England - Days 2-4 (Durham)

Most of my time in England was spent north of London in Durham, which is about a 30 minute train ride from the border of Scotland (so pretty far north).  The oddest thing to get used to (besides the time difference) was that they had a ton of light.  Duham/London is much further north than we are here in New York State.  Due to that, in the summer, they have a lot more daylight.  The sun came up in Durham around 4am and didn't set until close to 10:30pm!  While it was light for along time in the summer, I don't think I could handle the short amount of daylight (if they have about 5.5 hours of night during the summer, that means only 5.5 hours of sunlight in the winter!).

There wasn't a huge amount of stuff to see in Durham, but it was interesting.  They had an old cathedral and a castle.  The interesting thing was that some of the student housing for the University was actually in a castle!  The way the British schools work is that you have a overall University (Durham University had 35,000 students).  Then within the university, you have colleges which are essentially large co-ed fraternities.  The colleges usually have about 700 students.  Each college has its own headmaster.  In the Castle college, they were required to have formal dinners (ladies wear dresses and heels and the men wore tuxedos - both also wore gowns similar to those in the Harry Potter books/movies).  These formal dinners were held twice a week and the rule was that everyone stood at their place until the headmaster arrived.  Once the headmaster sat down, no one could leave the tables before the headmaster left...that includes no bathroom breaks!  NO way would I have survived! ;-)

So anywhere...here's some pictures from Durham:

Map of Durham - I didn't trust my co-workers to remember how to get from the train station to our hotel, so I took a picture of the map at the train station so we could look at it if we had to. ;-)

Durham Cathedral on the right...castle on the left

River around central Durham

Durham Cathedral

A very nice looking garage... ;-)

Durham Cathedral...at 7am

Here's the train coming into Durham..."Woo! Woo!" as my niece would say

More of Durham Cathedral.  Notice the black....that actually soot from when England/Europe used to use coal for EVERYTHING.  All the old monuments/buildings were all heavily soiled and black.  The government has been working to power wash all of the buildings to remove the black.

Here's the inside of Durham Castle (at least the courtyard).  The dining "hall" looks just like the Great Hall from the Harry Potter movies.  It would be pretty cool to say that you lived in a Castle while going to university.

More of Durham Cathedral -- the stained glass windows inside were BEAUTIFUL!  Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take any pictures.

Just had to take a picture of this one.... ;-)

Just one more day's worth of photos and those are pretty slim.  Friday afternoon we took the 6:30pm train back to London.  We got in around 9:30 at night and then had to check into the hotel and get something to eat.  It was definitely a long day....more on that later.

England - Day 1

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity at work to take a training class....in the United Kingdom!!  I was nervous at first (considering I had never traveled outside the country before...Canada when I was little didn't really count), but after I got to London I actually enjoyed myself.  Since the trip was for work, I didn't have a lot of time for sight-seeing.  I was traveling with 3 other people from work, so at least that made it a little easier.

We arrived in London (after a WAY TOO LONG flight) Monday morning at 11am their time.  I didn't get a lot of sleep on the plane, but I was able to get a few hours of sleep.  We stored our luggage for the afternoon and did about 4 hours of sight-seeing before we had to catch a train north to Durham.  The course we were taking was held at Durham University.  Durham is only about a 30 minute train ride from Glasgow, Scotland, so we were pretty far north.

Here are some pictures from Day 1 of the trip:

Everywhere you went on a train or a subway (the Underground) the announcement said "Mind the gap".  Most times they really meant it as there could be a 12" or 18" gap between the train and the platforms!

Paddington Station

Clock Tower outside St. Pancreas/King's Cross

Tower of London - yes, its not just a tower, but a full castle

Trebuchet! ;-)

London Tower Bridge

This was some modern building right next to all the old castles.  It was weird to see something so new next to buildings that were made in the 12th century.

The Belfast - one of the British Navy ships

Hey, kids!  Its Big Ben!....

Parliament!!

And Big Ben!....

And Parliament!... ;-)

And Big Ben again!

Westminster Abbey

Couldn't leave England without a photo of a red telephone booth!  And to add to it, I have Big Ben in the background.

And of course...the Sherlock Holmes Restaurant. 

We didn't really go into any of the places we saw...not enough time, but we did get to see some pretty neat things.

More to come on what we saw in Durham.

July Goals

UPDATE: Added item 6 by popular demand. ;-)

Sometimes I feel that if I post my goals on here, I kind of feel accountable to someone other than myself.  Work and life sometimes get in the way of my quilting/crafting goals, but that's just how things are.  In an attempt to yet again revitalize my blogging (I should be better now that I won't be traveling again until the fall), I'm going to post some goals for July.

1. Post at least weekly on the blog.
2. Finish trimming and pressing all the quarter-square-triangles for Shine on Bayou Cane quilt.
3. Upload pictures from my trip to England.
4. Read 3 books. (starting out small here ;-)  )
5. Finish up the current page on the Starry Night needlepoint pattern (there are 25 pages total and I've finished pages 1-9).
6. Get together with friends for TEA!! :-)

I'm just going to post 5 things this month and see how I do.  Hopefully I'll get all of those things done!

Now...for a quick update on the land purchase.....  We were supposed to close on the property on Wednesday, June 30th.  We were ready....the other person wasn't.  So the closing was moved to 4:30 on Thursday, July 1st.  As of this morning, the lawyer's office STILL hasn't received the Satisfaction of Mortgage paperwork from the woman who holds the current mortgage on the property.  The woman mailed it out on Monday via REGULAR mail!  One would think that you would overnight (or at least use registered mail) for a legal document!  So while we are ready to close and have our bank checks (have had them since Wednesday), we're still waiting for the paperwork for the mortgage. 

Oddly enough, our agent (in her desperation to close the deal) had the gall to ask us if we wanted to assume the mortgage!  Heck no!!  So we're waiting for the paperwork.  Hopefully it will arrive today.  We're tentatively scheduled for a 2pm closing, but we won't know if the paperwork arrives until about 1pm this afternoon.  I despise people who aren't prepared for big things like this!

I'll give an update later today on the status of whether we are proud landowners or more irritated potential buyers. ;-)

Still Alive....

I'm still alive here...for the time being.  The past month has been SO crazy that I didn't even realize that its been a month since I last posted here.  While we haven't sold our house yet, we're hopefully going to be closing the deal on our land in another day or so.  All the preliminary tests came back good, so we are happy with it and want to purchase the property.  At this point its just a case where the other attorney needs to get his act in gear and realize that we are ready to close...especially since the contract officially ended yesterday (we're waiting on some paperwork from the other attorney to make sure there won't be any liens against the land).

On the work front...its been absolutely INSANE!  Here's the rundown:

• June 8-11th -- I traveled to our manufacturing facility in Maine.  It was a productive trip, but as usual, it got me a little behind in my work.
• June 13th-19th -- I traveled to Durham University in the United Kingdom for a training class for work.  Seeing as it was my first trip overseas, I was a little bit nervous about it.  I have a ton of pictures and had a good time over there.  I didn't have a ton of time to do sight-seeing, but at least got some done.
• Since I've been back, my workload has doubled....one of the 3 local engineers in my group decided to move to another group.  So for our team we have 2 local engineers and about 10 in India & Mexico.  Unfortunately, the other local engineer here is tied up 100% with a certain project, so I'm pretty much left with everything else.  So I'm now working 2 New Technology projects, 3 full turbine designs (2 of them have design schedules lining right up next to each other which is driving me nuts), drawing quality initiatives, corrective action board activities, and design article activities.  Basically its like doing 3 engineering jobs in one...and only getting paid for one.

Hope everyone else is still doing ok....I'm sure I've lost some blog readers since I haven't written on here in so long.

Thoughts on the Economy....

At lunch today, I happened to read this article on MSNBC.com.  As I read into it further and further, I could help but get extremely irritated at the people in the article...and others like them.  Bascially, the people in the article bought a house several years ago, refinanced it during the big housing boom, and now can't afford their mortgage payments.  At this point, they have just stopped paying their mortgage and are still living in their homes and are not worried about foreclosure at all.  Their reasoning is that the house isn't worth what they had originally financed it for and the bank won't get the full price for the house, so they shouldn't have to pay the full price.  Since they live in a state that requires legal entities to be involved with the foreclosures, and there are so many foreclosures out there, they can just sit in their home and not have to pay for the home. 

Ultimately, as you read through the article, the people complain that it was the bank's fault that the bank approved them for a loan that was more than they could afford.  WHAT!!!??  How is the the bank's fault?  The people should have done the math themselves and realized that they couldn't afford the loan the bank was going to give them.  Since when do you look at what someone is willing to give you and not think...can I afford this??  Just because someone is going to loan you a million dollars doesn't mean you should take it!

