Wordless Wednesday

Another fantastic fabric giveaway

Little Bluebell is giving away some fantastic Bliss fabric.  Check it out and enter to win!

I'm hoping to have some halloween projects to post later.  My sewing machine and I were not agreeing so I decided it needed a time out for now. 

Pictures of the painted bathroom

A few weeks ago, Mr. Moose and I decided it was time to make the house a home which means turning it into a place we want to live.  Neither of us likes bland, beige walls.  We started in the master bathroom mainly because I'd painted light blue swatches a year ago and neither of us liked the colour so it didn't get painted, but we didn't know what to paint.

This morning I set out to take pictures.  It started like this:

I finally got him to lay down (and turned off the flash) and here we go.

That lump on the floor?  Dog butt.  Sure.  He lay down.  In the bathroom.

I think the glare on the last picture is dog drool.  I'm pretty sure he licked the lens.

I spent a day at work reading.

Normally, there would've been a blog post yesterday.  I usually will take a break throughout the morning if I find I'm losing focus and stop thinking about work.  At that point, I'll create a blog post with pictures I've uploaded from home, or even text that I've sent myself for future blog entries.

Yesterday, I got to work and my computer was doing funny things.  Really funny and it wouldn't connect to any server.  So I logged off and tried to log on again.  "Your account has been deactivated."  Very funny.  Let's try that again.  "Your accont has been deactivated."

Ummmmm.  I peek at my boss's office and try again.  Third time's the charm right?  (I know.  And I'm IN I.T.!)

Next step?  Call the help desk with a healthy dose of "WTF?"

"One moment....  Yes, your name is on the list of people who've been hit by a virus.  We've shut down your account and will be scanning your profile.  Please disconnect your computer from the network and someone will by by to scan your desktop to make sure that it has no virus." 

Ahhhh ok.  Perfect.  I hang up, disconnect my computer and wait.  I drink some coffee and wait.

And wait.

I pick up my book that I use for bus reading and I read. 

Two hours later, I've told my coworkers, finished my coffee and I'm really a lot like a hummingbird in my cubicle.  Focusing on one thing for a few seconds before popping my head up to see if anyone helpdesk-like is making their way to my desk. 

Nothing.

I finish my book.  Talk to my coworkers.  Call the helpdesk for an ETA.  No ETA.  Large volume of people affected, no idea when they'll get to me. 

Project manager suggests that working downtown is great with all the shopping nearby.  I go shopping and return to my desk 33 minutes later with a stack of books from the used book store believing that SOMEONE would've been to my desk by now.

Nope.

I read some more, eat lunch, check with the chair of my afternoon meeting to make sure I have the time and location right.  Read some more.

Attend my meeting.  Project manager tells me I might as well go home so at 3:05pm I hit the road (ok, the bus route) and I'm on my way home.  Today is my day off.

Do you think by Monday I'll have my account back?  How about Wednesday since I'm out of the office on Monday and Tuesday?

Books and randomness

I haven't sewn a single thing since Sunday.  Not a single stitch.  I'm a little sad about it because I participated in another blog challenge to complete one thing this week. ONE.  I challenged myself to applique the dandelions onto Dandelion Wishes.  It's funny, I was afraid of applique until I took a class in it.  Then I realized how easy it really is.  So it's not that I'm dreading the project.  I'm just procrastinating for no good reason.  I also may have suggested in addition to applique that I could actually get the third border sewn onto my scrappy nine-patch.  Uh huh.  I did.  It may be a good thing that I have Friday off.

In other news, I've been catching up on my Library reading.  I learned of a local author's book at the murder mystery night I attended so I had to get my hands on it.  Luckily, the library had a copy and I've been reading Touch by Gayleen Froese all week on the bus and at lunch.  I'm really enjoying it and I'm glad I picked it up.

I've also been reading Harlan Coben's Deal Breaker in the evenings.  Another fantastic book that I struggle to put down.  Last night, I was falling asleep while reading so I finally gave up on those last 25 pages.  It's always better to REMEMBER a book.  I wasn't falling asleep because the book is boring, not at all.  It's so good, I couldn't put it down, even when my body was telling me I needed to sleep.

I've also returned to healthier eating.  This means actually eating IN instead of out.  No more ordering pizza because we're both tired and lazy.  No more picking up fast food because we can't really decide what we want to eat.  Last night I made pork chops, mac and cheese and broccoli for dinner and it tasted way better than anything I've eaten in the last month (well, except the Thanksgiving turkey).  My lunches have been healthy(er) frozen meals.  Some don't taste all that bad, but for what it's worth, Michealena's taste like cardboard.  Ick.

I'm cursed with a complete dislike of sandwiches.  Especially sandwiches that are made and then sit around getting soggy for several hours before they're eaten.  Ew ew ew.  There's also something fundamentally wrong with cold bread.  Even room temperature bread is iffy.  So you see my problem with lunch, right?  I have weird food issues - that there is my problem.  Soup and a grilled cheese?  Sure, but that's a little hard to make at the office and it's surprising how hard it is to find a good grilled cheese sandwich.  Most places pile on too much cheese or use weird bread or add other things to it that just don't belong. 

So.  Yeah.  Maybe I should go with a Wordless Wednesday.  That there was some meaningless, random babble.  And you didn't see what I deleted...

I blame the bagpiper that I can hear playing somewhere in the distance.  Please, someone, explain to me a bagpiper in a city's downtown at 8:30am? 

(The below picture is not from my city, nor was it taken at 8:30am, but isn't it pretty?)

I took this while sitting in the middle of rush our traffic in Toronto.  I had plenty of time for random shots of random and not so random buildings as we waited and waited and waited to move single car lengths at a time.  I will never, ever complain about rush hour here again.

The bag once more

I just wanted to share this bag again for Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday.  It's a terribly simple pattern - I think it took me only a couple of hours to make.  It's the Pick a pocket bag from Allpeoplequilt.com.  I even bought extra of the two black and white fabrics because I loved them so much.

The bag was super easy to cut out, layer and sew together, even though I'm really not used to sewing that many layers at one time.  I think if I were to make it again, I'd make some changes to it - first off, making it larger - but it's  such a sweet little bag that I can't help loving it.  And the batting it uses makes it really work well as a slightly insulated lunch bag.

Fantastic giveaway

Canton Village Quilt Works is sponsoring a giveaway on Jaybird Quilts.  There is some great fabric there and 3 different giveaways to win.  I personally love the batiks.