SwitchCity Deluxe: Travellers' Edition

January 2013 began on a quiet farm, surrounded by family and supplemented by I.'s delicious eggnog (at least, I think he made it on New Year's Eve or Day). It was a month of wild and wonderful travels to some tolerable cities, some delightful cities, and two major and mostly unpleasant East Coast cities.  

At the beginning of the month, I. and I visited some friends in Newark, Delaware, to celebrate New Year's Day, and I. subsequently drove his brother J. and I to the Amtrak station in Wilmington, where we caught up with one of our college friends over breakfast before J. and I began a trip north to Boston. While I will never be enamored of Boston, Boston in January is a bit better than Boston in March, for the one and only reason that we had snow.

In Boston, I spent four days attending the MLA conference (which was good, but huge, and difficult for networking because events were spread out across a seemingly infinite number of buildings connected by a half-mile corridor interspersed with massive shopping malls). Aside from the gentle annoyance of having to walk through shopping malls to keep my fingers from going numb in the below-freezing city air, I had a great time and was pleased to discover that I knew more than three attendees.

 On my last morning in Boston, I attended two seminars and then meandered to the train station, stopping by Boston Commons on the way. Apparently Boston does have more to offer than skyscrapers and crosswalks. Who knew?

From Boston, I journeyed via train to Providence, after which I flew to Newark, New Jersey, for a light airport supper, and then to St. Louis, Missouri to see my handsome husband, who had driven out to the Midwest to visit family during my Boston adventure. Together, we bounced around several small towns and cities in Illinois, visiting friends and family along the way, before driving back to the East Coast (with a coffee stop in Columbus, Ohio). A few days at the Folger Library in Washington, D. C. got me back on track with some of my research goals for the month, whereupon I flew back to London and reached Sheffield just in time to receive a large stack of student essays for marking.

Shortly after my return, Sheffield was blessed with a small quantity of snow, which made everything lovely for nearly a week.

(That last one is the view from our living room. Our neighbourhood is so very lovely!)

I. stayed warm this month by cleaning house quite frequently--it has been a bit cold, and washing dishes apparently helps keep the hands warm. He also went well above and beyond the call of duty, helping me sort out some new yarn that had gotten rather painfully tangled after I attempted to make it into a ball by myself.

In order to maintain the appropriate festive spirit for winter, I. and I journeyed up to Edinburgh (via York) at the end of the month, just in time to celebrate Burns' Night with our beloved church family and enjoy fellowship with them in the Sunday service. We have been so very blessed, and the weekend away was an opportunity for laughter, fellowship, and much-needed rest.

After all the hubbub, I ventured back to London, where I visited the British Library briefly and gave my first official public lecture as part of the London Shakespeare Seminar (an exciting experience all around).

I'm now back in Sheffield, desperately trying to get caught up on research and deadlines before the start of a new and wonderful semester, which begins in only a few days. I am still enthralled by this life as an academic, although the year is drawing to a close and I. and I are still waiting expectantly to see where we find ourselves in the summer and next fall.