We started taking some things apart today before the movers come first thing tomorrow. My desk only took about 10 minutes to get into small enough pieces to get out the door, so we're waiting to do Ben's until tomorrow morning.

We moved the picnic table into the garage because it is supposed to snow (at least a little bit) tonight. While we were doing that I decided that I should do a quick rake on one side of the house while we still have rakes...leaves get caught there every year. It was a little drizzly and a little cold, but not too drizzly and not too cold. I actually had a pretty nice time outside.

Wednesday: small change of plans and lunch

Well, today was going to be rather busy as Ben and I had several last things to finish up before the movers come tomorrow. Then the movers called and said that they aren't going to come until Friday...which actually works out a little better for us in the end.

You'd be proud of me...I'm even making some of the phone calls. I'm making the easy ones, but I'm proud that I'm not making Ben call everyone.

I had lunch with Jess and Heidi which was fun as usual. Actually, it was a little more fun than normal because Heidi was there. And I found a person to give all my extra cardboard boxes to! I was going to recycle them, but reusing is even better.

Speaking of things you put out at the curb, we almost missed our last trash pick up this morning. I figured that I'd have plenty of time to get it out, although I really wasn't sure when it got picked up. I woke up around 8:45 (later than I have been waking up) and got up to put it out. Then I started hearing this weird noise...I thought it sounded like an owl. Then I thought that maybe it was the garbage truck. So I threw some clothes on to at least get the trash can out there, and then I could go back through the house and pick up the last trash. Well, I got the can to the curb about 30 seconds before they came by. Phew.

Wednesday: pants and cookie cake

I wore my comfortable pants for most of the day today.

I don't wear them very often, but all of my jeans were in the wash. They're super comfy, but I need to be in the right mood. And not have to leave the house.

I did change into jeans for Bible Study though. They surprised us at the end with a nice cookie cake.

Monday: dreams, food, and Benadryl

I woke up in the middle of a dream this morning. I was in school. It felt like late high school because I was riding a bus. In English, we were studying "The Metamorphosis" and had to write a paper comparing and contrasting Gregor Samsa (i.e., the guy who turns into a cockroach) (yes, I had to Google what his name actually was) to a real person. Except the only person I could think of was the Beast from "Beauty and the Beast", so I was trying to figure out how I could convince the teacher to let me use him.

In other news, today was a great day in our house for finishing off food! We finished off a yogurt, a box of noodles, a can of white sauce, a can of red sauce, a can of chicken, a box meal of fried rice, the last of our eggs, a bag of tortilla chips, and the Coke. While we won't be able to finish everything that we have in the fridge, we are making pretty good headway.

We gave Flurry some Benadryl today to see if it would help sedate her for the upcoming car ride. It didn't. It actually seemed to make her slightly more alert, which the vet said could happen. So instead of taking a nap this afternoon with me she cleaned herself. We will be trying some different medicine tomorrow or Wednesday.

Sunday: misc little things

*After church today we went to Applebees. On the menu cover there are currently four people (two couples) sitting around a table. It matched us almost perfectly...even the order that we sat in. The only thing wrong was that Ben has dark hair instead of blonde. I tried finding a picture of it online, but was unable to. :(

*We think that Flurry can tell something big is happening and seems to be a little off.

*I started a new blog solely for quilting. I'll still post some quilting pictures here (when quilts finish or when nothing else happened that day), but I'll probably post more in-progress pictures over there. We'll see. I figure the worst that happens is that I don't post on it anymore.

*I don't have to work tomorrow!! Woo-hoo!! That means I can go to bed any time that I want to.

Saturday: another farewell

Tonight we said goodbye to our Saturday night gaming group. It's been fun getting to know them and the food has been good.

My pet dragonling turned into a silver dragon (oh, I've always wanted a dragon) and I got to roll 11 d20 to kill a red dragon. Unfortunately, that also killed me.

Friday: unemployed

Well, I am now officially unemployed, at least for now. Needless to say, it was a rather hard day.

Let's see...

*I started out the day by stopping by the office of one of my old coworkers. She was my official "buddy" when I started and helped me with the ropes. It's been a while since we've had a chance to talk, so that was nice.

*Then I had an exit interview. It went faster than I expected and they didn't ask any hard questions. Phew.

*I had an extra hour before I needed to go to my normal work location, so I went to the fabric store. Once I get the cloth washed, I'll be starting to work on this quilt. I won't be using all the colors in the picture below, but I think they're rather pretty bundled like that.

*Then I had to go to my normal work location. I was doing ok until my tech lead started telling me how much of an asset that I've been and that I was truly a part of the family. I then had to say good bye to everyone else and it didn't go all that well. I'm pretty sure it was harder on me than it was on them.

