I don’t think it is fantastic. The wings aren’t aligned correctly, the head is slightly turned, and the neck feels weak to me, but I ran out of time to make a completely new second dragon, so it will have to do. I would definitely make another dragon for friends with kids and think that the next time around I will be able to correct some of the mistakes I made this time around. Hopefully despite its flaws it’s well received.

Why yes, that is a quilt! It’s something I’ve been working on for about a year.

What you see in front of you actually started out as the back for a different quilt. When I was done making the back, I realized that I liked it a lot more than the original quilt, and started on a new project with a better quilt top.

I’ve “made” other quilts before. What I mean is that in the past, I have made a quilt top, put it in a plastic bag, delivered it to my quilting mother, and maybe a month or two later, a blanket would appear that looked vaguely like the thing I’d started with, but a billion times cooler and more useful. This time around I did everything.

Which is why this quilt is tied. I don’t really have the time or patience to actually quilt. Sewing a sandwich together for months on end seems like something I wouldn’t thrive at. I almost had a little meltdown when Mom told me I had to hand stitch the binding. (Binding is the border around the outside that glues it all together in one pretty little package.)

One of the nice things about the tying and hand stitching process was that it involved many hours of standing in front of a television. I watched all of the first season of Downton Abbey and most of Misfits which doing the hand tying. The hand stitching was mostly done while watching Archer.

Another nice thing for me about having a quilting project is that I spend my days moving form fields around on a computer screen; making something more blue; or possibly inserting, updating or selecting data from a database. When I go home at night, I can’t really pick anything up and say “This is what I did today”. I guess I could put the subversion repository on a USB stick, but it’s not the same thing. This thing takes up physical space. You can pick it up, throw it across the room, wrap yourself up in it, pretend you’re a quilt monster. Read books under it. That’s kind of cool. I can’t do that with my medical billing software. No matter how cool that database query was.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with it. I don’t really need another quilt, and I probably shouldn’t start on another project until this one is out the door. Bonus points to those of you who stopped to look at what books were on our bedside tables.

The only problem with being a ring man is that ring men are allowed to bid on things. Thus began the process of Dad bringing home oddities every now and then. He would store them in the barn and bring them out a couple of times in the summer for a yard sale. Then gradually the yard sale became semi-permanent. Then it was moved inside the barn. Eventually he converted the barn into what is essentially a barn-shaped warehouse, where he operates an antiques / oddities / furniture emporium on weekends and whenever else he feels like it. He really enjoys it, and he seems to break even I think.

One day this summer I was back home for a visit, and as I always do, I toured through the barn to see what I could take for my apartment. Usually there’s a couple of odds or ends that would be nice to have. On this particular day, I was oohing and aahing over this desk I wanted to take home with me when I looked down.

On the floor, under this beautiful desk, were eight terrifying lawn gnomes. Snow White and seven dwarves. All were about half-painted. All were missing facial features. All were terrifying. I asked my dad who the hell would ever purchase such monstrosities. Dad just smiled and cryptically said he had plans for them.

When my Dad says something cryptically with a devious little smile on his face, you know something good is about to happen. Something fun. Maybe not to the person it’s happening to, but for everyone else. I pestered him about what he had up his sleeve until he finally told me he was going to prank some family friends when they were on vacation.

I know these two people. The husband is about the same age as my Dad. They go to church together. She sings in the choir, and they’re both retired teachers. He was my teacher in grades seven and eight, and my folks have been friends with them for as long as I can remember. They were guests at my wedding last year. This couple has a lovely home with beautiful gardens and a nice pool in the back yard. They both have wonderful senses of humour and appreciate this type of thing. It was going to be great.

Dad and I spent about half an hour bouncing back and forth with what he should do with these gnomes. Dad wanted to put one in a tree, but they’re pretty heavy. I wanted to put on in the basement, but Dad didn’t have a key. I suggested putting one in a rubber dingy in the pool, but Dad didn’t want to risk damaging the pool. He knew where he was going to put most of them already, but he was trying to place the last few. We don’t know who finally came up with this idea, but we’re both taking credit for it, so you know it’s got to be good.

