Streamin'

Believe it or not, I am not only typing, but actually publishing, this from a vehicle speeding down I-80 in Iowa! I feel like I'm living in the future, and it's amazing. (Who was it who said that sufficiently advanced technology always feels like magic--?)

David and I are nearly two weeks into our roadtrip, and will be arriving back in Mpls Thursday evening. We'll spend the weekend there, attending my neighbor's wedding, picking up the rest of my summer luggage, cheering friends who are running the inaugural Mpls Marathon, and will then head back west. I'll be spending the summer in Walla Walla, attempting to write the third chapter of my dissertation (not that chapters one and two are written yet; the whole project is theoretical, on multiple levels). Oh, but hey, good news in the dissertation department: I was awarded the fellowship I mentioned a few posts ago! That has given me some encouragement about the whole mess, so I'm very thankful for that.

The past weeks have been the pleasantest of blurs, filled with friends, family, food, wildlife, hydrothermal landscapes, and even, at the beginning, a surprisingly excellent academic conference. We've uploaded around 2200 photos, not all of which to which I will subject you, though I do hope to post a representative sampling.

I haven't checked in on the Internet very frequently on the trip; although accessing it in the car is pretty awesome (when we're on stretches of road that offer cell coverage) it also seems to add to the disorientation of long-distance travel and hasn't been particularly alluring compared to the company and scenery. Also, it's kind of giving me a headache. So I'm going to stop here, but will try to fill in the gaps before too long--and to see what some of you Internet Friends have been up to!