Moving–New Adventures

Well, it’s been a tumultuous and stressful few months. In November, I decided to start applying for jobs. By January, I had decided that I would definitely be leaving my job. I had several interviews (on Zoom, but for jobs all over the country), and I decided to accept an offer from Western Kentucky University.…

August–No Posts

Wow. I didn’t post at all in August. I think that’s the first time since I started my blog that I haven’t posted in a month. August was hot and special. The first bit of August was consumed with getting home, unpacking, and working on some of the things we had neglected. Seamus and Gilbert…

Summer So Far

We spent a week in Cape Cod, and gosh, it went by fast! We got up super early on Saturday to avoid traffic. We stopped for Sandwiches in Sandwich, and it was delicious! The week passed in a blur of baseball clinics in the mornings for the kids, sailing on the pond in the afternoons,…

Pittsburgh–Again

I’m in Pittsburgh for the NEH summer faculty institute on Afro-Latinx and Afro-Latin American Transnational Dialogues. It’s fascinating, career changing, and I’m learning so much! Over the weekend, Patrick brought the kids up for a fun weekend so we could not have to go two weeks without seeing each other. I could have driven back…

Recovered and More Snow

Everyone has recovered from Covid. Not sure if the other kids had it; all tested negative, but then we ran out of tests. Patrick made it home from Colorado with the car. We cleaned the house and thought about some home improvement projects. The kids had off school yesterday for MLK day, but they probably…

Omicron Wave

Well, after dodging Covid for two years, despite some traveling and hanging out with friends, and kids’ sports (most of this stuff was our family unit, and mostly outside), it finally caught up to us. Harlan started feeling a little sick on Wednesday last week, asking me for a tissue more than usual and wooling…

Skiing Copper Mountain

For the last few days, we’ve been at Copper Mountain during the day, and hanging out with our cousins at night. We have had a lot of snow. From Thursday until Saturday morning, it snowed and snowed. I think all told, we had about 12-14 inches of snow. We had a little trouble getting out…

Spring brings Changes

What a long year. This spring has felt good because it seems to be that every day I hear about someone else getting vaccinated and that’s one more person protected and potentially seen soon. It does start to give me some envious feelings, because I’m not eligible yet, even though I’m still working in person,…

Hamnet

I finished reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell yesterday. It was an excellent book, and I want to reflect on it some today. Mostly, I want to connect it to my late professor Dr. Libby Oakes, who taught Shakespeare and women’s poetry at Western Kentucky University for many years. I couldn’t figure out why the book…

Some Updates. None earth shattering

We’ve continued to ski almost every weekend. So far, we’re at 24 days for the season. Getting our money’s worth out of our season passes, for sure. The semester is going along really fast. This is week 5 of the 16 week semester, and a colleague mentioned the other day that she only had 11…