Notes from the Sue Hillis Stitch-in

I promised I would write about my experience at the Sue Hillis GTG. That was held in Richmond, Virginia over the weekend. I couldn't stay the whole weekend, but did have a nice time when I was there.

I was ready to go all day Friday. It was a cruddy day at my office because someone decided that, out of a staff of 10, 6 people could have the day off. We have a serious issue with this because the same 3 people take the day before and after every holiday off, but you can't say anything to anyone about being fair about scheduling. So I left, disgruntled, at 5 PM. My BF tells me that I am sunk because of how many people are on the road. I thought he was wrong til I realized, yes, every single person in the DC Metro area was in their car on the Capital Beltway, and then traveling down 95 South. It took me 2 hours to go 50 miles. That STUNK.

Oh, I have to tell y'all. I am sitting in traffic. We aren't moving really fast, maybe 10 or 20 miles an hour, when I see the guy in the neighboring car light up a ginormous blunt. In case you aren't up on your pot vernacular, a blunt is basically a huge marijuana joint, but instead of wrapping it in rolling papers, which are illegal to purchase in my area, the smoker will buy a cheap cigar (Philly Blunts were the #1 seller at the convenience store I used to work in, I guess that is where the name came from), remove all or some of the tobacco, add their pot and light her up. I don't smoke, so I don't know why this is preferable to regular smoking. I sure didn't think anyone would do it in traffic. Anyway, we weren't going fast and he seemed pretty jovial after he took the hit. He was waving people over into his lane, waving that blunt (I wonder if he ever thought one of us might be in an unmarked car, though I am pretty sure they don't send cops out in Neons, and the Sunfire with the body kit and custom paint job in the lane next to me didn't scream undercover, LOL). So I was OK with it til the smoke rolled in the car. ACCCCK. Pot smoke in my FRESHLY AND EXPENSIVELY WASHED CAR, as well as IN MY HAIR. I had to roll up the windows and run the air conditioning, which is not particularly gas thrifty, but I didn't want to smell like weed. A lot of the women at the get-together know of me, but haven't met me, so I did not want their first impression of me to be that I was smoking weed on the way down.

I finally got down there at around 8 PM, walked into the wrong hotel, and finally got to the right one. I just hunkered down and started stitching. We worked for a while til I realized I really did need to get a memory stick for the camera. And I was a little hungry, so we were off to the Super Walmart for food, the stick, and sour mix for the alcohol we had upstairs. people thought we were wierd for going to Walmart during the stitch-in, but, um, I don't know how other people do vacations, but in my family, it's not a vacation if we don't end up at Walmart at some point during the trip.

We got back and stitched happily til it was time to go drink. I don't drink much, so getting the chance to let my hair down is a treat. Managed to not get really messed up, so I stitched til we went to bed.

More tomorrow.