Nope.

Didn't start the sock. There was a tornado watch (so it wasn't totally silly of me to think, "what if there's a warning and we have to go sit in an interior hall for a while") but only really bad really heavy rain. (I find it particularly exhausting to drive in heavy rain - I usually drive with the cruise-control on, which saves a lot of fatigue on my hip and knee, but I've been warned off of using it in places where you may hydroplane).

I also didn't wind up (thank God) as the "chairperson" of my group - if I did, I'd likely still be there. (The chairperson has to do the "best of show" judging). One of the other women volunteered; her husband was "chairperson" of his group so she had to stay till it was all over. I thank her for that.

I talked with someone who knows lichens somewhat - just happened to sit with her at lunch. Mixed news - she was very discouraging re: the being able to correctly identify them from keys part (at least without doing complex chemical analyses to determine the compounds present) but she did give me some leads on people I could ask. She also observed that "It's probably enough to know how many different species are there without actually worrying about identifying them." She also is an editor of a regional journal and said she'd happily consider any paper that resulted from the lichen study for publication.

I was going to go in and play with the lichens tomorrow but now I'm more inclined to take a "bum day" and maybe make a batch of bread and consider looking around to see what varieties of beans and tomato seeds are available locally. And if the rain stops, maybe digging a bit in my garden.