See You In September

Yes, we got our power back on Monday night. Woo hoo! Spent last night reacquainting  myself with how to operate the stove, the dishwasher, the refrigerator.....I even made brownies from scratch! (Katherine Hepburn's recipe, no less).

I've got a couple books that need to be read, so I knocked off  'Room' (loved it!), and now I'm trying to read anything but the bookclub's non-fiction choice--which is strange because this bookclub is the neighborhood ladies Happy Hour/Night book club. Amy wanted a book club, so she's recruited us and chosen the first book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks".  I don't know how this is going to work out, but I suspect that we're going to wind up with 'Don't Drink and Read' t-shirts by the time this is all over.

While the power was out, it would have been a wonderful time to pin about 3 quilts that are ready for pinning, but blame the DH because he didn't bring the pinning table up from the basement when I asked him, and it slipped my mind after that. So, rather than get started on that now, I've taken my usual run out to left field and I'm working on something else...

Remember that scrappy little Valentines quilt with the totally impossible instructions that I picked up a kit for in Vegas last fall?

Ah....now you remember!

Yep, it's a scrappy little pumpkin quilt kit I picked up in Vegas, and it's from the same provider of less than intuitive instructions that came along with the Valentine's quilt.  I gotta tell ya, I 86'd those instructions right off the bat... I'm doing things my way with this one. Hopefully I'll have something to show you by the weekend.

And hooray for long weekends! I've got a lot planned. There's going to be a field trip to a pretty cool Baltimore establishment (it'll be a blog post, so stay tuned, you're going to enjoy this trip), I need to do my Baltimore Album homework for class next weekend, and I'd like to get those sandwiches made. Setting the bar pretty high, as of Wednesday.

Hope you've got something wonderful planned as well! Whatever it is, play safe, and enjoy yourself!

iPhone Blogging

Remind me again... What country do I live in?

Fast heading into Day 2 with no electricity. I do so love Pepco. How their management hasn't been indicted on some Federal racketeering charge, received Anthrax in their payment envelopes, had their headquarters set on fire, their tighty whities packed full of concrete and thrown into the Potomac never fails to amaze me.

In the meantime we're delivering laundry baskets full of frozen food and good cheese to our friend's spare appliances, (thank you Anna, and thank you for having 3 refrigerators) filling coolers with ice so we've got ice and cold milk for meals of cold cereal and sitting in parking lots outside of Chinese carryouts with the engine running so we can charge our cell phones.

At no time has Pepco told us when to expect to get our power back. In fact the army of temps they trucked in from Boise to answer the life threatening emergency line ("Do you have a life threatening emergency?" "no, but I'm pretty sure you will if my power isn't turned back on soon"), have been downright rude but nonetheless quite fun to screw with...one got me back good today telling me that they just found a bunch of fuses that blew and were replacing them one at a time...honest to God, he actually said that! ( and I am ashamed to say that I actually believed that for about 10 minutes after I hung up).

I'm a bit calmer now that the meat stash is safe. I can drive 30 minutes and take a hot shower. Eating McDonalds morning noon and night isn't that bad and there's some badass cassette tapes in the basement we can play on the boom box I found buried under a pile of Spandex leggings and off the shoulder oversize tshirts.

As long as I don't burn the house down with the 47 candles we need to read by at night, we're all good!

In addition to playing FUtility (lots of double entendres there, don't you think?) with the electric company all day I did finish a wedding project.

Riders On the Storm

Just hanging out in the non-event that is Hurricane Irene. You can actually hear the wind a little bit now, and it's raining, though not a deluge. This is the most hurricane-like it's been all day.

Yum....favors from the shower, the tux was a Red Velvet cake ball.

My SILs and niece totally skipped out on my daughter's bridal shower today. The one used the hurricane as an excuse--she didn't want to have to drive home in a hurricane. (The shower was over at 4:30 and it was simply raining, with no wind.) If you watched the news....and it was impossible not to as it was all hurricane, all the time on every channel since early Friday morning, you knew we weren't getting anything serious until 10pm. The other SIL and 17 year old niece just didn't show...no excuse, no call. They live less than 10 minutes from where the shower was. Whatever.

I vented on Facebook about that, enjoyed the comments from friends, and just now went in and deleted what I posted earlier in a state of rage.

I didn't delete my Facebook post because I wasn't angry anymore...oh, far from it...I am so pissed that I get cross-eyed just thinking about it. And I didn't delete it under the guise of 'never go to bed mad'----trust me, I am going to lie in my bed and let the remaining steam seep from my ears.  I deleted the post because I didn't want my father-in-law, who is recovering from heart surgery to see the post and feel bad for his granddaughter. He's got more important things to concentrate on rather than his rude daughter and  daughter in law and their lack of family values.

Alright, I really deleted the post because in my wrath I used the 'F' word. While I probably use that word a dozen times a day (okay, I use that word at least 2 dozen times a day.....okay, so I sometimes use that word so many times in a conversation that it would make Scarface blush), I just decided that it had no place on my Facebook page for all to see. :)

Alright already, enough about my f-ing pathetic sisters in law and their lack of consideration for my daughter. Selfish middle-aged bitches. (Oooh, she's pulling out the big guns....'middle aged'...SNAP!). One less quilt I have to make for Christmas.


Moving on....

I started the Halloween top last Sunday....spent the day cutting all the pieces and fussycuts, and I finished piecing it by Thursday night.

Then I spent an inordinate amount of time last night trying to piece together a back a couple inches larger all around than the top. Stupid me only bought 2 yards of backing material.. I have no idea what I was thinking, but I did wind up with some extra motifs on a panel, and some extra border print. I had to use the 2 yards in a directional that wasn't exactly the direction I had in mind, but I had no other fabric that I could incorporate into this back, and I was in a rush to get it pieced last night, so should the power go out in the non-hurricane, I'd have everything ready to sandwich. Got to bed at 4 a.m. I was still a little short and wound up piecing some 1" wide strips from that border together to add to the bottom.

This morning, after doing every piece of laundry I could find, and vacuuming the house top to bottom, I fired up the iron and fused the Heat n Bond to the fall batiks and then the cardstock to be used for the Wish Tree at the wedding. If the  power goes out, the Accuquilt GO! still works.

(Okay, bite my tongue, but we're having a bit of flickerage going on with the lights right now.

Tomorrow is play day now. I'm so enamored with this Halloween quilt that I've allowed it to butt into the front of the line. This is the project most likely for Sunday. If I can get it sandwiched, I'll probably start quilting it before I sandwich the rest of the pile.

There's 64 pounds of ice in the freezer downstairs. Here's hoping we can use them for luge practice tomorrow.

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