Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I am officially on vacation and very happy about it. The past week has been wild at work – three interviews last Thursday, three Tuesday, two on Wednesday, plus all of the usual work stuff. And on top of that I got a first draft of my final paper for my one remaining summer class written (12 pages, ~3700 words, 35 footnotes), which was a lot but thankfully means I don’t have to bring homework with me on our trip. Some of that writing got done because I gave myself permission to skip some classwork that will have less of an impact on my overall grade, and while I’m wrestling a little bit with that from a recovering perfectionist standpoint, I’m mostly satisfied with that decision and recognize it really was necessary to being able to unplug in the coming week.

Today is going to be a lot of packing and tying up loose ends at home, plus I have therapy this afternoon and am getting my hair cut this evening. Tomorrow we’re dropping Nova off to be boarded early in the morning, then coming back here to load up the car, and then we’re off to Song School! I am so excited. I’m going to be a wreck leaving Nova, but I’m so excited to reconnect with old friends, make new friends, and spend some serious time focused on music. The schedule got released yesterday and it looks (unsurprisingly) incredible.

There will be no blog next week, because we’ll still be at Song School. In the meantime, here are some Nova photos: