A Story From a Past Blog Entry of mine......

Yes, it is true...and yes it happened to me.

I recently decided to go for a swim. It is nothing out of the ordinary...it has been 100 almost every day. So, I swim. Swim, swim, swim. While I swim I am thinking of a news story last night about how they are short on rabies vaccinations this year. I smugly think to myself, "Well, I will never be in that situation anyway." My how smugness gets one into trouble. Three minutes later I notice a fowl smell emanating from the pool filter. You know the one. The death smell. "Oh, one of the baby birds fell in again and I bet he is in the filter." This is what I think. I open it. I see a sad little floating body and I am even sadder when I see it is one of the babies. I practically raised these babies myself! Ok, I didn't feed them....but theoretically, I was there. Right there. Oh, agony. My broken heart. Then, I reach to get the skimmer....and I see an ear. WAIT! Birds don't have ears on the outside. Good Lord!!! That's a BAT! Well, now. Who's been swimming in rabies NOW? Oh-MY-GOD!!!!!! I rush in and call CDC in the off chance there could be an open cut contact with saliva in the pool water. They put me on hold. They can't find any data. I start to panic. Could I become rabid? Regardless of what my students say, I HAVE NEVER BEEN RABID BEFORE. CDC can't find anything so they give me a State Health Line number to call. I do, wrong number. I think I have awoken a college student in Austin from a drunken stupor. "No Man. This isn't the Texas Health Department." "Thanks. Sorry to have awoken you at 3 o'clock IN THE AFTERNOON." I rush to the phone book and locate the the right number. The longer this takes the more convinced I am that I will soon start attacking my own pets. Or I might need a stake through my heart. Is the sun becoming brighter? It rings. I am beginning to wonder how one cuts off a bat head let alone actually ships it to the health department. UPS? FedEx? Post office. "Is there anything hazardous in this package ma'am?" "Well, it depends on your point of view...." It rings. An answer. "Let me put you in touch with the bat specialist", she says. Did she snicker? Is there really a bat specialist, or are they just humoring me while they pinpoint my location? "No ma'am", he says. "The chlorine will negate any small trace of saliva if he was even rabid. Let me tell you how to safely get rid of the body......".

MQX and Quilty Immersion

   I just returned a couple of days ago from Portland, Oregon where I attended MQX-Machine Quilter's Expo. It was 4 days of whirlwind classes and meeting new quilters, and studying every quilt in the show as much as possible. There were some fantastic quilts! I was able to take classes with Linda V. Taylor, Rick Taylor, Claudia Pfeil, Deloa Jones, Lisa Sipes and Judy Woodworth. I also made some new and wonderful friends! I learned so very much. Unfortunately I also learned what a horrible photographer and documenter I am....so bear with me. What you will see are my little impression snippets while I wandered through the show. Most are not full quilts but rather close ups so I could study them. I am ordering a DVD through the photographer at the show that will contain professional shots of all of the quilts...so I felt no need to take complete pictures.....good for me...bad for you. I am sorry, I wasn't thinking blog. I will do better next time.  sigh.


  The great news is that my Glacier Star placed 2nd in the Emerging Entrants category. It  was a complete surprise and I am so thankful and humbled to even have a quilt IN a show with all of these lovely quilts much less ribbon! It was really special.


  The evenings consisted of going out with two of my bestees, Michele and Shiva. They are fine artists and two people whose opinions I trust implicitly. They listened to me whine the entire way through this quilt....Really.....and after all of that they still c
ame to Portland with me and did their thing during the day. Then they supported me by having my back at the awards ceremony and taking me for amazing dinners at Portland landmark restaurants they had researched. That's why I love them. We ate at Pok Pok, Tasty N Alder,  Le Bistro Montage and of course, Voodoo Donuts. Any guess at my favorite? Puhleeeese! If you didn't guess Voodoo we need to have a talk. Sugar is indeed a food group. HA!

   So without further ado......some random snippets of MQX West 2013. The first one is mine: