One Year Ago

Lots of people are talking about what happened 30 years ago today. Under normal circumstances, that would be at the front of my mind as well.

But it’s important to me that I tell you all about something that happened one year ago today.

I had been running around like a crazy person for the previous few weeks doing work stuff. Worked a normal Saturday at the store and spent my Sunday enjoying a Quilters University type thing at The Quilt Company.

I knew there was an M&Ms meeting scheduled at Sandy’s house in Monrovia, Calif., the following day (Monday). When I got home from the quilting thing, I had an email from Sandy saying that the meeting was postponed indefinitely because our good friend Carol was in the hospital. Nothing serious, but the group would wait until Carol could attend.

Photo courtesy of mehitabel. Taken at Asilomar in the spring of 2008.

I hunkered down with my work laptop and started compiling the week’s softball scores. And watching the Oscars. I was leaving in three days for a two-week trip to administer a pair of softball tournaments, so I had lots of stuff going on. I fired off a “feel better soon” text message to my friend, then got down to work.

At one of our first block exchanges for the M&Ms group

I had finished my work and was waiting only for the Best Picture Oscar to be announced. Just as Steven Spielberg (I think?) stepped to the microphone to read off the nominees for Best Picture, my cell phone rang. When I saw who was calling, I looked over at Chris (the Hubster) and said "This is not going to be a good call." Sadly, I was right.

It was Sandy. She was sobbing. Carol had passed away earlier that day.

L-R: Carol, Lisa and Sandy helping me pack prior to our move from LA to Pittsburgh. Only the bestest friends will come and help you pack your stash for a cross-country move, especially when you have dueling quilting and knitting stashes!

This obituary ran in the Pasadena Star-News on Friday and was sent to me by mehitabel. I met Carol’s husband, Ole, several times and he was one of my few blog readers during the early days. He said it was one of the best ways to see what kind of mischief Carol was up to. He was very quiet, but always had a smile. I can’t imagine the depth of his loss.

Living on the other side of the country from where I met and got to know Carol, it has been hard for me to really believe that she is gone. And yet, I see the effects. If the M&Ms group is still intact, it has fractured from its original form. I believe that the group has continued without me this year. I understand that – I’m 2,500 miles away, I was a nightmare last year with all of my crappy summer stuff, and Carol was always the one who kept me in the loop. Carol was the glue. Without her, the pieces are separating.

Carol Jacobsen was the happiest, most giving and generous person I have ever met. Everyone was busy the last night I was in California, and several people dropped out of our planned final dinner. But not Carol. It wound up being just the two of us at Outback for dinner. She had some going away presents for me and we had a great visit before I headed east.

I don’t have the right words to express what an amazing person Carol was. And I know that no matter how much I try, I won’t be able to do her justice. So I’ll simply close by saying that I loved her very much and my world is not the same now that she is gone.

Godspeed, my friend. You are missed.

Not the Sharpest Tool in the Shed

It’s been too long since I fed the blog. Sorry ‘bout that.

I also seem to have f’d up the inaugural unveiling of the 2009 M&Ms exchange. Crappers. The group just called, live and in person on cell phone speakerphone to razz me for not including blocks with my kit for 2009. Oops.

“My” quilt will be this one. There are 7 other people sewing on this quilt and 25 total blocks, 13 of which are appliqués. I’m ditching the heart blocks (go and look. I’ll wait.) and asking everyone to do at least one sheep.

I got the fabric together last Wednesday on the way to Hurricane Knitters and scrambled to get to the post office on Thursday so the box could get to Sandy’s house by today. Sadly, it never even occurred to me that I should have sewn a block or two. My brain was all “let the group sew their 14 blocks and I’ll fill in the last 11 when I get it all back.”

I am an idiot.

In other news …

I had a really long day at the big ketchup bottle yesterday. Call time was five hours before kick, rather than the normal four. Lots and lots of time just sitting around, “answering” a phone that doesn’t ring. I started out diagnosing why I’d been having some (minor-to-medium) computer issues and fixed them. Then I pulled out a little project for my upcoming New Pathways class at Bloomin Yarns.

BIG sock!

