Meanwhile, there are several new GC scents up, so an imp pack is definitely in  order...

Mmmm... smellies...

I have a Gocco B6 screen printer for sale. it comes with enough supplies to make a good 15 masters for printing, as well as several tubes of ink. It's in great condition, only been used a few times. Make me an offer: I'm asking around 200 for it, but I'm more interested in getting rid of it than anything, so who knows what could happen.

* L'il bro and sis-in-law left early this morning. It was really, really wonderful to have them here. We did state street on Saturday, and went to New Glarus on Sunday. Well, 3 of us did. L'il bro got taken out by Das Boot and spent Sunday recovering. Heh. Amateur.  But he was able to make it for dinner last night, so it's all good.

 Now, I'm spending the day recovering myself. Two days of running all over Madison and South Central Wisconsin have sucked just about all the extra energy out of me. Tie that to the fact that I'm pretty sure the bebe is about to hit a growth spurt (I've spent all day munching, with no end to the appetite in sight) and it just seems most wise to me to spend a day doing small tasks that require little physical or mental energy. A little bit of baking, some light reading... luckily we have leftovers that will make for awesome dinner, so all in all, I can slack and feel little guilt about it.

*Although I do need to make up for it tomorrow by spending lots o' time working on the diss, just to get some momentum back up. I've gotten about ten pages written since school got out: not terrible, but I need to pick up the pace, a nd get into a routine. I'm quickly hitting the "Oh, Lord, just get the damn thing DONE already!" point, too, which helps. If I can write ten pages a week from now until the baby's born, I can have the blood thing completely drafted. Barring that, which  may not be possible, I at least want to finish the Libya chapter (Underway with 15 pages so far) and the Cato chapter (which is far, far less research intensive than the Libya chapter, and will be easier to do at home as my mobility decreases with my girth). That's ALL the new material at least *drafted*. If I can get those two done by the end of July / beginning of August, all I'll have left is a chapter on Roman approaches to anger (which is all Lit review with only minor new stuff by me about ethnicity), an introduction and conclusion, and then revisions. The intro and conclusion may, in fact, get written between the end of July and whenever the bebe comes, with revisions beginning in December / January. In other words, it's all really, really do-able, I just need to get into a groove wit' it.

It's also been an ongoing writing process for me in ways that I'm just coming to understand. That is, I've often thought of my academic writing as separate from the "Real" or "Artistic" writing that I wanted to do. But now that I'm able to work solely on my own projects, I'm finding it energizing in ways I didn't expect. When I stop procrastinating and get down to it, I love the work. It may be academic writing, but it is every bit as artistic, a creative enterprise just as much as the short stories I have on the back burner. When I treat it as such, as the Holy Thing that creating always is, it becomes transformative. Not to mention considerably more pleasant.

 * The porch garden is doing ridiculously well. In fact, I may never dig in the dirt again.
Ok, I'm lying. But with as shady a yard as we have, the container garden is turning out to be such a good option I wish I had thought of it two years ago. So far we have green bush beans started, as well as 3 beefsteak tomato plants, two windowboxes full of strawberries, a pot of violas, pansies, hot peppers,  and a whiskey barrel that is half full of kitchen herbs. The other half will go in this week. Meanwhile, I think I'll turn the bed in front of the picture window into a larger herb bed, with basil and giant dill, since those are the two we just most often.

* Meanwhile, I'll have to post a belly-pic soon. I caught my reflection in a shop window on Saturday and almost jumped. Oy, do I look like a pregnant lady now! I feel really good, all in all: my energy is almost back up to  normal, although as I said above, I do have to watch myself lest I get overtired. Which can be really hard to do,  because the "nesting" thing has kicked in and the urge to clean,  scrub, and organize everything in sight is starting to take over. Yowza.

Which reminds me: if anyone in Madison wants a rose bush or 4, let me know.

* Right. off to make banana bread. With chocolate chips in it. Mmmmmmm...
 

The verdict so far?

I'm deeply, powerfully sad to say, "Meh." Let me be clear: to me,  cake is a frosting delivery system. The popularity of the cupcake is due in part to the high frosting to cake ratio. Sadly, I do not like what they've done with the frosting here. I think it's too high on the fat: eating it leaves you with a filmy mouth, and it's about the texture and consistency of butter. The flavor is good, but incredibly muted: my tastebuds were getting coated with fat before the berry flavor could get to them properly.

That having been said, it's only their first week, and things may still get some tweaking. the lunch and breakfast menus look really, really good, so we'll be heading there at some point soon in order to eat Real Food. I'll report back then.
 

We're going to register this weekend, so I had a question for the Mama's on the list.

Any recommendations on a pump? I saw an overwhelming array when I scoped out the scene this morning, and had no idea where to begin.