verizon Center to enjoy our Wizards wallop the Cavs by 36 points in game 3 of the play-offs.
Friday we took Kevin to swim team practice and headed out for supper. We ended up at PF Changs at the Mall in Columbia and was told there was a 15-30 minute wait, but before we could even get to another restaurant to check their waiting time, my buzzer went off. Please remind me next time they are slow there if I'm in a hurry, because we almost didn't make it back to the pool to pick up Kevin in time.
Saturday was a qualifying swim meet for Special Olympics. Parents were strongly encouraged to help, so I reported for duty and got assigned the duty of race timer. Having something to do was much better than sitting with a book for six hours waiting for Kevin's events. I was between books anyway, so the job was good. Special Olympics doesn't use touch pads to determine times because some athletes don't do well with them so we used stopwatches, two or three times to a lane. The mean or median time, was used for each swimmer.
It was a long hot day, the temperature on the pool deck must have been close to 90° and I was exhausted by the end of the day from the heat. However, I had a good time cheering on all the athletes and getting to know the other parents. Kevin got assigned "my" lane twice so I got to use my "mom" voice to cheer and encourage him. He got a 5th in 50m Free, 1st in 25m Free, 2nd in 25m Back and his 4x25m relay team got a first, too.
Saturday night Fern and I went to see a local production of The Sound of Music, her friend was in the role of Brigita. Oh, but before that, I phoned in an order to a brand new Asian restaurant for carry-out over an hour before the show was to start. I was told my food would be ready in 35 minutes. I was pulling back into the driveway with food over an hour after I called. The food was good, but I'll wait for a couple weeks to call again so they can get the kinks worked out. I think they should have done a "soft opening" first, it was too much for them to handle like it was.
The play was very good, Fern was a little sad she didn't audition, she said it looked like a lot of fun.
Sunday, Kevin and I went to church and Dan went back downtown for game #4, 'Zards vs. the Cavs. The outcome wasn't as pleasant as it was Thursday, a loss by a three-pointer at the end. While he was gone, I tackled Kevin's room. I expected resistance, but he let me pick up the legos and letters on his floor. He usually would dump out anything I'd pick up but this time he just sat down and started putting the legos together. After a while he disappeared and I found him in my closet where his big supply lives. Come out of the closet, Kevin When I got the room done, he even let me vacuum, but he promptly dumped the bucket of letters out on the guest room floor. Oh well. I'm glad it wasn't my closet floor.
Fern asked if I'd take her to Target, she needed clothes. Sure, I needed light bulbs.
On the way home I reminded her she would be staying with Kevin, Dad and I would be going to a concert.
Who are you seeing? The Proclaimers. Really, can I go?
I've been looking forward to this concert for months, they don't come to the US very often. Dan was going as my guest, he's not the invested party. The Wizards just lost to the Cavs and I would bet he's now apathetic about going out. If she behaves, if she really wants to go, then why not?
You really want to go? Yes. OK, if your dad says yes and they let kids in at the club and your homework's done, you can go. Do I need any other escape routes, have I covered all possible outs? She squeals with delight.
When we get home, she asks permission and I tend to six! light bulbs that needed replacing.
The Birchmere in Alexandria is a general admission venue. When the box office opens at 5:00 they hand out line numbers, then at 6:00 they let people in in order to claim their seats. The shows start at 7:30. Dan never liked going early just to get a good seat, then wait for over two hours for the main act to take the stage, and it's about 30-40 minutes away, so we don't go there. Except on the rare occasion when The Proclaimers play there and not at "our" Ramshead Tavern on our side of town. It was my first visit to the Birchmere.
Fern and I left the house at 6:00 and managed to find very good seats, very close to the stage. We ordered supper and finished just in time for the opening act, Jeremy Fisher to start. She loved him, he's now the greatest thing since sliced bread. So, of course, I had to buy her his CD.
The Proclaimers took the stage sometime after 8:30, I forget to note the time or how long they played. They played a lot from their new CD and a lot of my favorites. The crowd whooped when they introduced familiar tunes, I was the only one who whooped when they introduced the title song from the CD. It was a fabulous show.
Fern liked the concert, she said The Proclaimers sounded better in person than on CDs, but she still liked the opening act better.
I inadvertently drove away with Kevin's backpack so he couldn't do his homework until I came home. Then he didn't go to sleep until well after 3:00 this morning. Sheesh.
How many 7th graders does it take to put in a light bulb?
Apparently, more than one, the one being my daughter.
Her ceiling fan has two bulbs burnt out. Been burnt out for a while now. It's not a matter of reaching them, there's a step stool in her room she uses to climb into bed. Her bed is higher than a regular bed but lower than a loft. It's about boob-high when I walk up to it. We got the bed at Ikea, you can make bunks with it or put the bed at the top for a loft, in the middle or at the bottom and hang curtains on the top rails for a princess-style look. Ikea doesn't sell it anymore because kids were getting hurt hanging from the top rail. Stoopid kids. Now her bed is in the middle position and I got her a wooden step stool so she could climb into bed. So I know she can use the stool to reach the ceiling fan.
The other day she asked me if I'd change them for her. Huh? OK, maybe I did forget to teach her how to change a light bulb. Still.
A couple years ago I bought a cool ceiling light fixture for my closet. It has three bendable arms so you can point the light anywhere. It's kinda like this one. I thought it'd be good for a closet because I could shine the arms on different racks of clothes. I installed it and it worked out great. That is, until I realized the bulbs burned out quickly. It was a pain because I had to go back to Ikea to get more to change them. But I could, I knew how. I never researched if I could get bulbs from the hardware store. Oh well.
Then, recently I discovered compact fluorescent bulbs with the equivalent lumens as a 100 watt bulb. I like a bright light, but could not use them often because the lamps would often have a safety rating of 75 watts or less. However the wattage used by a 100 watt-equivalent compact fluorescent bulb is about 24 watts. And a light went on over my head, I can use these.
The other day another bulb burned out in my closet light. This event corresponded with cloudy gray weather so it was pretty dark in my closet and I decided I'd switch light fixtures and use a 24 watt CFL. Except it was dark and I couldn't see to do the work. Let me explain about my closet. It's large and strangely shaped, the builder put it in the front of the house under the eaves, it has a window that faces the street, and when it's empty you could put a bed in there, but it's never empty. About fifty-thousand legos call the floor home, along with a tool box and many shoes. Kevin likes to dump the legos on the floor in there, and when I pick them up, well you know what happens. The legos are very happy on my closet floor.
I wait until a sunny day. I live life on the edge, I don't flip the breaker, I just turn off the light at the wall and start taking down the fixture. I drop a bolt and I don't hear it fall. Then, of course, I have to go somewhere and have to leave everything hanging for a day. When I get back to the project I start by looking for the dropped bolt. Since I didn't hear it fall I shake out all the clothes under the light hoping to hear or see it drop. Nothing. The legos aren't talking, they don't reveal the bolt's location no matter how many I move around or how many are crushed by my knees. I give up and see how far I can get without it before I look into getting a new one. I finish disconnecting the old lamp one wire at a time and immediately connecting the correct wire on the new one. Just as I'm reaching for the last wire, lo and behold, the dropped bolt is sitting in the old lamp I'm taking down. The rest of the job went smoothly and I now have 100 watts of light at the price of 24 and can actually see what I'm wearing. And where the legos are on the floor.
I thought they were this morning but then I was proven wrong.
Before I left the house this morning Little Voice told me to go upstairs, get a pair of socks and check yesterday's pants pockets. You know Little Voice, don't you? That little voice in your head that reminds you of things or tells you which aisle to drive down for the best parking space... Sometimes I listen, sometimes I ignore Little Voice. Little Voice is usually right, too. This morning I go upstairs, get my socks, get in the car and drive to work.
I live a block away from a big intersection and the light is never green for me to go straight through. Never. OK, maybe once in about 50 or 60 days. But that's close to never. To get to the beltway, I can go straight through the intersection and a mile or so later, past several mistimed lights, I get to Rt 50, which can be iffy during the morning commute; or I can turn right, don't have to wait for the green and take Rt 450 to the beltway. The lights are timed pretty well in the mornings so even though it's not highway, it's a consistent route.
