Cookies

Today we made cookies. Really it was my lovely daughter who made the cookies. She made plain chocolate chip, chocolate peanut butter chip and her favorite standby cookie--pumpkin chocolate chip. Tomorrow I going to meet with the Redwork Sewciety and I think we will need a bit of sustenance. I will bring coffee because there is never coffee. Not sure why. Could be that Barbara just doesn't feel that she wants to supply us with coffee every month without contribution or it could just be that she doesn't drink coffee. I find it hard to believe that people don't know that coffee is the elixir of life.......

Tomorrow I will drive the daughter to work at 5:45am. I plan to make breakfast around 8am then work on cleaning up more stuff. At 10:00am I go to Redwork group with the cookies. I pick up the daughter from work at 2pm, drive over to BestBuy to try and find a copy of Pleasantville, stop at Barnes & Noble for a calendar and most likely a coffee at Starbucks. A stop at Trader Joe's for baking pumpkins for the soup for our dinner will be next, followed by a stop at Sam's Club for the package of sliced roast beef and Swiss cheese for the sandwiches that will accompany the butternut squash soup. A quick nap and then dinner prep. It will be a busy day. We might even fit in a game of cards with the in-laws. After all that, I intend to spend Sunday sewing!

For those who are wondering why we need a copy of the movie Pleasantville--the lovely daughter has a speech class and her group is using the movie for their next project. They had to choose a movie on communication. Their sceond choice was Mrs. Doubtfire. Now that movie we could find! I can safely tell you that Pleasantville is not at Target or Walmart--both places the daughter choose to check first.

If you are out there, reading this, but not commenting......On Thursday is my guild meeting. We meet at St. Mark's Lutheran Church on Kingswood in Citrus Heights. Our meeting begins at 7pm. This Thursday we will have the Pixel Ladies speaking--landscape and portrait quilts. Very exciting. We would love to have you join us......

Julie

I know, it has been a while

I knew this would happen eventually. We ran into a problem here. The modem died. It was sad and was not able to be revived. Found out that Surewest uses another modem and I had 2 choices. For my first choice I could "lease" a modem for $5.00/month. Now we all know that means $5.00 plus all taxes. My 2nd choice was to buy one from someplace like Staples or Best Buy. Thinking that I could go and check out any new pens, I called Staples first, but they didn't have a modem that was RCF 1483 capable. I have that imprinted on my memory. I figured buying one was the best way to go. We are now connected again!

We don't even begin to realize how connected we are until it goes away. The modem was a must for us because both of my "children" are in school and some of their courses require homework done on the internet--especially the Statistics class. Very scary!

On Monday, I was at embroidery class. A very bright spot in my week. On Tuesday I was home. Wednesday I was running around after the modem and tonight I had dinner with my in-laws. How does all that wear me out?

My new goal

I am going to finish my projects. All those unfinished projects that linger around for years--I am going to tackle them and take charge. I was hoping to finish one project each week. Yesterday, I finished three projects. Okay, I started with three easy things, but still. Also, I made a decision. I love it when I take charge and make real decisions. I am tired of the rust colors of the Thimbleberries fabrics I have and I am going to use reds and raspberry colors. I am going to use blue. I will finish the quilt and I am not doing the one next year. I will still join the group--love the group--but I hate things about the patterns. I hate trying to decipher what is the correct color. I am tired of seeing right beautiful colors and ending up with rust. I am taking a stand.

Wish me luck.
Julie

Friends and Dinner

Yesterday I spent the day with 5 friends. We had a wonderful tea and pastry, then worked together, had lunch and snacks and toddled on home around 6pm. It was so much fun! The chicken and brown rice salad was so good I am making it for dinner tomorrow evening. You can find the recipe at Kim's Big Quilting Adventure (www.kimsbigquiltingadventure.blogspot.com).
I always have such a great time when I hang out with them. You have no idea how I look forward to each get-together.

The salad has to be made the night before, so I have been diligently chopping and cooking my chicken, rice, snow peas, green onions and peppers. The recipe calls for red pepper, but I buy a package of small peppers from Costco that come in red, yellow and orange. I choose a variety of colors to give my salad a bit of color. Tomorrow after school I will make the dressing and then we will have this salad with garlic bread. I may make a green salad to go with it for my husband. He may not recognize the rice salad as dinner unless it is accompanied with a green salad--as in three items on the plate.

Have a lovely week if I don't check back soon. Tomorrow night is Dancing With the Stars and I am supporting Jennifer Gray, Florence Henderson and Bristol Palin. Yes, we all know I think her mother is an idiot, but Bristol is cute and I was impressed with how hard she was working. I have to admit that Rick Fox caught my eye.....I may be sending him a vote or two.

Julie :)

Why oh Why?

Why do I torture myself? I am home today because I had a stomach ache and I am watching an episode of Law & Order that I would have missed if I had been at work. This episode gave me nightmares. So here I am watching it. It was a very good episode. This woman is found to be in a coma induced by a drug NTPT. The person appears to be in a coma, but is really frozen. They are alive under the coma aware of what is going on, just unable to move or "wake up". A real nightmare! It is positively chilling.

While I was on the computer wishing a friend Happy Birthday, even though she is mad at me because she thinks I forgot, I went on Kim's Big Quilting Adventure. She got her flu shot today.
I have never gotten a flu shot. Reason #1: I have been told that it only protects you from previous strains of the flu, not the new ones. Unfortunately, it seems that the flu everyone gets is the new strain--therefore why bother with a flu shot. Reason #2: I haven't had the flu for YEARS. I am totally tempting fate here, but it is true. I wash my hands ALL THE TIME. I am obsessed with hand cleaners. I don't touch children's faces or hands and I take great care that they never touch me. I am also known to be not a hugging type of person, therefore don't have to deal with that too often. Reason #3: I am not in any high risk group of people who we are told need the flu. I would rather my father-in-law get a flu shot than me if there is a a shortage and there always seems to be a shortage. I happen to know of at least 2 people who have died from the flu. Honest-to-God! I know you can die from it if it is bad enough and can die quickly, but again, I try hard to not be sick. I do get colds every year--every season. I eat vegetables and fruits all year. Imagine how surprised I will be if I die from the flu!

I hope I remain healthy and I hope the same for all of us!

Looking Forward

I am looking forward to sewing or rather hand stitching with friends on Saturday. I seriously cannot wait! I am emailing obsessively and calling. Just talking about it makes me happy--not twitterpated (go to Kim's Big Quilting Adventure--you won't be sorry)--just darn happy.

I am having such a hard time all week--work is wearing me down and I look forward to the weekends like never before. I have even stopped sewing all week! So unusual for me. After tonight, I vow to stop letting stressful days stop me from spending quality time with my sewing machine after tonight. Tonight I went over to my in-laws so I could spend some quality time with my sister-in-law. I really do love her. She is part of the good in my husband's family. In fact, I am lucky because there is a darn lot of good in this family that I have made my own!

I hope you all have something wonderful to look forward to this weekend. I just love it when people are in my boat.

Another happening this week. I have made a new friend. It is unusual when I find I want to be friends with a guy. Most guys don't really interest me except to exist as husbands or boyfriends of my girl friends. Gary, husband to Leah--wonderful guy, but really the friendship is with Leah, although I could call Gary in an emergency and I am sure he would help me out--car problems, removing dead animals etc. Bill, partner to Sandy--just adorable, but don't see us hanging out together, Sandy is really the friend. You get the idea, but now I think I will have three guy friends. I have Noel and Paul and now I am adding Larry. Larry is just sweet like Paul and Noel. So now we know what it is that I require in a guy friend.

Hope we chat again soon.

Meeting At Walmart

Today I took my daughter to Walmart. She was intent on purchasing a fall quilt that she saw in the Better Homes and Garden magazine. I have to admit that I do shop at Walmart--for specific items. Since we were there, I did make a turn through the food isle to pick up a few things. As I walked down an almost empty isle, I thought I saw a co-worker, Missy. There was a girl with her,who she introduced as her daughter. I introduced my daughter and Missy replied, "You are blocking the isle." This while I was remarking on how many of us live in the same neighborhood. We went our separate ways and later in the car, my daughter remarked that she seemed a bit rude. I do think Missy doesn't like me. She just doesn't seem the least bit friendly, yet all I hear about her is how friendly she is! It only bothers me because I've heard how great she is and I was looking forward to getting to know her. One thing I do know is that we have scrapbooking in common, but it may not come to be that she becomes my friend. I can't be friends with everyone.

Just a word about names. Another blogger, who is my friend, gives some people pseudo-names to protect their privacy I expect. After all, some people might not choose to be mentioned on some one's blog--to have even a smidgen of their personal life out there for anyone to read. When I rename someone, you can't count on my using their first letter of their name and then changing it or using a middle name--that kind of thing. If I am going to rename you, then you will get the name of someone you remind me of. Take Missy. She reminds me of this girl I knew in school whose real name was Anna. One day she decided to be Missy and no one told me so I kept calling her Anna. All of a sudden, we weren't friends anymore and being nine I couldn't figure it out. In fact, I called her Anna until we went to middle school. We probably would have parted company anyway by then because she was moving to be part of the popular kids. I know it is hard to believe, but I have never been part of the popular crowd. I was known and generally liked, but not popular.

So, sorry Missy that we missed this chance to be friends, but there will be other opportunities. I don't give up so easily.