It's week what?

I can't be the only faculty member on the face of the earth who counts down the weeks in the semester, right?  There have been many semesters when that countdown seems to go. so. slowly.  Not this semester, though.  This semester, thetimeisflyinglikeaperegrinefalcononspeed.  It's the middle of week four already.  How did that happen?

Part of it, I think, is trying to get used to the new job I'm doing.  I don't yet seem to have in my head all of the categories of things I should be tracking.  I knew what I had to keep an eye on before (have I done my class reading?  am I caught up on grading?  need to work on that paper I'm presenting/chapter I'm writing/research I'm doing, etc etc), but it's a whole new world now - one which includes things like: build the spring schedule - eek!  So I'm working on that.  The biggest sorrow, from my perspective, is that the number of meetings I attend each week has ramped up exponentially, and the percentage of them in which knitting is not an option (either because they're too small, or because I'm running the meeting) is much higher than I'd like.  So, more sitting in rooms for hours on end, less knitting.  Sigh.

I am still trying to get in a little bit each day, though, and that means that I've finished the back of Scoria, and am working away at the front.  I have no pictures, but I am making progress.  Mostly in the evenings where I'm either watching Eureka with the girls (love that show) or Firefly with Rick (also, unexpectedly, really love that show) - hooray for Netflix!  I have also found some time to work on a very very plain sock (perfect for movie knitting, and, I hope, also for meetings where knitting is only marginally appropriate, and must be very subliminal).

I'm actually much further along on that; I'm done with the foot and about to start the heel flap (even on my toe up socks, I am as likely as not to knit a heel flap; there is some small possibility that I might do one of the sweet tomato heels I learned last year from Cat Bordhi - I need to decide).  This is a gorgeous bit of yarn I picked up the other week at Yarning For You; I think it's Zen Yarn Garden sock yarn, but I'll check to be sure.  The plan is to knit a simple foot, then a corrugated rib leg, so that they feel like really luxurious thermal underwear socks.  Mmm...  Comfort knitting at its purest and best.

Other than those two projects, I haven't been working on much.  There's been no spinning (and I miss it), and I haven't had a chance to take a picture of or cast on for the really big project I got some yarn for last week.  With luck, that will happen before my next post.

So that's it, just a drive by posting to say that I'm still alive, still knitting, and that I'm actually, for one brief and shining moment, caught up on grading and class reading.  Does this mean I can knit with my wine tonight?