Hours of Daylight – 11:20

Another 43 Days have passed since my last entry. How freaky is that?

The days are shrinking before my eyes. It’s almost dark by the time i’m home from work and have dinner underway. Dark as pitch in the mornings. Soon we’ll shift an hour and the mornings will have some light, but it’ll be completely dark by the time i head for home at the end of the day.

Ok, to catch you up: Annette has now officially completed the PhD. She is done done done. She filed the paperwork and got the final OK just before turning 40 on August 22. So, she’s not lying when she says she earned the PhD before her 40th birthday. By a razor thin margin to be sure, but not a lie.

We completed a nine-day “Farewell Minnesota Loop Tour” during September. Pictures can be found at my .Mac space. We managed to finally put our kayaks into some water during those nine days, plus we rented a funky trimaran from a friend in Grand Marais and did some sailing on Lake Superior. That has been our only water experience of the entire summer. Sad.

However, the big news of the moment is that the University of Southern Maine has finally posted the job Annette has been waiting on for months now. She’ll now have to apply like everybody else, but at least another milestone has been reached.

My fear remains that this past nine-day Vanagon trip will turn into some kind of a running gag i.e. “The First Annual Farewell Minnesota Loop Tour.” We’ve seen a great deal of the state of Minnesota. This is an amazing piece of real estate with three very distinct environmental zones. Sure, it’s not quite as dramatic as Washington or Oregon where you can have dry 90’s in the eastern parts of the state while on the coast it’s 62 and raining. But in a way Minnesota’s different regions are “better” because they are more subtle. The land slowly changes as you travel the state, stay alert or you’ll miss it.