Boston Year

I have a new tag/label for my posts: "Boston Year." On August 1, 2013, we moved into a new home in the Boston area, and we plan to stay for about a year.  This is to be a year of adventures - new experiences, new growth. I wanted to capture as much of that as I could for our family. I debated starting a new blog altogether, but decided that the handful of you loyal family and friends who actually read this would probably prefer to skip the hassle of adding a new URL. And I would always have to decide on which blog to post something - not good for a decision-phobic person like me. So instead, you will see the label "Boston Year" for posts related to our relocation here. You can search for that if you like.

The year in Boston will be a sabbatical leave for Jeremy and I, meaning we are not teaching at all this year. Our work will instead be research/scholarship projects dedicated to renewing and refreshing the "life of the mind" for each of us. Seven years ago we had sabbatical leaves for a semester, although we stayed in our own home in town that time, and we both found it incredibly helpful for regaining enthusiasm and a fresh perspective on our teaching. With a career likely to span more than 4 decades at the same institution, I am eager to do whatever I can to stay fresh, so that I can develop 40 years of experience, rather than 1 year of experience, 40 times.

Already, we can say that this sabbatical leave has shaken things up for us. Jeremy began working  on his project in May, as soon as spring semester grades were in. He will be working on several projects with a collaborator at MIT, and could do some of it remotely. I took advantage of our job share situation and haven't worked very much since May, in compensation. But I have been busy. I noticed that there is a long gap on this blog, since about mid-May. It seems that our summer has evaporated as all of our energy has poured into moving a family of 6 for one year. Actually, it has taken me nearly a whole year to prepare for a year of relocation.

 I started this sabbatical with preparations late last August ( a year ago). Jeremy and I each prepared proposals for our year's activities. We also undertook a small remodeling project, figuring that the 1.5 bath house would rent more easily with 2 full baths (and work out better for us, too, when we returned). When these were approved by the college in November, then I began spending countless hours looking for housing for us, and searching for renters for our own home. We identified tenants first, and then I learned the ins and outs of being a landlord - all the places to notify, register, pay fees, update housing to code, etc. In May, Jeremy and I and Helen drove out to Boston for 5 days to look at the various housing options I had located via the internet and get a lease. All of June involved culling and many trips to Goodwill, and packing - mostly to move our stuff into storage, to make room for tenants. We also had to sort and decide what we would take with us for the year. Since we planned to move with just the minivan and a large car top carrier, we were quite limited in space.

July 1, we moved out of our house and became itinerant. We stayed 10 days with Jeremy's parents, then 5 days visiting friends in MN, then back to my in-laws', then a week on vacation with my dad and his family, then a final 5 days at my in-laws' house. We left MI for the year late in the afternoon of July 31, and arrived at our new home around 8 PM on August 1. And so, it all begins.....