Everyone celebrate! The 2010 Fungi Perfecti catalogue is DONE, in the hands of the printers, and, by virtue of the fact that they only called Andrew yesterday to let him know that the press check was this Sunday, Andrew is not required to travel to GFE Illinois this year to be physically present for the press check.

Actually, you can celebrate or not as you choose. The fact that I don’t have to hold down the fort on my own for 3-5 days while Andrew is stuck in the middle of a corn field is reason enough for ME to celebrate. I HATE coming home to an empty house.
Although the fact that I won’t have to spend a weekend sans-husband does cut into my plans for top to bottom fall house cleaning to keep myself occupied. I guess I won’t be scrubbing down the ceiling, the kitchen cabinets, or the windows in the family room…. At least not any time real soon. Damn shame that. 🙄

And as of tomorrow I switch back from swing (11 a.m. to 7 p.m.) shift to day (7 a.m. to 3 p.m.) shift. Another reason to celebrate! Yeah, getting up at dark a.m. (okay 4:45 a.m. so I can have time to ride the bicycle for half an hour before I go to work) is a pain particularly when it’s, well, BUTT DARK at 5 a.m., but I enjoy far more getting my day started early and OVER early so I can come home and still have some daylight left. Provided it’s not pouring down rain for the majority of October I have a LOT of garden work to get done. I’m planning on digging out the godforsaken Gerbera daisies that have taken over my garden border, I’ve still got some major pruning to do on my big lilac bush, there’s one rhododendron that needs a whack job, ungodly numbers of weeds, and if I don’t shear my lavenders they’re going to freeze and rot which will make a hideous amount of work next spring.
Working until late in the evening really puts a hitch in the fall gardening. I would, however, like to proudly announce that I HAVE HARVESTED ALL THE GRAPES! I love having the vines covering the porch, I think it’s a serious giggle to be able to eat grapes straight from the vine, especially in the hot tub first thing in the morning, but DAMN those grapes can be messy.
Since we’re still up to our eyeballs in grape jelly from last year, I am not making any grape jelly this year. We currently have five quarts of grape juice in the freezer that will be consumed as grape juice. Forget that sickly sweet purple crap that you got out of a juice box in elementary school, my grape juice has TEETH. I’d forgotten that grape juice can be good to drink.

Hm, what else?

I astonished the crap out of one of my assistants the other day by commenting (I can’t remember why, but the conversation made the comment relevant) that I was currently in the middle of five different books. Only three if you don’t count The Prehistory of The Far Side and the Foxtrot book Take Us To Your Mall which I’ve been reading while eating breakfast (NOT a time for great literature, you have to admit), but seven if you count the fact that I’m listening to David Rackoff’s Half Empty on my way to work and the fact that I’ve read the jacket blurb for David Sedaris’ Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk and mean to get into the rest of it when I’ve finished one of the others.
My assistant was completely gobsmacked, couldn’t understand how I could read so much. This from a woman who admits that she hasn’t read a book from cover to cover since she graduated high school almost 10 years ago.
Which leaves me completely gobsmacked. How can you NOT read?

The next time I’ll tell you about the amazing offer my hospital has received from the son of the previous ruler of Liberia.
But now I need to play Scrabble.