I turn out of my neighborhood and the light is green (what?!) so I make the decision to got straight and chance it on Rt. 50. And wow, the lights are shining my way. And 50 is moving. I haven't had to stop once, which means I've had no breaks to put on my socks. The planets are aligned, I'm flying to work. (Except the "hill" on 50 where people collectively cannot maintain speed up a hill. I hate that.) Even the beltway is great as usual.
Great until right after the last bail-out exit on the beltway (the exit I take on the rare occasion there is a back-up), traffic comes to a screeching halt. I reach for my phone to get the traffic map, hmm, can't reach it, must be at the bottom of my bag. My exit is jammed, both ramps. I could take either one, but not today, two right lanes are blocked with folks trying to take the exit ramps. I go on to the next exit to take the back way to the office, but that ramp is full, too. Yikes. I stay there and stick it out and pull on my socks. I have time now to look for my phone and call the traffic line to tell them because this was not announced and I like to share info like that. My phone is not there. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?
Here's another quilt I'm working on. I lead the mystery quilt at our quilter's retreat in February '07 using the delectable mountains pattern I found on the 'net. I did all the demo blocks ahead of time and started to put it together at the retreat but lost interest in it when some of the seams didn't line up right. Then, a few months ago I read The Sugar Camp Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini. It's a story about antebellum Pennsylvania, the Underground Railroad and a quilt the protagonist (I could have said main character but wanted the bump in reading level) makes to help runaway slaves. Inside the cover on the endpaper is a drawing of the quilt. (Click here to see a picture of the author's quilt.) It was basically the same block unit I made for the mystery quilt, the story's quilt is just bigger, but I was nonetheless inspired to work on the abandoned quilt again. I took apart the blocks I'd sewn together and reassembled them in this pattern.
This picture was taken before the blocks were all sewn together, but were just laying out on some of the background fabric. The center space is 12" square and I'm not sure what to about it. I think I don't want to leave it empty, but I haven't come across any blocks I want to use there. I want to finish this top soon, but it has stopped talking to me. Anyone have any ideas?
Thursday night I finished sewing the borders on this storm at sea quilt top. The body is from a John Flynn laser-cut kit I bought last year. I finished it a while back but had put it away to stew. Then I found the border fabric in Intercourse, PA when I went up to the Lancaster show a couple weeks ago. Now, I trying to work out how I'll quilt it.
Friday I was not involved in a car chase, nor did I receive a speeding ticket. It wasn't even close, but I was still watching out for the cops. I did, however, have to look in 12 unlocked lockers at the gym before I found an empty one for my work clothes during yoga class. Yes, I counted them.
Friday night I took Kevin to Special Olympics swim team practice. From what I can gather while watching from afar (I'm not allowed to get closer, that's his thing), he's doing well, he needs more practice at going distances, he tends to stop and watch what's going on around him.
Saturday I took him to swim-n-gym and then came back home to take Fern to her skating practice. The spring show was Sunday and it was the last time she'd be doing this year's production team's show. While she was gone I got in the shower and started to shave my legs. They'd been neglected for a while (like all of winter) but the weather was spectacular and I wanted to wear shorts. Dan comes in to tell me the spring skating show is today, not tomorrow and he was leaving to take her her skating costume and I had to get Kevin. So I ended up pulling on jeans so I wouldn't freeze in the rink. My legs will have to wait to see the sun. At least they are smooth.
The skating show went pretty well. I've seen it so many times now I almost don't pay attention. But this time I did notice the choreography was strong for the first three-quarters but kinda fizzled out at the end. I wonder why I didn't see that before? I wonder if it would have helped the coaches any if I'd passed that on two months ago? Oh well.
Sunday it rained. I went to church, then took Kevin to swim team practice again. While he was there I went to Costco to order new glasses and buy some milk. I usually get three gallons at a time. While I was at the milk cooler I heard another shopper say "only eight?" to his wife when they were loading their cart of milk. Eight? OK. It was very crowded in the Costco, I did a full lap around the parking lot with no luck and was about to drive back to the pool but a space opened up right in front of me so I stayed to shop. I probably should have left because in the end it took a long time to check out and pay and it was raining again when I walked out to the car. Without an umbrella.
I did a little laundry, not enough to count, and a little sewing and not much else.
