Starting Our Sabbatical Year with a Lucky Charm!




On December 31, 2016, Will started his "gap year."  

After more than 20 years in the technology field, and 15 years with one company, Will decided that he wanted to take a little break and see more of the world.

In a way, it was a "perfect storm." His company was closing its smaller offices (one of the smallest offices was the one Will was associated with), and he opted to take a generous separation package rather than stay with the company and uproot us from our Chicago home (and my work) to the West Coast.  In mid-life and mid-career, he liked the sound of taking what we (and everyone he worked with) came to call a "gap year," to "recharge" his batteries.  In part, the notion of a sabbatical of sorts was all the more appealing because I would be eligible to take a full-year sabbatical once my spring semester of teaching was over in May 2017.  Well, why not we take a sabbatical year together?!


While I am not on sabbatical yet myself, we took advantage of Will's newfound freedom and found ourselves, in January, enjoying a short trip with my parents in California.  We were staying in San Luis Obispo and took a loop drive toward Morro Bay (to see Morro Rock--above, on the right side--and those adorable sea otters, in front), 


then up past Cambria to see elephant seals sleeping just off the Pacific Ocean (only two pictured above, but literally hundreds on the other side), 


then a leisurely lunch at a central coast winery in Paso Robles (at Cass Winery), 


and concluded the day by reveling in the festive atmosphere of the Thursday evening Farmer's Market back in San Luis Obispo with my parents.

We knew that we had an auspicious start to our trip AND our sabbatical year when we started off our day trip in the morning.  Despite the near non-stop rain that California had been experiencing this winter, the light morning drizzle disappeared to reveal a beautiful rainbow that we drove RIGHT through.  Ok, yes, it's an optical illusion, but it was still a nice start...  

If you look carefully, you can see that there is a second, fainter, rainbow above the clearer one.  A double rainbow for the start of our sabbatical year!



Comments

  1. This is so exciting! We will be watching. . . Go Will!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your support. We miss you and Hector!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow this is serious fun - more serious than work at least :-) I will be following you!

    ReplyDelete

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