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Monthly Archives: October 2012

Traffic rules

Image links to original site. Or you can just stare at this smaller version for awhile.

This reminds me of the time when I was in Wisconsin (yes, during that lovely time period) and I was heading back to the hotel after working second shift with grampaw.  We were looking for dinner.  The exit we had normally been taking (we took pretty much all of them that head to town in order to make our drive more interesting) didn’t lead to a lot of fast food places.  Why fast food?  Because it was late.  Grampaw and I really wanted to just go back to our rooms.  While I’m just fine not eating anything for hours or days on end, grampaw apparently can’t handle that.  Grampaw had McD’s several days in a row at that point and I thought maybe he should vary his diet a little.  We saw an Arby’s and decided to go there.

The interesting thing about that decision was that the Arby’s was on the left side of the road.  It meant that I had to make a left at the light.  Ok, so that’s not really that interesting.  What WAS interesting was/were the light/s.  There were two poles right next to each other facing the same way for the same lane, which was separated from the rest of the lanes with a largish island.  One pole had a light with a straight arrow and one had a light with a left arrow and they operated independently of each other.  The lane they were facing was for what I thought was a left turn only.  Why was there a straight arrow?   There was also a pole right next to the stop line of the left turn lane and it did…something I don’t remember.  The whole situation was weird.  Grampaw was of no help when various lights turned green but others stayed red and I had no idea what it was telling me to do.

I ended up running a red something while it was a green something else.  No clue.  (It might have been easier to figure out what it was telling me to do if it were daylight and if grampaw hadn’t worked two shifts and I hadn’t been jumping shifts all week.)

I make! Baby rattle card edition

Welp, I broke my streak last week.  It had been nine straight weeks of crafting related posts on Fridays.  I couldn’t get my act together last week to get something completed.  I have half-complete projects everywhere though.  Anyway, we’ll see how long I can keep the next streak going.

So, we threw a baby shower for a friend recently.  Gifts were a slightly complicated affair, since she’s only in the country temporarily until her husband finishes Bible school.  Then they’re going to pack up and go back home overseas.  Or at least, they won’t be staying here, wherever they end up after he graduates.  So that meant that it wouldn’t make sense getting them big items, like cribs and car seats.  How would they take it back with them?  She actually said that she was going to look for used items so that they could just leave them here after graduation.

Well, if we weren’t going to get them cribs and car seats and other large items, it really only left the essentials, like diapers and clothing and bottles.  I am not against giving diapers to expectant parents.  They can always use diapers.  But the thing is, what if you have too many and the baby outgrows them?  It’s not like you can return an open box of diapers.  And as for clothing, I didn’t have time to look for stuff for the kid.  I was going to make baby shoes, and I still might, but I didn’t have time for it before the shower.  So, I opted for the ever wonderful gift card.  No really, I do think they’re great.  So long as they’re to places you actually shop at.  I thought a Target gift card would be fitting because they carry just about anything you could need.  They also have really nice looking gift cards.

But…I also think it’s terrible form to JUST give someone a gift card.  You don’t have to spend too much thought in buying a gift card.  So I decided to compensate by making a quick card for them.

I’m into abnormally shaped or proportioned cards, I guess.  Anyway, baby rattle in cheerful colors!  It’s actually a rather small card.  Not much bigger than a gift card (which was elephant shaped).  So I thought it worked out rather well.  I made a small envelope to match the card and stuffed the gift card in with it.  Tada!  Finished!

The inside was just a short note to the parents-to-be.

You can get the pattern for the card at the Silhouette store.  I modified it a little bit from the original, which should be quite apparent if you go look at the original.  Yup.