Mission accomplished

I did finally get the Shining Bird's Eye Shawl bound off.  I decided I wasn't going to go to bed until it was done and so I worked and worked and finished the last of it by 9:30.  That means that it took me close to four hours total just to bind off!  The picture here is one I snapped as I was out the door this morning with my iPhone so it's blurry but you can see the finished product, unblocked.  It is going to grow considerably when I block it tonight. And then it won't look so much like a granny's shawl but more like a gorgeous wrap.  I am going to have to get clever with regards to blocking.  Perhaps I can use my blocking mats for the width portion and put down towels and stretch it out on them.  I sure miss that extra bed!

I had a pretty decent run yesterday, considering I hadn't run for a week.  I did exactly 2.5 miles in 30 minutes, but it felt to me like I was running much faster than that, so I was disappointed with the final mileage.  Also the cottonwoods have bloomed so the bits of fluff are all over the trail and heaven knows how much of that stuff I sucked into my lungs!  I know my eyes didn't like it at all.  I am, in fact, wearing my glasses today because my eyes got so irritated yesterday.  It is cloudy, much cooler and windy today and even sprinkling a bit.  The fluff doesn't seem to be much of an issue as it was yesterday, so hopefully I'll have a better run today.

I got a new laptop yesterday!  I have noticed these past few years that more and more students are coming in with Macbooks and it is impossible for me to troubleshoot for them with their special issues on a PC.  Budgets are indeed very tight so I really lucked out.  Today I am going to start to mess with it.  It has a built in camera so that you can video chat, like on an iPhone 4 or (I presume) on an iPad.  I know only one person, so far, that may be able to video chat and that's my friend Ginny because she has both of those - the iPhone 4 and iPad.   I will most likely spend most of today getting familiar with this beauty.  And I can get rid of the old keyboard and monitor I used with the Mac mini I had so I will clean and rearrange my office.

Riding the bus is still not getting any easier, nor any nicer.  One thing that makes me crazy is how some drivers don't seem to take the passengers into consideration at all when they take off and stop.  I know that it's a personal trait because not all of them are so jerky.  It was very apparent this morning when I got on one bus with my hands full, as usual, and didn't have to lurch toward the first open seat or fall down.  I could walk down the aisle as the bus was pulling away from the stop, like a normal person.  There is a woman that I get sometimes that is just the worst!  She SLAMS on the brakes and STOMPS on the gas.  So very very annoying.  I swear, someday I'm just going to let myself fall and then see what happens.