The Blackburn Digest

Mystery:  We only have two large-leaved (leafed?) trees in our yard. They are Redbuds, and the leaves dropped at virtually the first sign of winter’s chill.  They were removed/mulched weeks ago. The remaining trees in our yard and neighboring yards are either small-leaf varieties (Crepe Myrtle, Oak, etc.) or evergreens. Well, Casa Blackburn must be situated at the nexus of some mysterious wind vortex, because the entire lawn has disappeared under a thick carpet of large leaves within a remarkably short time span! (Nearly eight 33 gallon trash bags full of them!) I have no idea where our small, tractable, cooperative leaves were transported to by the shifting (and shifty) winds – perhaps there is someone a quarter of a mile away, puzzling over the mysterious appearance of a multitude of small leaves in his/her treeless yard! Since our *windfall* arrived, it has proved to be remarkably stubborn about relocating (thus becoming somebody else’s problem) on subsequent gusty days. DH went forth today, armed with his trusty rake, and spent several hours moving the collection from the lawn to the trash bags. 

Irony:  While DH was outside removing large, stubborn leaves , I was inside attempting to make leaves!  Miniature leaves – small and very small – in two distinct shades of green Mulberry paper. The paper is very soft and malleable; it punches with some difficulty and clings to itself insistantly! I spent hours punching, separating and counting 400+ of each size and color; ultimately bagging approximately 1700 ivy leaves to send to a fellow miniaturist.  

This evening, in a desperate attempt to begin catching up on one of many activities which have been largely ignored during the run-up to the miniatures convention my local club planned for over a year and finally hosted on Saturday, Feb. 17th, I logged onto my Flickr account. Or rather, I tried to! This is what greeted me:

Flickr is having a massage.

For updates, please check the Flickr Blog.(It sounds like fun, but a look at their blog shows that an ever-growing group of Flickr employees are beginning to pull their hair out in frustration!) Guess I won’t be removing out-of-date images and uploading new ones tonight.

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I mentioned the miniatures convention. . . . .several clubs here in Texas rotate responsibility for hosting a yearly gathering of between 80 & 100 miniaturists for a day filled with food, fun, a pre-cut structure kit and themed workshops to keep the members happy and busy for an entire day (Well, eight hours of it, anyway) . The duty falls to my local club every five years, which means that many (most!) of the club members were experiencing this process for the third time.

The planning and preparation for this event begins approximately 12-15 months in advance of the traditional February date. There are many things to be done (designing a structure/theme, gathering materials, cutting and packaging the kits, finding a venue, planning a menu, developing workshops and creating 100 kits of each workshop, planning the decor and raffles, encouraging tote-bag donations from our sister-clubs and creating unique and attractive tote-bag donations of our own) – all this and more to fit within a set budget and the willingness/ability of our own club’s members to donate their time and materials. That’s the short list!

After 15 months of preparation, “the committee” and a few much-appreciated volunteers met at the venue at 1 PM on Friday, Feb. 16th. We had three (3) hours to arrange tables, decorate, prepare our displays, organize the food-service area, set out supplies, arrange the registration area, arrange a tote-bag pack & pick-up area, pre-pack complete workshop kits/paint brushes/structure kits, and…………………….where were the structure kits? Where was the Co-Chair of this event (one of those with prior experience, I might add!), who was in charge of getting the kits cut? Where was the Co-Chair who has been assuring the rest of the committee, and the rest of the club, that “all’s well – they’re coming along!”? Where was the Co-Chair who stopped answering her cell phone (or returning messages) two days ago?

Some of the necessary 100 kits arrived 15 minutes before we had to leave the venue for the day. Some more of the kits arrived several hours after the guests arrived and noticed that some of them didn’t have a structure kit (those were NOT happy campers!) The rest of the kits arrived just barely in time for us to somewhat placate the last of the have-nots and donate the planned number of full kits to a youth miniaturist’s group.

Over-all, the event was a success, but those of us on the committee (and many of the club members) haven’t shaken off the stress-induced fatigue. . .and fury. . .yet!

Look up Procrastination in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, and you will see a photograph of . . . . . . . well, ME!

Two of my Inching Along club members have completed their Totally Texas prototypes!! Innovative exterior finishes and trims, flooring installed (or scribed and inked on the base of the box inself), porch area finished in weathered planking or egg carton “field stone”, inside walls “plastered” or wallpapered and shelving/racks/tables brimming with Texas themed miniatures. They’re wonderful to behold – - – and irritating in their completion!

*My* Totally Texas languishes upstairs with a coat of exterior stucco (applied too thickly, so its convincingly (?) and unintentionally covered in a spider web of cracks! The interior plaster work is a plan-in-waiting, as is the porch roof, support posts, porch & interior flooring. . . . you get the picture?

As further proof of my finely-honed ability to procrastinate:

1) It’s not a ‘shopping weekend’ – I have no menu nor shopping list to create, and there’s no need to negotiate the crowd of bad drivers in the supermarket aisles.
2) The house is whimpering for some cleaning, but not screaming for it.
3) The laundry could wait a day, but it isn’t.
4) It’s raining (Thank G-d!), so the gardening has to wait.
5) The entire collection of Deep Space Nine can be viewed at any time. . . I’m choosing Now.
6) After several days of silence, I’m posting to my blog twice in one day!
In other words, there isn’t a single reason for me to be sitting at this keyboard instead of working diligently away in my Tower! I think I’m close to winning the procrastination award – what do you think?!

Saturday, 9am – Jan. 21st Since it was *The third Saturday of the month*, I was repeating something I have done for the past 2 years+ . . . . . Hearding Cats! (aka: conducting a business meeting of my miniatures club, Inching Along of San Antonio.)

My main goal of each business meeting is to get through the old & new business quickly enough to end the meeting before I totally lose control! Seriously! There is no group more capable of flying of on a fresh tangent in a millisecond than a group of miniaturists. Seventeen cats in one room could not move any faster in independent directions with individual goals than this group can!

Gave myself a pep-talk on the drive across town. “This should be an easy meeting; my fellow officers will be there, we have an agenda.” (The latter usually helps limit the number of tangents.) “Get through the list of items pertaining to our SAM’s Birthday Party in 2007, close the meeting and play with minis.” HAH!

My mental rehearsal of the meeting left something HUGE out of the equation: two club members were returning after being out-of-contact for several months of meetings & planning sessions!! The basic result of that conveniently forgotten fact was chaos – I would laugh about it after-the-fact, but I can’t. Every recent decision recounted in the Secretary’s report was challenged, questioned, rehashed and defended. Every “given” we have settled on in the past several months became the subject of sudden debate. I think they would have happily changed the theme, prototype, workshops and location if I hadn’t allowed some of my Irish attitude out of its box!

Just to make the scene more lively, the two members fanning the fires of contention are also the two who have (imho) the most “out there” and impractical ideas and suggestions! Sigh!

Where does the president go to resign?!