Home made Christmas Quilts

I started making quilts back in 2009 after I purchased a new sewing machine for my wife and she wouldn't use it.  My first quilt was a disaster but I learned.  Here are three Christmas quilts that I made over the next few years.

Since we have all the quilts that we need, I have been making crib style quilts lately and giving them to the Options 360 pregnancy center.  They give free ultra sounds to pregnant women and encourage them to keep their babies rather than choose abortion.

A New Owl for the Yard.

This is an owl that I welded up the other day made of some scrap metal.  I used a shovel, two ball joints off of my Jeep, three square washers from a rail road track and two curly pieces of metal off of some shelf brackets.

I will hang it up on a post along with a "branch" that will pass through the feet.  The branch will be a piece of re-bar painted brown.

Cookies

Susie has been in baking mode for the last few days.  She works so hard and then complains about all the work.  She does make wonderful goodies.  We usually give away nice plates full of goodies to all the neighbors but this year I am wondering if anyone will eat them.  People are so full of irrational fear.

Today we will put the icing on the cookies.

The other day we went to the Dollar Store.  I was leaning on a column outside waiting for Susie to come out.  I was not wearing a mask as usual.  Some young woman came walking along, saw me and stopped short about 20 feet away.  She refused to walk by but started pacing around talking to herself (no she was not talking on the phone.)  After about 5 minutes of walking and pacing and giving me "stink eyes" she went into the store to mix with the big crowd.  Others walked by with no problems.  The walkway is only 12 feet wide.

If you look closely at the cookies you will see that some of them are wearing masks, especially the sugar cookie guys.

Some of the cookies have masks.
But no social distancing.

Today in the local paper there was some typical Covid propaganda.  It is all in the headlines.  Most people only read the headlines.  It said something like "Clark County Cases Exceeds 10,000.  Hospitals are 80% Full"  The implication is that there are currently more than 10,000 cases and that the hospitals are 80% full of Covid patients.  Not true.  The cases are counted from the beginning of the pandemic and the hospitals are mostly full of other types of patients.  

Surveyors in the field.

The surveyors are in the field today and it looks like they are laying out a roadway that will go through to the next neighborhood to the North of us.

My guess is that soon they will start work on putting a road through to it.

This morning I went to Walmart to return a diffuser that I purchased their two weeks ago.  I actually purchased it twice.  The 1st one did not work so I turn it back for a refund and bought another one.  It seemed to work for a while and then we just decided that it was real puny compared to our previous one that we bought on Amazon.  I obtained the refund our new diffuser from Amazon arrived yesterday.  It works great.  I also had to go to Napa and return some extra AT fluid that I purchased for my daughter's car.  Seems like today was a return day.

Shopping at Safeway, I picked up a NY Stripe Roast that was on sale.  When I got it home I cut it into steaks and sealed them using my Food Saver vacuum sealer then they hit the freezer. 

Susie is making Christmas goodies

New glasses. Here is my honey doing her thing baking Christmas goodies and she is sporting her new glasses that came in the mail today. 

My Daughter left her Volvo here last night with the check engine light active.  I used my MaxiDas DS708 to diagnose the codes, clear them and reset the light but this is not a permanent fix.  I also tinkered with some of the sensor wires to check for bad connections.

This evening we watched the new Mulan on TV.  It is not as good as the cartoon in my opinion but it was still good.

I sent this photo and some of this post using the Email method.  I just wanted to try it out.

Flew my drone for a few flights this afternoon.

Goofy Gift Card

 My sister sent me a gift card the other day so I could use it to buy some cheese to send to her.  She cannot buy Tillamook cheese where she lives.  I ended up paying cash for the cheese and just kept the card for my own use since I paid more for the cheese anyway.

Last week I tried to use the card and it was rejected, so I logged into the web site to check the balance.  Sure enough, it showed $60 available.  The next day I bought some diesel fuel for my Jeep and tried the card at the pump.  It worked fine and did not as for the required PIN number....hmmm.  I though OK that's nice.

The next day I went to Ace hardware to buy some stuff and used the card again and it worked great, again not asking for the required PIN number.  A few days passed.

We went to Walmart and had a large grocery bill to pay, a little over $100 so I asked the attendant at the computer check stand to help me with my gift card because I knew the balance was small and I wanted to use it up.  She helped me and made two tries.  Both times the card was rejected.  So I paid up with my regular Visa and we went home.

Yesterday evening I decided to check up on the card to see what happened.  Here it is....   The website claimed that I spent $23.80 at Ace, $42.74 for Fuel, and TWO payments of $36.28 to Walmart for a total of $139.10.  It then deducted the $60 value for the card and left me with a balance of $29.74 still on the card.  Using a spreadsheet I tried many combinations of the numbers and there is NO WAY to come up with $29.74.

I checked my paper receipts.... I actually only spent $41.34 for fuel, and $23.80 at Ace.  So.... how can you start with $60, spend $65.14 and still have a balance of $29.74?  And why did the card pay the whole amount at ACE when the sale exceeded the limit?

How is it that their records show $139.10 of purchases when in reality, the card was rejected?  I tried the card again today at an auto parts store and it worked fine, and asked for the PIN and since I was buying more that $29.74, I had to pay the balance with another card.

Is this just "New Math?"  Hmmm.  I think I figured it out.  The company that owns this card is probably owned by Dominion, the company that makes voting machines.  It is very plain to see why you should not trust a computer to count your votes for the most important office in the world.  Also, you should also never go to Vegas and play "video poker" against a computer.

Shopping today.  We headed out to Walmart in our Jeep.  About a block from home, we encountered an old Russian man standing by his big tricycle looking rather lost.  We stopped and asked if he needed help.  Of course he could not speak English but he pointed to his tricycle chain.  It was off so he could not ride.  He was also so feeble, or tired that he could not bend over to fix it or push the trike either.  I got out and fixed his chain then helped him back on the trike.  He was grateful and pedaled off toward home.

Average crowd at Walmart.  Being a rebel, I wore a mask to get in the door, but once inside, I took it off and put it in my pocket.

This afternoon I finished up a quilt that I have been working on with at "Cat" theme.