I don't know you! That's my purse!

If anyone can tell me what the subject line is from, I will give you...my respect.
Today feels so surreal to me. Nothing is standing still. No, I'm not drunk. I know it's nearly a full moon, and I always get a little weird at that point, but the trouble is it's not even me being weird. It's everything else.
For instance, the storm last night. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, and wasn't nearly as bad as places to the southwest of us, but even so, with a particularly solid bolt of lightning, my phone rang. Just a half a ring, but a ring nonetheless. If I'd been on the phone, I would have been electrocuted. It gave me a headache.
Today, we are under weather watches, and I am feeling fussy and tense. It's sunny right now, but I don't trust the sky. I think we'll be okay, though. The weather map is pretty clean for now.

In better news, the second half of my break was better than the first. Once I resigned myself to grading my essays in peace and working on various conference presentation stuff, I was okay. I did still do some fun stuff, like:

Finishing Wicked

Reading the entirety of Lost, also by Gregory Maguire. That's right! I read one and a half books! It felt awesome. I didn't like Lost as much as I liked Wicked. It was very cluttery, and I have trouble with books where all the people are abrasive and quick to anger; you'll be reading a conversation and, two lines in, someone gets mad or offended right away and you have no idea why, even at the end when everything is explained. I hate that...I wasn't willing to suspend my disbelief that people were really like that, but it wasn't magical enough for me to accept it as it was. Part of that was certainly growing out of who the characters were, but after a while it felt like a device, like when dialogue is written with a very obvious and cluttery accent for too long. It was annoying rather than intriguing. I got frustrated in a bad way. There was also a lot of incoherence involved in the writing, the plot development, that went beyond the ghost story it was. Ironically, reading it went much faster than Wicked, though. In all, I'm glad I bought it, I'm glad I read it, but it's not a book I'll return to over and over. I'm looking forward to some of his other books, though.

I also finished a knit shirt out of the leftover fabric I had from that dress. Getting the pattern pieces cut was a challenge, because I didn't have much left. The answer? Front and back seams, and not caring that much what angle they were cut on. It wasn't the best designed top, since I sort of made an extreme modification of another pattern to do it, but it worked all right and it's pretty cute. Yes, it's a low back. It's sort of the original low back top I'd planned after seeing something out there on the market. I didn't do a great job planning the armhole/small sleeve, but as it's knit it doesn' t matter too much. It is pretty good, I think, for something I just did in a couple of hours with some leftover fabric. It's "out" worthy, and shall be worn soon with a pink shantung skirt.

Watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. How I love that show. This week I bawled without restraint as they brought home the widow and five kids of a pastor, who had had to leave the parsonage after the loss and had some tough times. I have the unfortunate habit of trying to eat during that show, and I need to stop it. Crying and eating scalloped potatoes at the same time is not a workable scenario.

Also played some quality games of mah jongg solitaire and electronic yahtzee. Ah, good times.