Today's haul

This is what I picked tonight, just now. Minus, of course, those that didn't make it inside, and those that were immediately subjected to a taste test. (Urbikany and Reisentrauße - yummy!) We've been drying tomatoes like crazy for weeks now. These will also be dried or sauced. We've had a late, cold summer, but some of the plants have really produced. I have enormous Brandywines; I'm hoping against hope they'll turn red.

Clean machine

I got the sewing machine back from the shop on Friday. Yay! I've started using it more lately, but stopped and took it in for some TLC once I realized that the poor machine, although infrequently used, has had exactly ZERO minutes of maintenance in at least the last 32 years since I learned to sew on it in the 6th grade.

The report? "It was a little dry, but she purrs like a kitten" says the nice man at the shop. And now it's all clean...



So I had to do a test block last night to assure myself that I can make an hour glass, which I will have to make many, many of for the next project. (Thanks, Megan, for all the cutting help the other night!)

Filmed in JiggleVision

Why why why why are nearly ALL movies these days filmed in that herky-jerky camera shaking business that makes me puke? Most of the time it adds less than nothing to the story. In fact I'd say it detracts, because whenever I see it I don't watch the movie or listen to dialog - I sit there stewing and thinking "JEEZUS I wish they'd make it stop." It's IRRITATING.

We had to walk out of a movie again last night, because if we had stayed, the poor folk at the theater would have been cleaning up second-hand popcorn. This time is was Hancock. Last time it was the latest Bourne movie. Before that it was the Kingdom. Fortunately they cheerfully refund our money at our usual cinema. If there's any silver lining, it's that.

My first quilt top!

I recently became interested in trying out quilting, so I started small and made a baby quilt top for practice. After many mistakes, I now know more than when I started. Lots of things I'll do differently on the next one, but I'll continue with this one to learn the quilting and binding parts.

Many thanks to Megan for the pattern (which I didn't get quite right, but there will be a next time), the encouragement, the bits of her stash, and the lessons in quilting and binding that I'm going to ask for. :)

I call this my "first" quilt top because let's face it, that mother/daughter project in 6th grade was reeeeeally light on the "daughter" participation factor.



All of these fabrics came from Value Village. The purple and the stripes are shirts, and the toads are from an awesome find: 10 yards of the stuff for $7. The shirts were 99 cents each. This is why I love the thrift store.

Can it be THAT bad? Really?

While walking through the airport parking garage yesterday morning, I saw a woman wearing a uniform and a neon yellow vest, and holding a walkie talkie. The back of the neon yellow vest read:

POS

Customer

Service

Now, I'm quite sure they mean "Port of Seattle", but I've yet to find anyone in my circle who sees anything other than "piece of sh*t".

That's some seriously lousy service.

I used to be the youngster

This is an actual conversation I had with my developer about 15 minutes ago. We were talking about wrist pain and track balls, mousing with your left hand, blahblahblah.

Me: I’ve had my track ball for years.
Dev: I had a track ball for my Mac when I was in elementary school, back in like the late 80s/early 90s.
Me: groan

My co-worker was in elementary school in the early 90s. Feel old? Me too.

Why you should read your horoscope

Okay, I know horoscopes are complete and total bunk. But this morning as I was having coffee, I inadvertently turned up the horoscope page from the Sunday paper that was still sitting on the table. (Yes, I also know it’s Thursday. Such is the state of clutter control at my house.) Here’s what mine read:

"Put arguments aside. You can’t reason folks out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into. Focus on social activities, family and friends during the week to come for the best results."

And what did I do instead? Well, on Sunday I had an *explosive* argument with (well, at) my unsuspecting boyfriend, and all week I’ve been working late and neglecting my friends and family. Would I have done any differently if I had read my horoscope on Sunday? The world will never know.