Barriers have been scattered across campus and the email warnings about parking on campus are filling inboxes … it must be time for football.

I love the convenience of online ordering, I really do. But the packaging waste is just stunning. This box is about 18 inches wide, 12 inches across and six inches deep.

Really, Staples? You didn’t have a smaller box or padded envelope?

Remember, kids, photos on train tracks will both get you a zero in my class and can kill you. (Shot over the top of the fence at the edge of my parking lot, on a rail line that is most definitely not inactive, despite what my students tell me.)

Seven days ago, I packed up boxes and rolled them around the corner in preparation for some work in my office. The 48 year old ceiling and floors were being replaced and the flat-white paint from the mid-1970s was going to get freshened up. Two days, maybe three … today was day eight. Ceiling isn’t done, carpet hasn’t been started.

I’ve been wandering the halls, laptop in hand, setting up shop wherever it seems quiet.

The academic nomad.

We headed out to the 30th anniversary celebration for our local NPR station, WUGA. And I had just received a new book by Larry Fink (not at all in the style of this image, but this reminds me of the first images of his I saw many years ago).

Just what we need.

I try to do a neighborhood loop every evening. Doesn’t always happen, but I try.