Thursday afternoon things

 * Yesterday I spent several hours prepping the summer class, and it was Elders/Board meeting, so I didn't have a lot of bandwidth for much else.

* I am slowly working toward getting ready for my two-week trip in a few days. I will have a *couple* embargoed posts (more if I get inspiration tomorrow/Saturday to write more) but I may also try to just post an occasional "from the road" post with a photo and minimal text (it is hard typing on my phone and I make a lot of errors). 

* I think I am going to try to finish the "Big Mexiko" vest - this is just a simple cardigan vest, knit of an old, old Stahl brand yarn I bought at least 15 years ago on closeout. I found the yarn last summer when clearing out my yarn closet and realized I still liked it, and that I had enough for a vest. I got a start on it last semester while invigilating and then, like many other projects, tucked it away and kind of forgot about it. (I have a big problem these days with "out of sight, out of mind"). I found it again recently - the back and one front are done, and part of the second front. Once that's finished, it's just sewing up, knitting on bands, and adding buttons - and I'm thinking maybe I could make a trip out to the "nice" JoAnn's in my mom's town for buttons. (There's a big new one that opened like a year and a half ago, in an old Toys R Us)

* I also have a bunch of socks planned. I want to wind off the "John-Boy" Static yarn for simple socks, and I have a striping yarn with glitter in it and a pattern that should work with a striping yarn. And I am FINALLY going to start (or so i think) the Whistledown socks I've had yarn wound off for for over a year. And I might wind off yarn for the Off-Kilter scarf - I bought some nice West Yorkshire Spinners' yarn a couple trips ago to the yarn shop for it, and dug it out again. 

*I really do have a huge stash and if I can force myself this summer I should look *critically* at it again and deaccession a bunch of yarn. I don't know if I'll just post a photo with a "hey if you want this and can pay postage, it's yours" or if I see if the Goodwill will take it (they seemed eager to take a bunch of wool-ease, but then that's a pretty standard yarn and one lots of folks like for afghans) or if I hunt around a bit and see if there's a program like some I've heard, where women's prisons have yarn available for people to learn to crochet and stuff to pass the time and feel some sense of accomplishment. I know I have more than I will use up but the problem is a lot of it is small lots - not a sweater's worth or anything like that. 

*Tonight, unless the weather AGAIN gets bad, is the AAUW "last meeting of the year" - we are going to the local mom and pop Italian place (it's always a meal out, well, except for '20 and '21, when we were on hiatus - I think in 2021 we had a meeting on lawn chairs in someone's drive, but no food, that was JUST after the vaccines rolled out). 

Man, though. It's been a wild - well, really, 20+ years. I was just thinking the other day how I lived through September 11, I literally saw the towers falling on tv, and I remember all the craziness after that, I remember buying extra bottled water and dry/canned food and filling my car's tank (waiting in a long line and paying inflated prices) because we literally didn't know what was going to happen next, and another Gulf War, and getting to see the first African-American president of the US, and then the pandemic....and the fact that about this time in 2020 they were still saying things like "we've never made a vaccine for a coronavirus and even if we can make a vaccine it will be something like five years" and me sitting there in my house wondering how on earth I'd manage to survive without much human contact for at least five years....And even outside that time frame, I've seen the Oklahoma City bombing, and lived through the end of the Cold War, and watched the Berlin Wall come down on tv, and saw the after effects of the big 1989 earthquake (I was GOING to watch the World Series on tv, but saw the news of it right after it happened instead) and the explosions of not one but two space shuttles....So many things. So much stuff. It's exhausting to think about and you'd think I'd have gained more perspective but I haven't. (I remember my mom telling me shortly after 9/11 about having lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and how she thought the world was going to end *then,* and so she was less discombobulated by 9/11).

Oh, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which yeah, that was my "holy crap the world's going to come to an end" of last year (and admittedly, a couple points this year. Though today it looks - hopefully? - like it might be over soon, that Ukraine is pushing back hard and maybe Russia will be driven to a negotiations table and eventually driven out of Ukraine? I hope.)