*I ended up having a long lunch with Jess after that. It made me much happier. The conversation just flowed.

*I went back to work to turn in my computer and badge. But they had already turned my badge off, so I had to keep calling people to get in the facility.

*Flurry and I took a nap. It's how I de-stress and was greatly needed

*Ben and I went to see "Limitless" in the movie theatre. It was pretty good, except for a few really dumb parts. Like when he's in the middle of NYC and suddenly can't get cell service because the guys are there.

Thursday: colors

I got all my pieces cut out for the next quilt. It was a little nerve-wracking though (or as nerve-wracking as cutting fabric can be) (which I guess isn't really that nerve-wracking).

The first three colors that I cut where bright orange, light blue, and bright pink. They do not match.

Then I cut out white. Things started to get a little bit better.

And then I cut out the base fabric. It's a fun paisley type pattern, but incorporates all the colors.

So this quilt might work out after all.

Wednesday: pizza

The people at work had a pizza party for me today. It was nice. :)

It also snowed here. It was a heavy wet snow, and so it stayed on the trees all day.

Tuesday: work

Ok, I'm ready to be done with work. Giving away some of the things that I've been working on for two years is hard. I like the people and I enjoy what I've been doing, so it will be easier when I don't have to see it every day.

And I definitely like not working. Well, at least for a few weeks. After that I'll probably be bored, so hopefully I'll have a purpose by then.

Monday: walls

This weekend I took down the picture wall. :( I have a few new pictures that I wanted to change out from around Christmas, but never got around to it.

Then I was left with a bunch of nails.
I Spackled and painted so that when people came into the house, the first thing they wouldn't see are all these nails sticking out of the wall. Unfortunately, the paint job didn't come out great...if you're on an angle and it is daytime you can see where I painted. But it looks better than nails and hopefully good enough.

On the wall in the gym there is a sign with rules. One of the rules is "Do not place hands or feet near moving parts." However, I would like to remind the sign that it is in a gym. All the machines have hands or feet near moving parts. Take the treadmills for example. They're rather pointless if you don't put your feet on the moving part.

Sunday: finished quilt

I finished the next quilt today! I like how it ended up turning out. I still need some practice on the edges, but I will just try again on the next one.

The top:

The back:

The foldover:

The cat test (passed):

Saturday: quilt day

Today is National Quilt day. In honor of it, it spent way too much time working on a corner of my binding.

Now, I know that there are other ways to do corners, but my problem with this quilt is that the back is smaller than the front. (Don't ask me why.) So I had to be creative to figure out how to get on the binding without messing up the front. I figured it out, but the corners are still giving me problems. One of these days I'll get it figured out.

Here's how it turned out. Not great, but definitely the best I could get.

update: the next corner went much more smoothly...it looks better and took a normal amount of time. :)

Friday: moving

So here's the big news: we're moving back to West Michigan.

Ben has taken a job with Gentex and I have a few possibilities on the horizon. I think we're going to leave here April 3rd after church and will get to Michigan on the 4th.

This was an incredibly hard decision for us. We like it here. We like our jobs, love our friends, and have put down some roots in the short time that we've been in New York. But at the same time, our family is back in West Michigan. We feel like this is where God is leading us; some doors have closed themselves here while other doors have easily opened in Michigan.

Wednesday: counting sheep

I was having a hard time on Sunday night getting to sleep, so I decided to count sheep.

They started out well behaved.

But number 3 turned into a bullet sheep. (My paint skills are kind of lacking.)

The sheep #4 jumped too high.

I finally got them back to normal.

Only to have sheep 10 do flips over a fence on me, very unexpectedly.

After that, things went out of control. They all dyed themselves.

So I had to give them a shower before they could jump. But then they were just sopping wet sheep.

Since it was a sunny day, they eventually dried. And then went *poof*.

But they stayed calm, albeit poofy.

Until one sheep decided she needed bows and ribbons in her coat.

Tuesday: today

"Beware the Ides of March."

That was an apt quote for today. The day went way better than I expected, but it was still not enjoyable.

I'll be less cryptic later. And when I'm less tired.

Monday: Happy Pi Day

I'll admit, I almost forgot Pi Day today. I know, it's horrible. But once I was reminded, circles just kept showing up!

For example, someone brought in some donuts at 11am out of the blue. Hooray! And for dinner we had cylindrical tater tots.

Sunday: TV shows

I finished all the on-line Grey's Anatomy this weekend. I really enjoyed the show and am excited to see the next season whenever it comes out. I found it interesting how I liked and disliked characters at different times throughout the series.

I started The Cosby Show next. I know it's old, but the first two episodes still made me laugh. I remember it as a special show because I was old enough to stay up and watch the new episodes while Nathan had to go to bed.

Saturday: brown sugar

Today I was making some PB cookies and opened up a new bag of brown sugar. It was as hard as bricks! I started looking on the bag to see if there was an expiration date, but wasn't really sure what I'd do if it was expired. Probably use it anyway. There was no expiration date, but there was instructions on how to soften it. Put a piece of bread over the brown sugar in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. I had some big chucks so microwaved it for a little bit longer, but it worked very well! Mixing the batter wasn't the arm-wrenching experience I had been anticipating.

Friday: black?

So I took a break from quilting the other quilt one night this week to make a block for one of my next quilts. I only made one block because I need some feedback. It's the black baby boy blanket...do you think the colors will work?

Here is the one block.

Here is a photoshop of four blocks together.

Thursday: today's victory

Today I had a victory. I wrote a program a while ago and last week gave it to the operators to start using. Well, it didn't work. Why? Because I wrote it with VBA 2007 and the computer only had 2003 on it. There are some commands that are not backwards compatible, as I quickly found out.

Ok, not a problem. Well, just a little problem. We'll run it on the computers next to the other computers. I try it. The network drive permissions are incorrect. Bother. I finally get that straightened out. It seems to work! Hurray!

Of course, I didn't test one of the buttons to print something. It turns out that these other computers aren't hooked to the printers. (The first computers were...it never even crossed my mind.) So I had to figure out how to get those computers hooked to the printers. The on-line tutorials were not very helpful as they left out the one step I couldn't figure out: how to get the server name for the printer.

Here it is, just for reference: 1) get the printers and faxes open in an explorer type window (you can right click the "printers and faxes" if you can't figure out any other way). 2) In the white area, right click and choose server properties. 3) Find the name of the server. It might be the computer name, but not necessarily.

Wednesday: more thoughts on words

Sanctuary.

What is the first definition that you think of when you hear that word? A place of worship or a place of refuge?

And really, shouldn't it mean both at the same time? Shouldn't our place of worship be a place of refuge?

Tuesday: hmmm

Hmmm.

I'm making a list. It helps to de-stress me because then I don't have to remember everything that is running through my head.

I love lists. I make them all the time. I have been better lately though and haven't added fun things like nap and shower just to have them on my list.

Monday: why my back could be sore

First of all, I had to collect six catapult pieces and carry them at once in my backpack. "No big deal," I thought. But then I found out they (circled in yellow) were about six times the size of me (circled in blue).

Fine, fine...my back probably isn't sore from that. But it could be sore from shoveling this morning. We didn't get shoveled out until around noon (we took many breaks). I did go into work after lunch, but there were only about 15 out of 50 people there.

We shoveled just enough to get the car out.

(And my back isn't sore...but after today, it could have been. The snow was heavy.)

Sunday: weather

I took this picture this morning because I found it interesting how the last bit of snow was melting from our deck.

But then by the time we got back from church around 1pm, we had an inch of snow!

By 4pm, we had more.

When I went out to shovel, it was a good 4" and still coming down hard. The part I shoveled first probably had about 1/8" on it by the time I was done, 15 minutes later.

And here's my helper. She wanted me to go to bed.

Update: Ben and I went to shovel again around 9:30. There was another 5" minimum.

UpdateII: Ben and I looked outside around 10:30. There was another 1".

Saturday: waking up

I woke up way too early this morning...earlier than the alarm usually goes off on a weekday. While it was kind of sad, I did accomplish many things before 9am.

Friday: something I never thought I'd burn

Tonight I was making curry (and using up the potatoes). At one point, I need to heat some vegetable oil and then put flour in it. In the past when I've done this, little bubbles appear when it gets hot.

So this time I was waiting for the bubbles to appear. And waiting. And making sure the burner was on. And waiting some more. No bubbles. Finally I decided it had been long enough and started to put the flour in. It stank like burnt food, and the flour even looked burnt. So I threw it out and started again. It turns out that the little bubbles only appear when there is an "imperfection" in the oil...like a little piece of meat from the main dish. But when your pan is perfectly clean, the oil just starts to heat without the bubbles.

And the quilt progress - I've quilted about 1/4 of it.

Thursday: long week

It's been a long week. I'm glad tomorrow is Friday.

Wordless Wednesday

(hahaha)

Tuesday: puffs

I had my yearly eye exam today. I passed. Phew.

The nice lady that was working the pre-eye test stuff let me off with only one eye puff. I have such a hard time with that machine. She first said that she was going to do three puffs in each eye. Talk about torture. In the end she just did one puff in one eye.

Part of the problem is that I don't know when it is going to come, so I squeal a little bit after each puff. The other problem is that my eyes just don't stop blinking. I try really, really hard to keep them open, but on the puff machine they just don't pay any attention to me.

*Blink*