Preparing for underway

So I'm all packed (and resisting the temptation to throw another book in my carry on - I have the Manga Guide to Calculus, another book from my shelves called A Tour Of The Calculus, an Inspector Alleyn mystery I may or may not have read (I don't remember the opening pages), and a book on the Bog People (these were well preserved human remains found in a Danish bog).

My train is underway but 2 hours late, according to this neat little tracker that uses Amtrak's data to map stuff. I'll check back closer to my departure time from here, but I'll probably leave about the same time in order to be "safe," even though if the train's late getting to Fort Worth, it's even later leaving Dallas. (Mineola is the next stop)

I managed, with some difficulty, to get a sprinkler on a timer aimed at my tomatoes, so hopefully they will not perish during my absence. (Difficulty: first the old sprinkler I had turned out to be broken. Found a second one in my garage, but then when I was holding the hose kinked to attach the new sprinkler- the lazy way - the old hose sprang a leak. Fortunately I had a new hose I bought last fall but was too lazy to attach when I needed a hose this spring. I will say I was fully expecting the old hose - it came with the house - to fail at some point, probably better it failed now than while I was gone).

I also trimmed back the holly because it was blocking the light getting into my dining room and my houseplants' leaves were yellowing in protest. (The house plants are on those Aquaglobe things - the ad is annoying and they have a big SCIENCE FAIL in it ("the plants make oxygen and this goes into the Aquaglobe and makes the water go into the soil." NO IT'S CALLED MATRIC POTENTIAL DIFFERENCES DANGIT) But anyway, the Aquaglobes work well even if the ad is awful.)

I cleaned house yesterday so there's that. I always prefer coming back to a clean house and also I figure there is less chance of unwanted critters (which is pretty much ANY critter that I don't bring into the house myself) if the kitchen floor is free of spills, there's no leftover sugar on countertops anywhere, etc.

I also wound up putting the Joris pattern  in my bag (a stuffed toy, sort of a dragon/creature thingie. It was very popular among the ITFF crowd a while back). And a skein of "unloved" sockyarn that I decided I'd never make socks of. (Joris is written for dk yarn but I know other knitters have made him of sockweight; he'll just be smaller). So that might be a project over break as well.

Catch you all on the flip side. I have a few embargoed posts while I'm away.