Happy Memorial Day (US)

It's not really a happy holiday, but it is a good time to recognize the sacrifice of men and women in uniform and their families. I hope you took at least a few minutes to remember them.

No Deadlands game this week, the GM had tickets to a showing of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and for some reason he felt that was more important. Poozer. (joking of course)

Saturday was a meeting of our local tatters. I showed Rosemary (one day I should learn her last name) how to tat with beads. She's working her way through Kay Judt's book of stars. I also brought a box of thread to share (thanks, Stephanie). There were balls of size 10 and size 80.

On Sunday, C had a pie class. He brought home sample of his strawberry-rhubarb pie and it was delicious. I hope he makes it again. After that, we dropped off a bag to Goodwill, some books to sell at a UBS, and finished emptying my Saturn. I had forgotten to empty the glove compartment. No one keeps gloves there anymore, did you notice?

One of the errand we ran was to try and get my purse fixed. It's a teardrop purse, cross body sling, of leather and nylon. It's an excellent bag but the back of the strap is nylon and wearing to pieces. The guy took one look and said, 'nope, can't do anything with this.' I think he could have, if he had asked what I wanted him to do. I didn't expect him to replace that lining, I wanted him to sew leather over it. Ah well. I have sewn fabric over it and hopefully that will work. (pictures to be added later)

Monday, C and I went by Jo-Anne's so he could buy my birthday present. He bought me a new pair of embroidery scissors. They didn't have exactly what I wanted and if I hadn't gone with him, he would have had no idea what to get for me.

For supper, we met some friends at Casa San Carlo. I had wanted sushi but the sushi place was closed. It's not exactly a hardship to go to Casa San Carlo instead. I had the blue crab ravioli again. And for appetizers we had escargot and the fried mozzarella. By getting leftovers, I had enough room for a slice of the orange patron cake. So. Very. Good. RG had my birthday presents; a copy of How to Get Dressed, Mer World Problems (coloring book), and a corner paper punch. She did very well, didn't she. The funny thing is, they arrived at her house while I was visiting her. She had paid for all 3 to be gift wrapped but only two of them were. I had to plug my ears and hum while she called customer service to get a refund. They handled it quickly and well, at least. But they taped the wrapping to the book. SACRILEGE!

DR gave me a gift certificate to B and N. Hmm, books, how did he know?

Today, my co-workers took me out for lunch and my supervisor brought in chocolate cake. I brought half of it home.

Keys update: Rosemary found them in her yard Monday. That helped just loads.

Silk blouse update: tie-bleach didn't work.

books: Read Pleasure for Pleasure over lunch & on the way home. I've had it for awhile & just hadn't read it before. Started reading a little of Seeress of Kell again.

fingernail: that broken fingernail ripped the rest of the way this morning. At least it wasn't painful. Now I have 9 decently long fingernails & one very short one.

Today I have errands to run. The roto-rooter guy says that he has to call to get an appointment to get the guy who checks for leaks to come out.

I need to go drop off plastic bags, used books & stuff for the thrift shop. Plus, I need to find at least three tank tops to go under my new blouses. I'd like to stop by the bead store & the thread shop. I want to go see Anitra, too.

iPod update:
Good news! It's not dead. On my way to visit Steve & Anitra on Sunday, I was going to stop by the Apple store to see if I could buy a new battery from them. On a whim, I plugged it into the car outlet. Whee, it worked, immediately. When I got home, I plugged it into a house outlet & let it finished charging.

Yesterday's outfit: lime green 2006 Palmetto Tat Days shirt, blue jeans, sandals, dragon pendant, Celtic knot earrings, etc.

Today's outfit: new black polo, black slacks, black loafers (heels survived), dangly Celtic knot earrings, star/tree/moon pendant, ring, flower band ring & braided hair.

Errands: mailed Liam's present
Left Mom's card at home, so I'll mail her present tomorrow
finished laundry yesterday
Mostly finished packing clothes
Mailed Hailey's letter
Picked up new bus pass
Put covers on game books to make them easy to ID at con

Mood:
Irritable. I'm voraciously hungry and Chris wasn't able to bring food home. He had to pick up Duncan & without ac he couldn't stop to get anything without endangering the dog. I've been starving since 4 pm & it's almost 7pm. Supper won't arrive until 7:30, if I'm lucky.

Fun with Steve & Anitra:
Steve let me read his latest novel. It's a first draft but very good. He also had a bunch of books that he brought back for me, including one signed one. Anitra & I complained about our jobs and discussed about our current tatting projects. She has glow-in-the-dark thread. It looks like lots of fun.

Tatting:
And now that I have batteries for my camera, I can take pictures of the tatting I've done recently. For example, my teacup so far; the tat-along (which came out very different); & the triangle motif.

Errands run:

• Go by post office to mail Liam's present - not done
• Build-a-bear to get snow leopard - done
• Get padded envelope to mail Mom's present - done
• Ditto for Mitra's - done
• Mail Mom's present & Mitra's present - not done
• Mail Hailey's card - not done
• Apple store to investigate getting new battery - not done
• Laundry - in progress
• Pack for trip - once laundry's done

Today's outfit: I was wearing black shorts & my black 'Warning Mood shift in 5 minutes' t- but it seemed to cool for that. So I changed to blue jeans (not one of my favored pairs), purple 'Fear the 4, Busch Gardens' t-, sandals, dragon pendant, silver fem-figure ring, silver band of flowers ring, & three layer earrings (patterned ~silver upside down teardrop base, brassy patterned crescent moon & coppery elephant on top; small ball hangs from teardrop & tiny coil from crescent). I've just pulled my hair into a ponytail with a navy elastic.

Plush snow leopard: I named her Frivolite, for the French word for tatting. Hey, it's a lovely plush & $1 goes to World Wildlife Fund. And that never sucks.

Tatting update: I ran out of thread on the shuttles while working on the teacup. I did 2 sides & part of the 3rd side before it happened. So I worked on this triangle that I printed out on Friday, in the same variegated blue.

While we were at the mall, I stopped by Sears & picked up a couple of polo shirts. They are lighter weight than most of the ones that I already own. I really wanted a new pair of navy blue slacks or black skirt. No luck there. I found one black skirt that was close, but the bottom 2 layers are unhemmed nylon. Ick.

More Tatting stuff: Wally aka Needledreams has started a Tat-along project. So now I have to decide what I'm going to do. What variant?

1st attempt: failure. The thread is/was an experiment. Result: not entirely suitable for tatting. Thread doesn't slide very well.