OK, so here's the story first. Was waiting for an SASBE to come to me to fill up the bubblie with the "wanted seeds". Bubblie came on 11/21/08, inside one of those clear plastic bags from the post office. Immediately I noticed that it looked like something had been spilled on one side of the bublie and figured HMM, looks like the cofee missed the mouth and landed on the envelope. Went to open the bag and found the following "formal printed on the post office's plastic bag. Remember now, the envelope looked like a small amount of liquid had been spilled on the bubble mailer, but other than that, no damage at all to the envelope and I did find everything inside it was in perfect shape. "UNITED STATES POST OFFICE KANSAS CITY MISSOURI 4127 Dear Postal Customer The enclosed was found to be either loose in the mails or damaged as a result of mechanized processing by the Postal Service. We realize that your mail is important to you. Every employee with the Kansas City Post Office is trying to handle expeditiously and without damage, every piece of mail with which he/she is entrusted. With local volume of about 4.5 million pieces daily, we must use mechanized and automated systems to ensure our customers receive prompt service. A malfunction of this equipment can result in a damaged piece of mail. Irregular bulky items, such as coins or paper clips, enclosed in envelopes can also cause equipment to jam, resulting in damaged mail. We are constantly working to eliminate damage to any mail. You can help by assuring that each letter or parcel you mail is prepared and addressed properly. We appreciate your concern and offer our apologies for any inconvenience you have experienced. Sincerely Plant manager" Of course it doesn't explain what happened to this particular piece of mail that was stained from a liquid on the bubblie and no part of the bubblie was damaged any other way than that. To bad they aren't as equally concerned in charging their customers the correct mailing price to start with. Someone must have been "sipping something" while at the machines and spilled it on the bubblie. Fran

In about 1980 or 1981, Texas had a horrible heat wave. The temps did not go under 100 degrees for something like 27 days. Although we lived in the southwest area of Dallas, & driving was torture, one night after work my roommate wanted to go to Prestonwood Mall, about a 45 minute drive. She was insistent. We hadn't been in that air-conditioned mall 5 minutes before someone called, "Evie!" It was an old classmate from her high school in Clovis, New Mexico! ........ ........ An old friend told me that she sometimes has those spur-of-the-moment changes of, uh, plan? heart? mind?, but hers are usually of the dodge-the-bullet variety. She thinks maybe it's her guardian fairy angel godmother. One day, she said her car "just turned in to Baskin-Robbins", she didn't know why. So she & went in & bought a carton of milk. might as well... Got back in the car, resumed her journey, & saw, less than a minute down the road, a car just like hers smashed into a tractor-trailer rig. The paramedics were cutting away the car to get the driver out. still gives me chills.

Wonderful-oh boy-I am so glad you didn't come home to that-it would have been less humorous then!

Re Bluebars' comment: LOL--I would scatter them on the back of a quilt to cover all the little snips I had to make to make it lie flat after quilting. Had to do this with two quilts, and it would've been easier if I's had some nice little blocks to use for the applique. This thread has opened my eyes to that possibility. GrammyP: I like sashing for the same reason, but it failed me when I was making a SlideShow quilt, with all those little squares inserted in the sashing. Had to do some ripping and finagling there! The worst quilt I have ever made, so far as ripping out is concerned, was an all-batik 9-4. The important I-Spy squares were all dark prints, and I planned a variety of peach-colored or yellowish batik prints for the background, but as I began to put it together, I realized I hated it. Ordered more peachy batik so the background could be all the same fabric. Put together the first several rows (for a queen-sized quilt), realized I didn't like the effect of the quilt as a whole and decided to rip off a number of blocks on one side to make it lap-sized. Then realized that I had destroyed the symmetry of the pictures in the dark squares and had to rip and rearrange. In the process of doing which, I sewed in a block with cat pictures upside-down (Several other blocks had things like leaves and fruit that had no up or down; wouldn't you know I would pick one with directional squares to mess up on?) More ripping. To this day, I still don't get the usual good feeling when I look at that quilt. It is in service covering an unwanted piece of furniture in the living-room that DH can't bear to part with, so I see it often. As soon as I get around to finding or making something more attractive, this quilt gets to reside in the trunk of my car!