OOPS!

A few minutes ago (at 11:00 a.m.) I telephoned Marisol at college to inquire about her spring break and summer plans.  After many rings, she picked up her telephone.

You know it's a bad sign when a panic-stricken, sleepy voice answers,  "What time is it?"

It turns out that Marisol has a class which begins at 11:10 a.m. on Wednesdays.  As devoted readers might suspect, our conversation terminated immediately.

Without previously knowing it, apparently I am an excellent alarm clock.

Sigh.  I lasted about five minutes in church this morning until the smell of perfume drove me out.  What part of "Fragrance-Free Area" is so difficult for people to understand?  It seems as though some people think that sensitivity to scents is just a joke, not a serious problem that can lead to asthma attacks.

More happily, our Sunday quintet (The Professor, me, Tremor3258, IMO, and Iltflinthills) had a good lunch together at Bob Evan's.  Then we went for a walk around pretty Antioch Park.

Apparently my lunch was too sugary because I needed (as in, I had no choice about) a nap as soon as The Professor and I returned home.

Quilt Show

Please bear in mind that March is blowing in today, so the quilt square and the quilt did not cooperate well when The Professor photographed them for me outside in the sunshine.

This is the Something in the Air block from August 2006.  I finally pieced it last night.  Eventually I hope to put all twelve Something in the Air blocks together and finish the quilt.

Here is my version of the completed guild challenge.  The main fabric is much prettier in actuality than comes across in the photograph.  It was actually painful for me to cut this fabric, so I tried to leave the pieces as large as possible.  The small blue squares pick up the blue in the patterned fabric, but this is also difficult to see in the photograph.

This quilt also includes my first attempt at sashiko.  (You might see the embroidery in the dark green octagons.)  I also used the sashiko patterns for the machine quilting in the other octagons.

The New Shanghai Express

Yesterday two of The Professor's more congenial colleagues invited him to join them on the week-long study-abroad trip to Shanghai this May.  One of the colleagues was born in China, so The Professor could travel with someone who knows the language.  The other one of the colleagues, even though he is aware that The Professor snores, offered to let The Professor share his hotel room, so The Professor could cut down on expenses.

The Professor and I thought about the opportunity for awhile and decided that he should go, especially since he would be able to travel to China with friends.  (The Professor and I love to travel.  However, I probably can never go to China because of its air pollution and my asthma.  For example, last year's visiting professor from China was shocked to see blue sky over Kansas City when he arrived because his home city is always smoggy.)

This is really exciting news for us.  I feel so happy for The Professor.  He should have a wonderful trip.

The Roo Report

The Professor's school's faculty and alumni event was sparsely attended at Municipal Auditorium last night.  However, two of The Professor's best faculty friends and their wives came, so the six of us had a pleasant evening together.

The evening's biggest hurdle was finding the mythical mezzanine level upon which our directions claimed the school's catered dinner was.  Our group walked up and down the ramps for awhile;  then we returned to the main level.  Success!  The first person we encountered was a man in a Hereford House shirt.  He guided us to the school's reception room about twenty feet away from where we found him. 

Compliments must go to Hereford House for the delicious buffet dinner the restaurant provided.  The barbecued beef was excellent;  I wish I had had a bigger appetite.

Not very many people attend the Roos men's basketball games.  I think The Professor's school arranged the outing just to provide a few more bodies in the seats.  I don't really follow the Roos, but they defeated the IPFW (Indiana-Purdue-at-Fort-Wayne) Mastodons.

This was the first time I had been to a basketball game since the three-point basket had been added.  I remember more dribbling at basketball games in the old days.  Now it seems to be mostly passing and attempts at three-pointers from the corners of the court.  Or, is that just how the Roos play?

By the way, the tiny UMKC pep band played excellently.  It was obvious that UMKC has music majors.

Oops!  I almost forgot.  Happy Leap Day!

The Threatdown is Back!

Devoted readers may remember that I love The Colbert Report.  Thank goodness the writers' strike is over (mostly because I'm selfish and nothing is more important that serving my need for comedy), and "The Threatdown" returned last night.  The tie-in to bears was, as usual, skillfully done.  (If you click on the "bears" link, go to the bottom of the page to find out why bears are so threatening.)  However, the video for the Starbucks threat was hysterically funny.  To view that, click on the "Threatdown" link above; then click on "play" for the Starbucks threat.

In Other Humorous News

ESL	ESL	ESL
ESL	KISSA:	ESL
ESL	THE UPDATE	ESL
ESL	ESL	ESL

Wednesdays are The Professor's late nights for teaching.  When he returned home last night, The Professor came into the kitchen from the garage laughing.  (Believe me.  That's a very unusual mood for him after teaching until 9:45 p.m.)  Kissa had left us another present by the kitchen door.  Only this time, practically unbelievably, it was an almost six-inch-long fish.  Yes, a fish!

