I'm still here!

Wow how time can get away from you!  I have been working, working and more working.  I get up and have my coffee and turn on the work laptop and work for an hour or two, then get ready for work (which takes all of 20 minutes tops) and then I'm back at the work until 8 or 8:30 when i drive the less than 6 1/2 miles (all back roads) to work, unload all the stuff i bring home, set it all up, and begin my official at-work work day.  then at 5 pm -ish sometimes later i pack it all up again, drive home, eat dinner spend the hour or so left before dh goes to sleep (he needs more sleep than me) and then most nights i'm back on the laptop for work again.  i do this M-F and sometimes I'm doing work on the weekends too.

around all of that I have been over to the east coast of Florida (i'm in the Tampa Bay area) to see my in-laws, that same weekend we traveled up the east coast of Florida to see my eldest son and his family including the nearly 8 months old twin granddaughters, saw youngest son who drove down to meet with them too and then returned home, exhausted but grateful for all the family time together.

We have been fishing in the boat just once, I guess it might be twice. 
We made a quick weekend trip to Mexico Beach to meet up with my brother from KS while he explored real estate options in that area.

We spent several hours over two weekends helping to get rid of our old liner in our above ground pool.  This included bailing a lot of the last bits of the water with buckets to help the hose along when it got down to the bottom.  And that took hours!  Then there was the cutting up of the liner that was holey and stretched so wrinkly it was nearly comical, due to the chemicals put into the pool last summer in an effort to rescue it from its continuous cloudiness and brown algae that never would clear up.  So essentially we were pool-less last summer :(

That then required having to remove the sand which was put down to help level and smooth out our much deeper than 4' deep inclines so we could get at yet an older liner below it.  Apparently once the pool got the algae problem last year and we chemically treated for the algae it caused the liner to get holes more readily.  I tried patching them but I believe the damage had already been done.  Last season we even emptied the sand filter/pump and started from scratch in an effort to not put anything back into the water.  Alas, to no avail.  When we got the wrinkly liner up there was a bunch of stuff living in the sand below it!  So up came that liner.

DH put his foot down on removing the foam sheets we had down to make it softer.  He wanted something down below this liner to help keep those huge armored black beetles with horns from coming up through the bottom of the liner.  We have problems growing stuff in our yard but we are very good at allowing algae, mold and some sort of tree weeping blackness on one of our oak trees without even trying to accomplish these items!

I did trade in my old Rose Viking machine and got a Saphire 835.  I'm very happy with it and I'm looking forward to getting to quilt on that 10" bed it boasts!  Which led to me starting a watermelon table runner for the Mexico Beach condo for seasonal oomph.  I have all of the plain-ish blue log cabin blocks done.  Okay, so there are only 7 but at my track record for sewing and quilting the past 4 years I'll take that as a positive!  I also made two of the log cabin blocks used to look like watermelons and one test 1/2 block for the setting triangles on the outside of the runner.  More on this later I hope.

I hope all of you have been well and productive because someone should be in this world. 

Sleep well, and may your days be filled with love and laughter,
denise/deBRAT