Good news!

It turns out that The Girlfriend, who landed a job in Minneapolis in January, is going to be able to transfer to the Chicago office much, much earlier than anticipated. Hence I won’t need to move to Minneapolis for the summer — missing the best time to live in Chicago for the second year in a row (recall last year’s move to San Francisco for her summer internship) — nor will I need to take a leave of absence for the fall to save us from the burden and expense of constant travel, maintaining multiple apartments, etc.

This possibility has been brewing for a few weeks, and I had pondered the idea of taking the leave anyway, to have more time to finish the devil book and start up new research. But when it became clear that it was all but certain to happen, my first, gut-level reaction was, “Oh great, now I get to teach in the fall!” And while I was able to achieve great things in the monastic setting of our San Francisco apartment last summer, I must admit I harbored serious doubts about my ability to stay completely self-motivated for seven months.

So overall, I’m pretty happy.