Thursday evening things

 * Classes are cancelled AGAIN tomorrow. That makes a whole week of instruction gone. I e-mailed my class that was to have an exam tomorrow and told them it was Wednesday of next week instead (I do not trust the print shop, given its recent history, to have actually printed the exam I sent to them Monday morning yet, and I'd rather not deal with arguing with them or copying the exams myself on the departmental copier first thing Monday morning.

* My cold is better but not BETTER. I'm at the rattly-cough stage and a couple times this evening I coughed hard enough I was worried about giving myself a migraine or busting a small blood vessel somewhere. I've been trying to keep it at bay by drinking water and running a humidifier and periodically eating a spoon of honey (which actually does work, and it's the only thing I had on hand - even if I could take a lot of the typical cough medicines, honey probably works at least as well)

*I haven't done a lot. I haven't enjoyed this enforced downtime - I've only left the house since midday Monday to carefully walk to the mailbox and get the mail. I finished taking notes on all the magnoliids (the so-called dicots) and started the liliopsids but didn't get all that far in them, but I guess I'm now a week ahead of where I planned on being since I didn't cover the little bit of material (along with the exam) I was going to do this week, and heck, I even have the lab written (I did that last Saturday). 

* I'm having big flashbacks to March/April 2020 and that's not good for my mental state. I'm hoping the roads seem good enough midmorning tomorrow that I can at least go get some fresh food. And maybe go to my PT appointment, but if I'm still coughing periodically I may have to cancel because I get coughing and it's hard to stop. I'm hoping another night's sleep will fix it.

* Other flashbacks: this week was the 20th anniversary of the Columbia space shuttle breaking up on re-entry (I had forgotten it was on re-entry). I had gone up to Chickasaw (it was a Saturday) with a couple who had (briefly) joined my department; we were going hiking. I don't know if we had had the radio on and heard the news, or if someone had seen it before we left, or what, but I do remember when we got up there to the nature center one of the rangers came out, and said to the other ranger standing there, "We got the official word; take the flag down to half-staff" which is kind of a chilling way to find it out.

Heck, I was writing the blog then, and I mentioned it.

It's weird to think of how much stuff I've lived through in the time I have been writing this blog.

* Also, today, there's news that (allegedly) a Chinese-spy balloon is floating around Montana somewhere, presumably, looking at defense installations or at least there to freak people out.

And it made me think of the 1980s all over again, and this

Yeah, I guess this is maybe less ominous than some of the things that happened then but I think I might have been happier if, say, an Air Force plane punctured it and retrieved it when it came down and just took it away without it being a big news thing. 

* I did get out the swift and ball-winder and I wound off two batches of yarn - the first, some DK Berroco for a simple top-down raglan turtleneck from a back issue of Simply Knitting. It's a man-designed sweater but is unisex enough that if I make the right size, it'll work for me. And I also chose a dark reddish purple for the color.

And I decided I needed a simpler knit for my invigilating knit than the linen-stitch raglan (which requires concentration to not knit the stitch pattern too tightly) so I found the yarn for and the pattern I printed out for Chalcedony from a back issue of Knitty. I had the recommended yarn (Eco+) and either the recommended color or one shade darker (it's a medium blue). I plan to start this this weekend because Wednesday and Thursday (now) I will be giving exams - and the following week I give my first soils exam. 

This is a couple things from fairly deep in the stash; one thing I do want to do is start making the projects I planned ages ago, got the yarn and pattern for, and never started. But I have other things I need to finish - A Sweater for John is awfully close, I just need to drag it back out and do the last few raglan decreases, the button bands and pocket, and then the finishing....