The countdown starts

It's finals week. All of my finals are papers this semester; I have one pile in my hands, and two more coming in tomorrow by the end of the day. Three piles to grade, plus grade calculations to do. (We shall not speak of the letters of recommendations that must be written, not to mention the 36 panels and 58 abstracts that I need to have read and ranked by next week when grades also happen to be due. That would be overkill, and perhaps depressing.)

So I don't have much interesting to report. I will say that the first papers I have read from my field methods class are looking very good. Their final assignment was to put together a small grammatical sketch of Bengali based on the data gathered in class, plus a mini-dictionary, and some of them have done a very nice job of it, if I do say so myself. It's exciting, and I'll be sure to show a few to my friend (the language consultant) when I see her tomorrow. On the knitting side of that experience, I gave my friend (the language consultant) Damson last week at a meeting; in a nice display of synchronicity, she was wearing a lovely deep fuchia shirt which perfectly complemented the deep fuchias of the shawl. She put Damson right on, and it looked like we'd planned it. She also said that it solved a problem that she hadn't quite articulated to herself, which is the problem of the cold spot on the back of one's neck, particularly in over-air-conditioned rooms. I informed her that a knit night friend of mine calls that her "hump", which is exactly what it is: the hump at the base of one's neck that gets cold. Little shawlets are perfect for hump-warming.

And there's a sentence I bet you never thought you'd read. Behold the creative function of human language!

Because of the many end-of-year meetings which I have been attending of late (five hours on Friday, when I was on furlough, another nearly five hours today, nearly three more tomorrow), plus grading, I have very little to share (hence the dearth of blogging), although I have been knitting, and Henley Redux progresses apace. So, in no particular order, some thoughts:

Saturday was busy. Older Daughter and I got up very early to be at her school by 7:00 in the morning so we could go to an adjudicated music festival in which her string orchestra was performing. It was an unexpectedly pleasant 4+ hours, her orchestra got reasonable rankings from the adjudicators, plus useful comments, and I got lots of knitting done on Henley Redux.

We went to our first professional soccer game ever on Saturday night, in LA. Rick drove, I knit (very nice). Chivas lost, alas.

Sunday was a lovely day. I'd dithered and dithered about what I wanted to do; I even dithered out loud to Older Daughter for some time, then asked her what she thought, whereupon she said, "I think that your brain must be an interesting place to be." I desisted with regard to the dithering.

But on Sunday morning, I got to drink coffee in a mug. While sitting in a chair. Rather than drinking it in my to-go mug while sitting in the car. It was delightful.

The girls did the laundry. Which was very nice.

But which meant that the happy spring green socks became felted.

Alas.

I got two new knitting books: Anna Zilboorg's Magnificent Mittens and Socks, and Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting. Happy day.

I will leave you with two jokes that the girls shared with me. The first one is from Younger Daughter, who got it from someone at school. It goes like this:
Two muffins are sitting in an oven. The first muffin turns to the second muffin and says, "Boy, it's hot in here." The second muffin says, "Look! A talking muffin!"

I don't know why, but that one just tickles me.

The second one comes from Older Daughter, who made it up herself:
Q: What does a musical chicken say?
A: Bach.

And with that, I will leave you.