chuggin' along...

well, das and I are officially staying in the new house (though I guess I can't call it "the new house" anymore... it's now just..."the house", right?). as I'd posted before, we've got some stuff done... and now the kitchen is just about complete (still looking for some furniture) and the living room is probably done (now that das installed the surround sound speakers). the office is still in shambles, lol, though we kind of have been expecting that. it hasn't been our focus room... and a lot of stuff has just been thrown in there. also, I want to set up the bookcase and my computer desk in there before too much is unpacked. the spare room is also a work in progress. we're waiting for my parents to bring down the bed that we got from my grandmother's house after she passed away. it's a nice full size bed. we'd had two twins in our spare room before... I don't know, I just like the idea of having the full size bed there... and I had said I wanted to take it for my house when my parents were taking stuff out of my gram's house. I really liked the headboard and footboard... and I just wanted something that was my grandmother's (not that I don't have *other* stuff, but... you know... I'm sentimental). anyway... we're waiting for that before anything else really goes in there. we will need to put something in there to fill the space, lol. but we'll cross that bridge...

so I'm kind of stressing out. it's better than it was a few hours ago when I was flipping out over an RFP that needed to go out that still wasn't quite done (and the owner was tweaking up until about an hour before submission)... but now I have to refocus my stress onto maine quilts. my upcoming "vacation". :) and it WILL be a blast. this I know. however... I have kind of waited until a little bit longer than I would have liked to do these signs. like... I haven't done them yet. and I have to leave tomorrow. ok... am I taking advantage of the fact that my darling darling husband works for a sign company and can easily take care of a lot of this for me... perhaps. :) but there is still quite a bit that I have to take care of myself just in word documents. (sigh)

but enough! enough of the dreary depressing stress-out speak! let me show you the upcoming maine quilts schedule! :) which is *totally* the point (besides all the awesome shops and whatnot). here we go:

• wednesday, july 23: help with the quilt set-up plus just in general volunteering. oh, I also have to drop my quilt off... which is totally against the rules and I *did* get reamed out for not being a good girl. but they can just suck it for all I care. :)
• thursday, july 24: again... general volunteering, but also my newest job... photography! I will be photographing all of the quilts... which will then mean that thursday night I will be fixing them all up... yikes! also, I'll be helping out with the champagne preview.
• friday, july 25: my first of two classes - small wonders with pat speth. I am going to work on 'star and hourglass' (I think).
• saturday, july 26: more volunteering (in the morning ONLY) then mom and I are going to be making our way around the vendors! there is a new booth hop that is going on that I'm very excited for. I have some money from my photography stipend (that's not going toward lodging or my latest quilt's batting/backing/LAQ) so I may invest in a finishing kit from one of the vendors... but I'll definitely get all the patterns.
• sunday, july 27: last day of the show and my second class - flying geese... again with pat speth. for this one, I'll be doing 'dutchman's puzzle'... I'm really excited about that one. it's so unlike anything I've done before. after class, I'll be helping out with quilt take down. then mom and I will be making the trek back home where we'll most likely just crash after unloading the stuff. :)

it'll definitely be a l o n g week, but so much fun. as always.

oh, and before I go... one last thing. this is totally a WTF moment. :) yesterday, das and I were moving things from our storage unit back to the old house. for this we'd rented a uhaul. we had been waited on by a youngish boy... I'd say 19-20ish... though he probably was older. anyway, we confirmed all the details, most importantly the gas gauge. it was right on the half-a-tank tickmark. no problem as their policy is to return with the same amount of gas in it (or else give up your first born plus a $250 fee plus gas at $50/gallon). we do our business... racking up about 50 plus miles between all the places we needed to go. the tank is now a little over a quarter full. I haven't the slightest clue how much gas to put in... but I figure it's got a twenty gallon tank (note: I'm a girl - I don't know these things nor have any basis for my guessing) and that I can do about $20 worth (which in CT is about 4.5 gallons). doing 4.5 gallons would also mean... that the truck was getting around 11 mpg... which I would assume sounds right for a 17' uhaul truck. so I put my $20, thinking how wonderful my logic is, and then start up the truck... and it's *THIS CLOSE* to the half-a-tank tickmark. I figure it's close enough and go with it. so I'm back at the uhaul rental center to bring the truck back (which was earlier than we'd anticipated). the kid gets into the truck to check out the tank so that we can finalize everything... he gets out... cocks his head to the side with a condescending smirk and says, "half a tank?" it really honestly to everything in my power to not slug him square in the jaw. then, not only has he been way super rude to me already, but he requests that I go back out and get another two to three gallons to bring it up to half a tank (which, mind you, isn't *that* far away from where I was). how hard would it have been to say, "I'm sorry but it's not quite up to half a tank... so unless you want to fill it up a little bit more, I'm going to have to charge you for not filling it completely." I could have understood that (I guess). so I get another $10... which a little over two gallons, which totally put it OVER the half-a-tank tickmark... and if I was more like my husband (read: confrontational) then I would have asked for a credit on the extra gas. but instead I couldn't even bear to speak to the little shit. :) so that's my annoying person story for this weekend. :D do you agree?!?!