1. I can't *wait* for the holidays, when I will apparently get my copy of this long-awaited release.
2. Something unexpectedly cool about expecting is learning about other people who are. Two cousins will now have babies 4 or 5 months on either side of ours. And then there are the academic "cousins" like little Nancy Wible or little Pezzullo-Striphas jr. Fun!
3. Now that my papers are mostly done, I'm really looking forward to my trips to the good old Midwest. Madison and Minneapolis in the same week, hooray. Nevermind that in my spare time while traveling I will be writing one of my NCA papers.
4. Speaking of NCA, one of the grad students in our seminar just informed me that this year's conference is *not* the week right before Thanksgiving but rather the week before the week before Thanksgiving. I was just assuming it was the weekend preceding T-giving, not having scrutinized the calendar all that closely, and having become quite accustomed, thank you very much, to chasing the conference with a nice (and much needed) week-long holiday. Such rhythm disruptions are definitely discombobulating, to me at least.
5. And speaking of Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving this year will be all kinds of fun. JM's sister KM is flying to State College from London, and we are going to assemble the crib and the new stroller and whatnot. It also marks the end of my talk-based traveling for a good long while.
