What Is And What Should Never Be

Fall time really flies by. One minute its summer, then you blink, and its winter.  Maybe the time is moving so quickly because our plates are so full. I keep telling Craig to quit picking up other stuff--publishing book reviews, editing drafts of other publications, assisting his prof with research, plus church stuff, etc.--and just focus on his PhD already. But I'm doing a million things as well. In addition to continuing writing for an online curriculum resource, I've got my church job, my after-school club job, and I've picked up regular hours for Ministry Architects, which has been great. I started volunteering at New Leaf Coop, my favourite (natural) grocer. Recently Craig rejoined his rec-league basketball team and we started running together on Saturdays. Sometimes we have friends. We've also watched tons of NBA and even most of Arkansas' comically bad football season. We make chili every weekend. We tried three new coffee shops and discovered the bes...

Craig really loves London. Between here and the Highlands, we may not end up traveling anywhere else for the next four years. So anyway, we went on our second London trip this past October. It feels like ages ago now but it was such a nice break halfway between a summer where we ran ourselves ragged but sometimes in a good way and a winter that is barrelling ahead into a hectic December and which will slow to a dreadful gray and damp crawl after that, I'm assuming. In London we: ate at Slim Chickens toured Royal Albert Hall  walked until I nearly cried, partly because of the miles, and mostly because of the crowds in Piccadilly Circus. Take me to the mountains, please. found all the Brewdog locations ate breakfasts at Dishoom on a Sunday ran through a portrait gallery which was a surprise highlight visited the Churchhill War Rooms  crossed the Tower Bridge journeyed to Oxford spontaneously bought tickets to a hilarious play slept in  found King of the Hill ...

This is like Christmas in July but the opposite because I forgot to write about our summer trip to the isles of Skye, Lewis, and Harris until now. We had been to Skye when we visited Scotland before moving here. Tourism on Skye is taking over to the point of becoming a problem, but it is hard to resist visiting the island. It's perfect. The first leg of the journey meant renting a car and driving for the first time in a year! (For Craig. I barely drive in the US and I don't drive here.) We made it to Portree, a central town on Skye. The highlight for me was hiking the Old Man of Storr. We also walked to a lighthouse at the tiptop point of the island, after the most aggravating and terrifying parking situation at the top of the cliff. And we went fishing. After that first evening and two full days on Skye, we drove onto a ferry (our first ferry with a car experience) and made it over to Harris, in the Outer Hebrides. It's much quieter h...