Can it Be One Month Since I Posted Last?

I'm in the middle of  a short break between quarters. (Drexel has quarters, shorter than semesters.) I went to post the othher day, and I didn't know what to say. Weird. I still don't exactly have any kind of theme for this post. I saw that I got an A+ in one of my classes, no grade posted yet in the other. I am all signed up for Psychology 101 and Principles of Communication. That starts up again March 29. Then I am taking the summer off.

Anyone living in the Northeast is aware of the incredible weather gift we received recently. It seems like one week we were buried in snow, the next we had crocuses blooming. This is weather I'd be happy to get in May, much less in March! We did a lot of yard work, patio and porch cleaning. We bought new patio furniture. Now it will snow.

Work is weirder than ever. Now that our merger has been in place for several months, the big layoffs are immanent. Get this, I have the job of scanning and formatting electronic signatures so that they are available for the separation letters! For those not hip to corporate speak, being separated from the company means, your fired. Suppose I see my boss's name? It's such a giant drag, all of this. I was joking around about that patio furniture, saying maybe I should take it back. Then I realized, I'll need it while I'm sitting around all summer out of work! Ha Ha.

My creative life is very thin right now, but I started making a purse. I was using the random patchwork method I used for the St, Pat's bags. I have a commercial pattern I'm working with. I used all repro feedsack patterns and some other fabric that seemed to be in the same spirit. I'm pretty excited about it. I think it will be cool for spring. I guess I'll post pictures, if I get around to taking them!

One last thing, I have to do my taxes, yuk. When that's done, I will indulge myself and look at everyone elses blog!

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.

Cruisin'

Here is a picture of Kate and some of her friends, waiting to leave on the cruise this morning. The other picture isn't so good, but it shows a line of luggage that is a block long! She's got so much clothing, formal, dress up, dress down, hot weather, cold weather, 100 pairs of underwear, i-pod, phone, journal, hair bands, jewelry, makeup, and get this: I needed to write up an inventory for every bag!

Well, at least now I can chill a little.

Thanks for the comments on my previous post. I am liking the textbook for my "Mass Communication and Society" class. I just read about the history of the book. Fascinating.

A Minute to Breathe

Well, my online classes have started. Needless to say, it takes up quite a bit of my time. I am already learning so many things, and I haven't gotten into any real subjects yet. My Mass Media and Society class is a little slow to start. The first week"s assignment has basically been to get the book. The UPS man just delivered it. The Professor should start posting lectures tomorrow. My other class is Strategies for Online Learning. This class has tons of articles to read, lectures to view, mini papers to write, and discussion boards to post to. I've been introduced to the concepts of critical thinking. Something we should all be doing more of.

I find my motivation is high, and because everything is online. I can view the course materials whenever I have a minute at work. All those times when I was goofing off on etsy or looking at blogs, I am now doing school work. I think it will be OK.

Kate is leaving for a cruise with the ARC on Thursday. She looks forward to it all year. Quite frankly, it is a pain in the ass for me, all of the preparations. Today was the day I had to drive to the ARC office and deliver her spending Money, her medications along with a detailed description of how and when the medicine is to be administered, and her medical form. We just went this morning for the physical, because that is when I could get an appointment. Kate was supposed to have today off, but she was scheduled at work, I guess because she is taking the next 10 days off. I had to rush her over to work after the appointment. I was to deliver the drugs and cash, as I just mentioned, between 2 pm and 5 pm. I was gathering everything, when I noticed that she only had 10 pills left of her allergy medicine. I know they would give me a hard time at the ARC, so I called the pharmacy, who informed me that I was a couple f days early to have the prescription refilled. You see what I mean? These little annoyances just grind you down to a nub! When I went to take money out of the ATM in town for her, the thing was broken, jeez.

I am happy to report that Joe and I are going away this weekend. We will be staying at a B&B in Hudson, NY. We came upon this town accidentally while on a motorcycle trip, and it looked so cool, I decided we should stay there someday. I'm pretty excited about it!

Young Victoria: Violence!

