Flying pigs

There have been cardinals, blue birds, nuthatches, sparrows, chickadees, doves and more to the new feeder.

The cheeky chickadees show off for the camera, too.

Once nice Saturday I will plant a chair in the lawn, pose as an ornament and take pictures of more than chickadees. 

Soft reset

My phone does more than I know of.  My grandson wonders why gramma needs so much phone; gramma had a flip phone last summer and learned to text less than a year ago.  The crux of the matter was the manner of the death of the flip phone.  It fell into a toilet at a wedding.  It died on the spot.  The marriage ended about a year later. 

Just like marriages, there is no guarantee that phones will withstand circumstance.  The little fellow was drownded and there is no warranty replacement for a phone plucked from the toilet. 

I have owned a mobile phone since the 1990’s, when they fit in a big purse, not in a pocket. My first phone came with the plan.  Over the years I upgraded the phone four or five times, and the upgrades all came thanks to extending the contract two more years. 

I had to pay for this replacement phone! There was no contract extension long enough to throw in a free phone.  Then, too, the price for the smart phone was almost the same as the price of a new flip phone. I took a deep breath, and went straight upgrade.

That was six months ago.  I won’t confess how many months I spent learning the smart phone’s smarts.  Let me just say I now have ten icons on the screen, and I rolled them out one at a time.  I moved Sarah, my navigator, to the dashboard about three months ago.  I like her best of all.

Now I’m OK with change, but I don’t find it wonderful.  So when the green blinking light would tell me I should download some upgrade, I didn’t.  The screen didn’t tell me how it would change my phone, only that change would happen.  That didn’t please me.

One morning I took the phone off the charger and saw an ominous warning.  Uninstalled changes were backed up a country mile because of my neglect and would I kindly do something.  I relented.  I will admit it was still downloading after my shower and after I got dressed, but it was done when I finished breakfast.

Nothing seemed different about my phone, until I fired up Sarah last Saturday for a trip to the near west side of Cleveland.  She took me the three miles to the turnpike without incident, then told me to go east and quit talking.  Hamilton told me her little green arrow was still going west, but she said nothing.

This afternoon I had my first opportunity to take Sarah back to the phone store.  She still had nothing to say for herself.

“How unusual,” said the young man at the counter.  I wonder if he believed me.  He did agree she might have choked on her upgrades.  “Download the navigation app again,” I suggested. 

“We’ll just try a soft reset.” He pressed the off and volume down switches simultaneously. The screen collapsed into its middle and then reappeared.  “Let me know if it works,” he said.

I’m happy to report, Sarah is back.  Soft reset it was.  I wonder if those buttons can be found on people.

The phone that drowned

The rest of the quilt show

Go on over to Jan's blog and see The Rest of the Show

A quilt well rescued

I've mentioned rescue quilts from time to time.Quilt tops pieced but never quilted. My sister Jan is extremely fond of rescuing quilts, and quilting them.  She says some one's grandma is smiling in heaven, "Look, Ethel, look  That quilt is finished and can be used on a bed!"

Jan's friend Patty found an embroidered quilt top at a flea market.  It's a very large quilt, two embroidered panels, very well done.  Jan set aside a week to quilt the top.  Patty entered it in a regional show that the three of us went to today.

Some one's grandma is extremely pleased;

A kind lady with a good eye rescued the top,

And took it to an excellent quilter.

The quilt is quite white; the flourescent lights make is appear more yellow.

Storage wars

    

With fifteen around the table Sunday, some good stories were bound to be told.  Some were. 

After flipping through the characters of several reality shows we found a common thread in Storage Wars.  One of us told the story of a son who realized a year later that the remaining household goods in a storage shed were “just things.”  He told his buddy to cut off the lock, sell it all and keep the proceeds.

And from the other end of the table we got the story of the day.  Another friend is a builder and his wife has the unenviable task of keeping track of and updating the furniture staged in model homes.

They do own a storage unit her husband built and operates, and she uses a unit or two to store the excess.  Of course they had their share of abandoned units, and the occasional auction of the contents.  As Storage Wars, the television series, became more popular Jeane saw a definite uptick in the attendance at an auction and the amount of money they realized.  When she noticed a regular bidder responding with a “Yeep”, she knew the time had come; there was opportunity for a sharp contractor’s wife to turn her inventory, too.

Jeane added a unit of her own to the next several auctions, nicely staged.  She was tempted, but did not put a cardboard box up front labeled Grandma’s China.  The results were as anticipated:  all the unwanted furniture was gone.

As Jeane said, at her last garage sale her son’s lemonade stand made thirty dollars, more than she had taken in.  She didn’t have to tag anything, put it on her driveway for a long hot afternoon, and, last of all, collect back up what didn’t sell.

Tom and his son, Tommy T, last Sunday.  Every notice how little boys walk like their father walks.  They grow up and lean over deck rails the same way, too.

And finallly, visit my sister’s blog, Janice loves to quilt. She just finished a customer’s art quilt destined for a national quilt show.  Stunning, and now I don’t have to tell you about it.