While I do feel badly for people who are struggling with foreclosure, a large part of me just wants to slap them silly and remind them its their own darn fault.  A bank is looking out only for itself...its not looking out for you!  A bank is there to make money, regardless of how they do it.  If you're not smart enough to figure out whether you can afford something or not, then you probably shouldn't be buying that thing.

What really bothers me about all of this is that the problems caused by people who were just too dumb to realize they couldn't afford something affect those of us who did things right and only bought things that we knew we could afford.  It just doesn't make sense to me that the rest of us are punished by the idiots out there.  The banks have tightened their rules (which is probably good) but they've gone a little far with the hoops that people have to jump through in order to get approved mortgages.  Its made it such that some people who COULD afford a home can't get a home because a bank is too strict with its rules.

What should happen with these people in foreclosure is that they sit down with their lenders and figure out what they can reasonably pay (and that may mean giving up cable TV and vacations).  They should pay that reasonable amount and have their loan life extended until they pay off the amount.  They shouldn't be given a "free ride" just because the legal system is slow.

Busy as a Bee

Suprise...Surprise....Things got busy again and the blog suffers.  We've also been having some internet and computer issues at home which has prevented me from posting in the evenings.  So what's new??

1. The well truck is on our lot and ready to start drilling.  Its been there since the 21st and there's nothing more than a 18" starter hole (at least as of Tuesday evening).  I'm not sure why the guy hasn't started drilling yet.  One would think that you wouldn't leave your truck unattended on someone's property for that long.  Hopefully they will really start drilling soon!
2. The septic tests are complete.  They came back about as good as you can get it, so we're definitely happy with that.
3. We've been trying to figure out where to place the house on the lot.  I look at the lot and how the land is layed out and I can visualize where the house should be such that we use the best part of the lot for the backyard.  Rich tries to measure everything and wants to try to line the house up with the property lines (everything has to be straight you know... ;-)  ).  Thankfully, our builder is of the same philosphy as me.  The house doesn't have to be "straight" to anything, its just how it looks on the land.  Straightness is just perception when you actually get back into the woods.  We'll figure it out once we get the well drilled and tested and we start clearing the trees out a bit.
4. Because it sometimes takes us FOREVER to make a decision, we've been trying to look at things like siding color and wood floor choices now.  We figure if we can narrow it down to a few choices now, then we have a better shot of making a decision later.
5. We did have an open house last weekend.  We had one woman who came in and loved the house and yard.  The only problem is that she's definitely into Feng Shui.  So she was concerned about the direction of the house relative to the sun and that there were other houses "higher" than ours.  She had some WEIRD comments due to the Feng Shui aspect.  If she's going to be that picky, she might as well move to Mt. Everest and build her house there.  Then she can have it face whatever direction she wants and she'll be the highest house.  Nedless to say...we don't think we'll get an offer from her.
6. I'll be traveling for work a lot in the next few weeks.  I have a trip to Maine from June 8th to June 11th.  Then I have a trip over to the UK from June 13th to June 19th.  When I get home ont he 19th...I'm going to be SO glad to be home.  I won't want to travel for another year...but I already know that I have to take another trip in the fall.

I think that hits all the big things...at least for now.  There's another issue that I'm "grappling" with right now, but that's just having to make another career decision.  Nothing major there. ;-)  I'll elaborate more in a bit once I get my thoughts straight.

Hope everyone else is enjoying the summer weather we've been having!

Another Friday...

Despite my best intentions to try to post everyday, this week has been awful!  I looked at my blog this morning and I haven't posted anything in an entire week.

This week has been somewhat crazy because I had visitors in from our manufacturing plant in Maine.  They were up for a quality workout from Tuesday until yesterday.  I had no free time between 7:30am and about 4pm, at which time the manufacturing folks left for the end of their day and I spent from 4 until about 5:30 trying to catch up on all the emails that I didn't get to during the day.  The manufacturing folks were hourly people and since we were starting at 7:30am, they were done with their 8 hour day at 4pm and there was nothing we could do to keep them here later...they were gone.  Sometimes I think it must be nice to be able to work your 8 hours and just leave.  That doesn't EVER happen for me.  As it stands, its 11:30 on Friday morning, I've worked more than 40 hours at this point, and I can guarantee that I won't be leaving the office before 3:30 or 4 this afternoon.  Oh well.....

