Tomorrow morning I make my last trip to Uppsala for the year. I’m staying only one night, returning home late Thursday evening, then I’ll be home for nearly three weeks. I can’t tell you how much I–and my family–have been looking forward to that. It won’t be all rest and relaxation, of course, as I’ve got plenty to do in those weeks, but I am so very ready to have a break from all the travel. My next trip is the first week of January, to Oxford for a conference, and then I’ll start back in the swing of Uppsala things on January 18. That feels like a long time to be away, but I suspect it will fly by.

During the upcoming spring term I’m planning (hoping) to cut back on my travel quite a bit and go down to Uppsala every other week rather than every week. Even if I stay a day or two longer on the weeks I’m away, I’ll still be home much more than I have been this fall. Since I started working on my Ph.D. almost a year ago, I’ve taken nearly all of the required courses for my degree, so from here out I can focus much more on my dissertation work. There’s still plenty of reason for me to be in Uppsala regularly, but I’m all for spending longer periods of time at home between trips.