Have you ever felt free? No, not the Mel Gibson Brave Heart sword-throwing blue face paint kind of free…though that is cool. I mean the feeling you get when you don’t have a lot of things of your plate and life is fairly manageable. Yes? No? Well, I must say that I have not had this feeling very often in recent years. If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I quite often write about how busy things are and how burnt out I feel. Well, guess what?

So if you haven’t figured it out (or read the last post), I am on sabbatical. Sweet, sweet sabbatical! I’m just finishing up my second week of this and it is fantastic. I could really get used to this for sure! It’s not that I’m doing nothing all day…I’ve actually been quite busy, but there is no work related stress. I’ll get to everything I’ve been and will be up to later, but for now I am enjoying every minute. As the band The Cars once said, Let the good times roll!

We have now passed the midpoint of February and as usual time is flying by (that has not changed). The weather has been up and down, but it looks as though were heading toward more spring like conditions. I can’t wait to get rid of this snow and get out into the field.

The first few days of my sabbatical were consumed with a project in my basement that was several years in the making. It’s about 95% complete and I hope to have in done in early March. Last weekend I plunged a little bit back into work, kind of. My fellow football coaches were interested in attending the Glazier Football Clinic in Minneapolis once again (I believe this was our seventh visit) so I tagged along. As usual it was a great experience and I certainly came back with some good information for our athletes. Getting away to another city was nice too, though twelve hours of driving in four days is a bit tiring.

Glazier clinic vendors area, February 2016.

First clinic, February 2016.

I will have lots of time to rest up over the next week while I relax on a Caribbean cruise with my family. At the time we made plans for this sabbatical (my wife teaches at the same school I do), we decided that we would take the boys on a trip somewhere since it is so much cheaper to travel outside of March break. We did go on a cruise for our Honeymoon, but it’s been a while and obviously the boys have not had the experience. We are travelling with friends of ours, so we will be in good company while we visit such places as Cozumel, Belize, Roatan and Grand Cayman. Looking forward to the great experiences and warm weather!

Since I’ve been so preoccupied with other things, I really not spent a ton of time on the railway. I did make one brief trip to the museum to photocopy a file and then expended a few hours at the library looking through microfilmed newspapers. I forgot how tiresome that could be, and how “easier” it was when I was in my twenties. Thankfully the museum will be of some assistance since they do have a number of papers digitized, which can be keyword searched. Unfortunately I will still have to plug through some papers the old-fashioned way, but c’est la vie!

Museum files, February 2016.

Things will get on track once we get back from our cruise as life will be a little less busy. Besides the aforementioned trips to the museum, I do need to start work on my portion of the John Paulson article I’ve agreed to do. The plan is to present this paper at the Northern Great Plains History Conference in Saint Cloud, MN in September. I also have some interviews to conduct south of the border once it becomes more spring like outside. Did I say I wasn’t busy?

Anywho, I should get rolling. I still have some stuff to take care of before we leave. I’ll be back in a few weeks with I’m sure a bunch of things to report on. Until then…