Apparently there was an attempted assassination on Queen Victoria early on, and in this movie, Prince Albert dives in front of her and takes a bullet. Don't worry, he was fine, plus that never happened in real life. Assassination attempt, yes, Albert getting hit, no. Otherwise, the movie was pretty much everything I want in a historical costume drama. We enjoyed it very much.

We had Thai food, which was great. At first we were afraid we wouldn't even get any food. Quite a few places in Doylestown were closed, and many more were booked up!  I had no idea. Shows you how I never really get out on New Years Eve. I went and picked up a calzone for Kate at our local Pizza Restaurant, and they were turning people away because the tables were booked!

Tomorrow we are hosting a big holiday family party. It was supposed to be December 19th, but was canceled due to snow.  Let me tell you how done I am with the holidays. I should be taking my tree down, but no, not till this party is over. I had to shop all over again, now I have to clean all over again...

Got Any plans?

I picked up this quilt recently, it had been half-done for at least 2 months. I still want to add some beads to it, kind of as a way to quilt the parts that are still puffy. I had not done any sewing in so long.

I am home today, using my very last vacation day. I'm glad, because it has been SO boring at work. Next year they are going to shut the whole place down between Christmas and New Year. It makes a lot of sense, because they are heating and lighting a giant office complex, mostly for nothing. There is hardly anyone there, and no one
is really doing anything. Just hanging around, surfing the internet and eating cookies. The down side is that you are forced to use your own vacation days for the shut down. Most of us have a lot of vacation time, but some do not. Those without are unimpressed. Who knows if we will even have jobs by then?

I start college on Monday!  I'm scared and excited. It's hard to guess how much of my time this will take up, but I assume I will have less time for blogging and such. I have already completed an on-line orientation which is designed to teach you how to use the software and the online library. I'm impressed with it so far. I hope all this makes a difference in my life, maybe opens some doors. I'm so burnt out on my job that I can't quit, it's brutal.

Kate has had her laptop for a week and I just figured out how to hook it up to our wireless network THIS MORNING! The first couple of days after Christmas were very busy and I didn't even get to look at it. Then I started the process. I am so friggin' lame at computer stuff. When there is a problem, I am usually stumped. Fortunately I have a supply of young tech geeks at work who can listen to me try to explain a problem and figure out what the heck it is that I am missing. Then I go home and I can't find the thing they told me about, or I misplaced the piece of paper with the instructions, or it just won't work... anyway, that is behind me now and Kate can do all the things she wants to do.

I am going on a date tonight!  This is what my husband told me. He has a friend whose girlfriend broke up with him because he never wants to do anything she does. I think this sparked Joe to offer to take me to the movies. I love to go to the movies but it is so hard to find one that he is willing to see, that we rarely go. Get this, I am married to a man who hates violent action movies! I can take a certain amount of violence for the sake of the story, but he can't stomach anything. It really rules out quite a few good films. On the other hand, he is very willing to see all manor of art house-foriegn-costume drama-chick flicks. Tonight we are going to see Young Victoria. We are also having dinner, most likely Thai food, which I love. I think I will get dressed up, even though it is freezing out.

It occurs to me that it is New Years Eve. I keep forgetting. We don't generally attend any parties. I assume we will be home in time to have some champagne at midnight.

You got any plans?

Longwood Gardens at Christmas

Here is what I did yesterday. Longwood Gardens is one of my favorite places in the world. I have been several times, but never at Christmas. My husband knew I wanted to go, and he suggested it. This is a big deal, because he hates the drive (90 miles to S. Pennsylvania) and he assumes that since millions of people go, it will suck. He did this for me!

The drive is long, but the place was wonderful, he even had to admit it. We had fine weather considering it is the end of December, and the beauty surpassed the experience of shuffling around amoung the unwashed masses. I've never seen so many wheelchairs and motorized rascals in one place before. i think most folks in wheelchairs don't really need them. I think that since there is a lot of walking, people just rent these things so they don't get tired. I saw children that had to be 8 or 9 years old in strollers.

Anyway, great fun, and it got even better once the sun went down. Pictures can not do it justice. How do you get that many lights on a tree? How do you get that many lights on hundreds of trees?