In reality, I started drafting the part of this post (below the stars) on April 10. I haven't really had the time or the inclination to post, I've just been that busy.
To catch you up, the third egg indeed did not hatch, and the two formerly cute eaglets are now huge and covered with beautiful almost-black feathers. While things were crazy busy, I sort of lost track of my eaglets and mostly missed their tween stage when they look like punk rockers. But I can go back and view parts of the saved videos later when things quiet down. That schmutz on the lens, by the way, is eagle shit. It's really liquid when they let it go, and in this case, the wind carried it up and slapped it right across the camera lens.
As for now, everything has been graded, turned in, and Commencement is a thing of the past. This week I removed my stuff from my old office desk and it sent to cold storage. Next, I assembled my new standing desk and then rearranged my office to make best use of the new technology. The hard part about all of this is that I lost some of my storage, and the new arrangement of my office means that I need to find attractive yet accessible places to store things. So right now I can't find anything, and my office looks like it was ransacked by ruffians. This upcoming week, I need to get my car to the collision repair (the result of a parking lot kerfuffle), the Emperor to a doctor's appointment, and then us down to Oklahoma City for a big meeting. That's when I will decide whether to go to San Diego or not -- in between all of this, I need to get writing on my huge project.
In short, the end of the semester merely changed the focus of my crazed activity.
Right before finals week, the Emperor and I traveled to Midwest College City to meet Miz C-- for a weekend of doing whatever the heck we wanted to do. We slept in, had great Greek and Mexican food, and just generally caught up. I really needed that.
I've been meeting with my fiber friend Artistic A -- recently, and have actually made a little bit of progress on my knitting. When I was writing my dissertation, I found that it was helpful to have small projects that could be finished, so while I was adrift in the middle of a huge project I could still get a sense of closure every now and then. That's the role my knitting will take this summer -- I'll finish all of those projects I've been dragging on with all winter, so I'll get those bursts of satisfaction to keep me going.
Okay, I leave you with my earlier draft post, and I'll try to come back and report Progress in a few days.
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It's now looking like the third egg at Decorah isn't going to hatch, for reasons that we'll likely never understand. That said, it may be a relief to Mom, because the two chicks she's got right now are a talon-ful! The oldest, D24, is about eight inches tall and weighs about a pound. Sibling D25 is about six inches tall and not far behind in weight. I'm going to have to give them names, because talking about numbers is silly. Okay... the oldest is Pat, and the younger one is Kelly. In the photo above, that's probably Pat peeking out from under Mom. He or she (I'll say "he" just for convenience's sake) is constantly popping out from under whichever parent is brooding, as if he's looking for fresh air.
The past ten days have been unbelievably busy, and the next two weeks aren't going to be any easier. I've got classes, appointments, and meetings cheek-to-cheek, plus a professional conference, until Sunday April 24. This morning, however, I'm at my leisure for a little while. The Emperor is making an epic breakfast (which means an epic clean-up for me later, but heck) and I'm contemplating my bead box with an eye toward making another bracelet or two, to match some of my summer clothes. I'm also thinking that a little tussle with the vacuum cleaner, aimed toward the bathroom, would be a good thing to get into.
This past Monday, the Emperor and I bailed the wreck and lit out for Nearby Big City to attend a long-anticipated showing of Jethro Tull: The Rock Opera. We were not disappointed. It was a great show on several levels. First, the music was fantastic; there was no way to go wrong with that. Second, the show itself was cleverly done, and thought provoking. Finally, the audience was entertaining in itself.
I was a Young Thing during the age of Arena Rock, and despite my parents' efforts at keeping me firmly and just a little too sheltered, I managed to see some pretty epic shows: Yes; Queen; Genesis; Emerson Lake and Palmer. At all of these, the music was a little too loud, and the crowd was a little too wild, but I survived and have the experiences to talk about now. Fast forward to last week. For some reason, I thought that the crowd at the Tull concert would be a bunch of rowdy 20-somethings and that the Emperor and I would be the Gramps and Gramma in the audience. Oh, how I was mistaken! Everybody was just about our age. Men and women in conservative "nice" clothing were mixing with ageing hippies and bikers and oldsters and you-name-its. It was a small venue and there was lots of beer but otherwise, the crowd was entirely happy and really orderly. During the popular songs, we stood up and hollered and waved our hands over our heads in time to the beat. It was great. We had fantastic seats.
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