Almost home…

Hello from the Chicago airport! I just wrote a really huge reply in comments on the last post which would have probably been better off as a whole new post. Cut me some slack if it’s not extra-coherent, I’ve been awake since 5:00 in the morning and on a series of planes all day.

I’m currently on my way back from teaching at the Snake River Fiber Fair in Idaho, and I have to say — I have not had that much fun in a long, long time. Great show, enthusiastic students, excellent organization and — the big bonus — SHEEP! I stayed at the Lazy PJ Ranch (Pat’s one of the Fair organizers) and not only got to maul adorable rams every single day, but also herd naughty sheep escapees back into their enclosure. By the end of the weekend, a fair number of the rams had figured out that REDHEAD HUMAN GIVE PETS! YAY! and they’d come running to the fence, in some cases nosing each other out of the way to get over to my hand. Incredibly cute.

In my suitcase somewhere deep in the bowels of O’Hare right now? A raw fleece — shiny, huge and grey. Love love love. Pat’s husband Jack vacuumed the excess air out to make it smaller, and I was kind of hoping TSA would accidentally stab it during their inevitable poking-through-my-knickers excursions. If so, it would’ve become a sheep bomb, and rapidly expanded to about 7 times its current size as the air seeped back in.

Dude. Sheep bomb. It’s the only appropriate payback for the time they stole copies of my books out of my suitcase on the way to TNNA, and for everything else they put me through every time I fly. You have no idea. Terrorist threat level orange? Whatever. My all-time favorite was when a screener tried to make me take my sweatshirt off to go through security, but I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. (I learned my lesson on bras after a Chicago screener made it to second base with me once — I’m talking full-on under-the-shirt grope that would break just about every HR rule imaginable in any other company). Had I not been heading somewhere to teach, I probably would’ve done it just to make a point.

“What? He told me to take it off!”

Sheep and show photos to come…happy Monday!

Tagged with: Teaching