Maybe not quite so jiggity jig.
I got home from my work event and board meeting week last night. I was gone eight days in all, including travel time, but it was a long eight days. The trip there was pretty uneventful, fortunately, since I was on a schedule and had to arrive at a certain time that first Saturday in order to get everything set up and ready for the start of the event.
The event went swimmingly with only a few hitches here and there that no one else even knew were hitches...which is how it should be. The board meetings that followed were solid, and I've got some very exciting walking papers for my work life this coming year which is how I like it. If I'm going to be busy, I may as well be busy doing meaningful work.
But it went downhill from there. I made the mistake of getting in my car to head home.
A significant potion of the drive home looked like this.
It took--I kid you not--an hour and a half to go two miles in this particular traffic jam. And it wasn't the only jam I sat in. And several times the rain was so loud I had to turn off my podcasts and drive in (rain-loud) silence because I couldn't hear anything anyway.
The double whammy of construction and horrible rainstorms all along Lake Erie (most of my route went along the south and east sides of Lake Erie) meant that my usual 12-14 hour drive--depending on traffic around Chicago--clocked in at 19 1/2 hours. I was two hours later than I'd wanted to be getting into Shipshewana, IN, on my first leg of my trip home on Friday, and three-and-a-half hours later than I'd expected to be pulling into my driveway yesterday. 5 1/2 extra hours of driving. Bully.
I've made this trip probably 12-15 times over my lifetime, and this one took the cake for Most Annoying.
Sitting in my car in the Cracker Barrel parking lot
I'll tell the story on my next podcast episode, though won't dwell on it since you all tune in to listen to quilting, not whining, but as a teaser, the excitement includes: a toxic water alert, an insanely badly managed Burger King, bad coffee, a 5-second sprint through the Cracker Barrel parking lot in a torrential downpour resulting in--well, you'll have to tune in to find out, nearly rear-ending another car when everyone slammed on their brakes unexpectedly when a lake appeared in the middle of the expressway, and being in the bathroom in complete darkness (complete darkness) when the power was knocked out in a roadside rest area.
Fun times.
But here's the bright spot.
My 20 minutes in Lolly's (I got there at 5:40 and they close at 6 on Fridays) resulted in these.
I've never tried Quilter's Dream batting so I picked up a crib-size package to try out.
I've been testing out several marking pencils of late and have heard good things about Roxanne's, so I got a package of those.
My trial-size bottle of Best Press that lives in my retreat tackle box is nearly gone, so I decided to pick up a new scent. (I'll keep the empty old one around and just refill it. Still, fun to try new pretty smelly things!)
And I succumbed to more charm packs, though I really shouldn't. But I'm a fan of William Morris and couldn't resist Morris Modernized. I bought two packs because I've learned most designs call for that many.
Today, Sunday, was pretty much a Pajama Day for me. I watched a couple of episodes of my current Comfort Food TV--Murder She Wrote--while enjoying my Real Coffee Sans Toxins, and then watched several lessons in my current Craftsy class. We spent the afternoon at "Guardians of the Galaxy" (great movie!), and now we're home again and I'm pretty much ready to go back to bed. I'll do my best to make it to a reasonable hour, though.
No sewing today. Hope to get back to it in a day or two to have something to actually talk about when I do get to posting my next podcast episode...
I feel for the people who are continuing to suffer the effects of the toxin alert for water from Lake Erie due to an algea bloom; it affects significant portions of Ohio and some parts of Michigan. I was able to drive out of it, they're not. Prayers for you, folks--hope your water tests okay and it clears up quickly!