It’s a duplicate of Cat Bordhi’s teaching sock that she uses in her New Pathways classes. Since I want to be Cat when I grow up, I busted out some Rowan Big Wool and US 17 needles and started magic looping a 24-stitch New Pathways sock. I cast on around an hour before kickoff and finished it tonight. It’s not perfect, and I may do a second one with the leftovers. Or not. We’ll see. Remember, I’m an idiot.

In other news, I got to the heel on my Leyburn KAL sock.

Heel!

The heel is turned and the flap has been decreased. Leg then onward and upward to Sock #2.

I’d be about halfway through the leg right now, but I blithely ignored the pattern and didn’t plan out my stitch count for the leg. So I’m now tinking back the 6-ish rows I knit tonight before I realized my mistake. I’ll be going forward again in no time. I think.

'Cause remember. I am apparently not the sharpest tool in the shed.

M&Ms #8 of 8: Mine!!

My letter to the group was pretty vague. I went out and bought a box of the Crayloa crayons you got in kindergarten. Just eight colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple/Violet, Brown and Black, and I included it with my letter

I love blues, and that’s a color that’s usually very prevalent in both my knitting and quilting. So I told my friends to use those crayons as a guide and while they were welcome to use blue, they shouldn’t focus on it. I didn’t put any restrictions on my quilt at all. Pick something and go with it. Have your row reflect what you love about quilting.

You all saw my row being constructed here




And my “opening row” here

Yeah, it's the good 'ol Double Z!

My friends then took that row for a ride from mid-February until December 8, and here’s what they came up with


The above photo was taken at Sandy’s on December 8. Believe me, I would much rather have been there than in Florida. It would have been exponentially more enjoyable!

I took another photo this morning while the weather was still nice here this morning


In the above photo, the rows were constructed by (from top to bottom, links to their quilt posts): Carol, Anne, Denise, Nonie, Sandy, Yours Truly (starter row), Lisa and Beth.

I’ll be toting this quilt top around for a while in an effort to find the perfect border and backing, but I am very much looking forward to seeing this quilt finished. Thank you, my friends. I love all of you and am incredibly thankful that you have been willing to keep me involved in your group despite the thousands of miles between us. You all mean the world to me, and I would not have lasted eight years in Los Angeles without you.

I can’t wait to see what kind of trouble we’ll get into in 2009!

So that concludes the 2008 M&Ms quilt reveals. I hope you have enjoyed the series!

M&Ms # 7 of 8: Carol!

Carol gets a gold star on this whole Row Robin project.

She set the schedule of who got which quilt at each trade.

She’s our official note-taker, making sure we all know what took place at our meetings beyond eating good food and laughing a lot.

She volunteered to be Mail Girl, sending me the next quilt at each exchange.

And she’s just a genuinely wonderful and generous person.

Carol’s quilt was the one I brought home with me in February after our initial meeting. She even tried to give me a jump on getting started. Remember the leak above our mailbox? Yeah. That was Carol’s quilt.

Here’s Carol on “opening day.”


Carol found a border print a while ago and built her quilt around that print. Do a full row of five 12" (finished) blocks, but fabrics can be different in each block. She provided background fabric, and since she knew that her fabric tastes and mine are polar opposites, she sent a few other fabrics that would go with her border print and once I had a few minutes to rub together, I got sewing. Remember this picture?


Well, it was from this blog post.

Somehow, I didn’t manage to take a picture of my row on Carol’s quilt before sending it off, but I did my “trademark” Double Z block from Quilters Cache. You can see Carol’s churn dash block? That’s the row you can see just to the left of center in the finished quilt below. My Double Z’s are one row to the right of the churn dashes (4th from the right)


Here’s hoping that this "inside" of the quilt looks fabulous with Carol’s border print!

One quilt left to blog. Mine! Santa was very, very, very good to me and I’m sure some of that stuff is blog-able. Plus there are two knitty FO’s and a 2008 wrap-up, so it’s going to be a pretty busy week around here (I hope!) Tomorrow’s itinerary includes Christmas card shopping with my mom first thing in the morning and a probable trip out to Robinson with the Hubster to visit Costco and possibly the J-store. Hope your day-after-Xmas is fun too!

M&Ms #6 of 8: Lisa!

Oops. I spent the afternoon in the basement, sewing. Then we had dinner and I watched a little football and all of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I kind of forgot I hadn’t done a blog post. Well, the world won’t end if I’m a little late, will it?

Lisa had very specific instructions.


