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Ami's AfterChat Newsletter

April 1998


Please Note: This newsletter was originally sent on April 20, 1998. It may not have improved with age. Information may be outdated and irrelevant, not to mention useless. It is here only for your enjoyment.


WELCOME
Hello to all the new subscribers to this newsletter. Welcome! If you'd like to read back issues, you can find them on my web page at http://quilt.com/amisimms. Even if you don't want to read them, they're still on the web page. If someone forwarded this email to you and you'd like tobecome official, you can do that at the web site too. It's easy. Just follow the prompts and you can have this delivered to your very own e-mail box. Then you can forward it to all of your friends.

To all the regulars who read the newsletter each month. THANK YOU!!


DON'T FORGET
I am compelled to remind you that our next chat in the America Online Quilters' Chat Room will be Thursday, April 23, 1998 at 9:00 EST. Please come and join the fun. Everyone is welcome. Please don't be put off by the protocol, it just makes it easier for me to answer all of your questions. We had a great crowd last month, so come on in.


WOMAN'S DAY MAGAZINE
Be sure to pick up a copy of this week's issue of Woman's Day Magazine. It's the May 12, 1998 issue and my photo-transfer pillow is on the COVER. All right, so the picture is 2 inches big, but it's on the cover! Now, if you actually want to see my name, you have to find page 63 and practically rip it out of the magazine. In the spine, just about to the glue, is where you'll find my name as the designer. The photos on the pillow are of my friend, Sue, and her husband, Dave. (Sue and I have been best buddies since high school.) The adorable baby is my neice, Paige Simms. I don't know whose chair that is.


HOUSE CONSTRUCTION
Our studs are still naked, and we flunked our electrical inspection. I'm so embarrassed. But there is progress.

The Plan called for everything to be done IN ORDER, with the structural changes to my office happening in sequence with the new addition. Dry wall in the new addition---dry wall in my office. Paint the addition---paint the office. The Plan also called for this whole thing to be done by now. Stupid Plan. I told everybody about the NEW PLAN last week. It's called the "Ami Gets Her Office Done First Or She Is Going To Make Your Life Miserable Plan." And it's working out just fine.

They're painting as I type and nothing ever smelled to good! In between sentences I run out to the living room, and screw together another component to my new office furniture system. I am finally upgrading to a real desk instead of the wood slab balanced on top of the filing cabinets. And I'm worth it.

If you want to see what it will look like, turn to page 246 in your Office Max catalog and behold the slate colored modular office system at the top of the page under letter A. Envision yours truly swiveling in front of the efficient corner desk with matching hutch. To my right will be the 48 inch table, and to my left the 36 inch version. Uncluttered desk top as far as my arms can reach. Storage possibilities even I cannot fathom. The dream desk come true.

At the bottom of the catalog page you'll note that some assembly is required. Actually, there is nothing pre-assembled except the cardboard boxes the stuff came in. I am putting in every nut, bolt, and screw myself. Except for the 3 or 4 leftover ones that I'm sure are just decorative anyway. I only left out three little pieces of wood, and some dowels, but I used up all the glue.

I have been salivating over The Desk for some months now. In fact, it was a condition of the remodel. I spend several hours each month at the Office Max display model pretending to type, and file, and pin stuff to the cute little built-in bulletin boards. I will send this email out on the Old Desk, only because I may not be able to reconstruct the wiring configurations of my computer after the move. But, by time you read this, I will be sitting at the New Desk in the New Office, and probably leaning up against the New Paint.


DID YOU KNOW?
Permanent magic marker can be removed from your Omnigrid rulers and mats with nail polish remover. And the burnt-on gunk that sticks to the bottom of your iron after you accidentally iron the wrong side of fusible interfacing can be removed by soaking the sole plate of your iron in a pan of white vinegar over night. Cleans out your sinuses the next couple of times you use the steam, but think of that as an extra bonus.

The last little bit of advice? McDonald's paper drink cups don't age well after having been left in the drink holder of your car overnight, especially when the liquid inside gets a chance to freeze and then thaw more than two times. Waiting until the third freezing does not make it easier to chisel the remains out of your console either.

How do I know all this? Guess.


CAN YOU INVENT THIS FOR ME?
I think it's time I got new glasses. The lenses are fine, but the frames are on their last leg. Or whatever you call that part that goes over your ear. Ever since I adjusted the back seat of the car from the "tilted-way-back" position to the "way-too-straight" position my specs haven't been the same. I must have surprised the chair, or possibly it isn't too bright to adjust those things when you're not actually sitting in them. (I was leaning over it, facing the back of the car at the time.) The chair back came up rather suddenly and whacked me in the head sending my glasses flying over my left shoulder and into the steering wheel.

Haven't been the same since. Either the shock has permanently elevated one of my eyebrows, or the lady at the optical place didn't get them aligned properly. So I want new frames, but it's so hard to decide on the perfect ones. And trying on samples is no help. If I could see what the new frames would look like by trying on frames with no lenses, I wouldn't need glasses in the first place! Besides, I look so good without my glasses on, I can't concentrate on the frames I'm auditioning. Without my corrective lenses, my wrinkles disappear, the emerging gray hair isn't as noticeable, and I look fuzzy around the edges---just like one of those glamour photos. I look ten years younger.

Anyway, I want somebody to invent a machine for picking out new frames. You go into a little booth where nobody can see you and you try on the frames. There's a video camera in there and you click a button each time you pop on a new frame. Smile, click. Smile, click. Smile, click. Then you put your real glasses back one, the ones that you can actually see with, and you look at the pictures of yourself wearing your new frames. That way you can see how you'd look. Good idea, huh? Start working on it, will you? And mail the royalties this way, OK? (Remember, you heard it here first!)

And another thing.... People who make eye glass cleaner in the little squish bottles really ought to make the pin prick that the liquid sprays out of a different color than the rest of the pump. Obviously, it's made to by used by people who wear glasses, whose vision may not be the greatest when they're holding their glasses in their hands instead of wearing them on their heads. I have to take a pigma pen and put a circle around the squirt hole every time I get a new bottle of the stuff.


A FUNNY
Actual quotes from Federal employees performance evaluations:

"Since my last report, he has reached rock bottom and has started to dig."

"His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity."

"I would not allow this employee to breed."

"This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won't be."

"Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."

"When she opens her mouth, it seems that this is only to change whichever foot was previously in there."

"He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle."

"This young lady has delusions of adequacy."

"She sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them..."

"This employee should go far - and the sooner he starts, the better."

"This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."


ANOTHER FUNNY
These lines are out of the OER (Officer Efficiency Report - performance appraisal for the military):

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer...

Got into the gene pool while the lifeguard wasn't watching...

A room temperature IQ...

Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together...

A gross ignoramus - 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus...

A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on...

A prime candidate for natural deselection...

Bright as Alaska in December...

One-celled organisms outscore him in IQ tests...

Donated his brain to science before he was done using it...

Fell out of the family tree...

Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming...

He's so dense light bends around him...

If brains were taxed, he'd get a rebate...

If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week...

If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change...

If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean...

One neuron short of a synapse...

Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled...

Takes him 1 1/2 hours to watch 60 minutes...

Was left on the Tilt-A-Whirl a bit too long as a baby...

Wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead...


THE WORLD'S EASIEST QUIZ...

  1. How long did the Hundred Years War last?
  2. Which country makes Panama hats?
  3. From which animal do we get catgut?
  4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
  5. What is a camel's hair brush made of?
  6. The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
  7. What was King George VI's first name?
  8. What color is a purple finch?
  9. What country do Chinese gooseberries come from?
  10. How long did the Thirty Years War last?
ANSWERS
  1. 116 years, from 1337 to 1453.
  2. Ecuador.
  3. From sheep and horses.
  4. November. The Russian calendar was 13 days behind ours.
  5. Squirrel fur.
  6. The Latin name was Insularia Canaria - Island of the Dogs.
  7. Albert. When he came to the throne in 1936 he respected the wish of Queen Victoria that no future king should ever be called Albert.
  8. Distinctively crimson.
  9. New Zealand.
  10. Thirty years, of course. From 1618 to 1648.


THANKS
As always, thanks for taking the time to read this. If you ever would like to be removed from the list, just email me and let me know. Just be gentle.

Happy Quilting,
Ami Simms

http://quilt.com/amisimms


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