The Edge of Empty

In the midst of winter, I thought a bit of green would be welcome so I went back to the travel pictures and found this photo taken at a rest stop in Pennsylvania last fall.  The Hubster has always had a fascination with having a pet lay on his shoulders.  A E is not so accommodating of this wish.  However, when a small ferret is out in the big world with really big trucks zooming by, a familiar shoulder is not such a bad place to be.

Another Wednesday night and as I turn off my computer at work after another 12+ hour day, I realize that once again I don't have a CryWolf hint ready for Thursday morning.  For the last two weeks, I have managed to post something on Thursday night (so if you checked earlier in the day on Thursday, you might want to go back and check them out).  This week, I was determined to get to it earlier and be prepared but I just haven't been able to squeeze more into my days.  If you are here looking for this week's hint, I will try to have one up at some point tonight.

My grandmother was a quilter.  She taught me a lot and I spent many evenings stitching on quilts with her, but I have never created a quilt by myself.  I have thought about quilting many times, but I have never taken the plunge. When I came upon In Color Order's Half-Square Triangle Block of the Month  tonight, I must have been feeling very optimistic about the amount of free time that will be available to me this year.  What really excited me was that I would only need to learn to make half square triangles and then arrange them in different patterns. Even better, I would only need to create one quilt square per month.  This seems totally achievable.  So now, I am publicly committing to this project and have placed the button on the sidebar. I am getting started late so I am giving myself permission to make the blocks the month after they are introduced. If you want to join the LATE block of the month club, hop on over to In Color Order.   The Hubste...

As much as home ownership is the American dream, the past few years of underwater mortgages have shown that the dream may be somewhat flawed.  Not only that, once you put a down payment on a house and sign your mortgage agreement, the house begins to be one money sucking adventure after another. This year, for Christmas, our house gave us a broken heater.  Of course, the service plan that I bought last summer when the air conditioner went out really paid off (not!).  Because of the service plan, we would only have to wait 3 days for our "priority appointment". Together with the reduced price of $175 for the first 30 minutes, I just knew that I got a great deal. (Just in case you weren't catching it, that was sarcasm). Once the service person had made the evaluation, they would give us an estimate of the repair costs.  After a day of shivering, the Hubster started making comments about what he thought the problem might be.  Not to be outdone, I put my research sk...