“A good rest is half the work.” (-Proverb)

Pretty soon, I will be spending most of my time in Courtyard by Marriott beds that look like this. Maybe a Holiday Inn or a Hilton Garden Inn, but they all start to look alike after a point.

I travel for work, and all fall, I’m in a different hotel every night, for weeks on end. I head to some 60 colleges and universities around the country in a 4 month period, and I'll see a good bit of the USA along the way. It's quite interesting, but it is exhausting, and the planning for these trips, between airline reservations, hotels, rental cars and individual visits to "lock in" with professors, students and Career Services offices around the nation, takes me months.

So, this time of year, in mid-July, as I’m enjoying our remaining flowers that are blooming, it’s with the bittersweet recognition that, as each variety of perennial fades, it brings me closer to when I’ll be gone again. The clock is ticking! (Can you hear the panic setting in yet?!)

The annuals are still going strong, and we have lots of color inside, but most of the perennials are finished for the season, with a few exceptions. It’s frustrating to get excited about the ones that are opening up, knowing that soon I’ll be missing them!

My wall-sized, laminated maps arrived recently, heralding the beginning of my trip-planning stages. These maps are “American Higher Education maps” that highlight all of the colleges and universities around the country so that I can more readily visualize where I need to plan my trips and route them accordingly. I have always used atlases in books before, but this will put everything in front of me so I can see the Big Picture more easily.

Once I’m on the road, I find it fascinating, and I learn and see so much, but this time of year, before it all starts, can be daunting… OK, good to get that out of my system!

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: It’s a dangerous business, Frodo,going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” (-JRR Tolkien)