the stats

This week:
We saw and entertained house guests #4, 5 and 6. It was a joy to see them, but a highlight was having our small friend here for a little while. You may recognize her from the Shearing Day chapter in my book Fiber Gathering: Knit, Crochet, Spin, and Dye More than 25 Projects Inspired by America's Festivals. She is now seven and a half years old. We made her a "nest" in my office with pillows, bedding, and a comforter for her to sleep on and then she rearranged everything. This was so she could sit on my office chair and read aloud to her "class." (The class consisted of various pillows, Pinky the stuffed bear, some dog toys that Harry and Sally loaned her, and other inanimate objects.) Apparently everyone in the class enjoyed story hour!

I also managed to grade 19 academic papers turned in by my Engineering graduate students this week. I'm teaching a writing course for graduate students in Engineering. That meant I had to read their work and make comments. I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt so intellectually stretched and stimulated...I learned about Civil Engineering, Bio-Medical Engineering, Electrical Engineering...whew! Probably the last time I had to learn so fast was in graduate school -- and I graduated from UNC in 2001. It's been a while.

Today is also the 12th anniversary of the day the professor and I got married. We don't tend to do much for our anniversary, which is lucky.... I just brought him to the airport as he is off to an academic conference on butterflies in Alberta. His fancy camera is being serviced so I loaned him mine--hence, no pictures here.

Also today, the scaffolding went up to fix our fireplace chimney so we can put in gas fireplaces someday. We also had yet another person rush indoors to see the inside and work up gas fireplace estimates. Cause, you know, we didn't have anything else going on. (I'd laugh here, since if I didn't, I might cry over the chaos of all this!)

Finally, you may remember the purple sweater project. Last night I got ready to integrate in one ball of yarn that came all the way from Tokyo to help me finish the sweater. Sadly, when I started work again on sleeve #2, I discovered that I'd made the cuff too short. So, I ripped out almost an entire sleeve so I could knit it properly. This sweater may be done in time for fall. At least, I hope so. It's a moving target, this sweater project.

So, that's:
+3 houseguests and then -3 house guests
+19 Engineering papers
+one dozen years of being married
-one professor (just for the week)
+one scaffolding
+one more gas fireplace estimate
-one knitted sweater sleeve
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one busy and tired Joanne