The Home Stretch

Two meetings this morning - to discuss information literacy and how to teach it with one of the college librarians, and to discuss setting up blogs for a summer ESL group with someone in International Ed - and another tomorrow afternoon (contract management), and I'm done with work until August!

I finished the first readable draft of my conference paper yesterday, all but the conclusion, which needs to percolate for a bit. I'm presenting it to two Beta readers tomorrow, so will have a chance to test it for length and coherence. It was so easy to write that I'm worried now that it's not academic or serious enough, but partly the ease came because I'm just so familiar with the works I'm writing about. Fun fun fun.

Working on this made me think that there's some scope to talk about metafiction in children's books, particularly from a reader response pov. A future project, perhaps??

Anyway, with all this done, I can now focus on trip preparation.

But a lot of that's done already, too ... gee, am I that organized?? I need to get my birthday tattoo done (hee), and late next week will get a haircut, and I'm looking for some very lightweight garments that will serve both for visiting churches in Italy and presenting papers in Bristol...

Did you know that two weeks from today I'll be landing in London? :-) :-) :-)

Maybe when I'm sixty I'll get a diamond stud in my nose.

Meanwhile, at the age of fifty-three, I have a flower tattooed on my ankle*.

I tried to find the "perfect" image or symbol and didn't find one that really hit the spot. Then I realized that it didn't really matter, it was the gesture that was symbolic. It represents first and foremost my delightful group of friends, whom I love, and who banded together to give me this symbol of myself in some strange way. It is freedom, and a new beginning, and "woo hoo! Look at me! I have a tattoo on my ankle."

And, guys, I know I asked you to come with me, but when push came to shove I just needed to do it and in some ways to prove to myself that I could do it on my own, so I did.


*In the great LJ tradition, I should post the photo, but it's pretty new and not healed yet.  Maybe in a week or so.  Those of you who participate in movie night will see it then.  Ms Lido will see it tomorrow :)