Hello again! Liz here, reporting direct from Atlantic City, NJ. The last few weeks have been hectic and chaotic, as we’re entering our spring tradeshow season at work. Our first big show of the season starts tomorrow, here in AC, and I arrived yesterday to help with the setup. Already, my feet are sore, and I’m tired and achey from sleeping in a bed that’s not mine (though the pillows are really nice, I will say). The hotel room is nice, though the view isn’t much to speak of.

One thing I love about staying in hotels is the free stuff you get. Ok, admittedly, they don’t give you that much. But I love those tiny little bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and they give you a new set each day, despite the fact that it takes less than 5% of a bottle to wash your hair. They’re just so cute. And I love having them on hand at home when I run out of shampoo and forget to go to the store to buy more. Good stuff.

Last night was fun. A few of us booked a reservation at Bobby Flay’s restaurant at the Borgata Hotel and Casino. Pricey, but delicious. We ordered light - surf and turf appetizer skewers with grilled lobster and fillet mignon, and side orders of mashed potatoes with truffle oil and creamed spinach to split. And then we split the most delicious dessert I think I have ever tasted - a chocolate butterscotch cake. It was moist, rich, and had a really interesting texture - some layers were smooth, some were cakey, some were denser and had that sorta granular texture you find in peanut butter bars. It was heavenly.

We played the nickel slots at the Borgata for a while. I only played $10, and at one point I was up by nearly $28, but then I gave it all back over the course of about 5 minutes. Oh well. It’s not like you play nickel slots to win it big.

I haven’t had much free time lately - as soon as I was able to go back to work after my arm healed, it was go go go, but I have gotten some knitting and spinning time here and there. They’re getting to know my face at the library as I borrow audiobook after audiobook, in order to have something worthwhile to listen to while I’m fibering. (It’s my new word - “knitting / spinning / dyeing” is too long, so “fibering” will suffice to encompass it all from now on.) I finally finished listening to the massive Outlander series, and I enjoyed listening to it this time around almost more than I did reading through it the first time. I think a large part of that is due to the narrator, Davina Porter, who is absolutely fantastic. Still, after nearly 300 hours worth of the series (those big books take a long time to read out-loud - the final book alone was 56 hours!), I’m glad to be able to move on to something new. I’m currently listening to Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, read by the author. I had tried re-reading it a while back and just couldn’t get into it. I’m enjoying the audiobook version, though. Kingsolver has a very soothing voice, and it’s the perfect thing to listen to after a long, stressful day as I’m getting ready to settle in for bed.

I just wish I had my spinning here with me in the hotel room, but I guess my spinning wheel wouldn’t have been all that easy to transport, especially for only five days. I’ll live. I do have my knitting, though. I threw it in a light-weight, squishy $1 bag from Target (one of those “green” reusable shopping bags that all the stores are pushing now) to take with me on the airplane.

I had really hoped to be able to finish the back of my Nantucket Jacket before I left so that I wouldn’t have to carry the nearly-complete thing on the plane with me, but no such luck. Still, I’ve only got about 8 more rows to do before I’m ready to bind off and start on the front panels.

I’m not 100% crazy about the up-sizing of the pattern - the seed stitch panels seem too wide, and I think I would have preferred the cable panels to be extended instead. But, live and learn, I guess. I’m enjoying knitting it, though. It’s an easy enough pattern to memorize, but not so easy as to be mind-numbing. And the combination of the cables and seed stitch is just so dang pretty!

Anyway, all this talk of audiobooks and knitting is making me want to put my feet up and enjoy them for a bit before we head out to dinner in an hour. So, I’m off. Tata!