Drought

I don’t normally make it a habit of explaining my whereabouts, but I know a few of you have been visiting the site regularly and looking me up in your feed readers to see if I’ve posted anything new.

All I can say is I haven’t felt like writing much lately. I’ve been living my life offline, partly out of necessity and partly because it has felt really good to disconnect.

This past week, for instance, I read an 850 page novel. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Nathan bought me a Kindle as an early birthday/Christmas gift and Outlander happened to be a promotional freebie (still is, by the way). I spent whatever time I could this past week with the Kindle or my iPhone in front of my face getting sucked into the trippy, time-traveling escapades of Claire Randall. Moral conundrums involving suggested bigamy and Prime Directive-type “should I try to change the future?” questions aside, this book was like crack. Think Dr. Who meets Harlequin romance with a little bit of Ken Burns thrown in for historical integrity. Of course I don’t know if the book is at all historically accurate, but I did look up both Scotland and the Jacobite Rebellion on Wikipedia for a quick dose of context.  I finished the volume last night and now know more about the landscape and architecture of the Scottish highlands than I ever thought possible.

And of course I bought the next two books of the nine-book series. Damn you, Amazon.

There is much stress at home right now, most of it having to do with Autumn. Trust me when I say that parenting the child is most definitely a two-person job and I can’t leave that job for Nathan to do alone while I write. Most nights, after Autumn’s gone to bed, I am emotionally and physically spent and want only to escape into a world where I don’t have to think.  That usually means reading, sex or playing Angry Birds on the iPhone. Sometimes I’m lucky and get to fit in a little of each.

FYI, Angry birds is also very addictive.

I am taking advantage of some overtime and spending Saturday mornings at work. This makes my weekends impossibly short, but all that extra income is coming in handy.  I’m whittling down the last of my student loans and can hardly wait to finally have my education paid in full.

At this point paying for that education is much like continuing to make payments for a wedding ring long after the divorce is final, but whatever. I have a degree, even if its sole purpose is to serve as a source of shame whenever I post a Tweet with gross misspellings and grammatical errors.

On a side note, I recently attended my 20^th high school reunion and one of my classmates, who I had befriended on Facebook, mistakenly believed me to be an English professor at the university. I was all, “Girl, I don’t have near enough ambition for that!” Still, I was flattered she thought I could have risen to such heights. Me? Faculty?  That would only be possible if they let me submit my dissertation in increments of 140 characters or less.

So yes, there is a lot of stress in my life right now but I’m dealing with it as best as I can. Some days are bad and I go to bed wishing I’d handled things differently and some days I’m quite proud of doing well under pressure. Most of all, I refuse to deal with the stress by eating. I’m still exercising at least four days a week, and with the exception of an extreme carb-fest at Vitale’s Ristorante last night, I’m still eating well, too.

74.4 pounds so far.

The bottom line is sometimes a person needs to take a break, and since my income is not contingent on publishing regularly, I’m going to take my breaks when and for however long I need to.

If the length of this post tells you anything, I think I may be coming to the end of this break.

As always, though, I’ll write when I can.

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Out in the Styx

I work at a college. Some of you might already know that, but I’ve never come out and said which college that is for privacy reasons. I like to keep my work life and personal life separate, and while I have been known to write work-related posts (and delete them later), I have never felt the need to be the one to link this blog with my employer.

The thing is, my employer also happens to be my alma mater and my father’s alma mater, so there is a part of me that’s very proud to be associated with the school. That’s why I decided to share this bit of awesomeness with you, my tiny, tiny audience.

This thing moves pretty fast, and while I know a few of my office mates participated in the filming, the only familiar face I spotted was the guy kissing the woman in the Captain Stubing chapeau. That would be our university president and his wife.

I love this, especially since it was done in one take. I don’t know how much rehearsal went into it, but they did a great job. I was a film and video major once upon a time, so I know pulling off a one-shot deal like this wasn’t a walk in the park.

Well, actually it was. Here’s the cinematic swath they cut while filming:

The campus really is beautiful, even more so now that the leaves have turned the landscape into a patchwork of vibrant reds, oranges and yellows.  Too bad they couldn’t have waited a couple more weeks to film this, but you never can tell what kind of weather you’ll get once we hit October.

All I know is that I’m still having to say no to the tank tops.

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