Sunday night my daughter asked if I was pregnant. I was wearing pajamas. Without the girdle-like protection of my jeans I don't look as skinny as I used to. I guess I gotta lay off the excess snack food, huh?
I re-ran the readability gadget on my blog and got a high school level. So I stuck that little resulting sign over in the sidebar.
An exit before I was to get off the beltway this morning, a pair of cop cars got on. The traffic slowed from usual cruising speed of 70 or so to 61 or so. I hate that. Then one of the cop cars crossed all four lanes and pulled in behind me and I gracefully moved over to the next slower lane with all appropriate lane change indicators blinking. Since my exit was coming up, I just kept moving over and kept checking my mirrors. Usually the cops around here just speed up to 70+ (on a 55 mph road) and buzz by everyone. These two cars were still hanging back. I was still checking my mirrors. Then the lights came on. Uh-oh.
I got into work and spent one hour and fifty-two minutes on the phone with the help desk. I'm having printing issues. A banner page with our user ID on it is printed out with every document through our network. It wastes paper but it's helpful knowing whose printout belongs to whom. When I print something, one copy of something, everything works fine. When I specify to print out multiple copies of my document, only one copy prints. If I submit the job many times to get many copies, I get many banner pages. I hate that. It started happening when I got the new CPU back in February. When you're on the phone with the help desk, they remote to you so you don't have control of your machine, can't read blogs email while you're waiting for resolution. Nothing, but jump up to check how many copies printed with this setting or that. Not fun at all. I know, who said work was supposed to be fun, right? Nothing was resolved, the help ticket is still open and someone should be calling me. More fun.
I found this gadget to determine the readability of your blog and ran my blog through it.
Not the high-brow result I expected or feel I deserve. A friend of mine, an English department chair at a local high school, told me these programs look for "big words" and words not oft-used. So I did an experiment.
The lovely large white envelope addressed to some office in Andover, MA was placed in the mail box in front of my office building before the 12:00 pick-up yesterday, along with a lovely large check, a full 12 hours and twenty minutes before the deadline. Moments later the state taxes were filed on-line. I should be getting that refund in a few days. Yippee.
Fern skated well at the ISI District 4 championships over the weekend, unfortunately there were others who skated better. She took home ribbons for two second places and two fourth places. She wants to do more competitions, so I can only surmise she had a good time and isn't detrimentally brokenhearted about not getting a first place. We bought the DVDs for her events, but I have no idea about how to upload the video so you all can see, too.
One of the local Brownie Girl Scout leaders asked me to come and sew badges on vests for girls during their weekly meeting last night. She gets quite aggravated when the girls don't have the insignia in the correct locations and wants to make it very easy for the parents to get it "right." There are four troops meeting at the same time in one of the churches so she was hoping for my sake I'd get a lot of business. As it turns out, I got four new clients and was able to finish vests for three of them. Then my machine jammed, the one I just picked up from the shop for its 7500 mile checkup. Time was up anyway so I brought home the fourth one. I charge $25 per year of service or $1 per badge. If a year is purchased, I feel it good service to fix anything on the vest that's loose or out of place. The last parent wanted to only pay for the six badges to be sewn on. However several more should be adjusted and I'm in a quandary as to how much work to do and how much to charge for it. I'm leaning towards thinking if she can't afford the $25 and only wanted to pay $6, then I should fix everything and sew on the new things for $7 or $8 total, and not any more. This is a pocket-change job anyway, not a mortgage payment.
I'm very glad Jason got the boot on last night's Hell's Kitchen, I didn't like him.
I can't round up the weekend yet, it's barely gotten underway. Dan and Fern left at 4:30 this morning for Richmond, she had ice time for compulsories at 8:15. Kevin is at swim-n-gym and I'm supposed to be packing to go down as soon as he's done. She's got a program competition at 4:20 this afternoon, then two more things tomorrow.