So things have been exciting for us this week in terms of the land we're buying.  The land is contingent upon a well being dug (and getting good water).  The well driller originally told us he had a month and a half backlog and he wouldn't get to us until sometime in late June.  However, because our builder has worked with the well driller lots of times previously (and more in the future) we were moved up the list and we're getting our well in next week! ;-)  Yay, Todd (our builder)!  We're pretty excited and hopefully we'll get a good flow rate and the water won't have any weird bugs and junk in it.

Monday we're meeting with Todd to review where to put the driveway and he's going to stake out where the house and driveway should be.  We plan to do a lot of the clearing ourselves, so once we know where things will be (and that the well is good) we'll start spending our time up there cutting trees down.

On the quilting front, I finished all 120 HST's for Shine on Bayou Cane and I'm starting on the QSTs.  I'll have some pictures this weekend of the sections already completed on the quilt.  I also have to start planning another baby quilt for a friend is who is due around November.  Any suggestions on patterns??

End of the Week

I'm always glad when Friday finally rolls around because it usually means that I have two full days ahead of me that R and I can do what we would like to do.  However, things have been pretty busy lately and I wonder how it got to be Friday already!  Not that its a bad thing...just kind of surprising that its Friday already.

Yesterday was garbage day again.  And you guessed it...it was windy!  ;-)  Garbage cans strewn all over the streets (thankfully without the garbage in them) made the drive through the neighborhood a little "difficult".  At least someone (probably my MIL) put our garbage can and recycling bin right up next to the house where it was protected from the wind.

I've been SLOWLY making my way through squaring up 120 half-square triangles (HSTs) for "Shine on Bayou Cane".  Somehow it takes MUCH longer than expected to square up those little buggers.  I've definitely spent more than an hour doing it and I'm only about 1/3 of the way done.  Maybe I'm slow at cutting, or it may just be my engineering tendency to get it JUST RIGHT.  Eventually I will get them all squared up and be able to start sewing the next step on the project.  I'm just trying to enjoy the process right now and not really feel pressured to get it all done really quickly.

I'm not sure how much posting I'll be doing this weekend as we're celebrating Mother's Day on Saturday (yeah - I know...a day early) and we're meeting with our builder to figure out what we need to do to get a test well dug on our land that we bought.  Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Oops - Updated

Late yesterday, R went to get the tires changed and oil change on his car.  He walked into the dealership and explained what needed to be done with the car, and then commented that the key fob "stopped working".  They didn't ask any questions and he didn't volunteer the information that it stopped working AFTER it went through the wash.  So we got a new key fob free of charge. 

I couldn't help but laugh when he told me the story because something similar happened to me in college.  When I went to college, we were advised to get a battery backup system for my PC to make sure I wouldn't lose any valuable school work if we lost power.  One of the mornings during the first month of school, I was rushing to get ready and couldn't find an open outlet for my hair dryer.  Without really thinking, I plugged it into the battery backup since it had open outlets.  The hair dryer ran for a few minutes and then I heard a little pop and it cut out.  I figured it was the hair dryer, but then the battery backup started beeping.  Because the hair dryer pulls so much more current, it fried the circuits in the battery backup and it wouldn't work.  A few days later, I went to Office Max to return it and get a new one and all the store asked was whether it worked or not.  I said, no it didn't work (didn't mention that it stopped working after plugging my hair dryer into it), and they replaced it for me....free of charge. 

Now....I did read online that it shouldn't have fried the circuits by putting the hair dryer on there, it should have just popped the safety circuit and stopped working.  So there really was something wrong with it, but with the combination of the battery backup and the key fob...it was a little something that put a smile on my face.

Just remember this little story though...don't go plugging in anything that pulls a big current (like irons) into battery backups for computers!  Especially if you use something to protect the electronic circuitry on your sewing machines!

Oops!

Sunday was a pretty busy day for us.  R mowed the lawn while I was at the grocery store and then we both spent most of the morning tending to our flowers (fixing the obelisk, fertilizing flowers, watering roses, pulling weeds).  We managed to shower just before lunch and then in the afternoon, we took a ride up with R's sister, her husband and her daughter, Allie, to our "expensive pile of dirt" where we plant to build our house.

Before we went up there, we didn't know if we were riding with R's sister or not, so R put his wallet, keys and cell phone in his pants pockets.  We had a great time hiking around the property and got home all sweaty and icky again.  Off came the sticky clothes and thrown into a pile in the laundry room. 