There is still ice, albeit more and more slushy, covering the lake on the cove.  How did Kissa find a spot by the sloping, rocky shore with open water?  Also, where was it shallow enough for Kissa to even feel comfortable enough to lean over the lake and bat her paw into the water?  She must have caught the fish herself because cats don't seem to want to have anything to do with carrion, so The Professor and I are almost certain this wasn't a dead fish Kissa found near the shore.

Kissa is about nine months old now; she's certainly becoming more and more adventurous.  I hope it doesn't get her into trouble.

My favorite Kissa habit is the way she follows me to the mailbox up the street.  She stops every twenty feet or so as we walk along the sidewalk, so I can rub her chin and tummy.  I love Kissa's affectionate nature.  If I weren't allergic to her, I would actually be inclined to let her into the house on purpose.

Photo Show

The two photos above were taken at my church quilting group's meeting on December 17th.  We're holding up the 2007 Cobblestone Block Workshop quilt.  The woman in the pink shirt is the representative from the Rose Brooks Center who came to pick up our 2007 donations.  Our minister is on the left-hand side in the top photo.  He pieced the orange and green block in the center of the quilt.  It was the first time the minister had ever sewed.  (Devoted readers will no doubt notice that I'm the one wearing the plaid shirt.)

My son has begun to remind me gently that it's time for me to come back and finish painting in his new house.  I have finished my competition quilt, except for the label, so he has a point.  Here are some photos from last November when our family was helping him move into the house.

IMO has no fear but needs some common sense.  In the center bottom of the photo above, you can see the door to Tremor3258's basement.  Tremor3258 is trying to spot IMO as IMO tries to remove some of the previous owners' screw anchors.  The Professor walked into the living room to see this blood curdling sight; he put an end to the screw anchor removal until it could be done more safely.

Iltflinthills was entranced by the height of the light fixture in Tremor3258's dining room.  We were amazed that she could stand underneath the light without too much neck bending.

IMO helped me paint the first of what turned out to be five coats of paint in Tremor3258's bedroom, but here he is more interested in the photographic record.  The bedroom required so much painting because Tremor3258 was too polite to tell me that he didn't like how the first two coats and the resulting faux painting turned out.  I had to cover that with three more coats of paint, but Tremor3258 really likes the current dark blue walls.  The other bedroom I painted so far has deep sky blue walls now, so you can tell that Tremor3258 likes intense colors as opposed to the neutrals he was forced to endure when he lived with The Professor and me.  (However, just for the record, I always painted the young Tremor3258's bedroom whatever color he chose.)

Hurray!

Unless I change my mind, I finished quilting the competition quilt yesterday.  Only the binding and the label remain.  Tremor3258 has invited us to lunch after church, so I can work on sewing the binding down afterwards while we visit.

I'm delighted that March is almost here.  The extra daylight is such a boon to me.

It snowed a little bit last night.  The lake is ice-covered in our cove.  Part of the ice has melted and refrozen, so the resulting changes in texture look sort of other-worldly.  I'm really fortunate to live here.

The non-migratory geese seem to like to gather at the boundary between the ice and the water at the lake end of the cove.  The cacophonous cries of the nearly hundred geese as they awake each morning are too distant right now for us to hear.  I'm definitely not complaining about that.

A Strange and Silly Play

The Professor and I attended a performance of The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told last night at Grant Hall on the UMKC campus.  It was different but at times amusing, even though it will never become a classic in the world of theater. 

One of the funniest lines all evening was not spoken by one of the actors but by a middle-aged woman sitting behind me, presumably to her father after he audibly complained about the play's content.  The woman said carefully and patiently, "Just remember.  We're here to support Stephanie."

However, this play was much better than the one The Professor and I saw Valentine's Day evening.  This play (hereafter referred to as THIS PLAY) will remain unnamed for reasons that will become evident.

First, I had looked forward to seeing THIS PLAY with great anticipation because one of the main actors, who had come to Kansas City from especially for THIS PLAY, had brilliantly portrayed his character on a long-ago canceled TV show.  I thought THIS PLAY was going to be fantastic.

Second, THIS PLAY began more than half an hour late because of "technical difficulties."  As the action in the play progressed, I could only imagine that the technical difficulties had involved placing the actor I had so wanted to see under an extremely cold shower, plying him with numerous cups of hot coffee, and slapping him in the face until he regained some semblance of coherence.

The actor tripped over his lines and stumbled on stage repeatedly throughout the performance.  Once he even wandered out on stage when THIS PLAY obviously did not call for his presence.  The Kansas City Star review had called the actor charismatic in the Wednesday night performance, but apparently any charisma had been left behind in his hotel room and replaced with a certain dazed, under-the-influence type of behavior for the Thursday night performance.

Can you tell I was bitterly disappointed?

Also, the playwright should have written a trilogy along the lines of what August Wilson did with his ten plays about the Hill District in Pittsburgh instead of cramming everything into one three-hour play.  All the subplots were confusing, and the stage was crowded with too much action.  Dividing THIS PLAY into three plays according to the main plots would have improved definitely improved the storytelling.

Oh, well.  You can see why I felt so kindly toward The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told.