Not feeling too great today. Part of it is the weather - it's very humid and we have that kind of pre-cold-front uncomfortable pressure and general bad feeling. (At least for those prone to aches and pains and sinus trouble).

And I kind of broke my brain yesterday afternoon, rushing to write an in-class test and three separate-but-equal take-home tests (to try to cut down on cheating) for my stats class next week.

I'm trying valiantly to "clear the decks" before tomorrow afternoon so I can have Thursday and Friday off (it's mid-fall break). It's painful (and I also have about a dozen student papers to grade this afternoon/this evening) but I have to do it if I am to enjoy my time off. (Saturday is already spoken for. In fact, if there were two of me, both of them would be spoken for on Saturday. And not necessarily in a good way - there are competing "we need you to" volunteer work opportunities.)

And flipping through channels on the tv this morning, I flipped past Animal Planet. They had video of someone's housecat doing a funny howling "talking." Just like Patty used to do. And I kind of missed her all over again. Dammit.

I'm trying to cheer myself up; I'm telling myself I'm done teaching for the day. I've got KING fm going on the computer. I've got a simple scarf I'm knitting on to keep me occupied while reading papers. (The papers are review/critiques of journal articles so I have to read the articles too).

I did call Barron's and Stitches N Stuff (the two places in Longview that are particularly important to me); both are, as I expected, still in business. (I know I am paranoid about that but I had a bad experience my first fall down here - I had all these wonderful plans to drive down to McKinney (for the first time) and go to the quilt shop that was there. Only, this was 1999, and the quilt shop that had been there had closed up.

I actually closed my office door and put my head down on the desk and cried a little when I found that out.)

So I always call places - even if they have an online presence because I know of businesses that closed their doors but left their Zombie Online Presence up (at least until the domain registration ran out).

I am going to take a bit of money out of my savings account this afternoon (Not like it's doing me a lot of good IN there, I'm making something along the lines of 1% interest on it) and this evening (provided I get these papers graded), I'm going to scan through the recently-obtained patterns (in books, from online sources, or in issues of magazines) and note down yardages, yarn weights, and fiber types for some of the ones I want to make, just in case I see the perfect yarn for them on sale.

I'm considering this my "stock up" trip. I've been so crazy busy this fall (and the crazy busy seems like it will continue unabated) that shopping has been severely limited. And I also worry enough about things like inflation going up to the point where all my money is going towards feeding myself and keeping the house warm that having a stock of projects ahead (well, it's not like I don't have what some knitters call SABLE* already) is a comforting thought.

(*Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. That's probably true for books but debatable for yarn and fabric. I do seem to be working the stash down a bit this summer, which is nice.)

And who knows - in some kind of horrible, Mad Max future, warm socks may actually become a valuable (and trade-able) commodity. (Yeah, I have "enough" sockyarn. Except most avid sock-knitters don't really accept "enough" for long - there's always some new pretty interesting thing out there. And sock yarn doesn't take up much room.)

So, Thursday is going to be Fun Day of Shopping and Being Out and Around. Friday is going to be Stay at Home and Work on Stuff day (maybe even finish that Bento Box quilt top). Saturday is volunteer work. And Sundays...well, with Youth Group on Sundays now, Sundays are sadly kind of a lost day...almost after I get home from church I have to turn around and go back for Youth Group. (I'm not entirely sure having Wednesday nights off is a valid trade.)

Oh, I'm also sad because I'm having Youth Group Frustrations but I won't go into too much detail about it here, other than to say that one disruptive person can totally mess up group dynamics.