The great thing about living on the semester system is that despite a great deal of work during the long semester, long breaks are the reward. After a four day grading binge, I entered my last grades last night. And until January 20, my life is my life. I spent the day reading, finishing a book , starting another, buying a few more, going for a walk, cleaning my room and organizing papers, and relaxing with some glasses of wine.
Tomorrow I begin a trip to Minnesota, my home. After taking a bus from Chicago to Minneapolis and meeting my parents, I’m taking my old jeep up to Duluth to stay with a friend for a night. Then it is off to Bemidji, my Jerusalem (to put it strongly). There, I will stay with a professor and her family (she is a good friend as well) and see many of my old mentors during the annual faculty Christmas party. I hope to see many other friends as well, either at coffee or at one of the few remaining bars.
It will be wonderful to leave the city and head up to the northwoods where the air is clean and the sky is big and clear. Frozen water, pine forests covered in snow, the Mississippi, Lake Superior, and Paul Bunyan. It will be cold, but it will be beautiful.
For the few people who read this, I am slowly taking back up the practice of writing and I hope that this blog becomes more active and frequented in the future. I was about to say that my posts will drop off during the break, but there are so few posts as it stands that that is probably not true 🙂 I am looking forward to my trip, and to the future in general. Many exciting things are afoot. More later.
Natural Causes 