Dad hid Snow White and Six Dwarves.

All three concerts were significantly different. I believe they only played one of their songs at all three concerts (Lucky Man). The first night was very much a radio hits singalong night. The second night they played a lot of B-sides and rare songs, and the third night was a mix of the two. I finally heard them play Light Years, which has been a favourite of mine for a long, long time. We had great seats every night, and in Hamilton we had floor seats right at the front of the second block of seats, which meant we had tonnes of room and could see really well.

I forgot how much incredible music Pearl Jam’s made. I don’t tend to listen to a lot of straight-out rock any more because I’m old, have no street cred, and new music is so bad with the exception of Wilco. In the weeks since the concert, I’ve sifted through all of their albums again. There’s so much depth and so much musicality. With the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind, I also sifted through all my Foo Fighters (I’m not actually a Nirvana fan), and they’re also wonderful.

I feel so old that I’m all like, “Remember when music was good?” and all that. I felt old when I just wanted the opening act to be quieter but they were just so loud and uninteresting.

I like good books. They make me very happy.

Pop Culture Happy Hour
From NPR’s Monkey See blog. Most of the movies and TV that I have found within the last six months [Downton Abbey, Parks & Rec, Bridesmaids, etc.] that I love is because of the Pop Culture Happy Hour crew. Four NPR editors get together on a mostly weekly basis and talk about books, music, TV, and movies. There are usually three segments per show and each podcast lasts about forty to forty five minutes. At the end of each podcast, they have a segment of things that are making them happy this week. There’s a fun jingle, it’s a very cheerful podcast, and overall, I love it.

Q
Q is a CBC radio program that features long-form interviews. It gained a lot of internet exposure after Billy Bob Thornton sorta imploded. Jian Ghomeshi interviews authors, actors, musicians and all sorts of other cultural figures in a one-hour daily program. A lot of the new music I have found is because of interviews and performances featured on Q [Adele, The Secret Sisters, Janelle Monae, etc.]. Q is awesome and Jian is a great interviewer.

Search Engine
Search Engine is a Canadian podcast that talks about digital culture. Jesse Brown talks a lot about digital rights, usually related with the hijinks of the Canadian government or the CRTC. Each episode is about ten to fifteen minutes. I haven’t found any new TV shows to watch because of this podcast, but I do feel more informed.

This American Life
Ira Glass has an awesome radio voice. Every week, This American Life delivers long-form stories about stuff. Last week, it was about natural gas extraction and it made me mad. Two weeks ago it featured a segment about actors in jail performing act V of Hamlet. The stories are hard to pin down, but they’re always poignant and usually informative.

WTF with Marc Maron
This one isn’t for my Mom. Marc Maron has on mostly comedians and they have a conversation. About once every few weeks, this starts with Marc and the interviewee talking about why Marc didn’t like them in the 90s, then moves on to other things. Rarely is the interview extremely funny, and this is a great thing. Maron’s interview with Amy Poehler, coupled with hearing about it for a year on Pop Culture Happy Hour is led me to try Parks and Rec (which I will tell you all about later — spoilers: it’s great!).

RadioLab
Nerds talk about nerdy things. Awesomely.

So there you are! Podcasts I like. Do any of you listen to good podcasts?

I’m on Google+ now. Now I can give Google even more of my personal information, and Facebook less. Except that nobody is on Google+, so everything will have to be cross-posted on both. Just like with Twitter.

Anyone else out there on this thing? Social networks are boring when there’s nobody to be social with.

Remember when life was easy and all we had were blogs and email? And terrible Geocities home pages? Those were the good old days.

Sad face. :(

“If you’re between the age of 18 and 25 and you want to scare the hell out of the people who run this country, this time around do the unexpected. Take 20 minutes out of your day and do what young people all around the world are dying to do. Vote.”

-Rick Mercer