Rentrée

Our twelve weeks in Paris have slid by alarmingly fast, and we’re deep in the thick of packing up for Thursday’s trip back to California. I’ve gotten myself past the initial dread, which was mostly about not wanting the utter freedom of being here to end, and am now really looking forward to a bunch of things about being home.

The process of getting there, perhaps, not so much. We’ve got a couple of days of packing and rearranging stuff to do here, followed by the usual joys of the trip itself. But on the other end of it, there will be our wonderful apartment, and our great friends, and space, and light.

And two pretty cool classes, I think. The start of the fall semester is likely to be pretty crazy — it usually is, and this year’s further crazified by a major committee I’m serving on, all of whose work needs to be done by mid-October (god help us) — so I’m hoping to get as much set up in the next couple of weeks as I can. Which means, to some extent, walking away from my project. But I’m hoping to arrange my schedule for the fall such that I touch base with it for at least a few minutes each day, just to remember where I am in it and what I’m up to.

For now, though, there’s just packing stuff, hauling stuff, saying our various goodbyes, and getting on the road. I’ll hope that there’s nothing of interest to report until we’re safely in California.