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Good and Bad News

My hard drive died on Friday. I'm really lucky that my husband was smart enough to purchase an extended service plan for the computer. That's the good news. The bad news is that the company taking care of the service plan has probably one of the worst voice mail systems I have ever encountered. I have spent about two hours on hold  over the past two days. That is two  hours by the clock, not what it felt like, which felt more like six days.

The good news is that my hard drive will have a new set of brains soon. The bad news is that I'm using my son's old laptop with it's ancient operating system.

My mother had a small stroke last week. It felt like for a couple of days her brain was not properly plugged in. Happily, her brain is now plugged back in.  Clearly I would rather that my hard drive's brains be permanently fried than my mother's.  Life will so return to normal on both the human and the virtual fronts.

Despite having to spend time dealing on various help lines, I have not been idle. 

My friend Shelley came through some serious health issues. She is making gifts for the posse of people who helped pull her through a difficult time. Shelley invited me to her apartment  so I could understand what she was trying to do. I loved Shelley's apartment. It feels like a nest, it almost feels like you are entering her brain. Her apartment is small, but it feels gracious and thoughtful. It is filled with beautiful things arranged with humor but the space just exudes calm.

For the past several years Shelley has been quilting. She has a wonderful sense of color. As she has been learning quilting she has begun to move beyond the traditional and has realy found her own voice with the fabric.


Shelley is making a gift for each of the members of the posse. Shelley wanted one of the gifts to include the following quote from the Talmud. "The imprisoned can not release himself from prison ( on his own)"

Usually, I'm in charge of the progress of the entire piece. I was collaborating with Shelley who was still working through exactly what she wanted. Shelley couldn't exactly articulate what she wanted until she saw what I had done. So I made several versions of the text.

We thought we had settled on this version.

After working with the text I had calligraphed, Shelley realized that it wasn't quite want she wanted. Shelley wanted the text to be readable from across the room.  I then suggested adding dots to the dark letters. I have done this before. To me, it reminds me of a theater marquee.

Shelley was skeptical at first, but then she fell in love with what she saw.


I really enjoyed working with Shelley. I'm looking forward to seeing what the final piece looks like.


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