Happy Summer Solstice, everyone! Go outside at noon today and check out how short your shadow is. Or just kick back somewhere with a cool iced tea and enjoy the glory of my favorite season.

I, on the other hand, will be here at work. All by my lonesome. My boss, and the other two writers in my group all have the day off, so I'm running the show. Fortunately, there is very little to run. I do need to work up a draft of a little brochure on healthy eating to review on Monday, but it's not a big deal. And there may be something I have to read and sign-off on later, but all in all it should be a quiet day. My friend Salena and I agreed that since we're about the only two here from our project teams, we're going to have a nice relaxing lunch somewhere.

I have the promised photo of the melon tank in progress. Despite what I said yesterday, I seem to just be plugging away with 2" stripes. If it bites me in the butt at the end, I'll be a sad frogger, but I'm hoping it won't happen.



I wonder if I'll manage to finish this up before we leave next Friday? I guess it depends what else I am doing in the meantime. I read somewhere (can't recall if it was the Knitlist or the Knitblogs list) that Continental is still not allowing knitting paraphernalia on their flights, so I suppose I will not try and push the envelope. It's an overnight flight anyway, so hopefully I will catch a little shuteye. If not, I do know how to read, and I have many NY Times Magazine crossword puzzles that could keep me occupied for quite a while. Still, it'd be so nice to while away the flight time in a relaxed, knitty manner. Damn the people who have brought so many changes, large and small, to our formerly peaceful existence.

I'm not just talking about knitting on planes here. It used to be that when I went away, my biggest worry was that my cat would be lonely. Even with people coming in to visit daily, she likes to sleep with me and I'd always feel awful leaving her like that. But now, the worry is bigger and has actually led me to change my usual procedure. Instead of leaving her home and having people come in, my parents are going to come pick her up and take her to their house for the two weeks.

This change of plans is partly because it is a longer trip than usual, and partly because of all the fear of another terror attack coming over the Independence Day weekend. I realized that (a) if anything happened to her directly or (b) anything indirectly kept other people from coming to look in on her, I would feel so awful, guilty, and terribly sad. So, the lesser of two evils is shipping her off to "grandma" for a bit. I'm sure she will terrorize Mom's cat, Kiwi, to some extent. Mom, I apologize in advance!