cup of chi

The basic story is: I'm in a rough and tumble aerial cat fight. 

[aerialcatfight]

on porch drinking...

Britt: do we have to wait until 5pm?

Me: no!

[aerialcatfight]

Views lately, as my “summer of lakes” continues with some east coast travels and twin time. Eventually, I swear, we are going to stop being nomads and settle back down in Ithaca. 

But first: more quality time with Britt this week, Matt’s return from London and another weekend at the beach, a quick trip to Michigan for a wedding, a long weekend in Ithaca to move into our new place, and another trip to Maryland/DC. 

All of these places include bodies of water, so I think I’m set to continue the trend. 

[aerialcatfight]

for late summer consumption | cocktails made with La Croix 

[aerialcatfight]

heyo!

this summer, I decided to go all in on having the best summer of my life: traveling (mostly) in service of fun and relaxation, spending time with the people I love, and sending one million and one texts to scuppertime​ that include some form of the sentiment “yolo” to justify another cocktail, another adventure, another round of cheese. it has been the summer of lakes (see above), the summer of road trips, and the summer of so much sun (the pnw stole all the good weather this year!).

behind the scenes (for those of you who have followed along on instagram and maybe kind of hate me for what appears to be non-stop vacation), I’ve been planning my fall classes and getting started on post-PhD research projects and preparing myself for another go at the elusive tenure track. and every single day, I am so damn grateful for my current position that has given me the stability to be away from campus for two full months and really, truly feel the weight of the last few years lift while I aggressively love on life. (holy cheese, Chels...get it together.) 

anyway - hope everyone is also having a fantastic summer and I’m pumped to catch up! 

[aerialcatfight]

This is a place called Mousehole. (Mousehole!)

Obviously, I’m obsessing over how to add it to my summer itinerary. While I’m sure the day is coming when not ALL my travel will involve the UK or the PNW, today is not that day. 

[aerialcatfight]

Three seasons in Ithaca later...

Hello! 

It's been a while. Not quite all three seasons but close. And I thought I was done here - because of time, because of privacy, because of lots of things. But here we are, again. Possibly because it's spring break and I've got a little time to write and possibly because I just missed reading and writing here. Probably both. 

In January, I started a full-time visiting position at an incredible institution that has asked me to up my game in pretty significant ways. (Not hard to guess where, since you know where I live...but let's pretend it's more anonymous, okay?) I feel very, very lucky to have landed this opportunity but it has demanded a lot of time and energy. I’ve been absent on a lot of fronts lately (heyo, friends and family that check up here!) and I’m trying to do better. 

A significant upside to all this work, though, is that I know what next year will look like (barring any surprises, of course). I know where we will live (still Ithaca but a new apartment that I am so excited about), what our jobs will be, and could (if I wanted to) even commit to plans that are six months away. After the upheaval of the last few years, that is a crazy (wonderful) thing. 

 In six weeks, I'll finish out my first academic year in Ithaca, move our stuff into storage, and take off for a nomadic summer of travel. And I want to record more of it, aside from Instagram. 

 So here we go (again)!

[aerialcatfight]

Look, the stuff of life never ends. That is life. You will never clear your plate so you can finally allow yourself to get to the good stuff. So you have to decide. What do you want to accomplish in this life? What’s important to you right now? And realize that what’s important now may not be two years from now. It’s always changing.

Monday morning is a good time to revisit this.

[aerialcatfight]

Forget balance. Balance is bullshit. What I mostly crave is integrity and joy — a sense that I’m doing what I do excellently and getting a lot of pleasure out of it, that I’m used up and useful.

Courtney E. Martin

[aerialcatfight]

best feeling

Just booked tickets to spend three glorious weeks at home over Christmas - celebrating holidays, babies, and weddings! 

(Oh, and bookended with some time in Buffalo for good measure so I can eat cheese with BB while Cupar sits on me. I can't even handle the excitement!)

[aerialcatfight]

We live in a country of sharpening divisions, pronounced tribalism, corrosive polarization. And I wish we would nudge kids — no, I wish we would push them — to use college as an exception and a retort to that, as a pre-emptive strike against it, as a staging ground for behaving and living in a different, broader, healthier way. As we pepper students with contradictory information and competing philosophies about college’s role as an on ramp to professional glory, we should talk as much about the way college can establish patterns of reading, thinking and interacting that buck the current tendency among Americans to tuck themselves into enclaves of confederates with the same politics, the same cultural tastes, the same incomes. That tendency fuels the little and big misunderstandings that are driving us apart. It’s at the very root of our sclerotic, dysfunctional political process. And college is the perfect chapter for diversifying friends and influences, rummaging around in fresh perspectives, bridging divides.

Frank Bruni, Demanding More From College

I don't talk a lot about the specifics of my job here, but this is a huge part of where I find the value in what I do. 

[aerialcatfight]

Hello, world.

Is this tumblr-ing?