Later in the evening, R wanted me to wash the pile of clothes just so they weren't sitting there.  Now...normally I search through R's pockets because who knows what I'll find in there, but this time I didn't because I saw him empty the pockets when we came home.  So everything went through the washer and then got put into the dryer.  We kept hearing this funny banging noise from the dryer, but just thought it was the waistband hitting the side of the dryer or something.

Well, just before bed, R decided to gather up all his stuff for the next morning.  All of a sudden he says "I think I know what that banging was"....sure enough, in the pants pocket was his car keys...with the little electronic key fob.  We pushed the little buttons...nothing from the car.  At least the key itself still works, but now we'll have to get a new key fob.  We even checked to see if we could get the battery out of it to see if it was just the battery, but we think the whole thing will need to be replaced.  Needless to say, R was in a bit of a foul mood after finding that out last night.  On the good side, he's going to the dealer today to get his snow tires taken off, so hopefully they'll be able to replace it and it won't be too expensive.

Stash Busting 2010 - Week 18

Its been a while since I posted for the stash busting effort, mostly because I was on a mini-hiatus from blogging.  But during that time I have gotten some quilting done.  I finished up the Sixties Charm quilt.  This is the first quilt that I quilted on my mid-arm machine (Viking MegaQuilter).  It came out pretty well I think for the first quilt.

This past week I've spent most of my time pressing and cutting fabric for the next quilt.  Its from Judy Laquidara's book Weekend Quilts.  Sorry about the picture being a little fuzzy, I think the batteries on the camera were dying.

So here's the stash report

Used this Week: 8.43 yards
Used Year to Date: 25.23 yards

Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 0 yards

Net Used for 2010: 25.23 yards

Wow!  I have over 25 yards used this year and nothing bought.  I'm doing pretty good so far!

Treats in the Mail

I came home from work on Thursday to find not one...but two packages on my doorstep.  I brought them inside to unwrap my goodies.  The first box was from my FAVORITE tea shop, Harney & Sons.  They have awesome tea. 




After digging through the packaging, this is what I discovered...





A whole package of Harney's Hot Cinnamon Spice tea!  Yummy!  I've had their Apple Cinnamon tea before and it was really good, so I'm sure this one will be good, too.  If you look close, there's a little card that came with it from my sister.  Thanks, Laura!!

So the other box on my doorstep was something that I ordered for myself....



Its my thread!  I didn't think it would be here so soon.  Superior was able to ship it through USPS priority mail (flat rate shipping) so not only was it cheap (less than $4), but it got here very quickly.  I placed the order on Tuesday and it got here on Thursday...not bad!




It will be fun to test out the tea and to try out the thread when I start to put together my quilt.  Tea and quilting seem to go well together. :-)

Garbage Day -- the Aftermath

I forgot to take pictures when I first came home, but let me tell you...after the wind today it was a mess.  Someone had kindly put the lid to our garbage can up by the house, but the garbage can itself was a good 400 200 feet from the house and I had to dig around through some pricker bushes to retrieve the recycling bin.

The sad part is... take a look at the nice photo below from a few years ago (our rose garden with the white obelisk in the middle).



The obelisk didn't make it through the wind today.  It had taken some damage last fall from some stupid kids who decided to rip it out of the ground, bust one of the legs and take the top off.  We had managed to repair it a bit and stuck it in the ground.  This past winter, one of the plows was trying to get done REALLY fast and they went flying down our hill and throw the heavy, wet icky stuff at the edges of the road 15 feet onto our property and a chunk of ice took out part of the obelisk.  So with both episodes weakening the obelisk, the wind today was just too much for it.  The wind knocked it right over and broke one of the other legs.    So now we'll have to figure out something else for the climbing rose to climb on this year and we're going to have to do it quickly before it gets too big.

Garbage Day

Every week our garbage is picked up by the local village municipality.  Each Wednesday evening, like clock-work, everyone in the neighborhood takes their trash out to the curb for it to be picked up the following morning.  Apparently there is some "rule" that the garbage MUST be out by 7am Thursday morning.  I've actually heard of people getting yelled at for putting their garbage out to the curb after 7am, but just before the garbage truck gets to their location.  If its out there before the truck and its not slowing the garbage guys down...who cares when it gets out there.

