The person just before me at the gas pump spent $95 on 24.747 gallons. Just think, $95 gone and the only place they’ve been is the gas station. No money left over for the quilt fabric store. That’s not any fun.
Yikes!
Ninety-Five Dollars
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy
Things that make me happy.
Dufus Dusty
Unconditional love
Contents not included
A snail mail package with a hand-made gift (a Wonder Wallet) from a friend.
Keep your fingers crossed for another 100,000 miles.
A paid-off vehicle.
Got room for one more?
Not the dreaded closet!
A clean closet floor. Oops, that doesn’t exist.
Thank you for “liking” my post!
The star showing up when I logon to WordPress, letting me know someone “liked” my post.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy
WordPress unveiled a new photo gallery feature for this Weekly Photo Challenge. I couldn’t get it to work. These photos use the default display for this theme. And when I figure out how to get the photo gallery feature to work, that will make me happy.
Updates Are Fun!
Recently I broke my computer, hubby’s computer and my sewing machine all in one day. Turns out I had help: updates. The day before my technical difficulties, our computers downloaded the latest operating system updates. My computer took exception to this and decided not to allow me to log on the next morning, no matter how many times I turned it off and on at the surge protector. I managed to log on to hubby’s computer but then it wouldn’t shut down. Turning it off and on at the surge protector took care of that problem and I managed to get it to reboot properly.
That left me with a finicky sewing machine and my computer with a bad hard drive error message. The sewing machine has since been serviced and calibrated, so it is good to go.
Hubby did some magic by attaching my hard drive to his computer and running it though a file checker. Result? There is nothing wrong with my hard drive. He re-installed it. It booted up fine. He applied the service pack. It crashed. This is, as they say, a clue. He backed out the updates and here I am, writing on my computer.
But updates lurk everywhere. My smart phone has a shopping application that I use regularly. It’s easy to take an item off the list: just touch the item and a deletion line shows up over it. To remove all the crossed out items, I just have to shake the phone a little. It vibrates and moves the items off of the current shopping list to the main list.
Or at least that’s the way it was before The Update.
I was at Whole Foods Market. I put the apples in my cart. I touched “apples” on my shopping list and the deletion line appeared. After a few more items, I decided I wanted to see the whole list without scrolling. I shook my phone, gently, to remove the deleted items. Nothing. I tried it again. Still nothing. I shook it purposefully. Just as purposefully, those items stayed on my shopping list, crossed out. I had downloaded an update to this app in the last week or so, but I didn’t consider this an improvement. Surely, I thought, it must just be me.
With that in mind, I tried a few different approaches. In the middle of the cereal aisle, I shook my phone up and down as if I were a bartender preparing a martini. (That’s shaken, not stirred, right?) I pretended I was a maraca musician and shook it rhythmically back and forth in a 180-degree arc from left to right with a little hip shimmy thrown in.
I meandered over to the refrigerated section, stood in front of the orange juice and then I got serious. I choked my phone with both hands and growled at it, much like acting-Captain Spock did to acting-First Officer Kirk in the bridge fight scene in Star Trek 2009. (Can we all say “emotionally compromised“?)
I could not get those deleted items to move off the main shopping list.
At home, I mentioned this to hubby. He had noticed the same thing when using that app on his smart phone. He then showed me that the new version included a drop-down feature of “Clear marked items.”
Oh. At this point I reminded myself that “update” is not the same as “upgrade.”
Ten-Minute Table Runner
The pattern for this is called the 10-Minute Table Runner. This was my first one and it took me 37 minutes. I could tell I didn’t do it right because I couldn’t get it to turn out like the example without adding in three or four steps. The next day, I showed it to Shelly, who had sewed a few some time ago. She couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong, either.
Step one: follow the instructions . . .
I tried it again the next night and it only took me about 20 minutes. I still did it wrong and still didn’t know why. I left it in its perwhacky state and took it to work to show Shelly. Fortunately for me, Shelly sewed a couple that night as well and remembered how to do it correctly.
My problem was that I didn’t follow the directions, exactly. (Surprise!) I managed to do everything as it should have been through the step where I ironed the tube. The next step was to “fold the tube in half and sew.” Seems simple enough now, doesn’t it? What I did instead was to open it up and then fold it in half. That meant that when I sewed it, the seam was on the outside. All I had to do was iron it and fold it in half with the middle (showcase) fabric on the outside. How hard can it be? Can I say “Operator Error?”
A 15-minute table runner
Ah ha! That night, there I was in front of my machine yet again sewing a table runner, this time without adding any extra steps. It takes me about 15 minutes to make one, but at least it is presentable.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Mine
This Weekly Photo Challenge had many possibilities. There’s my parking space at Whole Foods Market (at Lamar, in Austin, Texas). I hardly ever get to use it because someone else is already parked in it when I arrive; even so, it’s mine. Then there are my fabric scissors, never to be used for any purpose other than cutting fabric. I hide them from hubby to ensure their safety. I could have posted a photo of any of my dogs, but as soon they chew up something, hubby inherits full ownership; then they are his.
Small, but sweet.
So here it is, what I consider “mine.” It’s the view from my cubicle window. My ownership is temporary, as one of the guarantees of this job is that individuals, units and departments get moved around our agency all the time. I’ve worked on eight different floors in four different buildings, including the basement of the main building, which we unlovingly called “the dungeons” due to its smell.
The statue on top of the Texas Capitol is the Goddess of Liberty. She holds up a star that a pair of hawks commonly use as a perch. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to see both hawks sitting on the star at the same time. That’s when I really appreciate the view that is mine.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Mine
