Wooo HOO! 48 hours from now, I'll be trying to sleep prior to making it to Dulles for a 6 a.m. flight. I tend to not sleep the night before a flight of any kind because I'm stressing about what I'll forget. Unless I'm flying home or to my sister's, because regardless of what I've forgotten I can borrow what I need - on those nights I'm stressing about missing my flight. So 48 hours from now, you may see me back here, posting about what it is I'm afraid I'll forget and what my game plan for back-up will be. BUT!! 72 hours from now??? I'll be whooping it up in Anchorage! Awuh! Awuh!
What do I have for y'all this evening...let's see...okay - here:
First, provisions for the trip, because in case you didn't know that Alaska was huge (apparently if you put it on top of the Lower 48, it goes from the west coast to the Mississippi and from the Mexican to the Canadian border...I tried a fruitless Google search for that kind of information... I may have just made that up - don't cite me on it...the point? Alaska's BIG), it is REAL big - and while we're there we've got a lot of driving to do - something like 1950 miles (ya - one thousand, nine hundred, fifty miles) to cover. So - to the Wegman's bulk section:
Bad photo (shocking, I know) but from the top right we have a pound of red shoelace licorice, a pound of dark chocolate raisins (antioxidants! they're GOOD for you!), and a pound of sour patch kids. Oh yeah. Somewhere, there's a pound of TUMS, too.
In knitting progress, I give you the corrected version of the Surplice top AND the progress I've made on part deux....it was a rip-back and re-knit corrective procedure that worked perfectly (thanks for asking), and I immediately forced myself to cast on for the second piece (which I can't yet name as either front or back, because much like you put the crappy-yet-sentimental ornaments on the back of the Christmas tree, I decide which part of the garment is what based on the number of mistakes I make on each piece...). Made quite a bit of progress Monday night, but that was the last night I had time to just sit and knit and not stress about school, work, or packing. Here's the kuh-nitting:
Makes me happy - and while yes, I could have made a TON of progress by devoting more time to it, I need to point out that I finished the rewrites to chapter one, I'm [thisclose] to finishing the rewrites to chapter three (and thanking the good Lord that I don't have to worry about chapter two until chapters one and three have been thoroughly destroyed reviewed by my committee again) and I'm almost all packed (one load of laundry for Friday and I'm good - oh, and some dirt cheap sunglasses so I don't lose the Maui Jim's). Plus, two weeks in the summer isn't necessarily a convenient amount of time to take off in my industry, and so there was a lot of swearing on bibles and deals with the devil about the amount of work I'd accomplish before the trip...and?? HA! My Important Work is also [thisclose] to being done! Go team!
(Now, of course I would have preferred to have spent the whole week working on this and getting it done so I could WEAR it while away, but really? I was also supposed to knit something for Jen's cousin's baby when he was born....two years ago...and now I'm actually going to MEET the kid...and still have nothing knit for him...So really, by NOT showing up with my lovely Surplice top, I'm saving some face...or something like that...)
In non-knitting news, I have some lovely garden shots to show you:
And:
And:
The tragedy here of course being that the year I finally decided to give my Thumb of Death a try...the year I spent all sorts of love and time cultivating my gardening skills...this is the year that a) nothing dies and b) I get to take a two week vacation to Alaska. Fate, we'll call it.
In any event, Troy McLure has been entrusted with their care (mostly because he's capable and he always shows up at work, sometimes even on weekends, and he'll try harder than anyone else to make sure I don't come home to some dead plants....I hope...) and this evening we had a steak dinner and a tutorial on watering plants. I'll be leaving detailed notes as well (because yes, I am that way - you can take the special ed teacher out of the classroom...). After the tutorial, I taught Troy how to play Mancala. When you start, the board looks like this:
When you hand someone their hindend in defeat? It looks like this:
Methinks T-Roy won't be up for any more Mancala anytime soon....
