The Mini-Vaca of Fall Break

As some of you know teaching full-time (face-to-face and online), doing university admin work, developing an new online course, reading, writing, housekeeping, and participating in online communities can be exhausting. Thank God our university (BGSU) acknowledges the mid-semester burn-out and rewards students and instructors with a Fall Break.

I needed it more than I thought I did.

Of course, I worked during Fall Break--revising lesson plans, developing my next semester's online class, housekeeping, etc.--but I managed to sneak a little bit of fun.

Thursday afternoon after some much needed vegging FD and I drove down to Findlay to buy some fresh veggies at the Farmers Market.

My only regret is that we just now found about this locally produced heaven. We got tasty heirloom tomatoes, fragrant basil, a perfect cauliflower, crisp peppers, just-dug-up potatoes, a ziploc baggie of very sweet lettuces, an gorgeous eggplant, delicious zucchini bread, homemade granola, a mouth-watering mini apple pie, awesome goat sausages, freshly ground turkey, and some jams.

Needless to say, we've been eating like royalty for the past few days.

There's nothing like getting food straight from the farmers, not some refrigerated, fluorescent-lit supermarket. Honestly, we didn't pay much more than grocery-store prices. And if we did, I'd rather support local farmers than Kroger.

Sadly, though, the Farmers Market's last week is this Thursday. FD and I teach during its 4:30-6:30 hours, but come May we will be visiting it all summer long. I can hardly wait, even though I'm dying for fall to get here.

(90 degrees in October...And there are still freakshows who think Global Warming does not exist!?! WTF?!?

In addition to our Farmers Market trip, my parents came in for a visit, which was super-nice.

We hung out at the house for awhile, grabbed a nice lunch at Biaggi's, and then looked at a mini-storage unit. (Yes, I got my masterful multi-tasking from my Pops. In addition to his work addiction. Pictures do speak a thousand words--one cliche that totally accurate.)

FD and I caught up on some movie watching too: The Last Mimzy (totally AWESOME--a family version of Donnie Darko in a way--5 out of 5 Hello Kittys) and 300 (rad camera work that slowed down footage so sequences replicated frames in a graphic novel--too bad the ending kinda sucked--4 out of 5 Hello Kittys).

We got a bike ride or two in and lots of reading.

Goodbye, Fall Break. I'll miss you until next year.

Hello, Final Drafts of Essay 2 and a very, very busy week.