Owls

After I started being haunted by owls (see my post in April or May), I decided they are like my special guardians or something.  In that spirit, and because we had a big empty spot over the couch, I made this.  Happily, this project actually did get done in one day, unlike the couch.

Upholstering the Couch (aka Love Seat)

So, I've never really like our couch.  We inherited it from Todd's parents after they had it for who had it for who knows how long.  I was always wanting to get a new one, but I decided recently, in the spirit of not filling the landfills with more STUFF, to reupholster it.  I was all ambitious that it could be done in like one day, but that is not what happened, my friends.  No.  But, it is done now and here is the photographic evidence.

Of course I forgot to take a "before" picture, so this is a picture of Todd sitting on it one day.

My plan had been to carefully remove all the fabric, use the pieces as templates, sew them together on my sewing maching and reattach them to the couch.  That plan started getting complicated very early on.  For one thing, besides the cushions, not a single stich had been used.  Everything was stuck on with staples or tacks. 

The picture below is the jar of staples after I was done taking off all the fabric.  I had thrown away several handfuls before I started keeping them in the jar.

The next issue was that the fabric pieces I was taking off in no way could be used as a template. 

This is one example where you can kind of see that they just took some fabric and sort of made it work.  My personally theory is they took fabric from a couch and stuck it on the love seat.  There were a lot of places where there was randomly too much fabric.

In this picture you can see that the back of the fabric was all yellow and weird.  This couch was widely believed to be the most uncomfortable ever.  I discovered part of the reason was that instead of webbing, the person had used pieces of lightweight board.

So, I figured that once I got all the fabric off, it would be extra easy, because I could just staple everything on.  Well, extra easy it was not.  I didn't have tack strips, so I ended up hand sewing a ton of stuff so that the seams would lie flat.  I had to make up a bunch of stuff, too.  The back cushions were ridiculous, but mine are a little wonky, without having had a real pattern.  I also didn't do the best job with the webbing and the padding is lighter than it should be.  Still, I'm happier with it now than I was before.  Even if it does look and feel a little "homemade."

Why am I getting French Spam?

I think I don't want to know what these Spam subject lines mean:

"Le cadeau du printemps"
"La longueur enigmatique"
"Plus quelques centrimetres"
"Des sacs interessants feminins et les montres suisses"

I wonder if there is a hint to the reason for these french speaking spam emails in the subject of a different spam email:

"Julnc, check out the great annual sale."

It makes my brain hurt.  What does it mean?  Je ne sais pas.

Good Santa/Bad Santa

There are two guys who come into my library that look like Santa.  I wish that I could figure out a good way to sneak a picture of them so you could see, but you'll just have to imagine.

Good Santa has a fluffy white beard and likes to wear red and green.  He works as a professional santa, so near Christmas, his beard gets even fluffy, but he wears it all year round.  He smiles and is very friendly.  When kids come up to him, he is very friendly and gives them a little card that says "I talked with Santa" that has his picture on it.  It doesn't have any of his business details, so it's not even like he's just trying to make money out of it.  His wife says that his address is on the back, but it's just white... snow... the north pole.  He is always Santa-ish.

Bad Santa has a gray beard and his hair is greasy.  He comes in in a dirty t-shirt that barely covers his belly.  He does not smile or look friendly.  He sits in a chair with one leg up in a way that makes me think he's airing out his balls.  I do not like bad Santa.  I wish he would stay away.

To wash or not to wash

So, I just got a bit strident with a woman we know and her daughter.  She was talking about how she hated Germex.  I use antibacterial gel sometimes, but I do agree that some people go a little overboard with it, and a lot of times they'd probably be better off just washing their hands.

Then, she comes out with the fact that she only washes her hands about once a day, because she only does it if she gets something on herself when she goes to the bathroom.  She's a teacher.  I point out that part of the handwashing is for the bathroom itself.

Her daughter says that when she shops at Walmart, if she has to go to the bathroom, she doesn't wash her hands, because she's just going to come out and touch the shopping cart, touch the clothes, touch the conveyor belt. 

By this time, I feel like I've stepped into crazy town.  These are people that I like and that I normally agree with, and I honestly can't even believe what I'm hearing.  I go into the facts as I know them... bathrooms have more germs than other places.  The germs are in all these crazy places because people don't do simple things like wash their hands.  Even if they don't get sick, they can be spreading diseases to other people. 

Their argument:  if someone is going to get sick, they'll get sick anyway.  One person doesn't make a difference.

Now, that gets me to a point where I am having a hard time being polite, because that argument literally makes me crazy.  Yes, one person is a very small percentage of most things.  But, a lot of people individually deciding that one person doesn't make a difference DOES make a difference.  And, in order to make any kind of change in the world, individual people need to make decisions for the greater good, even if it feels like a drop of rain in the ocean.

I told her that she is lucky that she's never caught anything nasty in her 50 years, because there are a lot of horrible things out there.  They both said that they aren't going to start washing their hands.  I might keep this in mind the next time they offer me something to eat.

I am awesome.

So, you all probably know about my hand stabbage that happened a couple months ago.  That was awesome because I brought my hand straight down on a super sharp knife.  Today, after waking up late and getting to work half an hour late, I proceeded to stick my finger pad between the blades of a pair of scissors and cut.  It wasn't too bad, but when I tried to put a band-aid on it, the blood came dripping out of  it.  I found some gauze, but I was looking for scissors to cut it (ha, ha) and hit my head on the cabinet.  By the time my coworker came to rescue me and cut the gauze, I had bled through the gauze and had to start over.  She seemed grossed out at the bloody mess I had left on the counter.  Then, since it was work related and my coworker commented on the lots of blood I bled, my boss had to quiz me on it and write up a report to send to everyone and their brother.  Luckily, I recently had a tetnis shot, so, you  know, I'm good.

I am gone crazy.

Here is a word:  CASTLEBERRY

I see an owl when I look at it.  I don't really understand, but it's there all the same.