six more days

Less than a week and I'm on my short break (that involves traveling).

I think I'm probably going to drag along one or two of the environmental-policy books and try to read on them a bit during the two weeks.

I'm taking the train. It looks like any issues from flooding have resolved but because of trackwork (argh) I have to take a bus from St. Louis to Bloomington. That's not so bad though I will have to carry something that would work as breakfast if we get into St. Louis early and I have to get off and get on the bus before the diner is serving. (For the return trip, it looks like the trackwork should be done).

I want to get back to working on Celestarium - I know where I left off but these past couple weeks I've just been too busy to want to pick it up. And the couple of pairs of socks on the needles. And I might take Grasse Matinee with me and try to finish it up.

And maybe....I'm considering taking the hexie quilt. I want to get back to that, too. And I bet my mom has some cool scraps of fabric I can acquisition for the quilt.

***

In a minute I'm going to close this up and try to finish the "Crossfire" top. (I am calling it that now because half of the blocks lean right and the other half lean left - it's an homage to the old CNN show that I remember my dad watching every night when I was in grad school).

I also want to finish Spitfire. I am almost done with her last leg, and then it's just ears, wings, and decorations. I printed out drawings of her so I can get the coloring right (her mane and tail are bi-colored: two shades of orange).

I'm trying to decide whether to take tomorrow totally off. I need to mow the lawn and it's supposed to rain in the afternoon, so I will do that in the morning (Unless I make myself do it this afternoon). I also need to clean the house before I go.

I got a good draft of the paper written and even did the figures for it today (yay, pomodoros!) and so if I go in it would be mainly reading additional stuff or working on the new class prep. (One thing I want to do this summer is do more "unfocused" article reading in hopes of developing some new research ideas). Thursday I meet with my student....and I want to take either Friday or Saturday and maybe just go antiquing for fun.

At least I figured out my mom's birthday present - I was going to have to go shopping for something (figuring I might not have time to get out on my own while up there) but then I decided to order her a tiger swallowtail butterfly t-shirt from Sharptooth Snail (I really like the monarch one I bought from there). I'm having it sent directly so I don't even have to worry about packing it.