Archive for July, 2008
Generosity and Caring
There are so many stories of generosity and caring…
One of the winning bidders from the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative’s June small quilt auction was Kevin Astle. He paid for his quilt online, as most do, but added a note in the comment section telling us that he wanted it shipped to the next highest bidder as a gift! Turns out the quilt he bid on and won was one that his mother made. He said that he had lots of his mother’s work and wanted to share her talent with others. The bidder whom he overbid called and left a message on our answering machine when she got the quilt she thought she had lost out on. She was understandably surprised and extremely delighted. And then she sent the AAQI a donation!
Learn more about the Alzheiemr’s Art Quilt Initiative in the AAQI Update, emailed twice a month. Sign up here.
1 comment July 31, 2008
Cross Here
Walk This Way
It’s not often I find defacing public property amusing, but this altered sign at the crosswalk by our local movie theater is inspiring.
Next time you shuffle from the parking lot to wherever you’re going, let’s see a little wiggle!
How’d they do it? Looks like a computer generated sticker. It’s been there for about a year as far as I can tell. Makes me smile every time.
3 comments July 25, 2008
Signatures of Support
Last month I asked Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative supporters to share their email signatures that mention the AAQI. I picked the best three and here they are. (Click the image to see a larger photo.)
Pretty clever, no? The top one is actually Julie’s business card with a statement of support at the bottom. The other two are actual email signatures.
Well done, everyone!
3 comments July 23, 2008
My Phone Stinks
No kidding. It really stinks. As in somebody’s armpit. Really cuts down on long conversations. I use speakerphone a lot. I’ve sprayed my phone with deodorant, Oust, Fabreeze, and I’ve wiped it down with anti-bacterial wipes. I’ve sprayed it with perfume and closed a dryer softener sheet inside the lid. Nothing. Nobody at AT&T could figure out how to get the stink out either. So I waited the two years until the contract ran out. (You should see my rollover minutes.)
I was looking forward to getting Jennie’s hand-me-down Razr, when she upgraded, but when I saw the great deal she was getting on the SHINE she bought, I got one too! (Steve got our rejects.)
My new phone has a program to calculate tips, count down to important dates, alarms, games, a calendar, camera (still and video), a 1 gig SD card that goes right in my computer (extra), calculator, measurement converter, games, and MP3 player. Apparently I can make and receive telephone calls with it too. And, if I want to increase my monthly bill five fold I can surf the Net, text message, and send pictures and videos from my phone. (I won’t be doing that.) Sadly, I can’t recognize any of the ringers as MY phone, nor have I figured outhow to answer it. I’ve had to retrieve my last 16 missed calls as voicemails.
The User Guide is 122 pages long, printed in type the size of gnat droppings. It doesn’t include a single instruction, just definitions. My thumbs are too old to work the joy stick and every time I slide the phone open I turn on another feature I didn’t know I had. But it fits in my pocket and I have insurance it if falls out and lands in the toilet.
But you know what? My new little Shine is already worth its weight in gold. I took it with me when I visited Mom. We sat and listened to music. (She got the chair, I got the arm rest.) Mom fell asleep leaning against me. As we listened, and I started to lose feeling in my rear end, I took out the phone and started playing with it. I tried to take a video of us, aiming the lens where I thought we were, holding the phone in front of us as far as my arm could reach. To my utter amazement I got a winner. At the precise momment l hit record, the most amazing thing happened. The volume isn’t very loud (I probably turned off the Dolby surround sound accidently) so you might have to adjust your speakers.
I think you can see it if you click here. It’s only about 8 seconds long, so you’re not in for a long download.
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39 comments July 16, 2008
Packed Sardines
A friend from high school discovered this blog and added a comment about my mom. In it she included a rather strange reference:
” I miss her fun personality from our youth and her enthusiastic refereeing of “packed sardines” at your house. That was so much fun.”
I hadn’t thought about Packed Sardines in years. What a great game! I can’t believe my mother let us play it!
My parents encouraged any excuse to have a party. They’d routinely host 15 or 20 of my friends at the beginning of most school vacations, a full moon—whatever the occassion. (I just knew I had the coolest parents.) Mom taught us all how to play Packed Sardines when we were in 9th grade.
It’s Hide & Seek, but when you find the person, you crawl in with them, making it possible to get eight kids in a stall shower. Nothing was sacred. She let us hide all over the house: in closets, under the beds, in cupboards, out in the garage, in the flower beds behind the bushes. She even suggested hiding places. I think the shower was her idea. It was my Dad’s idea to turn on the water. All the squealing and giggles; what fun!
