Ami's AfterChat NewsletterSeptember 1998Please Note: This newsletter was originally sent on Tuesday Sept. 15, 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 Information may be outdated and irrelevant, not to mention useless.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.
THE CHAT ON AOL At 9:00pm I had just walked in the house after a day long trip to Amishland with my friends who own the quilt shop in Rome, Italy. An entire day of trying to think (and speak!) in Italian evidently wiped out the part of my brain that remembers on-line chats! Yikes!!! I am sorry! This month, our get-together is on September 24. 9:00 pm EST in the AOL chat room. Come on over. That's the same day I pick up my buddy from Charleston and we set up our booth at Flint's Quilts At The Crossroads. Another busy day, if you get my drift!
COME AND SAY HI If you'll be attending the Quilts At The Crossroads show in Flint on September 24 - 27, come by the vendor mall and say hi. We'll be downtown in the hotel that keeps changing names. (Just follow the crowds!) You might even get a peek at some of the quilts for the new book!
BOOK UPDATE
TEACHING STUFF
MANY unHAPPY RETURNS If you've never tasted Oriental Mix, it's delightful. Little brown crackers in interesting shapes. Some are a little sweet; some are a little spicy, and they keep trading off, so you can never tell for sure until you pop it in your mouth. Sometimes there's nuts in there too. It's probably saturated with artery-hardening carcinogens, but it's one of my few vices. I can shove it in my mouth faster than almost any other food. A little Coke with lots of ice and I am in hog heaven. I paid for my Oriental Mix, sat down on one of the benches outside the store with the cargo pants and untied the bag. Evidently, Oriental Mix is not a popular taste treat here in Flint. They probably don't sell a lot to teenagers looking for cargo pants. The stuff was stale. Really stale. I started looking for bugs. I could hardly believe it. My taste buds were all lined up ready to experience the tasty crunchy morsels of delight. I took another sample. Worse than the first. And there I sat with a pound and a half of it! I went back into the store, and told the adolescent behind the counter that the Oriental Mix was stale. She looked at me as if to say, "And the problem would be........?" I told her I didn't want it. She asked me if I wanted to exchange it. As if there were anything else that would even come CLOSE to the flavors my tongue had already been promised. (And how could I ever hope to shovel out the exact amount of the something else to exactly equal the purchase price?) No, I didn't want to EXCHANGE it. I handed her the bag and the receipt, and so began THE TRANSACTION FROM, well, you know where. I had to give her my name. And my address. And my phone number. With area code. All of this information was laboriously entered into her computer. I was trying to recall my mother's maiden name and the birth weight of my first born when she took the bag of Oriental Mix and plopped it on the scale. She punched a few keys on the calculator, checked it against the receipt I had given her and handed me back $4.59. Observant readers will note that I was charged 6 cents for the stale crackers I consumed during the 30 seconds I was out of the store! They must have a real problem with returns. There must be thousands of evil malcontents who buy jaw breakers or red licorice strings at Mr. Bulky and come right back into the store 4 seconds later and return them. Just to tick off the staff. Maybe they're licking the candy first and then returning it. Maybe Mr. Bulky has to run a DNA test on all returned candy. Names and addresses are given so that reports can be made to the authorities. And they charge the consumer 6 cents as a way to defray the costs for the DNA analysis. This little inquisition must be to deter such anti-social behavior. It sure cured me. I won't ever go in there again. I'll fly to Pittsburgh for snack crackers! But, if I ever do have to go back I've got a plan. Next time I'm faced with a nosy MS. Bulky who wants my vital information I think I'll reply: "I'm sorry, but I work for the CIA. I could give you that information, but then I'd have to kill you."