Black background, fabric provided. Name of the block must include the word “Star,” and could be any 12” (finished) star except the Autograph Star. She had made autograph stars for each of us, which we were to sign with our name and the name of the start that we chose to sew. The color of each block was to be chosen by the color of an M&M. You saw a preview of my block here with this picture:


Once again, I took crappy notes, and hell if I can remember the name of the block I chose. Lisa reads, so if she can fill me in on the name of the block, that would be awesome!

As you know, a regular package of plain M&Ms has candy in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and brown. If I remember right (and that’s a crapshoot, especially when I’m blogging this late!), brown was to be ignored and orange could only be used once. Your only color restriction was that your row had to be a different color than the row before yours. Carol and I had a good giggle when I posted the above photo as the tiny little preview of my work on Lisa’s quilt. Knowing my affinity for blue, Lisa was baffled that I had chosen green. Tee hee! Carol had done a blue row!

Here’s what I got in the mail from Carol

On my lovely living room carpet, no less!

And here’s what it looked like when it headed back to Carol for the next switch


And finally, here’s what Lisa saw at the big Dec. 8 reveal!


I think she had a fantastic idea and would up with a really terrific quilt!

Merry Christmas, everyone! It’ll be a quiet holiday here. Just the Hubster and I for the morning, then at some point we’ll head over to my parents house. Enjoy your Thursday in whatever way suits you best!

M&Ms #5 of 8: Anne!

Anne is the lone blogger in my M&Ms group, although she’s a bit of a lapsed blogger. That’s OK. She’s fun anyway, and I love that she’s grabbing her new life at the Gardens with both hands and shaking it for all it’s worth!

Anne loves bright colors, particularly lime green. When she moved in at the Gardens, we made her a quilt for her bed at her new place. Here’s her blog post of that quilt, my row is the nine-patch blocks at the foot of the bed.

So anyhoo, the colors for Anne’s quilt this time around weren’t drastically different. Dog/cat fabrics, bright colors, black backgrounds. Fabric options, background (I think?) and between-row sashings included for our convenience. Here’s Anne with her "starter row" on Opening Day:


Once again, I worked on this just about exclusively at the Lake, I used a fabric I bought at Quilted Memories up there, and barely took pictures for some unknown reason. I used two blocks, two Brasstown Stars


And three Paper Pinwheels


And where did I find the blocks? Say it with me now … Quilters Cache! Here's what the quilt looked like when it headed back to the left coast


Finally, here’s Anne with her finished quilt top.


Three more quilts to go.

In other news, I’m officially off of work until January 5. I don’t really have the words to express how happy this makes me. We’re also meeting with the third and final contractor about the master bathroom tomorrow morning. Here’s hoping we can get someone in here and working in January.

M&Ms Quilt #4 of 8: Nonie!

Nonie picked some of my favorite colors, blues and yellows. I have a whole tub of fabric with a pattern pulled to do a blue and yellow quilt of my own!

Here’s Nonie with her row on opening day

Hi, Nonie!

If I remember right, Nonie’s instructions were pretty much to use yellow and blue fabrics and you should use at least two different blocks in your row. But I could be wrong. I don’t clearly remember the instructions for this particular quilt. (since I had it many moons ago ...)

I worked on this quilt exclusively at the Lake, and went to my favorite store up there, Quilted Memories to get one of the two blues. I promptly mis-cut in some way, shape or form and had to readjust exactly how many of each block I was going to do. Eh. It all worked out OK.

My row is on the bottom. Blocks, as always, were taken from Quilters Cache. I believe they were (L-R): Antique Tile, Arrowhead Puzzle and Envelope Motif. I have no idea why I skipped my “signature” Double Z block, since it wound up in just about everyone else’s quilt.


And here’s the finished quilt on the night of the “big reveal.” Boy, my row really stands out in the middle there!



I don’t know why I didn’t take more pictures of this quilt, but that ship has sailed. We’re at the halfway point of the M&Ms Row Robin. I hope you aren’t bored to death yet!

M&Ms Quilt #3 of 8: Denise!

Before I start talking quilting, I have a very important announcement to make:

Happy Birthday, Dad!

I learned early that December 21 was the winter solstice. Easy to remember, since it’s also my dad’s birthday! We’re off to the family birthday dinner shortly and remember, the days get longer from here on out!

