Hermit's Log

I am excited to report that I am only a few random acts away from securing the title of "Weird Neighborhood Lady".

Yesterday, I decided to try and clear the sidewalk in front of my house of snow so that it would be "safe". Mind you, I didn't bother to do anything to provide safety in front of my house last week when we were iced in and the sidewalks were probably truly dangerous. 

So you may be asking yourself, aside from my choice of what form of precipitation requires clearing, does this action go towards my hopeful title.... Well, first, I didn't actually wait for the snow to stop therefore all of my work was quickly voided by Mother Nature. Second, I used a broom; yes, I swept my stoop, the sidewalk in front of my house, and about half of the sidewalk in front of my neighbor's house...if did a pretty good job since the snow wasn't real sticky, and heavy. Third, I did this work while dressed in yoga pants, a t-shirt, my dad's quilted flannel shirt, and slip on shoes with no socks...I basically looked homeless. 

Admittedly, I did have a purpose for clearing the sidewalk, I wanted it to be clear for the pizza delivery guy...yeah, I'm not willing yo get out on slick roads but I have very few qualms about paying somebody else to do it just so I can have one last hurrah of unhealthy sustenance before March 1, which is when I join a gym and start (again) with a course of whole foods in preparation for getting in good shape for my family's trip to Alaska in the summer. 

The next question I have to ask myself, though, is what can I do to amp up the weirdness so that I can clench the title....must ponder. 

Quilt Con 2015

This past weekend I drove my mom and a friend if her's down to Austin to attend Quilt Con 2015. This was put on by the International Modern Quilt Guild. There was a juried show of modern quilts, workshops, and lectures....and, of course, vendors. We all attended a couple of different lectures and spent a great deal of time looking at the quilts and spending way too much money at the vendor booths. 

Here are just some of the quilts that were on display: 

Face #1 by Melissa Averinos

Grove by Casey York

Outside the Box by Jenny Voss

Barn Remnant by Kim Eichler-Messmer

The keynote speakers were some of the women from the Gees Bend Quilt Collective. I highly recommend checking them out as they are a very interesting group. They provided stories about their coming up in the world and how they learned to quilt but the best part was that they spent a lot of their time on stage gracing us with some beautiful sung spirituals. It was very moving. 

The song they opened with and kept referring back to was a rendition of "Give Me Flowers While I Yet Live". This is a wonderful song about giving thanks and compliments to those in our lives while they are alive; that we should wait until somebody has left our lives to give them the praise that we have for them.