Crushed by the crazyness but not done in yet!

I'm a person who needs lots of downtime, during which I write, read, (a-)muse, play with my cat, dream of my future, take restorative naps, and plan trips in my head and with my heart. I've had terribly little downtime of late, first because of a big grant proposal hump (I worked every week and every weekend from early September to early October), followed by a week-long trip that was so fantastic it was richly dream-like (several blog posts to follow!), followed by one weekend in Chicago half spent shopping for the right clothes and accoutrements for a dear co-worker's wedding, followed by a day with an old friend and her family in the 'burbs of DC, followed by four days in the heart of the nation's capital at a conference, quickly followed the next Saturday by my co-worker's lovely wedding - in Chicago but consuming more than half of my Saturday - followed by the temptation to do nothing this dark and dreary November weekend, except that I have tickets to Lyric Opera's matinee performance of Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky) tomorrow. [YAY!] In between all of this is condominium association board work aplenty. Surely there is no rest for the weary? If the stars favor me, I will start posting on that mid-October trip over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I can hardly wait.

Meantime, these are two photos snapped with my pocket Panasonic Lumix. It's a little embarrassing to get such good pics from such a cheap little camera, when by preference I lug all over two SLRs and assorted lenses of far greater price with not-always such great results.These are Great Falls of the Potomac: who knew the Potomac River had such a magnificent heritage upstream from where Mr. Washington purportedly heaved his silver dollar across? It was nothing less than stunning on that perfect early November day.