* I'm less sad than I thought I would be over my friend's death. I think part of it is that it was not in the least unexpected, she had been suffering more recently, and I see it more as a release than a loss. I mean, I'm still sad for her family, and I'm sad that the slim hope I held out of her having been misdiagnosed, and then getting better, didn't come true. But I think sudden deaths are more awful and shocking.
I also think I had kind of mourned this already - I know I cried about it last fall.
* The family is recommending donations to a program she was involved in and strongly supported. It's a good program, so I think I'll do that.
* Unfortunately, the funeral is Wednesday at 1 pm. Right when I teach ecology lab. I can't cancel lab - there is something we need to do this week, and we've also missed enough school already. I feel bad not going to her funeral (I don't think anyone could cover the lab for me, it's kind of a specialized one). And I know there will be a huge, huge number of people there - I might feel more like "I really should cancel" if there were only a few mourners, but knowing all the groups she was involved with, there will be lots of people there. (Also, most of her family is in the area).
The graveside service is somewhere far away, so I can't do that. There's been no mention of "Family Night" (what we call "visitation" down here, and I think I like the "family night" term better - "visitation" sounds kind of clinical). I will ask the church secretary if there's going to be one, because if there is, it will be tomorrow night, and I could go to that.
* On top of all that, there's this strange and sad story of the plane that disappeared over the Gulf of Taiwan, with 239 people aboard. And I had an odd mental picture: my friend, just outside the Pearly Gates, trying to guide and shepherd all those scared souls that didn't know what had just happened to them. That's the kind of person she was, though....if someone was lost or scared, she'd jump right in and help them.
***
I did take the weekend off, which I think I needed it. I did some more hand-quilting on the quilt in the frame, and I pressed off fabrics for the eventual Vignere Cipher quilt. And I finished cutting the fabric for the "next" quilt:
That's four examples of "Block 1." There are three block styles you do, and then you mix them up for the finished quilt (with sashing between them). The fabric is from fairly deep in the stash, it's a set of fat quarters I bought several years ago from Connecting Threads. The pattern I'm using is called Ob-la-di (Yeah, like the old Beatles' song, but I don't see any explicit connection with the design of the quilt).
I also did go to the little local quilt shop and bought a few pieces of fabric (to add in to the mix for the hexagon quilt). And I dropped off this top (they had some 108" wide grey backing that worked, and since this was a precut fabrics quilt, I hadn't prewashed the fabric in the top). I'm going to have it done in tight stipples, like the "topographic lines" on one of the fabrics.
Somehow, it makes me feel hopeful to have a quilt in at the quilter - something to look forward to. I confess, part of my crazy book-and-yarn buying habits online are because knowing I have something nice coming in the mail gives me something to look forward to - some days I get a little starved for that feeling, because a lot of times life either feels a little like the movie "Groundhog Day," or it feels like the changes happening around me are not changes for the better.
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