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*

Monday: time for dinner!

This is how I described myself right before dinner:

"I'm very a little hungry."

It's a weird feeling, only being hungry for a small amount of food but being really hungry for it.

Sunday: rarely seen friends

Today we were planning on seeing two rarely seen friends. We spent a few hours in the afternoon playing Dominion with Luke...we hadn't seen him in several months so it was nice to catch up. We were going to meet Laura for dinner at Texas Roadhouse, but the dumb airline overbooked her flight and she got bumped. We had frozen pizza instead and didn't get to see her. :(

Saturday: laundered money

Ben and I were about to leave for an event at church, and he can't find his wallet. We're looking in all the normal places and trying to figure out where it was last...and then I find it in his pants, that I just washed. I laundered some money today.

Friday: snow and quilts

Today was a beautiful day! It snowed a thick sticky snow last night so this morning it was a winter wonderland. Actually, it was that way for most of the day. I braved the roads and went to work. It was a little bad, but thanks to our great four-wheel drive it wasn't too bad. When I got home I had to shovel the driveway before I could park though. Or half the driveway. Actually less than half...just enough to get the car in. There was about 12" of snow, but it didn't drift for once which was nice.

Like I mentioned, I finished the quilt top last night. The pattern called out for the colorful circles to also be in a cross between the blocks, but that was just getting way too busy. I looked at it with the green fabric, but that didn't match well enough, so I just took them out.

Here is the beginning of the back.

And my new fabric. Notice the black...I still cringe a little bit when thinking about making it into a baby blanket, but I want to try it. I'm hoping it will be better than I expect, and I really like the fabric.

And of course, Flurry.

Thursday: this and that

I don't really have much to write about today, so you'll get an eclectic mix.

*I saw another heterograph: "You should sight a process here."

*I finished my quilt top! And I figured out what I'm doing with the back. The back can be so hard some times because I don't really want to spend that much time on it, but at the same time I don't have enough left over fabric to just cover the whole back. I'll post pictures tomorrow...I'm sure you can't wait.

*I was in a professional movie for work that was up on a website today. It was part of the celebration of National Engineer Week. Sadly, it appears as though you need to be logged into the intranet to be able to see it.

*I tried using the word "unfortunately" above instead of sadly, but that is just one word that doesn't seem to work for me. And it took me about 20 seconds to get it close enough for spell-check to figure out what I was trying to say. But I think that is because sometimes spell check is dumb.

Wednesday: today

When I'm stressed, I've found it helps to sleep. So I'm going to go sleep.

Good night.

Tuesday: four question friday

1. If you had $10,000 to donate to a charity, which would you choose?

I'd buy goats. I usually get them from CRWRC.

(Image from here.)

2. Snow days: Do you welcome them happily or are they a pain in your butt?

Well, I don't have kids so snow days really don't affect me too much. However, if I need to stay home then it depends if I brought me computer with me. If I can work from home snow days are fun. If I can't, they're annoying because I need to take an unplanned vacation.

3. What talent did you wish you had and why?

The ability to think on my feet faster in order to persuade them to agree with my opinion.

4. Are you a news, politics or celebrity gossip junkie?

No.

Ten years ago today

Ten years ago today I was in a physics lab. It was about Faraday's Law. My lab report even had a cool graph and equations.

But the coolest thing about this day was my lab partner.

Although I know that both of us left that lab without another thought about our lab partner, today still marks the 10 year anniversary of our first meeting.

Sunday: heaven

Today I finished the book Heaven is for Real. It is what a little boy saw when he went to heaven for three minutes. It's an easy read, and I'd definitely recommend it.

Two parts stuck out to me...1) that the boy got angry and upset when people died and they didn't know Jesus. Shouldn't I feel that way? 2) That he saw family members. He saw a sister that had been miscarried and a great-grandpa. When Mom died I sometimes wondered if I'd see her again...that heaven must be this amazing place and why would you want to see family when you could be worshiping God. While I realize that this book is not the Bible, there is also no reason for me not to believe what it says...and that means that I'll get to see my Mom again.

Saturday: heterographs

To begin with, I'll admit that I had to use wikipedia to find the word "heterograph". I knew what I was looking for, but not what the word is. Heterographs are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean different things. One of the most common hetergraphs is there/their/they're.

Lately I've been noticing more uncommon heterographs. I can kind of understand the there/their/they're problem...two of those words are not nouns. (Although I also think that with a moment of thought, it is easy to figure out the correct one.) Here are the ones I've seen, with made-up sentences...

"I maid the program last night, so it should be all set." (This one really surprised me and it took me a while to figure out what was going on.)

"I finished the hole thing."

"I took the forth train." (Actually, I think I spelled this wrong earlier, but I've since fixed it.)

Isn't language interesting? What are your favorite heterographs?

Friday: weather

Today the weather was really nice out...when I got out of work the thermometer in the car said 67 degrees. (Although by the time I got home it said 62, which seemed much closer.) But now it is super windy outside.

Thursday: Panera

Tonight I had dinner with some friends at Panera. It was a late dinner, so first I went fabric shopping. I'm happy with my choices...I think. There is a black fabric that I really like, but we'll see how well it works.

Anyway, the time at Panera was a lot of fun. We had dinner and then sat around until closing time. It was a great place to do that.

Wednesday: computers, quilts, and elbows

Today I was putting together a computer (like the keyboard, speakers, mouse, etc) and looked at the keyboard to sign in. Someone had moved the keys around so that instead of 3-4-5-6-7-8-9 it said "GOTCHYA". Sigh. I go to change it out only to realize that I had already neatly twisty-tied all the cables back. So I decided it would be faster to change the keys back to their original positions.

The insides of my elbows were sore today. How could such a thing happen? They weren't very sore, but sore enough that I periodically noticed them. I don't notice the insides of my elbows very much.

And I started the next quilt. It would go faster if I didn't have to rip out so many seams. This is one square (although not completely together yet). There will be four or six squares.

Tuesday: Crazy Love chapter 4

At church we're going through the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan. This week's chapter was about being lukewarm. The chapter made it feel like if I'm not doing the things that he listed I'm a bad Christian. But if I can put those feelings to the side, I can also realize that there are many aspects of my life in which I'm not a great Christian. Good? Maybe. Sometimes I have to squint. But God is the most important thing in my life and I don't always act like he is.

I can start with a basic question: does everyone around me know that I love God? My family does. My friends do. I guess that even my faithful blog readers know. (If there even are any that don't fall into the friends and family category.) But do my co-workers? I'm pretty sure they know I'm a Christian. But do they know that I love God? I spend a lot of time with them. But the most I ever talk about is that I've gone to church. Anything more than that is uncomfortable.

So my prayer today, and hopefully for the days to follow, is that I'm more uncomfortable.

Monday: Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! I received some flowers. :)

Ben spent it skiing. :)

Sunday: the quilt

It's finished!

This is the best corner. I used a new method that I found online and it worked pretty well, but I need more practice with it.

Here's the artistic shot.

Overall, I think it came out pretty well. I'm still having edge problems, but it's getting there. The actual quilting part was only ok. It was fun for the first few squares. I didn't see changes happening like I put the quilt top together, so it wasn't as much fun. I'm also not sure what I think of the satin edging. I really like the feel, but it is hard to work with and likes to snag.

Saturday: tomorrow

So you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see the quilt; it is currently in the dryer.

In other news today, Ben surprised me by getting the groceries. Woo-hoo! That means we don't have to get them tomorrow.

We played some games with friends tonight and I managed to hurt my team a lot at one point. It was funny though because usually I can't hurt my team. Hmm, maybe it was funnier if you were there.

Friday: hi

Hi.

Flurry thinks it's time for bed. I had a nice evening. Ben and I went to Tioga Trails. The service was slow, as normal, but we had plenty to talk about. Ben and I each won at Dominion once.

My quilt is almost done. I'm starting the forth border now. The first and second sides went well, but I had some serious problems with the third. It came out...ok. Good enough that I'm not going to rip it out again at least. Hopefully I'll have pictures of the finished product tomorrow.

