reading/location, clothing/money, vacation/weather

I've been reading more of late, after having gone months without picking up a book. I mean, certainly, I read every day even without the books, but not reading for the sake of reading, really. So now I've finished Indecent and gotten through all but the postscript in The Natural History of the Senses (and yes, that's a postscript, not an afterword, or so it's labeled).

I think it's the location thing. When I'm at home, there are a million other things to do. All this reading was done either at the club job (it's always a slow start) or at a diner I've been going to with relative frequency of late, mostly due to having errands in that area of town daily for awhile now.

Errands that mostly involve clothing: dropping off donations of my old clothing that I need to purge from my closet, and getting drycleaning and repairs done. Which ran me $100 in one shot, I might add, though that included a few suits and my old North Face jacket which desperately needed a thorough cleaning and some miscellaneous other pieces including a bunch of silk, some of which needed special attention.

It takes money to look professional. It takes money to do a lot of things, which irks me, but what are you going to do and all that.

On the up side, I've got a bit of vacation coming up (finally) after a conference I'm going to in Seattle, and I'll be taking the opportunity to stay there for a bit afterwards. And since Penn State's flying me out anyway, and coming back after that bit of vacation is actually cheaper than when I would have flown back, the flight's covered, at least. Minor victory.

And I scheduled my birthday and the day after off to enjoy Arts Fest. I don't usually take time on either, but I think I'll enjoy having the time for both. And now I'll be able to stop dealing with how I'm going to wedge in the time I have to either take or lose for awhile.

It's been stormy around here: a bit of a relief, actually, from the high temperatures we'd been having. During one of the more violent bouts that I Tweeted, a microburst occurred just a block or two away, taking out power lines and stopping traffic on one of the main arteries that runs beside campus.

And on that note, I have to run: one of my three meetings today starts in a few minutes.