Desired

"The Iowa Hawkeyes will open the 2012 football season on September 1 against the Northern Illinois Huskies at Soldier Field in Chicago."

Saturday, September 1st, the football season kicks off in a big way. My company worked on the reconstruction of Soldier Field some 10 years ago. Although I've been by it dozens of times, I've never been inside it to see how it looks. I'd seen a couple of Bears games in the mid-1980's so it would be interesting to see how the interior has changed.

I sort of knew this was upcoming but really didn't shove it to the forefront of my consciousness. Had I done so, perhaps I'd be planning a trip there. I don't remember when the last time was I saw my Hawkeyes in person. Soldier Field has a lot of parking and the Chicago Park District runs shuttle busses from all the train stations and from the Millennium Park garages to the game. In theory, I could walk to the train north of my house, take that into the city and catch a bus to the stadium. It would be cheaper and probably take just as long, given the amount of traffic expected. I honestly expect, for a 2:30 p.m. game, the Hawkeye faithful will be in line at 6 a.m. to get into the lot. That's just kind of how we are.

This is a fantastic event in actuality. The Chicagoland area has a high number of Hawkeye fans and Northern Illinois is a 2 hour drive west of the city. A lot of people have both schools as alma maters. I'm kind of surprised the game isn't completely sold out but there will probably be as many NIU fans as there are Hawkeye fans.

According to Tickemaster, I could still get a ticket if I wished to fork over $70.85 plus fees. These aren't very close in seats but I've been in nosebleed sections and end zones when all the scoring in the game was on the other side of the stadium. It's the Hawkeyes. Half the fun is just being there. If I have $125, I can get a closer in seat. If I had the ticket, my decisions would be on how painful would it be to sit in traffic to park versus how painful to stand on a bus going from the train station to the field. Hmmmmm.

Maybe I should just hope this is on free TV where I can watch it from the comfort of my recliners. No lines for the bathroom and no outrageous prices for a hot dog and a soda.

Beverage:  Edinburgh's Finest tea

Deb

Concert Tickets

I stopped by Arby's yesterday. I had to go to the hardware store to get garbage/yard waste stickers and to inquire if I can get a second free quart of paint from the upcoming promotion. I took advantage of a free quart to get a color I want to use in the back bedroom, assuming I ever get that far in household chores. But I was looking around my living room, which is painted in colors I really like and I could use a quart of the custom color on the walls for touch ups. I wasn't sure if it's a one-shot deal. The gal at the counter said it wasn't so the next free coupon that comes my way means I'll hie thee to the store for touch up paint. Arby's is one door down from Ace Hardware.

They are doing this promotion where you sent them a photo of special concert cups turned to the artist you'd like to see. You could win VIP tickets to see that artist in concert. The choices are: Trace Atkins, All-American Rejects and Taio Cruz. I've at least HEARD of Trace Atkins.

See, this semi-irritates me. I realize that Arby's has to go with whomever they can find to be a part of a promotion like this. Plus, they have to look at their demographic; where are they most popular and then, by extension, what kind of music does that demographic listen to? And factor in which age group is most likely to actually photograph their drink container and email it. I'm not inclined to photograph and submit the drink container to an online contest. I'm not their target audience.

But what if they gave away tickets to the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra? What about the Dallas Symphony Orchestra? Or say the Lyric Opera of Chicago? It's hard to imagine, in this day and age of corporate sponsors being pretty much anywhere, that they couldn't find someone other than these three to go along with the whole VIP idea.

A promotion like this doesn't affect, one way or another, the amount of times I go to Arby's. I do think, however, that companies limit themselves when they don't think beyond country, pop and rap. There's a huge audience for other music and just once I'd like to see a company akin to Arby's acknowledge this. Who knows. By offering VIP tickets to something like the Dallas Symphony, they could entice someone who never would consider classical music, exposing them to that vast repertoire and enriching their life.

Yes, I am tempted to send in the above photo, even though it's half-way between Trace Atkins and All-American Rejects. "Well, I couldn't decide," I'd say. But that's not true. I have decided. I decided I'd just drink my soda and chuck the container. I'll take Old Blind Dogs over any of these any day.

