palace of winds

So, apparently I am just never going to have time to write with anything resembling regularity or timeliness — I still have a half post from, oh, last year, about Bryce visiting, and it’s just patently not going to happen. (Worse yet is the one from last April’s trip to Baton Rouge.) Things were busy enough around here before the stock market decided to make everyone insane yesterday. I dream fondly of the days when I used to be able to more or less clear my desk off before I left each afternoon.

Over President’s Day weekend Steph & I visited Bryce. There was much crazy-sushi-making (the making of crazy sushi that is, not the crazy making of sushi — well, maybe a little of the latter too), and much Hobee’s, and a little hammocking, and even less sleep, and a lot of driving around San Francisco looking for parking. But the whole San Fran parking thing was totally worth it, because on a whim we popped into the Good Will and within five minutes? Cocktail dress for my work conference (excuse the cameraphoneness):

Check out that clasp/closure thingie, y’all. It’s such an impossible find for $5.50 that I like to think of it as the universe giving back, acknowleding that I just don’t have enough time lately. (I bought an adorable cocktail dress pattern and this gorgeous brocade a few weeks ago to make my own dress for the final night gala, and I still really want to make it, but it’s so not going to happen in the next ten days, and now it doesn’t have to be this fretful thing that I will surely mess up in my haste. But I am almost done with the sundress, so my whole make-a-dress-for-the-conference goal will not go unfulfilled! I only have to put in the zipper and hem the bottom, and voila. Though I won’t be wearing it for the opening gala, because the theme is Americana and they’ve strongly recommended we wear sneakers and bring jackets — it’s out on a boat.)

Also? This September? Peru. PERU.

Once more: Peru.

I got the official a-okay from work, having chosen dates over Labor Day and cut down from three weeks to two and a half. So Bryce and I are actually really going, which just makes me want to dance like an idiot every time I think of it. And then quail a little at the thought of all the planning that needs to be done between now and then. Regardless, it’s going to rock.