A last minute quick trip to Houston - Part 1

This morning I opened my notebook in church I use for taking notes and notice that I'm dating today's for November 2nd and my last page was October 12th - three weeks ago. And just now as I looked at my blog, my last blog post was October 19th - two weeks ago. After a couple of crazy weeks, I think I'm back on schedule! :)

Joanna had planned to come out to my house and spend a few days with me the week of October 20th. Oddly enough we chose the week to get together the same week as the Houston Quilt Market; totally unplanned by the way. :)

So Tuesday afternoon, I'm sitting in front of my sewing machine, hemming a pair of jeans and my phone rings. Joanna is on the other end, saying that she thinks we should travel to Houston this week to attend quilt market. I, being the planned and scheduled person that I am, told her that's a crazy idea! We have to plan those things in advance.

I mean, I hadn't planned to go to Houston. We had no hotel hotel booked and finding one a couple days before/during market could be a hopeless possibility. Plus I had a funeral dinner to help with the next day, Sunday School to teach on Sunday and quilting class to teach on Monday. And on top of that, a 12 hour trip to Houston just wasn't in my plans.

After talking the issue back and forth for a while, planning what we would need to do, contacting Jeanne at Bernina to get into market, making sure it was ok with Dad (Who, to my surprise didn't think I was totally crazy (only slightly!) for a last minute trip!) and getting substitutes to work for Joanna on Monday and me to teach SS, I agreed to go. I have never in all my life made such a long trip adventure with less than 24 hours notice. I guess there is always a first and I have to admit it was exciting with all the last minute details. Although I still like to plan it or at least plan to plan it!

Wednesday morning came and I felt like I was constantly running from one thing to the next. As soon as I discovered we actually were leaving, I started running around trying to get packed, orders shipped, email answered, hotel booked, our route planned and whatever else done that came to mind. By the time I finished packing, finally found a hotel room, attended the funeral, helped with the dinner (which was a large and busy one!), came home, loaded up the car and started traveling, I felt like I had been on a 24 hour marathon.

And to think 24 hours before, I was calmly hemming jeans, not having a clue we would be driving to quilt market! :)

We arrived at the hotel we booked in Houston on Thursday afternoon, only to discover it had outside doors, didn't look the greatest and wasn't in the best area of town. Since our room was not yet ready, we went back out to the car, hooked up to the net (wireless Internet is fantastic!), booked a different hotel and looked on Google for directions to get there (Thank goodness for computers, the Internet and cell phones!).

Once we checked into the hotel where we decided we would stay (it was nicer and in a much better area of town in addition to inside doors!), I called and canceled our room at the previous hotel. When I called Dad and told him we were checked in and what we had done, he just couldn't believe it! But just see how technology can be used?! He said he prefered a paper map to which I totally disagree! :)

We decided to visit a couple of fabric shops and what an adventure that was! We pulled up several browser tabs with Google maps for how to get to each one, took my computer and hopped in the car. We found It's A Stitch without any problem, but when it came time to find High Fashion Fabrics, that was a different story. We ended up driving around all over the same area over and over for about two hours, partly because (1) we didn't go far enough on the M street the very first time, (2) we ended up off the map half of the time and (3) the streets are just strange in Houston.

Plus it was rush hour so traffic was increasing, it was starting to get dark and my car kept dying. We decided my car didn't like Joanna since she was the one driving! It would always start again, but it was rather annoying, especially when you didn't know when it would happen. We did finally find High Fashion, but by the time we arrived they were closed. Yep, that's usually how it works!

We started back to the hotel, taking what I thought would be a short cut, but it turned out we ended up going in several large circles. And then we were totally off the map, so it was just a guess what street we were supposed to be on and what direction we were supposed to be going. And we were so excited about getting to the fabric shops, that we didn't even pull up any Google maps for how to get back. Brilliant, yeah I know!

By the time we arrived back at the hotel, we were ever so glad to be there. Looking back on that adventure is funny now, (Especially since Joanna was laughing at me holding my computer upside down and sideways as I gave her directions! She thought it was so funny seeing it instead of just reading about it!) but at the time we were so tired of driving in circles. My mind was so spent after all that trying to figure out where we were, I couldn't even name the streets anymore. I just told Joanna to turn on the H street or turn right right here, even if we had driven on that one several times already. And that just made the situation all the more funny several days later.

And just think - all of that was before quilt market even started! More to come from our trip...