Beverage:  Edinburgh's Finest tea

Deb

Bigger Than I Want to Work on, Right Now

One of my goals for the summer is to sort the fabric boxes. Just sorting them is not enough of an incentive for me to actually do it, however, so it's taken the completion of another project which would benefit from sorted fabric for me to want to get them done. The first step is to get the table in the living room cleaned off so there is some work surface on which to make piles. The first step of that mega-step was clearing off the papers I tend to just pile until I feel like dealing with them. Step 2 was the CD's, which I handled. That left a large, cleared surface just waiting for something to be stacked on it.

There is, in any project in my home, an invisible step that goes, "And remove the cat from ... " With her, it's easy to do. I get out the comb and start combing. She's got small mats near her tail so I work on one or two of them until she gets angry and then she leaves and I get my table back. She also gets sleek fur even if she doesn't really appreciate it.

The first box to sort is a box I brought back from Iowa in March. Mom is cleaning and she makes boxes of stuff for each of us to sort through. When we visit, we go through at least one box and we "oooh, yes" or "well, no" to the items contained therein. This box had a few things on top of fabric. One of them, I'd seen before but it was set aside. Now, it's in my house.

 

See these? These large hexagons made up of small hexagons were to be a quilt top. My great Aunt Tillie and probably my grandmother and her sister, Irene, as well as unnamed female relatives on my grandmother's side of the family made these. We think they did this during the Great Depression. My mother was cleaning out her mom's house after Gram passed away and found a bag with these hexagons in them. She doesn't remember ever seeing Gram work on them so they have to predate 1937. 

Here's the back of a couple. 

These appear to be hand sewn together, although it is possible someone had a treadle machine and sewed the yellow borders onto the patterned hexagon. 

Here's a close up of one of the hexagons. You want to talk vintage fabric, have I got vintage for you. 

Quilts were made of fabric saved from worn out clothing. Fabric cost a lot and was just out of reach of so many people during this time. If you were able to get a hunk of fabric, you used every single inch of it. I can't imagine, although it is possible, that the women of my family went to the fabric store and purchased fabric, beyond the yellow, for a quilt. So, this leaves me wondering, what are the stories behind the fabrics? Were these dresses that had worn out, shirts, children's clothing? Look at the bright colors. Who was supposed to get this if it ever got finished? Who actually worked on it? Why did my grandmother whom I don't remember even darning socks, wind up with these hexagons? Where did they work on it? Why was it abandoned? We have no clue. 

Now, here's the next question, how do I finish this? I'm no quilter. I can sew but quilting, if it's small, like the cat banner, that's one thing. I can pseudo-quilt. But this is a whole top. There are 44 large hexagons. I didn't lay them out on my bed, but I'm thinking there was to be yet another border between them, that they were to be separated one from the other. Maybe not but that's my current theory. That would be enough to make a queen-size quilt. How do I even begin to finish this? 

In a case of sheer co-inky-dink, one of the blogs I read, Michele Made Me, has the blogger making wee hexagons for her own quilt. Check out the July post with how far she's gone and then, if you're curious as to the progress, click the links to go backwards. Somewhere I posted a bit of encouragement, something to the effect that I truly admired her for doing this because I never could. Well, as Popeye would say, "Blow me down". I'm the proud owner of 44 giant hexagons in need of a quilt. 

For the moment, I've put them all back in the bag mom had them in and put them in a box which will be the "unfinished projects" box. This is not a project I will start this year. I am drawn to finishing it, however. Perhaps I could attach these to large pieces of fabric? I'm not sure. I just know I want to finally finish what was started so many years ago. I handle the pieces and feel such a connection to people I never knew and to the few I did. I want to honor their memory with the finished project. 

Suggestions?

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Another Month

When did it get to be August? Wasn't it just a couple weeks ago I was frantically cleaning in preparation for Carole and David's visit over Memorial Day weekend? In one month, it will be Labor Day and the end, sort of, of summer. What have I done this summer?

