just:words

Man, October was crazy. And awesome. And busy.

I haven’t been on here much, mostly because we were gone for an epic trip during the middle of the month. That meant working ahead before we left and playing catch-up once we returned, but it was totally worth it.

It all started with a crazy idea 18 months ago: “Hey, Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Hamlet in London next year!” I called out to Coart. “I so wish we could go.” To which my most awesome husband replied, “Why not? See how much the tickets are.” And that kicked off a savings plan and a lot of AirBnB research into London, Paris, and southern France, culminating in 10 days of AWESOME.

This trip ended with few “real” souvenirs but many wonderful memories of sights, smells, tastes, and feels of the cities where we explored. I came away wanting to cook more, eat better, walk more places, eat fresh, and have dinner with friends at 9pm every night.

I’m going to post photos & overview of the trip (for my own benefit –  way better than a scrapbook) back-dated to the dates we were actually in those places. If you care to see the pics and posts, they’ll start appearing around Oct 7th.

Otherwise, work is ….work, and life is life.  We “Halloweened” with friends yesterday (two years in a row – maybe this is a tradition now? I hope so!), have caught up with a few friends and students, ate supper with a lovely group of Germans earlier in the week, and still haven’t really caught up on the house cleaning. So yeah, everything back to normal. 😉

My brain space is full of the usual ramble of ideas, everything from what higher education could look like if we were willing to change, the rise of the GIF as a form of social commentary, how to recognize student agency in the classroom and strengthen it, how to teach writing better (since that’s my current project)….   You know, the typical. 🙂  I probably need to do a “good reads” roundup.

I’m ready, November. Let’s do this. Holidays 2015, here we come!!  Slightly more rested, even, since today was Time Change. 🙂