Just so you know,
I no longer trust myself to be a good trading partner.  Do not send me anything until you receive either a tracking number or my half of the trade.  It seems that things make it into the boxes but never leave my office.  Yesterday when I moved offices, I found a Pampered Chef order, a candy trade, Lindsay's cocoa, some Disney purses to go to Finland, my sister's baby blanket (the one she had as a baby not the one I made for her), a signed photo my DH is giving one of my friends (he sold an identical one at $400), Postcards from my last trip for my friends, the UFO RR, and a postcard DD asked me to mail.
In addition, over a year ago I talked to someone about my buying quilt fabric for them if they would send chocolate.  Do you think that I have once taken their fabric requirements into a shop with me? There are also generous people that have sent me things that I really want to send gifts too.  I even have a list of what to get them.  Do you think that list has ever been on me when I go to an LNS?  

So just as a public service announcement general warning - I have great intentions but poor follow through trade with me at your own risk.  You will get your stuff, but it may take quite awhile to make it from my office to the postman.

Shop hop is completed for the year and I didn't inflict too much damage this year.  I didn't spend anything at 11 shops.
At one shop I bought $2.13 worth of buttons
At the shop farthest from my house, I bought a new ruler and 25 fat quarters for $1 apiece.
At one shop, I had DS#2 with me and they had a simple fleece blanket (yard of fleece with a blanket stitch around it.  He said that it looked easy enough for him to do it.  The lady at the counter showed him how to make the blanket stitch and how to trouble shoot problems.  He went and picked out a fleece for himself.  Took it to the counter for cutting and won a prize as the Xth customer.  He picked out a simple quilt pattern and we'll start picking fat quarters for it after he finishes making his fleece blankie. He's already 1/4 of the way done.
The shop by Cat's house, I got a 1930's reproduction fat quarter and 2 buttons (total 2.50).
And at another shop they had the guy that draws the Oopsy Daisy Penny Square patterns there drawing custom patterns.  I've needed a pattern for a boy in overalls for an applique quilt so I asked if he could draw me one.  He drew it and customized it for DS#2, including his name and gave the boy a buzz haircut like DS#2.

All in all it was a lot of fun, I now have 16 new quilt blocks, an idea for an original design and got to see Cat's new baby.

If a beagle gets trapped in a bedroom that he wandered into in order to steal the stuffed animals and the wind blows the door shut and traps him, and if no one answers his barks for help, what should he do?

Dig of course!!  This is why DS#2 now has no carpet pad in the 3 foot area surrounding his door and the carpet has been pulled back to the center of the room.  Oh well, I wanted to start the remodel next year in there anyway.

With a lot of vacations planned for this time of year, I just thought this quote fitting.

"You will have more fun on your vacation if you maintain a mental age of 18 or less.  Act just old enough to make your travel connections and stay out of trouble."   Joe Schwartz

The first week after school was out, DD's friend S called.  S's mom walked in, handed her $50, and thanked her for agreeing to take the younger boys to the zoo and then walked out of the room, into her bedroom, and locked the door.  S called DD and wanted to know where the zoo was (They just moved here from back East last year).  DD told me the story, after hearing it, I handed her $20 and said, "Sounds like a good idea, tell me how your brothers get along with S's brothers."

Ixy got her report card over the weekend.  She was in 7th heaven.  For the first time ever, she got a 4.0 and that's with several honors and an AP class.

On the other front, the boys have left for Scout camp so Ixy and I are home alone.  Can you say, anime and stitching this week?  Although I do have to get the taxes finished but if I do that tonight, then we have the week to ourselves.

My boss generously gave me an extra day in Nashville so that I could spend some time with two friends in the area.  Unfortunately, both friends had some life challenges that interfered with their ability to come join me at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.
So with nothing to do in a strange town I figured, it's Nashville, I'm going to listen to a live band.  So I arrive at the place the band is playing and it's a bar where the Harley Davidson something or other club is having a party.  I get there just as a group is leaving a table near the bandstand. So I was able to get a seat.  During the next band break, I meet a man and his wife and we get talking.  Seems that he is in town for a DOE convention and he works with people in charge of Education programs for youth.  I have a 12 year old math genius who's latest obsession is nuclear physics.  So we'll see what happens.  I did have fun dancing there.
After the next band session, the Harley people left and an obnoxious group of Evinrude people came in.  So I relocated to another place with live music where one of the groups of vendors from the convention was unwinding.  They included my Diet Cokes with lime in their rounds of drinks so it was only fair that I buy one round and my boss did say to go ahead and use my corporate card to go to a show or find some entertainment for the evening.  I do wonder what he's going to think about a ticket from the Jack Daniels Saloon. 
The really good part is that I missed the shuttle in the morning and was able to hitch a ride to the airport with the vendor that I had partied with the night before.  So, it all worked out for the best and I was even able to get a shorter flight home.  I was routed through Chicago instead of Phoenix so I got home quicker and had a Char-grilled dog with everything for lunch. 

What a great break before going back to work.

Although it means I'll be changing all my passwords in order to protect my privacy.

Notes and tips for travelling:

Any luggage that has lived in my house for any appreciable time will set off the gun powder detectors at the airport.  It's best to just dress for the the strip search and plan the arrival time at the airport to account for it.

Carry on all luggage on the way and have one suitcase that can be checked for the return flight.  This may actually save me from being strip searched at a strange airport.

Do not plan on returning home without trinkets for the kids. This would not be a good thing.  They may not let me in the door.

Cyber cafes are good things expecially the free ones.  The only danger is when you cannot clear the history or the cookies from the cache.  Upon return home, change all passwords if you do any online banking, change the passwords by telephone immediately preferably before anyone else uses the machine you did at the cyber cafe (or before the person monitoring your usage accesses your account.)

