My Two Cents

YES, WE CAN!

YES, WE DID!

I've been relatively quiet about this past presidential campaign and election, except at home with WonderMom.  I just felt I needed to express my views on the candidates and the election results.  We're fiercely Independent voters, having NEVER voted a straight ticket!  We commonly vote Republican for state offices to counter the overwhelming Democratic candidates coming out of Upstate... and did so this time.

I'm obviously an Obama supporter, and happy he won.  He did win!  McCain didn't lose, he was beaten by an opponent who had better ideas, a more forward looking, well thought out, and eloquently presented plan for the future.  A candidate of a caliber we haven't seen in my adult lifetime.

I'm sorry, but I don't want my president to be a 'regular' guy, a Joe Sixpack! All of that senseless rhetoric just avoided talking about the real issues, and McCain's plans for solving our problems.  I want my president to be smarter than me, and savvy enough to hold his own when dealing with those who would take advantage of us.  I didn't see that in McCain, who asked us to trust that he knew how to solve our problems, and "had the scars to prove it".  And then there was the lipsticked dipstick!  What a bonehead move by McCain's campaign.  The real McCain started to re-emerge in the last two weeks of the campaign, but it was too late, and he had the iceberg in tow!

Mr. Obama has renewed my hopes for the future of my kids and grandkids.  I still believe they will not have the same level of lifestyle my middle class job afforded me to provide for them as they were growing up, but maybe not as depressed as I had imagined.  We will see.

I have high expectations (probably too high) for Mr. Obama, and I strongly disagree with his position on amnesty for illegal aliens.  You can't have everything, I guess.  I'm certainly willing to give him a chance to change the course of the country before I complain about him.  His performance on the campaign trail showed me he was a thinking man, not a platform slave.  He can assimilate new information and change his plans and directions as needed. He knows he doesn't have all the answers and is very good at picking the right advisors.  But he will be the decider, after carefully weighing of the facts.  I expect him to have some serious disagreements with his Democratic congress, and get his way most of the time.  I expect him to select members of his administration from all quarters of the political spectrum, and use their advice in shaping his decisions and the future of this country.

Much is being made of the fact that Obama is the first black POTUS.  That's a good thing because it is a sign that we Americans are starting to grow up!

Maybe the black community voted for him because he was black, and I think they were entitled to do so, but I believe he was evaluated on his character and abilities and found to be superior.  

It never crossed our minds, that he was black once we got to know him. Did we hold him to a higher standard than we would a white candidate? Probably, because we are a product of our past, however, our bias is not based on skin color, but on attitude and ideals, both of which we found agreeable in Mr. Obama.  This is the same criteria to which we would hold any candidate.

OK!  That's it.  Comment if you like, disagree if you are of a mind to.

It's Finished - Finally!

The Bathroom is finally finished!  After almost 2 months, most of which was waiting for ReBath, the bathroom is finally fully decorated and appointed.  Well there is still some calking to be cleaned from the window, but WonderMom is happy.  Here are some photos of the finished product.  They don't show it too well because it is too small to get a decent photo from inside!

This shot shows the new toilet, 

refinished vanity with new lavatory

and the newly installed GFCI outlet, 

small corner shelf on the left,

and vinyl flooring.

Yes, it is a tight fit on the potty since the

 new tub is an inch wider than the old tub.

This shot shows the new shower curtain on the

curved shower rod, and the overhead 

storage doors covered with wallpaper

With the curtain open you can see the new two-headed 

shower, and some of the details in the shower itself.  

Also it shows the wallpaper border.

I forgot to show you WonderMom's 

decorative creation for the new loo!

She has been working on this wall

quilt for almost as long as I have 

been working on the bathroom.

(Yes Cricket, the border is all one piece!)

ReBath ReDeux

They did it!  

And they're done!  

ReBath showed up today with all the right stuff and completed their job.  It looks great, but will look a lot better after I get the rest of the bathroom finished.

