366 days

Had this been a leap year, today would be exactly one year since my last post.
Unfortunately it is not a leap year, so we get no happy round numbers.

I have been trapped at home for the past four days with a nasty bout of influenza. I have noticed during this time that being a sick adult is quite different from being a sick child. This is most apparent to me as I stare around my room at the soiled dishes I will have to clean once I feel well. Wait? Isn't someone supposed to do stuff like that for me when I'm sick? You mean I have to get my own orange juice? What? Of course, Nathan has been wonderful in heating my soup, bringing me movies, and listening to me whine... but PhD students don't have a lot of time and this thing is pushing a week. So, with this reflection what I really mean to say: thanks Mom! Thanks to all the moms (and dads) who stay home to take care of their children when they're ill. From personal experience, it's a very wonderful thing!

I have been thinking from my sick bed about coming back to this blog... picking it up again. But one thing that I have been stuck by, in all my musings about serendipitous wanderings 2.0, is the title. I came up with the blog title in 2007, before flying to the other side of the globe and setting up camp. At that time I was wandering with a dim sense of what was to come and hoping for serendipity. But now... now things are laid out clearly enough. Of course there will always be questions, but it seems that I am no longer a nomad (or, at least, it does not feel that way).

So, serendipitous wanderings: it will remain my title, but I will need to find a new meaning for it along the way. Perhaps it will be a serendipitous search.