I’ll take a short break from my trip recaps to tell you how I’m doing right now. (Don’t worry, I’ve been going through photos and figuring out what to write about, and I will likely do another post tomorrow.)

It’s been the first week of summer teaching and it’s been great. I absolutely adore teaching at home in my new home, and I’ve enjoyed seeing my students again. I have a few new ones, and a few only over the summer, so things have been fairly busy. I am much more relaxed with my teaching rules over the summer and students are only required to take a certain number, but many take more than the required number. It’s nice to spread people out more over the day as well, and I’ve managed to only schedule 4 days a week as well!

Today is my last teaching day of the week and I only have a few hours. Then I have a relaxing afternoon (plus grocery shopping) and Louie and I are going out tonight for dinner to celebrate my birthday, which was last week. I told him it was okay to count the trip as my birthday celebrations but he disagreed. We also went to see the opera Susannah last night, and enjoyed a “Young Friends” buffet beforehand. We are just pushing the boundary of Young Friends, but I assure you we are still young for the opera!

I went for a run yesterday: I decided to get back into running so I have started a beginning running training plan through Runkeeper. It gives you 3 a week–I had meant to start on Monday but woke up with a headache so I pushed it back. My knee is doing mostly okay but my hip was hurting last night, but I think not bad enough to skip my planned run tomorrow. It really is mostly walking anyway, so I think I can listen to my body and do what works. I’m not sure if I also hurt my hip when I hurt my knee about a month ago, but I think it’s related. It’s nothing too bad though.

The weather has so far been warm but not humid so it’s been incredibly pleasant here. I will be grateful while I can! The cats were glad to see us when we returned: we had people stopping by often but it’s not the same as constant companionship. Muriel wasn’t so sure about violin however, and I think she would be happy never to hear the instrument again (sorry Muriel, not going to happen!). Miles is growing slightly less shy, and the students get to see a bit more of him, at least from a distant.

I feel like there isn’t too much to do here, which is somewhat true, if you ignore that we still need to finish decorating the house here, probably some yard work as well, but more importantly, there’s the other house. But it’s important to have down time and try to strike a balance, and the other house is a longer term project. We will likely go over there on Sunday and do some work.

So that’s me right now! How is your summer going? Do you have a lighter work schedule or keep doing the same?