Now, if I spend time assessing what I have done versus what I could have done, you'll find me sitting in a lawn chair in the basement eating a carton of ice cream. That is NOT productive on any level. There are times when personal assessment is a positive thing and then there are the self-flagellation sessions we females seem to specialize in. "I could have had a V-8" turns into, "I could have tiled my kitchen backsplash with ceramic tiles I made myself after I crafted a kiln out of bricks that I made myself." Um...yeah.

First of all, it was too darn hot. It was just not conducive to outdoor activity. I managed, however, to get the deck and the front steps painted, granted both were before the temperature rose to irritating heights. I'm proud of myself for that.

I washed deck chairs and planted flowers in pots on the deck. That's another plus for me. I've gone years with no outside furniture and only the geraniums to greet me. It's been too hot to really enjoy the deck but at least I got the chairs out. In October, a grand reorganization of the storage shed should be undertaken so the chairs are easy to get to next year, considering I did all this work.

Little projects here and there. A mountain of reading finished. Not a week goes by that I don't read one or two of the magazines in the ever diminishing stack. It's good to see it shrinking. In another year, it will be gone and the magazines I do get won't take me months to read.

It was in one of those magazines that I found what I'm going to call my "August project". It was an old Shape magazine. I have no idea how I got this. It just started showing up on my doorstep a year ago. For me, it's a 20 minute read, if that. There's nothing usually in it to interest me and I find it wholly disingenuous. It purports to give you tips on diet and exercise but has huge ads for weight loss supplements of dubious character. You can't have it both ways. Ooooh Holly Madison (Who the heck is she? Would someone enlighten me?) lost an amazing 20 pounds on something I wouldn't feed to a landfill. Looking at her, she had 20 pounds to lose? She could do that just taking off those embellished jeans she's wearing. That doesn't count. Hence, I give Shape no credibility when it comes to weight loss.

But, in the March 2012 issue, which somehow got buried as I usually "read" Shape the day it comes and then recycle it, there were exercises done with weights. I'm looking for non-impact, since my knees won't handle it at the moment, exercises that promote more strength and flexibility than aerobic activity. I looked these over. Bend the knee here? Well, I can modify this a bit. Stretch the arms out and hold it? Well, I won't be able to do 12 repetitions but I could do a few. For the first time since this magazine mysteriously showed up, it had something in it that I could use. I can't do all 6 exercises at a time. I don't have the strength yet. But I could do 3 a day, alternating days.

So, I dug out my weights and did my first three today. I could not do more than 3 reps of exercise number 2 which required me to hold my arms out at shoulder height and curl one arm, then the other, back behind my head. It sounds weird, but it's easy to do, except for holding the arms at shoulder height. It's painful after 3 reps. I don't have the upper arm strength.

I did not get dejected, however. I know I have a ways to go to rebuild what collapsed around me last year. My goal is simple. I will do half of the exercises every day for a week, alternating exercises. Page 1 was today and page 2 is tomorrow. When Sunday comes, I will try again for another week of exercises. It means earlier to bed and earlier to rise so I get these in. It took 15 minutes to do the first three. My goal is no achy feeling when I do 12 reps and to be able to do 12 reps on each exercise. I'm not going to do more reps on those exercises I find easy. Before I move on to 2 sets of 12 reps, I have to be able to do 1 set on all of them with ease and without pain or achy muscles. My ultimate goal is to do these every day through the whole of August, one week at a time.

I'm reminded of a song from the animated Christmas special "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". Mickey Rooney sings this.

Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door

You never will get where you’re going
If you never get up on your feet
Come on, there’s a good tail wind blowing
A fast walking man is hard to beat

My goal is greater flexibility and mobility. I found the Wheaton Park District has Tai Chi classes. They help with flexibility. I've found one I can take on Saturday mornings beginning in October. I'm signing up next week, as soon as I can.

This has been the most productive summer in the last 2-3 for me. As August starts and the end of summer draws near, I want to build on this success and go forward. I almost gave my weights away last year. It's a good thing I didn't. I'm pretty sure I can't bench press either of the cats.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb