Happy Independence Day

It's a long-standing tradition in the Bowles family to have a giant family breakfast at Grandma and Grandpa's house on July 4th, with pancakes, eggs, potatoes, bacon, sausages, "sunshine," and so on. So this morning Michael and I cooked up some yummy pancakes and eggs and hasbrowns and bacon in our own very small approximation of the famous "Bowles family breakfast." We had everything but the family. :( But we're having a really great holiday. We spent some time walking around at Crystal Lake Park, just a little ways from our house in Urbana. It's supposed to rain later this evening, but now it's just really humid and hot. I hate sweating. Later we're going to grill some burgers and pop some corn. See how most of our entertainment revolves around food?

Here we are at the park. Happy Independence Day!

On Monday I went to a knitting circle at Caffe Paradiso that's sponsored by Klose Knit, the yarn store in town. The owner of the yarn store, Brigette (pronounced with a hard "g" like the girl in Sound of Music -- she's German), instituted the knitting circle and teaches people how to knit at the cafe. It was very sparsely attended (it seems that everything in this town nearly shuts down for the summer -- it's a real college town) with just two other women besides Brigette and myself. But the whole thing was very entertaining AND I learned that one of the graduate assistants I'll be working with at the reference desk teaches sock classes at Brigette's store! Another knitting librarian! (btw -- Is it just a coincidence that so many librarians knit? And have cats? Search blogs on Google for "knit librar* cat" and see what you come up with.) I'm working on a pair of socks, but I might go back to the brown cabled cardigan that I started this winter now that I have a knitting support group again!

Saturday Michael and I are going to Nauvoo. We're very excited!

What I'm reading: Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson. Very entertaining read about linguistics and dialects and vocabulary and language development. Love it.