I got back from San Francisco around midnight Thursday and went into work on Friday. I was so tired. I would have skipped work altogether, but my boss didn't want me gone all week on travel in the first place, so I dragged my butt in. Man, there was a lot of work to do, (real work got in the way of blogging—I hate that) but I did cut out two hours early anyway to try to catch some time with Dan since it was his birthday. I remembered to buy the gift before I left town, but didn't remember to get a card. I got him a bluetooth gizzy for his phone so he can shift gears and drive and talk at the same time. Next year is his milestone birthday so I need to start concocting a cool present plan now, he's used up all the good ideas on me, so it'll take me a while to work it all out for next year. Maybe with the new administration next year, the dollar will be stronger and a European cruise will work out. That, or a new lawn mower.
Today I passed rows and rows of lush green trees, bows heavy laden with fruit, fruit I hadn't seen before, black, and thin, very thin. I was told later they were silicos trees, the fruits are harvested when they turn a silvery-gray and are processed. The end result: microprocessors. I'm in Silicon Valley.
None of you guessed why a drive around Infinite Loop was so absolutely thrilling to me. (Ab-so-lute-ly thrilling, I tell you, thrilling.) I'm so disappointed in you. All of you. I'll give you a clue: my phone was excited to be home.
OK, maybe I went too far with the absolutely part.
My meetings today took me south of San Francisco to San Jose and Cupertino. The highlight of the day was a drive around Infinite Loop. Any guesses why?
Click here for a Google map of the area, click on the little yellow guy for a walking tour of the neighborhood.
The weather was chilly and windy today and I packed completely wrong; I wish I had my winter coat or a warm sweater.
I'm sitting in room #21 in an inn in the Mission District of San Francisco. I'm tired, it's been a long day, my initial flight was canceled so I had to find another one. And I did. So here I am.
Remember when I wrote about doing laundry before vacation? Yeah, well, that's basically the last time it was done so the pile in the laundry room was higher than the dryer door. Made loading and unloading a bit interesting. I wonder if anything got washed more than once because of it. I got a lot done but left a load of whites/hots in the dryer. I hope Dan finds them so The Boy has socks to wear this week. Do you have this problem: your washer washes clothes faster than the dryer dries them? I hate that.
Went to BJ's with Kevin and bought some stuff, bacon, milk and chocolate milk mix on Saturday. Kevin helped put the wares away:
Kansas just won, so I guess it's time to sign off and go to bed.
I wrote the program to compare them, the secret passwords contained within. This proved that while I was on vacation, the passwords for 7000 users got corrupted and no one could log in. I had a cubicle full of guys in here yesterday panicking (kinda) about it but, after a couple stressful days of tracking down the cause and possible [safe] solutions, the passwords have been restored, without any loss of users' data, and the site was opened at 10:00 EDT this morning.
I know you all were very concerned about this and I wanted to let you to know you could breathe now, everything's gonna be alright.
I hope my son will be alright, too.
Yesterday we got him a new puzzle from the dollar section at Target. Last night he found the puzzle and helped himself. He knows he has to run a knife between the box and lid to cut the paper label to release the pieces. He also knows bandaids are for bleeding fingers.
I follow the trail of clues: puzzle box on the kitchen counter, mostly opened, full of pieces. Why did he go to the trouble to open the puzzle and not take it with him? Then I notice a smear of blood on the lid. At first I'm calm, then I start to panic and run upstairs to find him. He's sitting at the computer, happy as a clam, playing his computer games with his right hand, clamping his left fingers around his thumb. I insist on inspecting. When I get close enough to look I see a sloppily placed bandaid covering a small, still bleeding gash across the tip of his thumb.
I could have left him alone at that point. He was alive, after all, and most of the blood had been contained in the bandage. But I pulled it off and washed his thumb in soap and water and redressed the wound, one bandaid across the top to hold the cut together and then one around to keep the first one in place. That's when I notice another clue, the litter on the bathroom counter: a blood-stained paper towel from the kitchen and lots of backing strips. He must have tried several bandaids on his own but the blood inhibited stickage.
I asked him if he hurt. I'm not sure he gets "hurt," he always answers "no," but he did clutch this thumb for a long time after that even though his mood was fine. Autism is a funny thing. He's smart enough to know how to fix his problem, but he can't communicate what happened or how he feels. I'm just thankful he's as high functioning as he is, but sometimes I wish he could express more. It is Autism Awareness Month, if you didn't know.
And just for effect, I call my mom later, and say as soon as she answers, "How long is it supposed to bleed before I go to the hospital?"
