How to ruin your daughter's day in one easy step

1. Tell her that her father's request for sabbatical for the 2007-2008 school year was accepted.

But! But... before you feel too sorry for her, let me share a few tidbits:

"This chapter was fabulous."["fabulous"!]

"I would definitely consider adopting this book for my course. I look forward to reading the entire finished product."

"I found the writing to be very clear and well organized."

"My overall opinion of this chapter is that it as an excellent and comprehensive presentation of the ... issue. I found that every issue that I spend time on in my class was covered in detail in this text and I appreciated the accurate and up-to-date presentation of the science behind [this issue]." ["excellent"!!]

These are some of the reviewer comments on the chapter the Consort prepared for a potential co-authored textbook in his field. The publisher called last week, and today they made plans for the Consort to fly out to NY to sign contracts [contracts!!!].

The co-author lives/teaches in New Hampshire. So we'll be spending sabbatical year in a college town in New Hampshire, surrounded by mountains [mountains!!!!], the Consort willl be a visiting scholar, writing the book, I will bring my clients with me (they just need to change the address on the Fed Ex label), and this will be fun fun fun!

I understand the girls' sadness, because just today, with my car in the shop, my friends came through and gladly shlepped the girls to their activities, and even offered to drive Trixie to school tomorrow morning (these are homeschoolers, so driving someone to school before 8 a.m. is a big deal, indeed!). But it will only be one year, and I hope that our temporary house will be filled with houseguests throughout our time there. New England is a beautiful place to visit, anytime!

And the girls will have fun, because their Grandma, two aunts and their cool spouses, plus three (soon to be four!) cousins live up there. Plus, I'm pretty sure there'll be fencing.

I will end here, as the celebratory wine has gotten me tipsy...