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In the end, I took three books: giant spiderkilling hardcover biography, which I reread; giant spiderkilling hardcover collection, in which I read some lesser-known pieces and made notes about them; and book I'm reviewing (which I finished). I also read some .pdf books that I'd downloaded from Google Books, Antonia Fraser's Faith and Treason about the Gunpowder Plot because it was already in the house in the Land with No Internets and most of John Berendt's City of Falling Angels (on the plane on the way back).

I didn't write a lot, but I did think a lot. I thought as I was taking almost-daily walks to one of the earlier settlements in that part of the country--5 miles round trip from the old house I was staying in. I also cooked, baked, washed immense piles of dishes three times a day, and did a lot of wash, the latter requiring that I fill the ancient, quirky washer using huge buckets of water, which has done wonders for my upper-body strength.

I shooed flocks of wild geese off the lawn early in the morning and went kayaking when the water calmed down as the sun was setting. That was usually when the heron flew out of the woods and made his way across the water to another set of trees.

Sometimes, instead of reading, I watched the rain pour down and listened to the thunder, or I tried to figure out the different eras of the wallpaper peeling away from the lath-and-plaster walls.

There was no television and no newspapers, so unless I was visiting relatives and someone mentioned the news, I didn't know what was going on. I didn't miss it a bit.

It was a nineteenth-century sort of trip, come to think of it. In terms of scholarship, it wasn't very productive at all, but it was very satisfying.

Not ready to go back? Join the club.

Someone must have slipped a guilt pill into my students' pumpkin pie. On Friday, I started getting e-mails about the most random things, or maybe not-so-random things:

"I just realized that I didn't do X. Can I do extra credit to make up for it?"
No.

"Do you want me to e-mail you a draft of this?"
Not right now.

"Hi. Here is a complicated hypothetical situation--want to respond?"
No.

As long as there is pie left in the dish, there is vacation time left. It's not their fault, since I always stress how available I am, but respond? Maybe tonight, during the magic "12 hours until class" time, but before then, I am on vacation (which means work, of course, and grading, but not thinking about class).