BEFORE

AFTER

Tomorrow WonderMom goes in for jury duty so I can pull the old toilet, pull up the carpet, prime the walls for wallpapering, and put the beadboard in on two walls. 

 Wednesday is wallpaper, flooring, new toilet, and lavatory install day.  Sounds a little ambitious for me, but we'll see what I can do.  I'll have completion photos when completion happens - including trim, Cricket!

High Five Comes Up Short

Last week, our son, Socket, down in the Tarheel state was the star performer in an industrial accident!  He got his right hand caught in the lift mechanism of a forklift truck he was repairing and lost half of his right index finger.  He also damaged a tendon in his middle finger. 

I waited until now to blog about it so I could include news of his condition. Other than losing an important piece of an important finger, he's fine physically.  Mentally he is kicking himself for doing something he knew better than to do.  I think it's a tossup, yeah he put his hand in there, but the actual accident was just that, an accident.  Stuff happens!  You just try to be somewhere else when it does.  Sometimes you aren't!

He was pretty with it and actually assisted the EMTs in retrieving his finger piece from the mechanism.  He also walked to the ambulance and climbed onto the gurney, then walked into the hospital under his own steam.  He is just too big to pick up and carry!

They took him to the hospital Durham to see if they could reattach the finger, but no soap.  The bone was too badly crushed.  He was in surgery for about 2 hours.  His wife, Mistletoe, is miffed at him for getting hurt and scaring the bejesus out of her.  WonderMom is not happy that he didn't take better care of the nice fingers she made for him!  AND HE CAN ONLY GIVE YOU A HIGH 4.5 WITH HIS RIGHT HAND! By the way, he is fairly ambidextrous, but he is mostly left-handed.

Anyhow, here are a couple of photos, taken by him on his cell phone in the Dr.'s office after the surgical bandages were removed and his splint and tension band (for the middle finger) were installed.  If you're squeamish, stop here! 

If you'd like to send him an e-mail to cheer him up or bawl him out, click here->Socket's email

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***** WARNING  DISTURBING PHOTOS FOLLOW *****

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The splinted hand.  The rubber band is to keep tension on the damaged tendon.

The missing finger before splinting!

You were warned!

New Photos Are Up

I finally got the new photos of the quilt up on he previous blog.  The reason it took so long was I had to build a frame outside that we could hang the quilt from.  It is way too big to hang in the house and I wouldn't be able to get far enough away from it to get it all in one frame.

A Prairie Gem

Well, this weekend was the long awaited quilt show.  WonderMom entered her serendipitous quilt and showed it off proudly to those who came to see it.  Here's the best shot we could get of the whole thing.  It was hung on the side of a booth and we couldn't get far enough away to get a straight shot at it.  I'll get better shots of it tomorrow and replace/add to this one, so check back.  Sorry it took so long, but here is a full on photo of the quilt.

and as close up of the quilting

No, she didn't win anything, and that came as no surprise after seeing some of her competition.  It was obvious to us that her quilt didn't have enough actual quilting on it, even if the quilting was excellent.  Most of the other quilts were closely quilted over their entire surface.  Her quilt was only quilted in the border and in the black "came" between the pieces of colored fabric.  In any event, it was an enjoyable and educational experience for her, and she doesn't feel badly about not winning anything.

Here are a couple of the quilts that did win something.  Although it is hard to tell from these photos, there is a bunch of quilting on all of them.

These are some of the small quilts WonderMom made for the auctions held during the show.  They brought in some good bids and $ for the 

guild.  

On to AZ next winter to enter in the ASU Quilt show.  Maybe she'll come up with an idea to add quilting to the project and improve her chances.

 

Teaser!

WonderMom got her special quilt back from the quilter last Friday.  She's really pleased with the results.   She plans to enter it into a quilt show competition this coming weekend.  Before then she has to trim it to square it up, hand sew 32 feet of binding, attach a quilt hanger, and a label.  I thought I'd post a couple of teaser photos prior to the quilt show.  

Front

Back

I should have some good photos of the completed quilt as it hangs in the show. It is too big to hang anywhere in our house!