I flew up to Canada on Wednesday (boy are my arms tired) and have been driving around ever since. I’ve visited with two of my three sets of aunts and uncles, saw one of my cousins and walked her two little girls to school where I discovered that kids are crazy full of energy at 8 in the morning, had a great dinner meeting with Stackpole Books’ Canadian distributor Georgetown (and hung out with our national accounts manager Michael who had driven up from Pennsylvania), signed copies of my books in bookstores along the way which gave me a chance to talk to some really terrific bookstore associates in the many Chapters/Indigos along the way, saw my thesis advisor and major inspiration for my career Terry Copp and old friends from my Masters days at Wilfrid Laurier where I spoke about publishing at their annual military history conference with Emily Andrews who talked about the scholarly side of things (big thanks to Mike Bechthold for the invite), stopped in just about every Tim Horton’s between London and Belleville and tried half of a donut concoction that had crushed m&m’s on it (ugh as it turns out, but I wanted to give it a try just because), semi-successfully didn’t obsess about work, and am now sipping a coffee and chatting with my brother and folks and enjoying this Sunday morning while Zoe the cat meows and looks out the window staring at chipmunks. Whew 🙂