Lexington's Main Street, with VMI in the distance, yesterday afternoon in the sun. Today is rainy and colder, so that I am glad after all that I packed a variety of clothing options. I will be availing myself of my merino tights, for example, as well as my blue Fiona dress.
Lovely evening out last night at the Palms, an old Lexington restaurant we came to often, usually for brunch after church, in the years when the Fire Son was a cadet at VMI. My host, Steve Knepper, is a marvelous person --- full of intellectual interests and drive, but so sheerly nice that you aren't bowled over by all the keenness. His wife Annie was there as well, with their youngest daughter, who's about 16 months old and spent the whole dinner inserting a blue crayon through the straw hold in the plastic lid of a cup of water, then putting the straw in after it. Annie would open the lid, take out the crayon and straw, and replace the lid, and Cecilia would repeat the whole performance with total absorption. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.
Today I'm having a quiet morning in, putting together my poetry playlist for the reading tonight and actually thinking to add notes for poems I want to talk about a little before I read them, so I don't blank the details when I'm standing up there. I'm free until about 11:30, when I'll go over to VMI, find my assigned parking space, and make my way to the building where everything is happening:
*lunch with cadets
*3 hours of individual meetings with cadets who want to talk about their writing
*back here for a few minutes before I trot down to the pub where I'm meeting faculty for dinner
*reading at 7:45
I slept well last night in this very comfortable hotel room, so hope I'll be suitably energized for a long day. I commit to these things, and then when the day comes I think, Oh no. How am I going to get through this? It's always fun, but also --- as I'm increasingly aware --- a lot. But it's one day, and then tomorrow I can kick off and go home, taking my sweet time. I think I'll drive the Parkway, as I did coming home from Lovettsville and my friend Carla's house a couple of years ago, and make a little holiday of it. The husband won't be home till the evening, and the dog sitter is coming to walk Dora, so I will be in no rush. I've just got to make sure I have plenty of gas in the car, because once you're on the Parkway, you're on your own.
Wearing today:
*Wool& Fiona dress (M) in Marine Blue, bought fall 2024, last worn March 24. Wears in 2025: 5
*Old Thrifted Eddie Bauer cotton cardigan, second decade of wear
*Snag merino tights in Sand Dollar, first year of wear
*Birkenstock Papillio Mary wedges, second year of wear
Fiona, the good old fallback dress. I might change into my NPL Grape Wine Smock dress for the evening, or I might not --- depending on how much time I have between the end of conferences and dinner (which is a 2-minute walk down the street, so I probably have more time than I think). But Fiona is really a workhorse, dressing up in a simple, sheeny way just as readily as she dresses down. I could just maybe put on a nicer cardigan for the evening and go, with maybe the addition of my soft mauve linen scarf, which is currently in the car. Really depends on how warm or cold I feel, too. Tomorrow is supposed to be 80F, but today's high is 58, not freezing but not balmy, either. And it's wet. My hair will love it, but the rest of me, I think, is sort of glad to have some light wool to put on.
I need to look at a VMI campus map to get a sense of where I am going --- post, I should say, instead of campus, because that's what they say. I think I'll wander out in roughly half an hour, although it'll take me 5 minutes to get to VMI, and not much more than that to find the appropriate building. Still . . . better early than late, I always say.
EVENING UPDATE
Reading outfit:
I did go for the NPL Grape Wine Smock, to feel a little dressier. Beige sillk-cotton cardigan. Old linen scarf for a little polish.
A lovely day with cadets, a nice dinner with faculty, and in just a little while, I'm off to read.