No more bad news for now

A very quick post as I just got home from Starbucks and need to get to bed soon. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for all your support, kind words, and commiseration!!! I am so grateful to you all!

The meeting today went OK and there are no planned cuts to personnel coming from the department. Troops are rallying in the office and we are moving onward.

Quilty and cat-related posts coming up :)

When all else fails...make cookies

That's a great motto to live by, don't you think? Feel free to adopt it too.
A rainy afternoon calls for some sewing and baking. These are black and white blondies from the More from Magnolia Bakery cookbook (dark & white chocolate chunks, I left out the walnuts).

I think a glass of milk has my name all over it.

For bar cookies and brownies, do you like middle pieces or edge pieces? I am a middle piece person. In fact, if you ask my brother, he will tell you a story about a certain pan of brownies that only had about an inch of edges all the way around the outside and no middle pieces.

He's prone to exaggeration though and maybe his memory is fuzzy. I'm just sayin'...

Rough End to the Week

(photo credit: www.bbc.co.uk/guernsey)
If a tree falls in state government, does anyone notice? Thursday we had a terrible blow to our office with 1/6 of our staff eliminated. Out of the blue. No warning. No rumbles of more budget cuts (we are only in the second month of the state fiscal year!!!). The furloughs were supposed to take care of the shortfalls.

I was not eliminated but we lost two positions in my work unit of seven. We are now five. One position was vacant; the other was a intelligent, witty, loyal public servant of GA who has worked for our office for 22 years. Fired and his program eliminated. Just like that. He was part of our work family and then given a cruel corporate firing when his boss was out of town and he was told at the end of Thursday, your fired, hand over your ID and key, and you can arrange to get your personal things later but now you are escorted out of the building. Just like that.

We had always been assured that our department didn't get rid of people. That in exchange for working for state government for low salaries, you had stability and some security. Apparently not.

The photo above is how I have felt for the past two days. Friday, the office was abuzz with speculation, with sadness, with gallows humor. Monday we have a staff meeting and the deputy commissioner is coming over from the department on high to speak to us. We were not told why.

So with this uncertainty and worry and fretting and sadness and anger, I decided to stay home last night and not go to Bad Melisa's Midnight Madness sale. I hope my dear friends understand.

Morpheus Makes a Quilt Part Two

Morpheus and I are continuing to work on his quilt from this post. We finished all the blocks and are ready to lay out the quilt and start sewing the rows together. Morph is checking out the directions again.

Here he is after laying out some blocks and sewing rows together.
The black fabric matches so nicely with his coat.

Wait a minute. This is not how you lay out rows to sew together....


Perhaps he got into some of Gomez's catnip.

I don't think twirling around on the floor is part of quiltmaking.
Obviously, this sewing session is over..... Someone is just too excited to sew....

A True Public Servant

(image source: Doug Mills/NY Times)

Thank you Senator Kennedy for always raising your powerful voice for those who had the least.

How to Spend a Summer Afternoon by Edgar Poe

First take a long nap. Preferably on a quilt.

Then stretch and yawn. But not too much. You don't want to overexert yourself.
Take a little bath.

Repeat until it's time for dinner.

Good Times

Well Friday and Saturday turned out to be lots of fun and made up for a rather blah week. Friday night, S. and I went to see John Oliver (from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and "The Bugle" podcast) perform at Georgia Tech.
We had second row seats.
Guess who was the geek who called the second tickets went on sale?
Um, yes, that would be me...

Seth Meyers, who does the Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, was the opening act. I think I was laughing to hard and forgot to take a photo.

Both comedians were great! I am so glad we went because sometimes you just actually need to get out of the house and have some big fun. This show was big fun.

Did I mention that John Oliver was great?

Saturday was my sewing group meeting. There was some great show n' tell that should be up on Pat's blog soon. It was fun sewing with Karin, Cindi, Becky, and Sarah. We are all planning on meeting at Sweet Home Quilt Co. on Friday for Bad Melisa's midnight madness sale.