I got an email this morning saying the two files I blanked yesterday (see yesterday's post) were restored, but they are still empty. So I'm back to being stranded on that project waiting for restoration.
No, that wasn't an April Fool's joke, except on myself.
Her Royal Knightress AM Kingsfield wanted me to post about a quilt I saw at the quilt show in Lancaster on Friday. It's a yo-yo quilt.
If you don't know what a yo-yo is in the quilting world, you take a circle of fabric about 2-5" in diameter and sew a running stitch close to the edge of the fabric. Then you draw up the threads so it makes a little pouch and push it flat so you have your gathers in the center of the circle and tie off the threads. After you've made millions of these you sew them together one to each "side" so it forms a grid, and keep going until it's quilt sized. They are usually made of scraps. They don't do anything for me, too much labor.
In the art quilt section of the show, where you're not allowed to take photographs, there were a large number of very edgy and artful quilts, some were stunning and exquisite, some were weird, some were thought provoking. Some you would like to have on your walls and then, well, then there was this one:
The Yo Yo Quilt by Martha Bruin Degen from the Social Questions Series
I'm taking a work break to blog. I just wiped out two files. Zero bytes of data left. Empty. I need those files. I was in the midst of writing a program to compare them and write out the different passwords contained in them. Now I can't write because, there's nothing there to check. Sheesh. Dernit.
It's official, I'm moving to the next cubicle over, the one with a window. I've made about thirty trips so far between my new home and my old one carrying stuff. I actually took out the top desk drawer and swapped it out so I didn't have to move pen by pen. The bookshelves were easy, as was the file drawer. The remaining debris and detritus. Another story completely. It's the little stuff that accumulates that totally bogs me down, I get so incapacitated by having to deal with it all. Oh, that's where that is! Do I need this anymore? recycle. recycle. I'm gonna need this. And this too. And that.
I've written to the disability office to get the lights fixed over the new desk. (For the whole story, click here and here and here.) I have no idea how long it'll take to have the work done, so I'm not in a real hurry to get everything moved. The next call will be to the help desk to get the computer and phone moved. But not until the lights are gone.
Being a programmer, I don't get to travel much for my job, but I won the business trip "lottery" and am going to San Francisco next week. (I could have been assigned to Albany....) That is, if all the travel orders get approved ASAP. I'm excited about it to some degree. It's hard not to, trips for me are so few and far between. I'm sure if I had to travel a lot I'd hate it. Does anyone know anything about the Alcatraz Inn? My secretary booked me a room with a bay view, should be lovely!
I am a fifty-something mom of two, wife, a messy housekeeper, and a retired computer programmer. I enjoy golf, quilting, knitting, pottery and racking up steps on my fitbit.
gazelle
prairie dog
papa lion
Fern at the Bar Mitzvah
Fern with AM's son and Danny.
My daughter and her gaggle of friends earlier today.
A couple years ago I bought a cool ceiling light fixture for my closet. It has three bendable arms so you can point the light anywhere. It's kinda like this one. I thought it'd be good for a closet because I could shine the arms on different racks of clothes. I installed it and it worked out great. That is, until I realized the bulbs burned out quickly. It was a pain because I had to go back to Ikea to get more to change them. But I could, I knew how. I never researched if I could get bulbs from the hardware store. Oh well.
Here's another quilt I'm working on. I lead the mystery quilt at our quilter's retreat in February '07 using the delectable mountains pattern I found on the 'net. I did all the demo blocks ahead of time and started to put it together at the retreat but lost interest in it when some of the seams didn't line up right. Then, a few months ago I read The Sugar Camp Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini. It's a story about antebellum Pennsylvania, the Underground Railroad and a quilt the protagonist (I could have said main character but wanted the bump in reading level) makes to help runaway slaves. Inside the cover on the endpaper is a drawing of the quilt. (Click here to see a picture of the author's quilt.) It was basically the same block unit I made for the mystery quilt, the story's quilt is just bigger, but I was nonetheless inspired to work on the abandoned quilt again. I took apart the blocks I'd sewn together and reassembled them in this pattern.
The Yo Yo Quilt by Martha Bruin Degen from the Social Questions Series
