Vacation Day 4 Report

5 a.m. Wide awake. Why, oh why?

7 a.m. Nursing second cup of coffee,  planning my day, watching Bourdain's "No Reservations" season 1 on Netflix and trying not to get too grossed out by the cow stomach being served on TV to be able to eat my own very reserved cinnamon raisin bagel for breakfast.

Catch up on blogs, watch a little instructional quilt DVD, call to make an appointment to bring my car in for an oil change and tire rotation to see if that fixes a slight wobble in my steering wheel (7-year-old car with 139k miles on it--I take slight wobbles very seriously these days). Told I can bring it in Wednesday. Super.

9:30 a.m. Call Staples copy center to pose the quilter-specific problem to them of having to expand an image 385% so I can use it as a paper-piecing template. Answer all sorts of questions. We decide my best bet is to size the image at home and save it to a flash drive--they'll print it on their wide format printer. I decide I'll figure out how to deal with the fact that I wanted it 27" in diameter and they can only print 24". This is after several days of trying to figure out how to get my home printer to print the image using several sheets of paper. Apparently my model doesn't want to play in that sandbox.

10:00 a.m. Head out the door to run errands, studiously ignoring aforementioned wobble in the steering wheel.

10:15 a.m. At the camera shop with my digital camera to find out if there's any hope. It stopped working with no warning right before Christmas. Go figure.

10:30 a.m. Find out it will cost more to repair than the camera is worth.

10:45 a.m. Leave the store with prices and features of several new cameras in my head, but am not quite ready to make the financial commitment yet. Interested to see that the smaller pocket-sized cameras have about the same abilities as my cell phone camera. Love the progress of technology.

11:00 a.m. At Staples copy center, explaining my needs to a clerk who looks mostly disinterested. She prints off my image on wide format and sure enough, it clips two sides. I say, "I'll figure it out--good enough." Then I smile sadly and say, "And I'm sure I'm going to kick myself for having said that when I get to that point." But it should be an easy fix. Should. Be.

11:15 a.m. Decide to treat myself to spending a gift certificate from my Secret Santa and using a coupon I've had for awhile at my LQS. My car has the route memorized. I almost don't even have to have my hands on the wobbly steering wheel.

11:30 a.m. Wandering aimlessly through the shop. Finally settle on some "stash fabric"--half yards of blenders in various colors. At the last minute, I tossed on the stack a bolt of a great, springy/summery floral that will make a fantastic border. Find out everything in the store is 30% off. "3 yards!" I exclaim, throwing caution to the wind. Can't use the coupon since there's a sale, but the coupon was only for 20% off anyway. Why is it, though, I can never actually use a dang coupon when I try? Crumple up the coupon and toss it in my purse--it expires before the sale is ended.

1:00. Home, leftovers for lunch, excitedly head upstairs to my sewing room to tackle the machine quilting on my niece's quilt.

1:02. Interrupted by daughter with several questions.

1:03. Interrupted by husband with a few more questions.

1:05. Almost interrupted by son--told him he was old enough to find the cold medicine in the bathroom on his own (I treat his colds differently now that he's 20 than I did when he was 10) and closed myself in my sewing room.

1:15. Have my machine set up for free-motion quilting, and am practicing on my "practice sandwich" I have on stand-by. Fiddle with tension, speed, rhythm, until I get the results I want.

1:20. Start in on the quilt.

1:27. Thread breaks. Shoot.

1:40. Thread breaks. For pity's sake.

1:45. Thread breaks. Oh. Come. On!

1:50. Thread breaks. (Censored.)

1:51. Sitting on computer reading blogs.

We all went to a  matinee movie after that--I realized in the car on the way over I was really tired, and I almost fell asleep twice despite it being a really good movie. By the time we made a quick stop at a grocery store on the way home, I was bone-numbingly exhausted. My husband is making dinner while I took a hot bath and I'm am now trying to wake up enough to get through until a reasonable time to go to bed. I'm hoping this is just my early rising and not coming down with something. I'm the only one in my house that didn't get the cold/flu that made the rounds a couple of weeks ago, and now my son is going into round 2 with it. I think I'll have orange juice with dinner.

Here's to Day 5 being more successful all around.