Wednesday: fractions

When I'm looking forward to something, I'll often count down the time using fractions. Such as going to space camp, days until my wedding, a vacation, etc. (P.S. It helps to have a good denominator).

Today I forgot my book while exercising, so I counted down the minutes using my factions. Itc went kind of like this:

2 out of 30 minutes: I'm 1/15 done!

3 out of 30 minutes: I'm 1/10 done!

...

7 out of 30 minutes: I'm 7/30 done. Oh, that's a boring one. Prime numbers are boring.

12 out of 30 minutes: I'm 6/15 done! Wait, it reduces more! I'm 3/5 done! (I actually had to do this one a few times. Sometimes math and exercise doesn't work.)

15 out of 30 minutes: I'm 3/6 done! I'm 1/2 done! Hmm, I wonder if I'm on track to beat the 3200 steps from last time. That would be 1600 steps right now. Yup! I'm beating it!

...

I'm done!

Wednesday: wordless Wednesday

Can it really be a wordless Wednesday if you have a title?

Tuesday: tired

Tonight I am tired. tuesdays usually end up being the most tired days because it is get home from work, eat, and go to Bible Study. Today I threw in shovel the driveway and prep for Bible study too. We need to get gas in the grey car. It's been sitting in the garage for the last week plus because 1) it doesn't have any gas 2) it's been snowy and we feel safer in the blue car and 3) we're still trying to drive together many days. Oh, so I told you all that because we had to shovel that half of the driveway tonight. We still didn't get the whole thing done but hopefully enough for me to get out. It's supposed to warm up this weekend, so why shovel if it's going to melt?

I can tell Im tired. I'm rambling.

Monday: a forward

Today I was looking through the quilt blogs...

...it turns out there's one website that's a compilation of quilt blogs and I've been looking at it. I keep adding cool ideas to my idea power point. I'm adding them too quickly. It's a problem. And maybe a post for another day...

and found someone copied one of those funny forwards. I haven't seen this one yet. So I'll share some that I found especially true.

"Truths for mature humans
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is a great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How in the world are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet? (Amanda: I've stopped folding sheets. I just wad them up and stuff them in the drawer.)
7. MapQuest needs to start their directions on step 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
13.I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page technical report that I'm sure I did not make any changes to.
19. How many times is it appropriate to say "what?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?"

Sunday: thinking the same thing

Today Ben and I seemed to think the same thing at the same time several times.

Like when the NPR announcer said that it would only take $2.50 per person in the US to update the criminal evidence stuff. We both thought about all the other $2.50s it would take to update everything that needs updating in the US and how it all adds up to a lot more than $2.50.

Or when we stepped on small piles of ice instead of in a puddle and declared ourselves mountain climbers.

Or how as we were leaving the house we both said at the same time what we forgot.


We also watched the Superbowl tonight with some friends. It was fun, but I'm not that much into football. I was rooting for Green Bay, so I'm glad they won.

Saturday: powers of ten

In high school I watched this powers of ten video. It's from the 1960s.

Then the other day I saw a similar one that was made more recently. While I kind of like the other one because it is more... logarithmic... and goes the negative powers, this one is cool because it goes out farther into the universe. It's interesting to see what we're able to see that we couldn't see before.

Friday: I forgot to post

i forgot to post upstairs and just remembered after I got ready for bed, so this is a post from bed. i took a wonderful nap on the bed this afternoon. flurry curled up with me and we slept a few hours away. It's always a great way to start a weekend.

Thursday: what was I going to talk about?

I thought that I had figured out a topic for tonight's post, but I don't remember what it was. I shoveled the driveway this morning. We only had a dusting of new snow, but I wanted to get the snow that we had missed yesterday. I got some of it. The frozen layer on top was super thick and so I had to step on it before shoveling to break it up. That's what I was going to talk about. How weird it was to step on snow before shoveling...usually I try to avoid stepping on snow before shoveling. And the mound at the end of the driveway is pure ice. The car has to roller coaster over it to get in and out.

I also took a walk around the house to make sure some of the places we don't normally see were looking ok. They are. I was sinking down to the tops of my boots, so we do still have a lot of snow even though the last storm didn't give us much.