Thanks for the happy memories, Elaine!
2 comments July 14, 2008
Play With Your Buffet
I may have mentioned this before, but we go out to eat a lot, mostly because I refuse to cook. As Debbie, Steve, and I were enjoying lunch at the Chinese Buffet a few weeks ago, Steve came back to the table with all RED food. He had those bananas in a sweet red sauce (which are about as Chinese as the chocolate pudding they serve) and some watermelon, and something else I can’t remember. It was very pretty and so I thought I’d take my camera the next time.
Aren’t the colors and shapes pretty?
Now it’s YOUR TURN. Take a camera to lunch. Or dinner. Shoot your food. If somebody with a Flickr account will volunteer to collect the photos for me and upload them, I’ll link. (Volunteer by way of a comment to this blog.) By sharing we can all admore your sense of color, understanding of good composition, appreciation for juxtoposition, and your ability to hold the camera steady and not make the rest of us lose our lunch. HINT: to get the best exposure, STAND UP. That way all the other diners will know where the flash is coming from. Seriously, if you sit, you’ll be too close and your flash will wash out the food.
3 comments July 12, 2008
AAQI Auction Ends Tonight
The Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative small quilt auction ends tonight at 10pm (EST) on the dot. Before you call it a night, take a look at the bids and see if there isn’t a super little quilt that would look better in your house than in the house of the highest bidder. A portion of your bid is tax deductible. Pass it on…
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Add comment July 10, 2008
AAQI Gets 501(c)3 Status from IRS
The IRS has granted the Alzheiemer’s Art Quilt Initiative tax exempt status under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions are now tax deductible as we are officially classified as a charity! I am jumping for joy. It was a slam dunk. No questions or clarifications were required. Now we can take the AAQI to the next level and offer our supporters tax deductions for donations.
We can also apply for grants to help pay for our programs. We don’t spend much, but every little bit we don’t have to spend can go to research. AND, we can try and get corporations in the quilting community to point some of their philanthropy in our direction towards a cure for Alzheimer’s.
The AAQI would never have grown as much as it did had quilters not embraced this project and threaded their needles to help. To everyone who has participated in any way, here’s a “high five” and a “thank-you!”
And yes, I’ll be changing this page to reflect the AAQI’s new status any time now, so head over for one last look at the ”before” and in a day or two you’ll see the “after.”
5 comments July 8, 2008
Wired
We’re getting the house re-wired. Just the phones. OK, and some of the Internet cables. When we bought the house 19 years ago I swore I’d rip out the crunchy carpet in the master bedroom right away, but first things first.
Our house was used when we got it. Pre-owned. By someone who I’m guessing ran a telephone soliciting enterprise out of the basement. I’ve never seen so many wires. None of them went any place, like to a phone jack. Every electrician who’s ever worked on the house has been asked to “fix anything that you’d want fixed in your own house.” You’d think that’s like handing someone a blank check. Not so. Our wiring was just too frightening.
Admittedly, I added to the problem by coming up with creative solutions when I needed a phone, fax, or computer somewhere and the electrician “de jour” said it couldn’t be done. This would be why we have telephone cord and cables going down my quilted clothes chute, snaking under carpet, and coiled up in the corner of the living room. It was NOT my idea to run the phone cord from one part of the house to the other via the rain gutter. I am not kidding. We have a phone cord IN the rain gutter. (I just learned that.)
I am responsible for splitting lines with those cute little snap in connector thingies sold in office supply stores. These are just the extra ones I’m not using at the moment.
I am also the one who ran the phone cord for the fax machine from one side of Debbie’s office to the other by drilling a hole in the floor, looping the “extension” cord under the heat duct in the rafters in the basement, and fishing it back up through the floor on the other side. I got pretty close to the wall when I drilled the hole up through the floor, buy hey, that’s why we have furniture.
And when the so-called “professional” installer from Vonage showed up it was I who explained how to make all the phones in the house ring from the FOUR daisy-chained Vonage “devices” jammed behind my computer monitor. (Just pass me one of those connector thingies.)
Mike is our very capable electrician from Hinterman Electric who will take things like THIS and make it all better. (Notice the color-coded duct tape so I can remember which cord goes to what line?)
Can you hear me NOW?
12 comments July 7, 2008
Walk Tall & Carry A Big Stick
- Walk Tall
Hey, it happens! But nobody gets the short stick around here. No sir! Why use the puny handle that came with the plunger when you can unscrew it and use a mop handle?!
7 comments July 5, 2008
