Daniel and I are on our way back (as I type this!) to Texas after having spent three days in Nashville plotting our move later this year, and I have big news. This afternoon, we came to an agreement with a home builder on a new house just south of Nashville! It was all just …

I largely ignored the snow on Monday, because I was (once again — ugh) sick, but the winter weather (or, at the very least, threat thereof) in Dallas today is really messing with my life. As I write this, I’m at the Drake Hotel in Chicago, attending the Council for European Studies conference. I am …

My last post was just before I flew off to Vanderbilt for a day-long visit, and since then, some interesting things have happened. First, UNC — sans official transcripts, etc. — offered me admission. What you may not know is that offers of admission to Ph.D. programs generally come with funding … so in addition …

So, our trip to New Orleans last month inspired a series of things, the result of which will land me in Nashville in just a few short hours. I won’t bore you with the back story (which is probably not all that interesting, to be sure), but suffice it to say I am flying to …

I’ll be the first to admit that I am ruled by my passions. Here, I mean “passion” not as an emotion but as a noun, a tangible *thing* that demands my attention to the exclusion of most all else. When I get to the critical point in a novel, for example, when I simply MUST …

Apart from making a (barely) living wage and meeting the woman who would marry my best friend from high school, there were not a lot of high points to living in my hometown for the 18 months or so following my college graduation. An important exception, the diamond in the rough (so to speak), was …

This year’s holidays have just been strange. We celebrated Christmas with Daniel’s mom on the 16th — way early — and aren’t having Christmas with my family until the 29th. This basically means we’ll be celebrating Christmas for more than two weeks! Very bizarre. Anyway, I’m writing this from my dad’s recliner on my brand-new …

Difficult as it is to believe, Christmas is just five days away. This is a strange year for us, holiday-wise, as we’re not going up to see my parents until the weekend following Christmas. For my mom, who adores Christmas, this could have been a difficult thing to accept, until she realized the other day …

It wasn’t until I saw the movie “Waitress,” so highly recommended by my sister-in-law Lisa, that I was really aware of Keri Russell as an actress. I loved the movie, though, and recently decided to watch her TV series “Felicity” on DVD. Daniel DETESTS this show — I cannot adequately stress to you how deeply …

Yesterday, my developmental writing students took their second crack at passing the exit test that will allow them to move out of developmental (i.e., remedial, non-credit-earning) classes and into freshman English composition. The ones who had to take this second round were those who missed passing on the first attempt, and several of my students …