"We're On A Mission From Gaaaad."

(That's the only way I could think of to duplicate Ellwood Blues' flat Illinois accent.)  I had forgotten how much fun The Blues Brothers movie is, and how many fantabulous songs and artists & actors are in it, like John Lee Hooker, Frank Oz, Paul Reubens (Peewee Hermans), Cab Calloway, Carrie Fisher, Stephen Spielberg (!), Ray Charles, and Aretha, can't forget Aretha.  We all laughed and sang along out there on that chilly, breezy patio.  They show the movies out on what was originally the train station platform that now has a wrought iron railing between it and the tracks, and shrubbery on one side, but trains still pass, two did last night, one during the scene in Ellwood's flophouse room where the ell trains pass almost constantly.  Felt a bit claustrophobic, that.  I met Cookie, Z-Dawg (no, Mr. Z-Dawg though, boo), DS & DIL1 there and we had a rollicking good time on the cheap.  I spent a bunch of yesterday afternoon downstairs sewing on a new bag from a pattern I got at the quilt show we went to last winter.  I only had to go buy one item, the fusible interfacing for the purse body (which was only $3 with my coupon), otherwise I used all stash items.  Yay, me!  I'm determined to sew and knit from stash as much as I can until I can see signs that there's less down in the studio.  I mean I want to see bins with space and shelves that I can see wood on.  That's going to take a while, but I figure I must have liked the stuff to buy it, right?  So it's only logical that I want to sew and knit it up.  Makes perfect sense.  Today's Photo A Day June theme is "something cute."  Man, that was a hard one.  I'm not much into cute, but I managed.  I found a couple of little cream pitchers at Goodwill over the last year or so that I bought (for a buck each) to put pens, scissors, etc. in on the coffee table so it's not such a scattered mess.  One's a sheep in honor of my knitting habit and the other's a chicken in honor of our grand-chickens, Henny and Penny, who have the sniffles DIL1 says.  Chickens can sneeze?  I never imagined that, but it must be true if DIL1 says it is.  She knows stuff, lots of stuff.  She's putting cider vinegar in their water; that's supposed to be good for chickens with the sniffles.  I'll report as I know more.  Sneezing chickens--what next?

June 25--Mexico, Olmec, Baby Figure.  Lane sat in the pool of light with all the pieces scattered on the table and a pot of glue at her elbow.  Dr. Newman had asked her to fit the pieces together if she could.  From the look of the parts it was some kind of figure since she had a foot and both tiny hands.  On into the night she worked fitting bits this way and that until nearly dawn when she placed the last piece.  It was a baby sucking its finger and sitting with its legs spread so that the figure would balance upright.  The baby wore a fancy helmet.  Was it ceremonial?  Decorative?  Commemorative?  She wanted to come up with a logical and reasonable theory to impress Dr. Newman or at least hold his attention for more than a minute.  Maybe then he'd remember her name and stop calling her Jane.

Ah, professor-worship.  I had a touch of that in college myself.  When I look back on those days all of them were supremely self-absorbed and geeky.  I thought they were deep and interesting, but then I was pretty geeky and easily impressed myself.  Good thing I never acted on those feelings... actually the crowds of adoring girls around them were pretty deep, I never penetrated the inner circles... and it's just as well.  I met my beloved Durwood when I was in college.  No, he wasn't a student or a professor, his friend, Jack, ran the theater shop and asked Durwood to come help crew for a traveling show when he couldn't find enough students to hire.  I'm not telling you the whole story today, suffice to say we had our first real date 20 days after we met and the rest is history.
--Barbara