Juice Finds Joy in Holy Grail of Fabric Scraps

I had an excellent and satisfying day. First, my dear husband has insisted on driving the Kia for the winter, so I drove to school in warmth and comfort in the Subaru, as I have for the last week or so. He, on the other hand, has discovered yet another issue with the Kia, which is that the driver's door will not stay latched shut, which apparently makes left turns rather difficult. I feel bad for abandoning my Kia, as I feel a strange attachment to her like a parent to a naughty child.

Anyhoo, I spent the morning and early afternoon in the clinic working on stuff & had a client meeting. Then, at 2:30, some of my school buddies and I went to Feed My Starving Children in Brooklyn Park to volunteer. That is a great organization. What they do is package meals and ship them to about 30 different third-world countries to distribute to hungry children. Each meal feeds six people, and we packaged over three thousand meals in the two hours we were there. The meal is basically a Rice-a-Roni type thing--we put some fortified chicken powder (which is actually vegetarian? It's like a Lipton soup stock type thing), dried vegetables, soy grain, and rice in packages and vacuum-seal them. Because they do most of their work through volunteers, 94 cents out of every dollar donated to them goes directly to the food, which is a pretty incredible figure.

After FMSC, I picked up Julie, and we went to a home in our neighborhood to pick up some quilt scraps that I had found at Twin Cities Free Market. When I responded to the ad, the woman asked if I was interested in looking at her collection of antique quilts. (Duh!) So I said of course, and bagged Julie on the way there so that she could check them out, too. Well when we got there things were not quite as expected and I was sure glad to have Jules along. The quilt lady wasn't there, and some weird guy was there instead. He wasn't really scary, but he was a little...off. He was talking to us about several random things, and Julie and I were glancing at each other sidewise like Let's Get the Hell Out of Here, Dude! He brought four big containers of fabric for me, and Julie helped me shove them into Subaru and we got the heck out. I was in heaven ripping through all that fabric when I got home. The fabric belonged to the guy's mother, and in addition to collecting yardage, she would actually rip apart clothes and save the fabric. Amy and I thought we knew all about Seam Ripper Hell, oh no. This lady seam-ripped entire outfits, including the collars and pockets and hems. When she had taken out every bit of thread that held the pieces together, she folded them up ever so neatly and stored them away. Oodles and oodles of fabric scraps. Amazing. She would have been mortified, I'm sure, to have witnessed th reckless abandon with which I tore through all the fabric, separating her neat little piles and flinging them around. Sorry, lady. I was digging for gold! At the bottom of the 4th container, I found some special goodies: Two rugs that are made out of recycled plastic bags! I've never seen such a thing! They look like those braided kitchen rugs that can be made out of recycled fabric or whatever, but they're made of plastic instead. What an awesome way to recycle plastic bags. I'll have to take a photo to show later. (Sue--Danny will have to check these out for his new little rug-making hobby!) Also, there was a bunch of yarn, and a small bag full of those crocheted little granny squares. Neat-o!

Shad, Dave and I went to the MCAD Annual Art Sale tonight, which was awesome. Lots of incredibly talented students, man. Seeing their work was fun and inspiring. Also ran into lots of peeps, including Sarah.

After the show, Shad and I had dinner at Yummy on Nicollet. Our meal was delicious--wontons, calamari fried with peppers and shallots, seafood with fresh made fun noodles, and what is supposed to be the best General Tso's chicken in town (um, according to Dave). I thought it might be a new fun place to eat and I hope it was only coincidence that we had to stop twice on the way home to deal with some intestinal/digestive issues in gas station bathrooms.

Happy birthday to Mike! Tomorrow there is talk of a breakfast to celebrate his birthday. I understand the pancakes are merely the beginning of a day-long geekfest at his house playing video games of various sorts. Alas, I must bow out to read the 300 pages of Crim Pro to prepare for the take-home exam that I pick up on Monday. Speaking of Geekfests, I also have to attend a Law Review holiday party/meeting thing tomorrow afternoon and early evening.

It's late. I'm really tired, and I'm blathering on. So I'll end here. Nighty-night!