Meanwhile, back to quilting.

Denise wanted a Christmas quilt.


She provided some sashing fabric to go between the rows and some other fabrics to coordinate. She also sent along some of the fabric that will be used as the borders so we could all do our best not to clash.

I pulled stash fabric for the reds and greens I used, but if I remember right, I used one of Denise’s blue snowflake fabrics for my background.

Mine is on the bottom, right below Carol’s snowmen!

I pulled the mitten pattern from one of my very favorite holiday quilting books, “Joy to the World” by those evil geniuses Lynda Milligan and Nancy Smith. I swear I want everything they publish, including “More Joy to the World.”

Here are a few more close-up looks at my row. The green-mitten appliqué blocks on the ends are identical, and the pieced blocks are the block that’s becoming my “signature” block – the good ‘ol Double Z from Quilters Cache.



Once I had the whole thing pieced and attached, I realized that I probably should have done two mitten blocks, one green and one red, and three Double Z’s. I wasn’t thrilled with how closely my row mirrored Carol’s, but that’s my fault for trying to do this in a hurry. I hope Denise is pleased with the final product. Here’s how it looked when it left my house


And here’s how it looked at the “Big Reveal” on December 8!



That’s Denise holding the right edge of the quilt. Happy Holidays, my friend. I did get your package in the mail and I love it :-) (I'm just way behind on "life" and haven't made the time to send out thank-yous. Shame on me!)

Oh, and to the rest of the M&Ms, I have received my quilt and I love it! It’ll be blogged last in this series.

M&M Quilts #2 of 8: Sandy

Sandy’s quilt should have been the sixth quilt that I worked on, not the seventh. But I got really behind and finished Denise’s quilt so I could ship it back to Nonie, and Beth and Lisa were fine with having a little less time since they could sew concurrently to finish the quilt. (no, you really didn't need to follow all of that)

Here’s Sandy on “opening day” back in February with her starter row.


Sandy’s quilt was made with upholstery fabrics. All of them were heavier than regular quilting cottons, some of them a lot heaver, and many of them frayed quite a bit.

The parameters for Sandy’s quilt were that each row had to have five unique blocks (12” finished). You could repeat a block from elsewhere in the quilt as long as it wasn’t in the row that was touching yours. Sandy provided all fabrics for the quilt, since none of us were going to already have matching upholstery fabric in their stash.

This quilt somehow got “big and scary” in my head and I don’t really know why. But in the end? It is a little special to me as it was my election day project! This is what I was sewing on when I heard the news of who was going to be POTUS No. 44. I stayed up until about 3 a.m. that night watching election returns and sewing until this quilt was finished so I could send it out the next day. Totally worth it!

Once again, I used Quilters Cache as an amazing resource to find the blocks I sewed for this quilt. From left to right, they were:

Ribbons, Four Patch Fox & Goose, Double Z, Amish Diamond, Mystery Block (Nelson’s Victory that I screwed up? Not out of the question.)

Ribbons, Four Patch Fox & Goose, Double Z

Four Patch Fox & Goose, Double Z, Amish Diamond

Amish Diamond, ???

And here’s a picture of Sandy’s quilt when it left my house. My row is at the bottom.


Finally, here’s the finished quilt, as unveiled at Sandy’s house on December 8.

(my row is next-to-last on the right. see the bright blue < ?)

Sandy is our wonderful host for this very special group. The group is the M&Ms quilters because we meet on Mondays and Sandy lives on Melrose, so M&M’s means Melrose Mondays.

As always, huge thanks to Sandy and her daughter Deb for allowing all of us to spend so much time at their house. Love & miss you both, and Sandy, I hope you love your finished quilt!

M&M’s Quilt 1 of 8: Beth!

Sorry for the long blog hiatus. Convention was a killer (I’m too negative and have a smart mouth. Gee, that wrap-up meeting was fun!) and a full week of significant sleep depravation has left me fuzzy-headed for an additional week.

But, I’ll get back to blogging starting now! The only knitting I’ve been doing is on my Noro Scarf, and the end may finally be in sight! Good thing, since I’m itching to start on the yarn I bought for the sequel!

Anyhoo, I said I’d blog the eight quilts my M&Ms quilting mini-group revealed just under two weeks ago. We’ll go in order of when they left my house, most recent first.

