I've been busy...

Let's see, after today's minor corrections, the PMFF flyer and handouts will be good to go. And, since our new Saturday and Sunday venues have been nailed down, I can get a start on the schedule grid for the festival which is the most complicated part of the whole deal. I've written the performers' bios for the program and the "Welcome" message (actually I "cheated" and rewrote one Tom and I wrote a few years back) and can now make the map changes with the new venues.

The plumber (a new one since the one who did the work for me last year and January hasn't returned my phone calls) was just here to look over the plumbing situation in the cellar an give me a quote on basically redoing everything in PEX, not just replacing the shutoffs with ball valves. The price quoted was not only reasonable, but I've got enough money in my fast depleting cushion to cover it. He'll get started next week. AND I got a quote from the people who cleaned my chimney last year to reflash the chimney and, while they were up on the roof, put the screen topper on the toilet vent pipe. Came with an 8-year warranty so I've got that in the works, too.

Carol and I made major headway yesterday on the T-shirt quilt, but she's realizing how imprecise square sizes can be (no matter how carefully cut) with fabric with that much give. There's really a difference between older shirts that were washed many times and newer, more stabile shirts. Of course there's interfacing on the backs, but even that's only helpful up to a point. I think she's wishing she'd never started this with me -- and I'm pretty sure she's given up on the idea of making one for herself!

I've been trying to eat someplace other than at the computer, so when the weather is good, I've been sitting on the deck. Alas, what that's been doing is showing me all the work that needs to be done in the garden and yard. Sigh. I just can't do everything at once and, since I write everything down on my daily lists, I SHOULD be aware of just how much I AM getting accomplished. But the house is still a cluttered mess, there are still leaves that need to be pulled out of flower beds, volunteers that need to be replanted in a bed, the brick border surrounding the sundial garden dug out and reset, and, now that I have the shelves back in the cellar, I need to cull and sort and organize down there. Not to mention getting an antique dealer in here to take some of the cubic footage off my hands. And sell other stuff...and write thank yous...and, and, and... It's never ending. And PMFF stuff will be taking up more and more time and then there's the festival itself.

I did get to my first Maine Old Cemeteries Association meeting in about ten years last Saturday. I've been a member since 1974 and Tom very much enjoyed going to meetings all over Maine with me. Saturday wasn't my first meeting without him (he worked that last meeting I went to ten years ago so I met him in York after the meeting and we went out to dinner), but it was odd being there alone. We were quite friendly with another couple in the organization and, since Ginny died a couple years ago, it was really odd being there, talking to David, without having either Tom or Ginny at the meeting. Took the "Lost At Sea" tour after the meeting and spent the next hour and a half tromping around Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, ME...proving to myself that, despite my knees, I CAN spend an extended time walking, and proving to myself that I NEED to start walking again -- every day. I thought I'd really feel it (negatively) the next day. I DID feel it on Sunday, but how I felt was really good.

Gotta go hit the paperwork...

Linn