Anyway...invariably Thursdays are windy.  We have no idea what it is, but it seems like EVERY Thursday there isn't just a nice gentle breeze blowing.  We always have a gale force wind on Thursdays, which means that all the empty garbage cans are littered everywhere along the road.  Since we're at the bottom of the hill, we typically end up with everyone else's garbage cans.  Most of the time people come and retrieve them as soon as they get home from work.  However, there are some that just don't come to claim their bins, so we end up taking them into our garage so that they don't get blown around into the road.  Then when the wind does die down, we put them out for their owners to claim them.  It would be nice once in a while to NOT have a windy Thursday. :-)  Today in fact...they're forecasting wind gusts up to 50 mph!  That kind of wind will DEFINITELY move an empty garbage can.

On to a few "quilty" things....

I ordered a few new types of threads this week.  I usually do my piecing with Mettler's Metrosene thread.  The quilting store that I bought my Bernina from told me that the machine is designed around the Metrosene thread and if I want a really good 1/4" seam to use that thread.  To be honest...I haven't really found any difference in my seam allowances between using Metrosene or Connecting Thread's Essential threads.  That being said, I have heard lots of great things about Superior's Masterpiece threads and their BottomLine threads for quilting. 

For my birthday, my inlaws gave me three spools of Bottomline thread (in colors that I had requested) along with a color card and they also gave me one of the large cone thread holders so that I can get the larger spools of thread.  So earlier this week, I got myself my own birthday present of a large 6000 yard spool of Masterpiece thread in "Canvas" (can't wait to actually see the size of this thing) and two smaller 600 yard cones in a medium olive green and a peachy-pink. 

I have a quilt that I'm making that I posted a picture of a while ago.  Its a design that Judy L. has in her new book "Weekend Quilts" called Shine on Bayou Cane.  The dark background fabric I'm using is a deep, forest green and the lighter background fabric is soft of a yellow/olive green.  Then the focus fabrics that create the stars in the middle are a light pink, medium peachy-pink and a deep rose color.  Fabrics can be seen here and the pattern here.  So the olive green thread and the peachy-pink thread will be good for piecing these fabrics.  I've read that matching the piecing thread as close to your fabrics as you can make a big difference in how your quilt looks.  This happens a lot when you have light colored fabric and you use a medium or dark color thread.  I saw one quilt that had pale yellow fabric and it used a neutral grey thread for piecing, but because of the pale yellow fabric, you could see the grey thread all over the place.  Definitely don't want that happening to one of my quilts!

So the thread should arrive in the next few days and it will be kind of fun to receive something else in the mail...besides a jury questionnaire (more about that some other time).

I think that's it for my random thoughts for today...at least for the ones I feel like publishing. ;-)

Tea

So after reading a friend's post about taking a trip to Harney & Sons, I couldn't help but think...I need to really replenish my tea collection.  Over the past few months, I'm managed to empty just about all of my tins with the exception of the caffeine free ones...which just don't cut it first thing in the morning.  All I have left is a tin of Fanciest Formosa Oolong, Boston, and about half a tin of Early Grey Supreme.  Now, if you order via the internet, Harney will send you tea bags, loose tin in small tins, or you can get the grand-daddy 1-pound pouch of loose tea.

Let me tell you...it takes a long time to go through a pound of tea and when you like a wide variety of teas, one pound of each one will last a REALLY long time.  So I happened to send an email to Harney's to see what they would say to offering smaller quantities of loose tea without the tins.  Surprisingly, they said they are easily willing to do that...it just takes a little longer for the order to be filled.  I'm fine with that!  The only thing you need to do is either be REALLY specific when ordering online...or just call them on the phone and order that way.  I think I found a new way to fulfill my tea fetish. :-)

I definitely plan to sift through all my empty tins and make a list of what I need to fill them back up.  I just have to make sure its not too expensive a shopping trip. ;-)  On that note though, R confessed earlier this week that it seems like his "pain threshold" for spending money is about $500.  Hmmm...$500 buys a lot of tea.  If he's not bothered by a purchase under $500...... .

Just kidding...as I said...$500 of tea is A LOT OF TEA!  I don't think I could drink that much tea in the next decade.  I'll be floating if I tried to drink that much.

