As I pulled up to the lot (you drive up a hill to get here, and the building itself is on a smaller hill), I saw the roof of a vehicle parked in front of the building and at first I thought "Odd that Print Shop would be delivering stuff today" (they deliver the packages as well as bringing over large print jobs). Then I thought, no, offices are closed today...maybe it's a colleague in picking something up.
Then I saw it was a campus police car.
I pulled into a parking spot and thought: Do I want to go in the building right now? Because two possible things could happen that wouldn't be pleasant:
1. Smaller unpleasantness: it's a campus cop who doesn't know me doing the regular check-up rounds, and I get asked who I am and why I'm there. That would be minor, in my experience: for one thing, MOST of the cops know me (because I go over there regularly to pick up field vehicles; they are also Motor Pool). But if I got someone new and zealous, I might get interrogated a bit. Then again - all I'd have to do would be to show my open palms and say "I have my faculty ID in my purse, may I get it out to show you?" and things would be fine.
2. Larger unpleasantness: an "incident" would be "in progress" and I'd walk in in the middle of it, and that would just make it harder for the cop to fix things (like, if he caught someone breaking in and the person had a weapon, and he was trying to get the incident ended peacefully) and might put me in danger.
So I decided to nope out of there for now. I did want to go to the bank, anyway, to get cash in case I decide to go antiquing in Denison tomorrow (and more and more, I find I use cash for smaller transactions; it's better than loading up the credit card and having to write a big check at the end of the month).
As I pulled out, I saw the cop and he saw me - he was standing up near the door to the (largely unused*) Animal Use and Care facility, and he recognized me, and waved and gave me the thumbs-up sign - which I interpret to mean "Everything's cool, just doing my usual check of the building, nothing to worry about" but I was already on the way so I just went to the bank. When I came back he had gone, so I guess my interpretation of his thumbs-up was correct.
(*No one is currently doing experiments involving vertebrate animals - a few years back a colleague was doing something with anti-inflammatory compounds in rats, and before that, another colleague used it to raise about 20 baby alligators from a nest where the mom had apparently been poached, and the ODWC passed them on to him to raise. Almost all of them survived and were released back to the wild, and I will note that baby alligators are surprisingly cute, even if I would absolutely not want one as a pet...)
I also should fill up with gas, but my favored gas station (A Love's on First Street) was really busy when I drove past (a couple O G and E vehicles gassing up, and I wonder if there were power outages somewhere near me) so I figure I'll do that later; I could even do it tomorrow morning IF I decide to go.
Other option: I do another "just get in the car and drive" and see where I end up, though one thing about this part of the country is that there aren't as many nearby interesting small towns as there were in Illinois - we are kind of plunked in the middle of a lot of ranchland, so you have to drive pretty far to go anywhere. (Denison and Sherman - over in the next state - are pretty much the closest places of any size; it's almost an hour to the north to find much of anything else, and a bit over an hour to the west....) You do pretty much have to plan "I am going here for THIS and it will take me THIS LONG" and also you need to check things like when places are open...
****
I am a bit more than half done with cutting pieces for the Vignere Cipher quilt, and I also hand-quilted a bunch more on the quilt currently in the frame. (Really I think I do need to commit to "work on this at least 15 minutes a day" until it's done; it's been in the frame...well, I don't know how long, but well over a year...and it's mainly for lack of working on it that it's been in there so long, and I have a bunch more tops that I really want to hand quilt...and I'm wondering if getting things machine-quilted is just less-viable right now; it seems like the quilter has a huge backlog and other things in her life preventing her from getting them done. I know you can machine quilt on a home machine but that sounds like it's physically not very good - not ergonomic - and also probably wears on the machine)
Edited to add: I looked through back posts. I put this one in the frame in January 2016. Yipes. (The last "big" quilt I quilted, though, it took something like 10 years to finish it)
I STILL say I want to figure out a space in my house for a longarm machine and buy one some day and learn how to use it. Even if I only ever do my own quilts or do the quilts of friends-making-them-for-charity and just charge the materials cost. (A good longarm machine is like $10,000 so this is not a small investment. I know some people buy them and try to make back the money by doing quilting for people, but meh: more deadlines make Erica something something, and also you might get that one person who acts all unsatisfied even though you did a good job, as a way of trying to bully you into giving them your work for free....)
It would be really nice if there was a place you could *rent time* on a machine, but it would have to be close enough to me because I don't think you can longarm a big quilt in a single day.
(And if I got a machine, I'd want one of the ones that was either computer-guided or worked with "pantos" (pantographs) so you could do WHATEVER design you wanted; it seems that some of the machines will just do a few set patterns)
I don't know. Maybe what I really need to do is figure out a time-budget and see, realistically, how long a hand-quilted quilt takes me if I put in maybe a half hour on it a day - one of my big issues with "not finishing projects" is
I also admit: I tend to put a project aside when I'm afraid I'm going to run short on materials. Which is foolish, because if it's yarn or fabric that I bought recently, there's a *better chance* of getting more of it if I find out right away I'm going to run short. (I don't like playing yarn chicken, and I tend to slightly overbuy yarn, on the grounds that you can always use extras to make hats or gloves, or you can donate it to someone - I have sent off extra yarn to people who knit for charity, for example)
Or if I make a mistake and don't want to rip back, even if it's one of those mistakes that not only would not be seen 'from the back of a running horse' (as the old saying goes) but that would genuinely not be seen unless you knew what you were looking for and you looked for it. (I am, still, somewhat of a perfectionist, and imperfection bothers me even as I know it exists and it is how the world is.)
1 comment:
We've had fireworks, off and on, for a MONTH. It's ofteat night, and occasionally LATE night. Hate it, hate it.
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