I Have Free Time Today

I got a lovely little gift last week. The supermarket where Kate works asked that she switch her day off from Tuesday to Saturday. That means I suddenly have Saturdays FREE!! So, today I cleaned, tried on all of the clothes in a bin marked: Summer-too small (it all fit!) prepared a chicken dinner, and completed and submitted a homework assignment. (Go ahead, ask me about Abductive Reasoning.  It has nothing to do with kidnapping.)

I finished my second Irish bag that is part of a commission, and the requester has purchased them. I will ship on Monday. I used this spontaneous and random way of piecing together fabric I gathered  based on color. I don't think it is innovative, but I had not worked that way before and I really enjoyed it. I want to make a bag for myself, maybe in reds, maybe in multicolor.

Brush with Fame
Here's a good one for you, I was at a Valentine's day party in town last weekend. The author who wrote Eat, Pray, Love was there. Elizabeth Gilbert was standing by the sink when I went to wash out a wine glass, talking with 3 other people I don't know. I'm not much of a celebrity hound, plus I really didn't like the book that much, so I just said hi and that was it. I might have asked, so how's the new book selling? or something, but I could not really bring myself to do it. I've always known that she lived in Frenchtown, but I had never seen her in the almost 4 years we've lived here. Back to the party, it was really fun, and when the crowd thinned out later, we were dancing! My husband is a fab dancer. People were coming in to watch him. Well, one of our neighbors took a video with her iphone and posted it on Facebook.  Next thing, people at work are telling me they saw it! Joe was kind of pissed. He thinks you can't really do anything without someone posting it on the web. He has a point. There is virtually no privacy anymore.

Joe has been obsessing about getting a convertible for months now, ever since he decided our future epic trips would be more comfortable in that, rather than on a motorcycle. (amen) Without going into the trials and tribulations of finding the exact right car, I will only say he picked it up yesterday.

Ain't it sweet? I love the color. He says to me, "Baby, you'll look great in this car." Funny, how he tries to make it about me. Anyway, this little cupcake is a 1999 BMW M3 with 77,000 miles on it. It looks like new. I hope it makes him happy. Now he is going to sell his Ducati.

Work has been so incredibly busy, and the one person that works for me is getting more incompetent by the second. This, with the college work added on, plus the fact that our cable TV and our internet connection (DSL) all went wacky this week, I thought I would lose it. I never have time for blogging, so I think I'm going to indulge myself and have a look at what you have all been up to.

St. Pat's Quilted bag

Two Days in a Row

Another post, can you stand it? It is just so slow at work. Already today I wrote a one page paper for a class and posted it, and I have posted to the discussion boards for both classes. I just peeked in on the blog again and I had a lot of comments. Thanks!

Yo, Mom to Fat Dogs! You crack me up! Yeah, right, that's my room!  What my husband and I liked best about the room was that it wasn't loaded up with our clutter! It was nicely decorated, right? As the innkepers put it, it is low on the doiley factor. (FYI, you accidentally posted the same comment twice. Just so you know why I rejected one of them.)

Marty, whassup? Yes, people watching, my favorite sport. Where is there good people watching where you live? (Everyone?) One of the premier places to watch people around here is any boardwalk on the Jersey Shore. I know there is some kind of TV show on right now called Jersey Shore. I hear it is loaded up with stereotypes of Italian Americans. Whatever. New Jersey gets such a bad rep. I think there are people like that running around, but where I live you rarely come across them.

Jeana Marie, I just take it day by day. What else can you do? I just paid off my credit card. I have one more year to pay off my car. My main fear in losing my job is of burning through the small nest egg I managed to accumulate.

cconz! My soul sista. Yes indeed, what about that dining room? I didn't take a picture of the part of the ceiling that had fallen down. The ceiling was also dotted with these metal things that were stablizing it. The innkeepers say that they got an estimate of $9000.00 to restore that ceiling. Ouch. The original price of that house in 1905: $20,000.00! Most people spend more on a car now.

Aside from everything else, I am working on a commission I have from Etsy. Someone bought one of my Christmas stockings, and she asked if I would make something similar for St. Patrick's day. Apparently it is a tradition of her grandmother that she wants to carry on. It seemed like such a cute idea, I said yes. What the hell was I thinking???  I did get myself down the cellar to sew this past weekend and I cranked out a stocking. Really, it is more of a patchwork sack. It was so much fun to make. Great to sew again, even though the cellar is so cold it is barely tolerable. I have the entire month to do another, so I should be OK. I'll post pictures when I can.

Damn That Punxsatawney Phil!

I don't think I can take six more weeks of winter. I say that every year. HA!

So what's up? I'm having a slowish day at work, so I can peek in and say hi. Yesterday late afternoon we got word that the director of our department got the ax. She had been here for 31 years and crawled her way up from nothing. My company merged with another in October, and we know the big layoffs are coming. We believe our department, which has nothing to do with the actual business of this company, is a target for being turned contractor. The reprographics department went down last year. This means we will stay at our desk and do the same job, but we won't work for the corporation any more. We will work for some other company. Our wages will stay the same, but the benefits suck. So, everyone is speculating by the water cooler.

Meanwhile, my online classes are going fine. It will be just my luck that when I finally decide to go back to school, I will have to work for a different company that won't pay. Can you get a student loan when you only go part time? I use every spare minute for school work. (except for right now.) I often stay after work to get things done. The on-line aspect is very convenient for me.

Joe and I had a fabulous time when we visited Hudson a couple of weeks ago. The B&B was glorious, the innkeepers were fabulous, the town was fun, we discovered a great bar, the Red Dot. We were disappointed with the antique situation. There were tons of places, but they were way too high end for us. We are used to paying NJ/PA prices, but here we saw New York City prices. Hudson is on the train line from NYC, so there were many city-looking people there. I don't know how to explain it, you can just tell. They are way hipper than you in some intangable way. It was weird because there are plenty of other people in the town that look rather unprosperous, locals I presume? I wonder if they ever clash with the city folks? I'm going to post some pictures.