Latest Treasures

"Specially Hand Made by Mother". That's the label I found on this quilted piece that I purchased yesterday. My favorite thrift store has an outlet store near our house and I stopped in there yesterday when I was out for a walk. At the outlet store, all the rejects from the other stores are thrown into bins and everyone just picks through them to find what they want. You might think there is a lot of useless junk - and some of it is - but there are some very nice things too. They are sold by weight starting at $1.59 a pound.

In addition to the quilted piece, I got two placemats, a toy dinosaur, a toy car, and some owl "goofy goggles". Total price for all my riches: $1.27. How can you beat that?

Continuing miscellaneous

It's starting to look like spring around here! This morning B. & I headed out for breakfast, taking advantage of the fine weather. It was still cool, but pleasant. We walked over to one of our favorite breakfast places - about 10 blocks from here. We were surprised to find no one there yet other than the cook and waitress. Of course, it was only a bit after 7:00 AM. We were up early thanks to our frisky young cat Devin.

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After breakfast we headed home, checked email, and then headed out to run errands. We had quite a list of them lined up - dry cleaners, drug store, liquor store, Costco, the mall, Petsmart, Wal-mart. It would have been nice to narrow it down to two or three places but each one had something unique that the other didn't offer so we'd run in, get what we needed and run out again.

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Monday night I went to my woodworking class fully intending that it would be my last class. I've been working on my building blocks and have a nice assortment. All I need to do to them is sand them and then coat them with mineral oil and I hardly needed to attend class to do that. However, by the time I got to class I realized I didn't have any triangles or arches as part of my blocks. With advice from my instructor, I used the band saw, cutting out some of the more unusual blocks to add to my collection. And then I used a couple of sanders, including the circular sander which I hadn't used before. It was really a lot of fun and the two hours passed by quickly. I enjoyed it so much that I think I will attend next week's final class and maybe make a few more unusually shaped blocks. I've chamfered them all, giving them nice beveled edges with no splinters for anyone using them. And I've done some sanding using the machines at class but I still want to do some fine hand sanding on each, probably while I'm sitting out on the deck enjoying the nice spring weather.

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I had decided that I'd give up on woodworking but after last week's class, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll sign up again for another class next winter. Next week I start a new class I signed up for - knitting socks using double-pointed needles. Though I've been knitting for many years, I've never had much success with double-pointed needles and I'm hoping this sock class will help me overcome that.

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On Tuesday I went down to the homeless shelter as usual. Most of the guys needed no help but got right to work on their resumes or job hunts. One guy came in and said he really had difficulty with computers and would need my help. It didn't take long to see why he needed help - he couldn't read!! I've worked with a lot of guys over the past year or so since I've been at the shelter and a lot of them needed some computer help or help with spelling but this was the first one I worked with that couldn't read - at all. We struggled along and managed to get emails sent to a couple of employers. When/if he gets any response from any of them, he won't be able to read them!! Sometimes working with the homeless is quite overwhelming.

Home again

B. & I had an uneventful plane ride back from Maui. And both of us were glad to be back home though we did have a fine time on our travels. We drove the road to Hana, hiked down the crater at Haleakala, went to a magic show over in Lahaina, had dinner at Mama's Fish House and lunch at Kula Lodge - plenty of excitement for a one-week vacation. The cottage we rented was fully equiped with all the kitchen tools needed. It had space enough for the two of us and best of all, we had use of the front yard (of our landlord's place) which was right on the ocean. We would go down at night to sit on the bench in the front yard and listen to the waves while looking out to sea or staring at the night sky. Very nice.

Our cats seemed happy to have back to normal with our return. Zoe settled right in and was a pleasure to have around. Devin, however, must have been quite stressed out as this was the first time we were away from him. The first night we were back - both of us very exhausted from the flight - he sang to us for much of the night. He rattled the shades, knocked things off the shelves near our bed, leaped on each of us a number of times, meowed and meowed. Did he think we should get up and play with him?? Well, we didn't but it sure was hard to sleep with all that fierce meowing going on. By the second night, he seemed to accept that we were actually home again and he calmed down.

So now we are back to our usual endeavours - deciding what courses to take at the local community college, attending the courses from this semester, taking walks, getting groceries, etc. Another couple of days and we may feel normal again.