HOUSE UPDATE 1. There is no way to stir paint or extract it from the can without sloshing 5% of it in the ridge around the top of the can. 2. Paint cans are constructed in such as way that as soon as you pour the paint into the roller tray that 5% (and then some) dribbles down the side obliterating the brand name and color forever. This is a good thing. Since you will never again be able to locate an exact match, touch-ups are impossible. 3. This same dribble will pool under the can and harden like epoxy sealing it to whatever surface on which the can is resting. Attempting to move the can will result in this seal breaking when you least expect it, usually after enough force has been exerted to slosh the remaining paint out of the can. The amount of paint exiting the can should be just about enough to cover the top of your shoe. 4. Tapping on the lid of the paint can with the butt of a screw driver to seat it securely will only result in the paint hidden in the ridge to squirt in all directions. Squatting on the floor as you tap the lid in place will allow you to decorate your painting pants in areas you never before imagined. It's actually a work in progress. As you walk and your thighs rub together, the design will change. 5. Just because you might be able to glop copious amounts of paint onto a paintbrush doesn't mean it will stick to the wall when you attempt to fling it up there. 6. Keep the paint as close to the ladder as possible, but not in the direct path of your foot as you get off the ladder. 7. The farther away you can stand from the painted surface, the better the job looks. The closer you stand, the more you wear. 8. The number of paint droplets that hit your hat instead of your hair, is equal to the number of times you'll turn your head and accidentally wipe wet paint off a freshly painted wall with the brim. 9. You can save clean up time by wrapping a wet roller in a plastic bag. Come back in the morning and it'll be ready to go. Let it sit there for more than 24 hours and you can throw it away saving lots more clean up time. 10. No matter how thoroughly you've covered an area with dropclothes, the paint will find the one square inch exposed when the glump of masking tape stuck to your shoe moved the drop cloth. 11. You will then step in the paint and track it all over the house until it finally dries three rooms away. You won't notice the paint on the carpet until it's too dry to remove. 12. The same amount of paint on a wall will take three times as long to dry giving you plenty of time to back into it once you've changed out of your painting clothes. 13. It will always take one more coat than what the can says. 14. Primer and real paint look the same when they're wet. 15. No matter how many supplies you buy, you will always be one short. If you live far away from the store, this will happen more than once. 16. Those plastic light switch and electrical outlets covers you took off before you started will somehow disappear before you have a chance to screw them back in place when you're all finished. If they can be found, half the screws will be missing. Those can't be purchased separately. So, if you're about to grab a brush and a pan of paint, good luck!
These are all supposed to be true, courtesy of http://www.bizarrenews.com/. Check it out! After an 11-hour standoff in South River, New Jersey, police finally persuaded three family members to come out of their apartment lined entirely with aluminum foil. The family told police that the foil was to keep out "moonbeams and rays from the outer planets..." Three Texas men are in federal court on charges of conspiring to assassinate President Clinton and other government officials. Their plans, revealed last month in court documents, included producing botulism toxin from "chicken livers, chicken hearts and green beans with a little dirt," then shooting poison-tipped thorns from modified cigarette lighters to kill their intended victims..." When a 911 dispatcher in Bethel, Connecticut got a call and heard only silence on the line, four police officers, paramedics and an ambulance were immediately dispatched. At the scene, they found an empty house-- except for a parrot, and a phone off the hook... Admitting his 0-4 record is not impressive "on paper," trainers announced that "Lucky," a German shepherd guide dog for the blind in Wuppertal Germany, is available for his fifth owner. Lucky led his first owner in front of a bus, and the second off the end of a pier. He nudged his third owner off a railway platform in front of the Cologne-to-Frankfurt Express. And he walked his fourth owner into heavy traffic, abandoning him to be hit and killed. The new owner won't be told of Lucky's record - they say the dog might sense nervousness and "do something silly..." A man identified only as Mr. Humphrey jumped off a 7-story riverside parking garage in Norwich, England. According to friends, Mr. Humphrey had "a passion" for jumping off bridges and other high places. Pacing along a ledge before he jumped, he called down to police officers to ask how deep the water was. Apparently, he didn't hear the answer: three feet... When Milwaukee police arrested a driver on a traffic violation, he kept insisting they had the wrong man. Ernest Hickles repeatedly told police that it was his brother, Earnest Hickles, who was wanted on several warrants. After six days in jail, police released Ernest, realizing they already had his brother Earnest in another cell. Hickles' grandmother blamed their mother for the confusion. "She gave both kids the same name because she didn't want anyone to know she had another baby..." Three sisters in Davie, Florida say they'll sue the Broward County Sheriff's Office on a complaint of police brutality. But witnesses say the girls-- a 16-year-old and 15-year-old twins-- ganged up on Deputy Eric Caldwell and "beat him with their platform shoes..." A Michigan jury awarded $200,000 to a 27-year-old man who claimed that an automobile accident turned him into a homosexual. The man's attorney told jurors that after the accident, the man moved back home with his parents and started hanging around gay bars. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the gene pool: Darwin Coates of Pasadena, Maryland accidentally shot himself in the groin with a .22 caliber handgun. While he was on the floor, his cousin, Gregory Johnson, took the gun away and stuck it in his pants. It went off again... When the owners of a gas station in Baltimore County, Maryland arrived at work Monday, they discovered an automatic teller machine had disappeared overnight. The thieves were caught on security camera videotape, but police have no leads. The robbers were all wearing garbage bags over their heads... A New Jersey man is suing Pfizer Inc., claiming that Viagra made him crash his car. Used car salesman Joseph Moran of Colonia claims that "blue vision," one of the known side effects of the drug, distracted him while driving, causing him to hit a tree and two parked cars. Moran also says he saw blue streaks "shoot out from his fingers" as he reached to remove an audiocassette. After installing a new $917,000 security system at the Redwood City Hall of Justice, officials announced that "anything resembling a weapon would be confiscated." Hours later, deputies got their first catch---a bread making machine. Officials were quick to point out that "it had wires and a timer..." Here's hoping you have a great quilting day, Ami Simms
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