So whose quilt did I sew on last? Beth’s!

Beth did something totally different than everyone else in our little group. She picked a paper pieced quilt from that amazing website Quilter’s Cache, and provided all of the fabric, both the background squares (which caused a minor emergency) and the colored stars. By using Judy Mathieson’s brilliant freezer paper paper piecing technique (scroll down, it's there!), I zipped right along on this quilt.

From top (left) to bottom (right), here are the three photos that make up my row on Beth’s quilt. I photoshopped in the white line so you could see where my work starts. It’s kinda hard to tell otherwise. Anyhoo …

Left chunk

Center chunk (with my most favorite-est slippers peeking in at the bottom of the frame)

Right chunk

And now, for the whole shebang as it looked right before I put it in the mail back to California

Tah-Dah!

And on reveal night, December 8, at Sandy’s house!

Hi, Beth! :-)

Hope you like your finished quilt!

Beth wound up with a fabulous final product. I hope she loves it!

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

I’m in Florida. That sounds good, but I think I’ve been outside for a grand total of half an hour since I arrived at 2 p.m. on Sunday. So don't get jealous.

I got up at 4 a.m. and forced the Hubster to drive me to the airport, leaving the house at 4:45 a.m. to take me to the airport. Flight was at 7:15. I connected in Philadelphia (no plane change, just a layover), but didn’t have to switch planes. The good news is that I was able to get off the plane to use a bathroom that doesn’t move and get a pretzel (yum!). The bad news is that while I was in the airport, the fire alarm went off. It was LOUD.

But, it was nothing, so we all just stood around waiting for it to be turned off. I was the first one back on the plane (only person who came from Pittsburgh headed for Fort Meyers) and the rest of the trip was uneventful.

Before I left town, there was a flurry of activity. On Friday, my mom and I executed Christmas Tree Acquisition: 2008, getting trees for my house and hers. After we got her tree set up and in the stand, my tree was dumped in my front yard and mom scurried back home to get ready for a holiday party she was attending with my dad.

I figured I was already outside, covered in needles and smelling pine-ey. I had brought the four tubs of Christmas stuff down from the attic earlier in the day (good grief, were the big ones ever heavy!), so I just started putting up the outside lights.

It was 20 degrees outside and as long as I kept moving it wasn’t too bad. I got all the outside lights up and got Santa up on the roof of the front porch before turning into a frozen banana. Inside tree was put up when the Hubster got home. I’ll take pictures and post once I get back to the ‘Burgh, but basically? Looks the same as last year!

I threw up a few of the easy/favorite decorations. I have two “new” snowmen.



This guy was purchased on clearance for a buck or two. He sits on the “mail-dump” piece of furniture in the front hall



I don’t remember where I got this guy, but he was purchased some time last year. He’s sitting on the ledge of one of the windows that flank our front door.

I prefer to decorate with snowmen instead of Christmas. Then I can leave things out longer :)

There’s one other thing I finally took care of while I was in “git ‘er done” mode



I finally hung up my birthday presents! I have a better photo, but apparently I forgot to throw it on Flickr so I could access it here.

Yes, my birthday was in May. The Hubster did pretty well, having my signed program from March’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me! visit and the accompanying ticket signed. He also got my signed Barenaked Ladies CD and concert ticket (two separate meetings with the band) framed.

Yeah, it took me six months to get this done. So sue me!

I’m in Florida (don’t get excited. I’ve been outside the hotel for a grand total of 30 minutes since my arrival on Sunday at 2:30 pm) all week and will try to blog when spare moments come up. The “big reveal” for the M&Ms quilts was last night. Lisa was kind enough to email me photos of seven of the eight quilts. I’ll just have to wait to see mine until it shows up in the mail!

My “master plan” is to work backwards, featuring each quilt as it was when it spent time in Pennsylvania, starting with Beth’s (the last quilt I sewed on) and finishing with my own masterpiece, which I haven’t seen since February. Please be patient. I can only access the web when I’m in the conference area of the hotel, and my spare time is limited this week.

Okey dokey. Back to work!

Stalking the Mailman, AKA “79”

A week ago (Nov. 16-22), I was happily stitching away on my last of the M&Ms quilts.

