Rain, the Post Office, Quilting, and Zoom!

Thu, 14 May 2020 15:29:08 GMT

It finally rained, so my clover is no longer thirsty, hooray!

I went to the post office today to mail off a copy of Unjust Cause to someone I was reacquainted with at a Zoom virtual party who lives in Canada (and to send something I have been promising my parents since forever.) But, the book is important, because I got to chatting with the woman behind the desk about all the stuff that's been going on at the post office, foreign addresses, and, eventually, books. She told me that her niece loves SF/F, specifically paranormal stuff once it came out (because it always does when you're talking to me) that I write SF/F for a living. I was going to hand her a business card, but I'd cleaned them out of my wallet because I didn't expect to be hand selling in the era of COVID-19. So, I wrote down my information and... walked away.

I TOTALLY FORGOT TO PAY.

Just a few minutes ago a carrier came to my door and knocked. I ran down to meet him, and he told me that he'd gotten a text to check at this address because I'd spaced on my payment. He gave me a look like he half expected me to say, "it wasn't me," but I was so horrified! I was like, "OMG, we got to chatting and I totally DID!" I asked him if he was authorized to take payment, but, of course, he wasn't because he was literally just doing his route when he got sent over here.

So, I zipped back to the post office (it's less than 2 minutes from my house) and we had another big laugh. Had I been thinking I would have brought along a copy of my book for her. Mmmm, I could still do that, actually. Hang on. Going to go do that.

Okay. Back. I just went back to the post office a THIRD time, but she was very charmed to get copies of Precinct 13 and Unjust Cause out of the deal. I felt particularly good about this because, in passing, she said that had I not made it back before her shift ended at 1pm, she would have just paid my bill HERSELF. Which... that's TOO damn nice. So, I'm glad I was both able to take care of it AND give her a little gift.

In other news, I started a new quilting project. (rachelmanija , I need to still put a backing on yours, but it nearly done as well. I just have a small learning curve to surmount and... there may have been drunken hemming, I will have to send pictures.)

Here's the new project:

Image: cheery, whimsical brightly colored squares interspersed with cartoon-y quail-like bird fabric.

So.. I suppose I can't just parenthetically mention drunken quilting and not EXPLAIN.

As you all know, last Sunday was Mother's Day. Shawn decided that what she really wanted to do to celebrate (in case you're new, yes, I am also Mason's mom, but he's always called me 'ima,' and Ima's Day is Dec. 5, the day I legally adopted him,) was have mimosas and quiche. I made quiche and we popped the cork on Champaign that we always keep on hand for celebrations, and started sipping mimosas around... 10 am? In my extreme wisdom, I decided that it was a good idea to work on the quilt I've been making for Rachel. The fabric that I chose for Rachel is very shiny and lovely, but I bought it in 1990-something and so it is thin enough that I was worried that it would not actually take the full weight of the quilting. So my plan was to add an extra layer. Which I did. Three out of the four edges are fairly perfect, I even mitered the corners. Then, there's the drunken hem....

I am hoping to mitigate the worst of it when I put on the final backing.

I mean, I could rip it out and redo it? But the whole quilt has been a learning experience and I have taken to calling it my Shackleton Quilt, as it is a disaster of my own making, but I'm getting through it so that's heroic. (My family takes a very dim view of Dear Ernest Shackleton who is universally touted as a hero for having gotten his crew out alive from a disastrous shipwreck. That was heroic, no doubt, but when Shawn got a book about management based on Shackleton we were like, "mmmm, maybe a better manager wouldn't actually STEER THE SHIP INTO DISASTER IN THE FIRST PLACE." I mean, I am actually fascinated by the extent to which people will defend the guy who captained the ship into disaster simply because he managed to fix his f*cking mistake. Men get an interesting amount of credit for f*cking up.) But, so my quilt is also a bit of a c*ck up, but hey, I'm fixing it, so I'm clearly AWESOME.

The lat bit of news is that yesterday my iPad Gen 7 arrived and I immediately used it to attend a zoom book club/bookstore fundraiser. I listened to Mary Roach and Emily Anthes for Moe's Books talk about science writing. As an extrovert in this socially isolated era, I have been missing random casual interactions and I've discovered that attending stuff like this really does sooth my soul, as I have mentioned previously. The book club was fun, because it was actually more of a performance so it wasn't like I needed to have read anything to enjoy it. I am doing as many of these sorts of things as I can afford. They are wonderful.

Ah, the sun came out! Hopefully, Shawn and I will get our walk in today.

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Day in the Life of an Idiot

Rain, the Post Office, Quilting, and Zoom!