AND ANOTHER THING!!!

 No kidding folks ... Mother Nature is throwing a tantrum.  That's three storms she's sent through the Arizona Territory, and just to be sure you are LISTENING, it's 27 degrees this morning.  My heater ran literally all night long.  Ask me how I know THAT!  So lock your doors and let's NOT let her back in.  If we are really REALLY good for the next ten days, temperatures will run between 63 and 71.  I could use some of that!

Here's an early morning train creeping along in the dark as it's snowing.  I lightened this picture so you can see it.  No doubt about it, when there's snow, these guys slow down a bunch.  They must have been stacked up because there were several that went by going this direction.  

This oldest section of track is almost a siding, used often to let trains go by the other section of track farthest from my house.  It must be a nightmare to control, since they go both directions all day long.

This was one of the army trains moving heavy equipment and tanks.  I do love seeing these!

The sun is trying to come out, but it's still snowing.

I think it quit around 10:00 or so, when the sun came out in full force.  It didn't take long for all of this beauty to disappear as Mother Nature ran out and slammed the door.  I think her last words were TAKE THAT!!

Just for giggles, I measured the snow on my trash can.  It's almost 8 inches.  Yes I probably could have gone out and built another one of my fabulous snowmen.  I actually did start to do that, but got distracted by the WARM inside and the COLD outside.  

There was one poor little dove sitting on this snow covered board waiting for food, so I scraped off a corner and put some seed down.  She was very thankful to have a snow free spot to hang out.  Later, I swiped all of it off so the quail could eat.

The quail were not very nice and chased this guy off to the tree where he waited patiently for them to leave.  I threw some more seed out and he had a nice breakfast.

I whipped up a batch of sugar water for the hummers who were sitting on the edge shaking from the cold.  I though maybe a little slightly warm water would help.  Once the snow was gone, this guy showed up.  Truly, all that snow completely melted in about three hours.  

Here was the disaster of the day if you don't count the quilt I was working on.  I am NOT a fan of dishwashing.  It wastes SO much water!  Okay, truly, I'm just lazy.  I hate doing dishes.  Especially when I swing the faucet out of the way and it goes over the counter (shouldn't it have a stop on it?) and floods the living room before I realize what's happening.  

Clean up on aisle four!!  It took me over an hour because I didn't realize that was happening until it dawned on me it sounded funny!

As to the quilting ... I'm an accountant ... a math person.  This is all about math.  How wide is the quilt, how long, tell the computer to pull up the design and make it fit ... which it is SUPPOSED to do.  Every single time, it never comes out perfect at the bottom.  It's frustrating.

So I call the manufacturer to have them tell me that's normal.  It's NEVER going to come out perfect.  WHAT??   I'm so disillusioned!!

I tried to "stitch in the ditch" along the border, but it kept going sideways.  If you mark it every six inches, it is SUPPOSED to sew along that exact line.  I couldn't get it to work.  By the THIRD time I called I was getting pretty frustrated.  

The nice lady finally told me how to make those little circles end up inside the black border.  YAY!!  But that didn't help the stitch in the ditch one little bit.  I'll get it eventually, but too bad I had to mess up this nice quilt doing it.  

Don't worry she said ... no one will notice it!  My accountant brain can't accept that.  Only one out of four borders came out right.  

I'm a machine person ... it's like when my dad told me I would get stuck if I took the D-9 caterpillar out to disc the wet field.  He let me go anyway, because I'm sure he wanted to teach me a lesson.  Wasn't he surprised when I came in at the end of the day and never got stuck ONCE!!  

You become attuned to the sound of the machine, the nuances of the controls.  The same is true of the quilting machine, except it has a thousand more controls.   I'll get it eventually.  I'm stubborn that way!!