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I'm back in Atlanta - arrived home safely this afternoon. The trip was fun, but exhausting. I always enjoy seeing everyone but all of the running around is not very relaxing. I now need a vacation to recover. :-)

Thanks again to DF Teresa for putting a roof over my head and a place to come home to sleep for those 6 hours every night. I had a lot of fun staying with her and catching up. It has been too long and I know that I will see her several times over the fall and we won't go 7 months again!

Thursday I drove to Middleburg, FL. That was uneventful - which is the way that I like my drives to be - except that I had an awful allergy attack and spent most of the drive sneezing and irritated. This continued after I arrived until I went to sleep. Fortunately the rest of the weekend was not like that. Friday T and I met my parents who had driven up for lunch and a quick exchange of 4 tiny chairs for my nephew, Nicholas. It was good to see them. Then T and I did a little shopping and T had her makeup session for a wedding she's in this coming weekend. We stopped by Knitwitz for a short visit before meeting a bunch of longtime friends for dinner. It was fun catching up but the mariachi band was competing with our volume. I think that we finally won.

Saturday we started early with a trip to the crack book store. I'm a collector of books as much as anything else. I love to read and I guess that I'm just uncomfortable if I don't have 100 books waiting here for me to read. This had to be the cheapest trip to Chamblin's ever for me, so maybe I'm not as sick as I thought. We went to Riverside to meet some of T's stitching friends - Melody and Carrie. I'm in such a stitching slump that I didn't even take stitching on my trip. I have to do something about that slump quickly. I knit while they stitched. It was hot, hot, hot (yes, Africa hot) that day - I even told T that my eyelids were sweating at 9:30am when we left her house. The "house" that we went to in Riverside is gorgeous and right on the river. Here's a few quick pics:

It was too hot to sit on the porch, but I would very much enjoy that!

The St Johns is very wide here, so the straight on view doesn't show much except water. This is the view to the left.
And this is to the right. You can probably tell that a storm was coming.

A side note for those of you who haven't known me for 10+ years - I grew up on the water in Florida and it is one of the things that I really miss being in Atlanta. So looking out at this view reminded me a lot of home.

We packed up in the early afternoon and headed to Knitwitz for Midnight Knit-Insanity. There are so many parts that could be considered insane - the length of time knitting (9+ hours, longer for me if you count the 2.5 hours at Melody's), the getting home at 1:00am, the amount of makeup that had run into my eyes (re: Africa hot) blurring my vision, the laughter and stories told over knitting, the fact that Jennifer produced a miniature accordion right after Tricia complained about being told she couldn't have one, or the # of projects that I thought I would get to during this long knitting day!

I did manage to accomplish some knitting and here's what I have to show for it.

I finished my 3rd medallion. Let the blocking begin!

I turned the heel on the Jill-Walkers.
Sorry about the turned pics, Blogger is not happy tonight.

I completed one more block on the Herringbone Block Shawl

T got to ring the bell for finishing her bauble socks

I had a fun, fun time Sat night - thanks Knitwitz and Co!!

Sunday (after church), I headed over to the beach area and sat on the wonderful sand and put my feet in the wonderful Atlantic for a couple of hours. I wasn't allowed to go further than the shallow part due to my ankle recovery and it was pure torture to be that close and not swim in the ocean - but at least I got what I did. Sorry Heather - no pics...I forgot my camera! Doh. I visited with my cousins and my aunt, had a nice dinner and got home late again.

Now...when is my next vacation? I'm ready....