So I’m just going to hop over that long absence like it didn’t happen.

Tomorrow it’s off to Uppsala again, this time with Lydia in tow. She’s been wanting to make the trip with me for a while now, and it turned out that this week worked well enough for both of us. I’ve got a lot to do, as usual, but I’m sure I’ll be able to free up at least a little time for some shopping and stuff. I think she’s got her heart set on a trip to IKEA, so I’ll have to steel myself for that. That place is always a bit on the crazy side, but around Christmas it’s absolute madness.

After this trip, I’ll be going down only twice more before a long break at home from mid-December until the first week of January. It will be nice not to be traveling for a little while, but I do have plenty of work to do in those three weeks. The most daunting of that work is the writing of a paper I’m set to present at a conference in Oxford on January 6. I really want to be excited and proud about having a paper accepted, but mostly I’m just terrified and the way the weeks are flying by isn’t doing a thing to calm my nerves.