That's my little random thought for the day...one of many of course. :-)

Turning Over the Blogging Leaf

I’ve been a bad blogger lately.  Things here at home and work have been busy for a while and I haven’t really had the inclination to really post anything.  I guess it was a sort of mini-hiatus from blogging.  Well…I’m hoping this is a new start.  :-)

Recently I turned 30 (gasp! – although for some of you…30 probably seems like a lifetime ago) and I’ve done a lot of thinking about things in general.  I have a hard time being outgoing towards people and my first inclination is to say no to any kind of invitation out.  I’m just a quiet person and while my husband thinks I am very social…most of the time it scares the heck out of me.

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself wanting to be around people even less.  I’m not sure exactly why (still working on that), but its been a case where the last thing I want to do in the evenings or on weekends is to socialize with people…even if they are good friends.  Family is a whole other issue.  I used to call my mother and talk to her several times a week.  Over the past few months, I’ve maybe talked to her once a week…sometimes not even that often.  It seems like all I want to do is really be alone and not be bothered by others.  Maybe its just a case of being overstressed at work (had to make a decision about staying at my current position, having my manager leave our group, and now having a new manager take over and having to figure out what my new technical leader will be like…when they finally announce it).  I’m not really sure, but I’m hoping that at least this blog can be a little bit of resurgence to being with people.

So at my attempt to blog a bit more and at least “talk” to people, I’m hoping to post something each day.  It may not necessarily be about quilting or anything that you readers would find interesting, but its what will be going on in my head at the time (that’s a scary proposition :-)  ).  We’ll just have to see how it goes.

Stash Busting 2010 - Week 14

Boy its been a while since I last posted.  Life has definitely been busy for us.  Work is very busy despite our manufacturing workload being low this year.  Our upper level management pulled in a lot of funding to do advanced design work since we didn't have a lot of customer orders last year and into this year.  Its great that they did that because they've been able to not have any layoffs.  Even our manufacturing crew hasn't had any layoffs...but they do have unpaid furloughs this year because there just isn't enough work to keep them busy.  We're starting to get more customer orders now, so we think things have turned the corner.  The only downside is that if we get half the number of orders they think we'll get...we're going to be seriously understaffed.  To the point where they may have to institute paid overtime for salary workers to get all the work done.  While we all put in extra hours each week...its a whole different ball game when you NEED to work 60 hours every week just to get the basics done.

We've also been busy with trying to sell our house and buying land to build our next home.  Our house still isn't sold, but we've seen a lot more traffic the past few weeks and we're hoping someone will eventually make an offer.  We're kind of tired of keeping the house spotless -- its amazing how much effort it takes to do that all the time.  There's a certain kind of clean that you have for your own family...and then there's another level when you're showing the house.  On the plus side, I think we've found a really great piece of land.  Its 16 acres total, with the section where the house would sit being about 230 feet wide.  The house would be setback about 550 ft off the road (which is good considering its a state highway with a speed limit of 55mph).  Its all treed right now and its absolutely gorgeous.  Rich and I spent about 2 hours wandering around the lot on Friday afternoon and sat for about 20 minutes beside a small brook that runs across the northern edge of the property.  It was very nice and quiet.  We just need to finalize our building costs and get the right tests written into the contract for the land.  Since there's no well or septic on it, we have to have both of those tests done before we're willing to buy the land (both tests will be on a contingent contract for the land).

Aside from doing stuff for work and house hunting/selling, I haven't really gotten a lot done.  I did however finally get my mid-arm machine setup and start sewing a quilt on it.  The quilt is probably about 2/3rds done now.  It took me a little while to get the setup that worked for me, but I think I have it now.  I'll definitely  have some pictures on here later this week to show the progress.

Anyway - from a stash front...because I put the quilt on the frame and started quilting...I used stash for the back of the quilt. :-)  Here's my numbers:

Used this Week: 2.85 yards
Used Year to Date: 16.2 yards

Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 0 yards

Net Used for 2010: 16.2 yards

I've been good and still haven't bought anything new!  That may come to an end soon though. ;-)

Stash Busting 2010 - Week 11

Its been a while since I posted a stash report...mostly because I haven't been busting any stash.  We've been very busy with house hunting stuff, but I have been able to get some sewing in.  Over the past few weeks, I've been able to find a half hour here or there and was able to complete a quilt top.  I have the backing that I just have to press and it will be ready for quilting.

So here's the report:

Used this Week: 6.00 yards
Used Year to Date: 13.35 yards

Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 0 yards

Net Used for 2010: 13.35 yards

I haven't bought anything yet this year besides some thread, so I think I'm doing pretty well.  I guess this makes up for the poor job I did last year at busting stash. ;-)