Veteran's Day

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation."
              - George Washington

Quilt Begins...Again

We are starting the marathon. 130-some-odd quilters arrive today....most will leave on Sunday...but others will leave on Thursday....just in time for more to arrive on Friday. For eighteen days straight there will be quilters here. We might survive.

So, exactly what do I do as I await for these women to arrive like a plague of grasshoppers? I mean, besides blog. Well, I wait. Quilters are supposed to arrive around 3:30. I grew up with the rule that being early is being on time, but arriving at 2...? Well, so it began.

About a dozen arrived around two. They trickled in until mass chaos broke out about 3:30. This lasted for a good 45 minutes. Now it's back down to a trickle. I'm waiting for about 40 more women to arrive. Seems like a lot, but that's only a third left. Thy won't all arrive by the time I leave around 9:30, but most of them should. When they rush in a like a plague, it's about all I can do to keep up with their names, tell them where their rooms are and where their work space is and answer questions. When they trickle, I socialize with the "bellhops" (teenagers from a local church who help the ladies move in more stuff than you can imagine as a fundraiser) or the few women I know, do things I need to get done online and read a book. Not a bad way to spend several hours.

For quilt, that's about all I do. Next weekend, I'll be here all weekend being a "gofer", helping with odds and ends. Honestly, quilt isn't so bad once I got over the overwhelming amount of women and the stuff they bring. Once they're moved in, they keep to themselves and their projects. Nothing like having to entertain over 200 women like during women's retreats. So, quilt has risen in my estimation of camp events. But I'm not going to become a quilter. No matter how many times they ask.

MN: From the Perspective of a Nomad, Part 8

When they're not fishing...they're hunting.

Scraps and Pieces

• Well, Fall Quilt started yesterday with somewhere around 70 women arriving...followed by 50 or so today. They're all wiling away the hours with their sewing machines. This will go on through the whole month of November (minus the week of Thanksgiving) and then one more week in December. I'm much calmer going into it than I was in the spring....maybe because I have done it once or maybe because 90% of the women were signed-up and fully registered before the middle of September. That made getting ready much easier!

• Last night, Andrea and I went to a family's house to play games with some friends of hers. They had several other people over, too. We played Catch Phrase, which is always fun. And we played a game called Four on a Couch. That took me a little bit to get a hang of and it wasn't until I got home and was lying in bed that I knew what I should have been keeping track of (although I guess I did a pretty good job, according to the people I was playing with).

• I think the funnest part, though, was when one of the girls was telling a story about her recent jogging experience. I do live out in the country, surrounded by corn fields and dairy farms. So, lots of cows. I see the around when I'm out jogging, too, but they're usually within their fences. If they've escaped, they stay in their field and leave me alone. Well, she was jogging down a country road like most runners in the 21st century looking down at her iPod rather than what might be in front of her. When she was brought to an abrupt stop by running right into a cow. A cow who wasn't scared of her at all. She tried to scare it out of the road by yelling and throwing rocks, but that only made the cow mad. It came towards her...she got scared...and then tumbled over the side of the road into the swampy ditch.

         "Can you put running shoes in the wash?" she asked.

• Also last evening, Andrea showed me a video of two of her nephews. The older one found a live mouse caught by the tail in a trap. At first, he was scared of it but eventually he picked it up by the trap, the little house jerking around as it tried to get away. His father was asking what he should do with it, but since he wasn't sure, their dad suggested taking it outside. 

         "Oh, yes," the younger boy had now come to look at the mouse. "It needs to go outside."

         "Does it?" their dad asked.

         "Yes," the boy replied. "We need to take it for a walk outside."

• And today I learned from a teenage boy what a Cricket machine is: "A woman's video game console."

MN: From the Perspective of a Nomad, Part 7

Funny, from where I lived in Texas I headed straight up I35 until I was on the opposite end of the country and...well, it's almost like being on the opposite side of the world! This time last year, I was jogging around and playing tennis in shorts. Today I was jumping rope and running sprints while snow tumbled down from the sky. Personally, I much prefer the fresh, crisp air and beauty of the snow!

Yes, it has snowed in Minnesota...

This is about as much as it stuck this time around, although it fell all morning. But the snow shovels are out, the guys have been putting bags of sand in strategic locations about camp and we're getting ready...because, you know, it hasn't snowed in four months - and it's about time!

I also discovered a new tree this week. Not that I'm a botanist. I'm not good with trees...or anything that grows, really. Aaron mentioned a tree called "tamarack" earlier this year. I wasn't sure what he was talking about...until I saw yellow fir trees this week. Our camp gardener was telling us today that it is the only pine he knows that not only changes colors but looses all it's needles. They're pretty neat. I've certainly never seen anything like them and they make the landscape very pretty.