Mostly Harmless

Lookie what I made!

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.

So I know we’re already a week into March, but that doesn’t mean I can’t post a February Roundup. I make the rules on this blog, because I rule. I’m going to keep much to the same format as last month’s post, as it seemed to work pretty well. In January, I spent a lot of time trying to dig myself out of a pity party that wasn’t really helping anyone, and I managed to do so fairly effectively. February was a much better month in general than January was.

Big News
February started with a little more excitement than January. My brother was offered a teaching job at this new international school in Okinawa in Japan, and after much debate, decided to take it. I admire his willingness to jump at an exciting opportunity. His little girl is completely adorable and we will miss them all a lot. Everyone has Skype and we will figure out a schedule for chatting. Alan and I are trying to figure out how we can get there for a visit sometime early in 2012. Being helpful mooches, Alan and I have inherited a very lovely black leather couch, glass dinette set and other random smaller items. They leave on Wednesday.

Hobbies & Projects
I read a grand total of one book in February. That’s super pathetic, and I don’t really have a good excuse as to why I didn’t read more. I will post a review of the book soon. Maybe. As well, I will post a new Bookstravaganza list soon. Maybe. We’ll see. I did some more book buying by proxy, inherited a whole lot of my brother’s books, and forced someone to buy me a book. All of this doesn’t feel like cheating on my no-book buying rule, but it does mean that I have more books on my to-read list now than I did on January 1st.

I finished the “back” of my quilt top that I started this summer. After looking at both, it was decided that the “back” was a new quilt top and that I hated the one I started in the summer. My Mom and I discussed a strategy to finish the quilt, and then I haven’t done a thing since the first weekend of February. I have abandoned the original top and it no longer exists in my life. All in all, it seems like I made have made negative progress in February.

Social Life
My weekends were full of mostly family stuff. The first weekend, I went to Sarnia to help my Mom and Dad work on the house they randomly bought in December. I painted and helped pull staples out of floors and made my Mom tell me how to finish my quilt(s). Two other weekends involved significant amounts of niece time along with the rest of the family. I can’t get that little girl to fall asleep on me, but I can make her smile, and that’s possibly better.

The Windsor Weekend of Awesomeness was pretty good. It was weird travelling with people who weren’t Alan, but Natasha and Garry were fun in the car, and we had a great time with Esther. We hit up all our favourite restaurants and some of our other haunting grounds and general funness ensued. I actually got to meet up Esther and go to the ROM with her while she was on reading week as well. We made dinosaur noises and talked about how great Arrested Development is. We had dinner with different friends a few times and generally were sort-of social people.

Work
Continues. Scope creep is epic. I got to write one module three different times this last month as our clients changed their minds about what they wanted that many times. We’re hoping for beta testing in about five weeks. I think it’s more likely seven weeks.

Family
I think I’ve covered most of it. Mom and Dad bought a house in December and are busy fixing it up to hopefully either rent or sell it. My brother was in Japan, then was here, and is leaving again very soon. My niece is cute. My Alan is great. I like him a lot.

Other Random Stuff
Alan and I are putting our Ottawa trip on hold until the fall. Possibly Thanksgiving weekend. Scope creep has ruled out the first week of April as a viable option. I learned what RRSPs are. We haven’t done our taxes yet. Fancy new furniture. There are 3 fewer broken chairs in my apartment.

If you’re not watching Community I urge you to do so. I have told everyone I know to watch it. Three have done so and thanked me for the recontamination. Nobody has disliked it so far. Also, Fringe. I think Olivia is a great character. Both of them.

Health
When I last checked in, I was just starting in on my weight loss plan. I’d been referred to a local weight management clinic, and was still figuring out what the hell I needed to do. I’ve about six weeks in now and I think I’ve done pretty well. I have certainly improved my eating and am starting to see the results of that work. I am down about 15 pounds since I started, and more importantly, my clothes are starting to fit better. I still suck at getting exercise, but this week has been better than the last.

So that is my February in a nutshell. I wonder what the rest of March has in store for me.