It’s Beth’s. (Here is a link to the quilt pattern) It’s paper pieced. It’s the most labor-intensive and time-heavy of the eight quilts. And all of the fabric was provided. Most importantly, all of the background fabric, 80 triangles worth of the same black batik per person, came along with the quilt.

While watching Sweeney Todd, I diligently counted all of the triangles while “gluing” them to my freezer paper templates in order to use Judy Mathieson’s utterly freakin’ brilliant paper piecing technique. (scroll down if the link doesn't work there)

80 triangles. Brilliant. I was on my way. I laid out my colored fabric strips and was cruising along, no problem (well, brief periods of brain freeze, but nothing major). I get to Friday night, I’m zipping along. I’m ready to add the last layer of triangles to the last 20 sub-blocks. All of a sudden? Ruh-Roh Shaggy!

I’m one short. I only have 79 freakin’ triangles.

I text message Beth, who apologizes and says she’ll mail the much-needed triangle. It got in the mail before Turkey Day, but didn’t arrive over the weekend, so I’ll be stalking the mailman over the next few days. The Big Reveal is at Sandy’s house on December 8, so I need to get it in the mail as soon as I can. It’s as done as it can be until I get that triangle, so I’m hopeful I can get this thing headed west before I get into the busy second half of the week. We have theater tickets on Wednesday after having seen Spamalot last Tuesday, then we’re doing a holiday festivity thing at The Frick on Thursday. It’s a busy week.

I’m cruising on the socks I showed you last week. They’re Sheep Shop Sheep Feet. I really love the yarn. It’s a lot like Socks that Rock Mediumweight, but the company did a stupid thing with the yardage. Too much for one sock/skein. Not enough for a pair from one skein, but I’ll get into all of the details for the FO post, which should be SOON.

Oh, and I still owe you a FO post on Kermit. I’m hoping for a good non-rainy, non-work day so I can get a couple of “on the hoof” shots. Hope all my American readers had a wonderful long weekend. I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday! :-)

WiP Wednesday: Bits and Pieces

It has been a crazy busy week at chez DPUTiger. And it's not going to get any better. I’ll get to the “other” stuff tomorrow, but here’s what we’ve got knitting-wise

First Koigu Kermit sock is done. Second is on the arch increases.

Progress!

Please pardon the harsh-morning-light-on-the-TV-room-floor photos. I knew if I didn't take them first thing this morning, it wasn't going to happen.

If you are familiar with the New Pathways socks and remember what I was saying a week ago, you will notice something.

I said it was a Master Ridgeline. But that would put the arch increases on the sole and this sock has arch increases on the top of the instep. Well, I turned the heel at a special Fifth Wednesday Hurricane Knitters gathering last Wednesday. At the Bloomin Yarns stitch & bitch the following day, I was knitting away on my sock while helping a knitter with starting a sleeve when it “clicked” in my brain.

I put the heel on the wrong half of the sock. There was swearing and throwing of knitting when I discovered this fact.

Now it’s an Upstream, not a Ridgeline.

One would think that this is a potentially fatal flaw in a sock. Not so much when you’re dealing with the genius that is Cat Bordhi. I guess this is proof positive that arch increases really can go anywhere!

My only other knitting news came from Dave-The-Chatty-Mailman (serioiusly. the whole neighborhood hides when they see this guy coming) in yesterday’s USPS delivery.

Yay! ... Return address labels removed to protect the innocent ;-)

Yarn to finish my Incredible Shrinking Barts. I’d say I’d tackle that at knit night tonight, but my brain is shot to hell, so this may be the right week to knit brainless. Hopefully I’ll even be able to screw up the second Kermit sock in the same manner?

So not all that much knitting but LOTS of quilting. I’d take pictures, but it’s all M&Ms quilts, so I can’t show you now. I’m hoping Lisa will be kind enough to take pictures of all eight quilts at the Big Reveal on December 8 so I can show you all of these quilts. They’re gonna be awesome.

I have photos of all of “my” rows on everyone’s quilts and am planning a bunch of posts after the big reveal.

But basically, a week ago today, I had three of the eight group quilts in my house. After a quick stop at the post office on my way to Hurricane Knitters, I’ll have just one. HOORAY!

So that’s about it around here. I’ve been trying to stay out of the Pit of Despair, but I think the ROUS’s just might get me this time around. Wish me luck!