A rainy weekend

Yeah, yet another one coming up.

I think my plan for today is to get stuff done this morning (the little, nagging, housekeeping-task stuff: some grading, uploading the next round of stuff to the LMS, etc) and then run to the grocery store after my class*

(*It's Friday, but I don't think it's a Payday Friday. And yes, it is 4/20, but I'm hoping by going at 11 am I will be there before the, uh, cheerfully-impaired people show up. I don't particularly care if a person smokes pot as long as they do it far, far away from me and I don't have to deal with them when they're stoned, but I don't like being in crowds with large numbers of drunk or high people, so)

And then tomorrow, I don't know. There's always something I CAN be doing - more reading, more research background. But it's going to be cold and rainy and to be honest, I just kind of want to stay home holed up so I don't know. Maybe if I get the motivation after lunch today I come back here and do some research reading/looking up of articles and call it good.

I do need to do laundry and perhaps clean my bedroom up a little and sometime I do want to try baking bread - I finally bought some new yeast and I am thinking about some kind of sweet bread. I have a Test Kitchen cookbook that has a chocolate babka recipe in it that looks intriguing, or I am also considering looking up one of the Finnish sweet bread recipes I have (they call for cardamom, among other things) and just doing that. And I want to work more on Heartthrob; her body is nearly done and then I have to do allll her legs (well, four, but it feels like alllll) and then her ears and wings, and then I get to 'decorate' her (i.e. put on her mane and tail and do her face). And I have to figure out whether I try to do sparkly wings on the hearts for her cutie mark, or I just use grey felt, or what. I don't think I want to try embroidering, even though I have silver floss - it's a pain over crochet and it never looks as good. (If I could find some winged-heart buttons, I could just use those, but I don't think I've ever seen any).

Also, a quiet weekend at home sounds nice. Next weekend is going to be busy, I decided to sign up for the Oklahoma Native Plant Society "Wonders of Wildflowers" workshop seeing as it's only about an hour from me. I am going up for Saturday - not gonna do the Friday evening "meet and greet" dinner, it's just too far to drive up to go out to dinner and then drive back - and Sunday of course I have church (and it is "botanizing on your own" or some such, so it's not like there's an official program). But yeah - pretty much my entire Saturday next week is spoken for, though it will be in a fun way.

Also, I'm still getting over this whatever-it-was. I felt markedly better yesterday, though I still have a dry cough and a bit of congestion, and this morning I can feel like my lungs aren't quite right. (Not "not quite right" in an OMG GO TO THE DOCTOR way but "not quite right" in a "my allergies are bothering me" sort of way). I did do a short workout this morning and that went OK, so.

I am a little tired today because it was loud around the time I wanted to go to bed last night. At first I thought it was the dudes in the house next door playing music, but then when I went into my bedroom (on the opposite side of the house) I could still hear it. So I went and poked my head out the front door. First, I was wrong to accuse the dudes - their house was dark (no one home?) and things were quiet. I guess the sound was bouncing off the side of their house and making it sound to me (in my home office) like it was coming from there.

No, it was just general loud music all over the neighborhood. I could not pinpoint a source but it seemed like it was outdoor speakers. I am wondering now if there was some event at the football stadium; I am close enough that I get noise from it. (Usually not bad. On "football Saturdays" I only hear the announcers if I am outdoors, and while I do hear the fireworks they set off after a touchdown, that's not that frequent and most of the football games are over by 8 pm). I wonder if it was a Relay for Life event; it's getting to be the time.

I guess I can't be too cranky about that, but it was still v. loud. I tend to feel music should not be loud enough you can hear it in your house with all the windows closed when it is 7 blocks away from you, but that might just be me.

I went to bed with both noise machines (white noise generator and an air filter that is a de facto white-noise generator) running, and with a load of laundry going in the dryer, and I guess eventually (not too late) the noise stopped so I slept. (At least with a planned/permitted event there tends to be a hard "you have to turn off the speakers" time unlike with someone having a loud party - and shortly after I moved into this place I had experience with loud partiers, the summer those idiots rented the house to the north of me.)