The Grand Ole Opry is a good thing even if Aaron Tippins is next week not this one.  Keep an eye out for Bobby Pinson this kid is good and will go places, not to mention as much as he talked about words meaning more than looks, he's still eye candy to watch.

My husband accused me of not liking romantic movies the way he does.  Now I'll admit, I really don't enjoy Titanic.  It's one of his favorite movies. It took watching Thomas Crown Affair (the remake) with him several times before I really enjoyed it.  Last night, I watched a movie that he's been dying to watch for months.  He had brought it up for the 90th time so I threw it to the top of the Netflix queue.

I'm really glad that he insisted that we watch Serendipity.  What a great movie! It's the kind of movie that I have no problem letting my kids watch, it was so fun to watch the change in attitude between the two characters and how fate came into play.  DH said that he felt the theme of the movie was it doesn't pay to tempt Fate. It's a movie that I really don't hesitate to recommend to anyone.

Have you ever found something absolutely frivolous that you just had to have?  An impulse buy that was more than you should spend on impulse but you just had to possess it? An item no one else would even understand the craving to own? Would you feel guilty if you had the money to get it even though you know it would be better to save it or invest it? We're not talking the small impulse buys like silk fibers or a custom dyed fabric.  I'm talking a big impulse on something that the kids will fight over to whom it gets willed.

If you did buy it, who would you tell about it?  It's not like many people would understand spending an amount that would seem enormous to them on a frivolous item.  How do you tell friends that are struggling to make a house payment that you bought something just because it was pretty and you just HAD to own it? Technically, it could be considered an investment but it is beautiful, and now it's mine.  True, right now I'm in a good place financially but that could change in a heartbeat.  I'll admit that I spent money that I'm anticipating having by the end of the summer but it's not like this item falls in your lap very often, to be honest, I'd never held one in my hands before.

I just wish I knew whom I could share the news with.  Not many people I know would understand my excitement and thrill over an art object.  Now if it were a stitching pattern, or something on a smaller scale, I could tell the world.  I just feel a bit guilty gushing over something that cost more than most people's monthly house payment.  My oldest younger sister would understand.  She's an art history major.  My major was General Humanities; Art and Comparative Literature (with minors in Philosophy; Analytical Thinking and Logic and Psychology).  Maybe I’ll tell her the next time that she’s in town.

There is no longer a baking aisle in my grocery store.  They have an aisle that says baking supplies but where it used to be different flours, sugars, spices, pie fillings, nuts and chocolate chips; it now contains pans and different gadgets for use in the oven, cookie and cake mixes, instant pudding, premixed spices, and one box desserts.  If I ever needed confirmation that Americans no longer cook, this was it.  This was a major slap in the face to me.  I knew the produce section had shrunk and they have more freezers now than they did when they opened but to take 6 feet of shelf space that used to be bread flour, pasta flour, cornmeal, and all purpose baking flour and drop it down to 3 feet and eliminate the 50 pound flour sacks?  There used to be a section that was about 4 feet long that was nuts, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, mint chips, butterscotch chips and multiple brands from floor to the top shelf.  That’s been cut down to the same four feet but only the top half of the shelf.  The bottom half is now the sugar section.  I paced going up and down the aisle trying to figure out where everything was and why they had done it.  I must have looked strange enough on the security video that they sent someone to see if they could help me find what I was looking for.  The poor clerk ended up on the end of a public rant on the lack of cooking skills in the current generation.  He smiled and apologized and went back to the front of the store where he watched people bag their groceries in the self-checkout stands.

As for me, I was in so much shock at how much had changed that I never did find the item that I was looking for – instant pie filling for topping a frozen cheesecake.

And here is about 5 hours worth of work on my new obsession...

Embellished block

Over the weekend, I was able to meet with a teacher on Crazy Quilting or Embellished Quilting.  I laid out 2 blocks and pieced one. There was a kit that the teacher had prepared to teach embellishing and I’ve been having a great time with it.  I’ll try and get a picture up in the next day or two.  So far I’m using just the items in the kit but I have ideas about some other things that would work with it too.  I can see that the only problem I’ll have with embellishing will be when to say, “Stop! This block is done.”

So this week, I've helped hang cabinets in a kitchen, helped put in a subfloor, watched the work crew put in the concrete driveway, and organized the tools so that they're ready for Monday morning.

Why is it that people get upset when I ask them to do their job in a timely manner?  Of course, part of it might be that several people think that I’m slacking at my job.

Today I was accused of keeping claims on my desk for two weeks.  But the claims in question had actually been mailed back to the provider with a pink sticky note on them stating that the claims were incomplete.  In fact, if the customer service person had actually taken the time to listen to what the caller was saying, she would have known that.  Instead, it was transferred to my voice mail and the customer service rep then went around telling the entire claims department that I was a slacker.

First off, I had everything off my desk (except for 10 minor computer issues) as of Thursday when I went out of town.  Tuesday I received 2 weeks worth of claims on new computer groups that the claims department had saved for me.  As of this afternoon, most of those are off my desk now too (Found 3 computer issues to be fixed which is why I ask for new group claims).  Maybe the reason I’m accused of having 2 weeks worth of claims is because the person bad mouthing me had them on her desk and is trying to cover for not giving them to me sooner.  Maybe someone else had them but it’s really getting annoying.

And in the meantime, I have a water leak in my office and it smells like mold and is making me sick.  No the building manager doesn’t know where the leak is coming from, “Why don’t I spray some Lysol on the squishy spot?”  Well that doesn’t quite fix the problem.  And they still haven’t fixed the light that goes dark sporadically.