Not a Fan…

Well it hasn’t hit a high temperature yet for today, although yesterday broke records at 114 degrees F. Not a fan. I’m not a fan, I mean…I had fans running everywhere. Right now, my office is only 94 degrees…it was hotter than that yesterday. After my quilt guild Zoom meeting, I put my legs in the pool to cool off and read my book. The pool is in the sun for a goodly portion of the day, though, so I can’t even be out there until later in the afternoon. Plus I had a bunch of stuff to do yesterday…still do today. These 3-day weekends at the beginning and end of the school year are amusing…they just give us time to get caught up on work, I guess.

That was yesterday before the guild meeting.

I did grade stuff during the quilt guild meeting. It was mostly listening to bylaws and all that anyway, so I multi-tasked. Got me some of this…

I am taking a guess…what? And this is what happens when we Google shit, children.

Pretty sure I didn’t teach that. Maybe should use your notes y’all. Plus some of the kids put “Ireland” as their answer, and that’s related to that panel. So weird. I guess Wednesday will be a short discussion of “I don’t grade Google. I grade YOU.”

I still have a ton of grading to do…it’ll get done.

Yesterday afternoon, a fire started up east of us, about 20 miles east. It’s fire season…

It was scarier at night…

The smoke smell this morning was strong…

And as the day went on, the wind moved that smoke around and a few more distinct areas popped up. We’ve been watching this fire map…

The fire switched direction after I screenshot this…now it’s heading southeast, which is good for us, because we’re the black dot on the left. The fire would have to burn through a lot of residential area to get to us, though…in fact, I think all 5 of our senior parents would have to evacuate first. So we’re good. Just hot and smoky. It was over 4000 acres the last I saw…and that was this morning.

Hoping no one gets hurt and they save as many animals and buildings as they can.

What else? Because my brain is fuzz in this heat. My quilt I Can’t Be Your Superwoman won honorable mention at Form Not Function. Did I mention that? Can’t remember.

There are three of us in this show who live about 5 miles apart, and all three of us won awards…Marty’s piece got Best of Show and Linda’s got an Award of Excellence. So we met at Marty’s house and had a socially distanced toast of champagne, thanks to Marty.

It was nice to be in the same space as other hoo-manz. Besides the grocery store. Now back to making art.

I had no energy Friday night for artmaking, but I had two blocks for my quilt guild’s quilt for their annual show…so I did those. One was easy curves and one was not as easy…

I had to rip the curve on the right twice, but the one on the left was easy peasy. Kind of annoying.

So those are done and I delivered them yesterday. When the whole quilt exists, I’ll post a picture. It’s the Modern Quilt Guild, which I mostly don’t do. But they are accepting of me, and I knew I could sew these, so I did them.

Then Saturday morning, I cleaned this beauty up and labeled her and made hangers for her and packed her up and shipped her to my Patreon patron.

She turned out well, although she’s bigger than I had originally planned. Learning for next time, I guess.

And then last night, I finally had some energy for cutting things out. It’s too hot to think.

Still plenty left to do on that one. Maybe tonight? Hopefully. I’d like to be ironing her together at some point this week.

When I was out shipping the Patreon quilt and dropping off the quilt guild blocks, I got an email to come pick up some clay. WHAT? You said clay? I said clay.

My art group is building a labyrinth thing in 29 Palms in November. I need to build a thing for that. I explained how I was going to build it and how big it would be, and she handed me this. I’m excited…although I’m going to wait until it cools down a bit to start. I don’t want it to dry out too fast. Maybe next weekend. I have until October 1, so plenty of time. I’m really looking forward to doing this. I used to do clay in college and for a little while after…it’s been a long time. It’s a very soothing process.

And remember the bread that I completely fucked up on following directions?

It’s the best loaf I’ve made…

Just further proof that my mantra about reading the directions and then finding your own way (unless you’re a student in my class and your version of ‘finding your own way’ is to not do anything) is the way to go. With bread? The girlchild says I can’t totally ignore the science. I didn’t! I just fucked with it. And it worked. I can’t repeat it. That’s the funny part.

More cats in class…

Apparently trying to knock computers off a desk is a thing.

Nova was below the light table, but behind me…

And Kitten settled on the back of the couch.

When I’m the only one home, they all want to be with me.

They’re mostly sweet.

Yeah. Glad to have a job. Glad to have accommodations for my job. Glad to have a roof over my head. Glad to have the animals and people around me. Wish it were cooler and I slept more and felt more like I could make art right now. Instead, I will take the dog in the pool, breathe in more of the smoky air, and grade something. My office just hit 97 degrees with two fans on me. It’s only 108 outside. Oh good…could be worse. Stay safe, stay well…