Month: September 2025

Now that I live in South Durham, I’m roughly equidistant between downtown Durham and downtown Chapel Hill. That means I get to explore the Chapel Hill food scene in the same way that I did Durham’s over the past two years. That exploration started when my family was here in August, but that kicked up a bit this weekend. On Friday for dinner and Saturday for lunch, I went to Chapel Hill restaurants that had been recommended by members of my church small group.

Friday night, I ate at a fancy-ish French brasserie. White-tiled floor; airy space; open kitchen; staff in black. I opted for an early dinner so the place wasn’t loud yet when I arrived and really didn’t get loud even as more guests filed in. I wouldn’t repeat my appetizer choice, but the scallops and cauliflower accompaniment were very good and the brown butter almond cake with strawberries I had for dessert had a nice balance to it. I also had a crisp, dry French cider that was much better than the American offerings that are often far too sweet. There were several items on the menu that I searched for with my phone. Through the power of the internet and enhanced search, I was shown recipes in French. Those weren’t helpful, but my follow-on prompts to translate these into English gave me summaries of the dishes and not just translations of the recipes. That was an algorithm actually producing what I wanted.

Saturday I had lunch at a hamburger joint, the opposite end of the fanciness scale but every bit as good. I went off-menu and ordered my version of a breakfast burger (bacon, egg, and mustard) which led to a mix up with the cashier. Even though I told her no cheese and she confirmed that, they still put cheese on the burger so I had them remake it. This restaurant started as a student hangout, though I went to a different location with more parking. The burger was thick and juicy, not like the smashburgers that so many places serve. The egg was cooked over medium, which is what I like to see as it doesn’t get too messy. And the bacon was good, but that is perhaps the most difficult part to screw up. I went with tater tots for my side, which were unspectacular and which I’ve since been told were a big mistake by someone who loves their French fries. Alas. I also drank a root beer with lunch because I rarely do anything half-heartedly, even nostalgia. Not that the nostalgia lasted that long, though, as I went home and put in a few hours at my computer working that afternoon.

Saturday afternoon marked a small milestone. I finished assembling a small table for my entryway and placed the container for my keys, wallet, and headphones atop it. This was the final piece of furniture for my new residence, finally in its place, some six weeks after taking possession and after a few rounds of ordering additional items. I’ve also put all of my pictures up and they’ve stayed up, so things should now be in their places for the duration of my stay here. Yes, I had some issues with command strips that forced a rethink but everything has been okay for at least a few days now. And since I’m renting, some of the projects I envision for the place simply won’t happen. I’ve not had any more visitors since my family came in mid-August, but at least now I feel ready to host people here. That is also a pleasant change.

Yesterday, I took both a morning and evening walk. I took different paths for each for some variety as there are several paved trails that wind through the neighborhood, some alongside the roads and others tucked between houses. I don’t get the crunch of gravel underfoot that kept the rhythm of my walks at my prior residence, but there are many more options here and I’m able to choose a route that better suits the amount of time I have available.

This is also a time when a lot of my scheduled activities are returning so my calendar will have more consistency also. I’m looking forward to that, though there are a few more conferences coming up too, both repeat trips to places I’ve already visited this for conferences. There will definitely be fewer work trips in 2026. We’ve been conducting an assessment of work trips in 2025 this week and it has not made for pleasant reading.

We made a commitment this year to go all-in on conferences. It was a worthwhile bet but not one that we’ll repeat moving forward. There are still a couple more this year, too, but next year we’re going to double down on the few that worked and skip the rest. This week, we went to SEETA, one of the conferences that worked best for us in 2024. It helps that it is co-hosted by schools that mean we can drive instead of fly and that we can put on smaller events for during the rest of the year. We generally wait until spring to host events on campus, but we probably will again this school year at at least one of the four participating universities.

I am an introvert who tends to shut down in the face of sensory overload, especially auditory overload. I’m not a big concert person for this reason. Being at a conference, though, requires me to be “on” for hours upon hours and to be talking to people most of that time. Sure I’m able to steal a few minutes here and there in order to find some quiet and recharge, but it’s like your phone being on 5% charge and you only have enough time to plug it in to get up to 10%. Big receptions with lots of people and a wall of sound make this even harder, but I can white knuckle it for a while. And don’t even get me started on the insanity of pumping music into a conference event space.

I’m also still not used to the way people at ETA conferences will walk up to me and start a conversation as if I know them since they’ve watched some of our webinars. It is something of a de facto business development filter for this reason. The best side effect of this parasocial dynamic, though, is that people will self-select and approach me at these events so that I don’t have to guess who I should try to speak with in a crowded reception hall.

Charlottesville was lovely and I wish I had an extra day to explore it more. It was very warm on Friday but we were inside and then the weather was nice by the time the event ended late Saturday afternoon and we joined one of our classmates and his family for pizza. I also walked on UVA’s campus on Sunday morning before driving back. It has more historical buildings than most college campuses, though there was ample construction taking place too, and there were very few people milling about given when I was there. Dinner on both Friday and Saturday were good. Friday, we ate late at a comfort food Southern type of place amongst a cluster of restaurants in an otherwise residential area and Saturday was pizza. I also walked through the downtown area Saturday night. It is definitely a college town, for better and worse.

After yesterday and looking at today’s agenda, I can well and truly say that vacation is over. We are in the midst of a very busy time. I was swamped with work while Bill was away, then the reverse. Now we’ll both be very busy for a time. This is a very different situation to what we faced during parts of last year. A better one. My sleep schedule is more or less back to normal. That took two nights longer than I’d hoped it would take as it is normally much easier to come back from Europe than to go to Europe in that regard. Overall, coming back has been more jarring than I wanted it to be. I was forced into a slower rhythm and appreciated it, but now that is over.

As I predicted in last week’s newsletter, seeing the puffins was the highlight of my trip. I spoke with several other tourists during my stay who were unable to go to Mykines to see the puffins due to choppy seas cancelling the ferry. That means I had a stroke of travel luck on this trip. And there was another when my flight back to Iceland actually took off as that flight was cancelled each of the previous few days before my scheduled departure. I made my tight connection without difficulty even if I was unable to get anything to eat in the airport and had to wait for what became a very late dinner on my body clock when I got home.

The other highlight was an 11 course tasting menu at a seafood restaurant (though the final two courses were chocolate desserts and so wasted on me). It was very expensive though not much more expensive than meals that were not nearly as good. I did not eat at the cousin restaurant that just received two Michelin stars as that would have involved an even greater expenditure. The breakfast at my hotel was also very nice each morning as I loaded up on salmon and rhubarb juice. This was a critical benefit given how limited lunch was on several days on the various tours driving to different parts of the archipelago.

And I cannot conclude writing about the Faroe Islands without mentioning their undersea tunnels. They’ve built several tunnels that go underwater between the more populated islands. They even have an underwater roundabout in one of them, to my knowledge the only such roundabout in the world. You can look up more about that on YouTube if you want. It’s also a pretty wild image on digital maps if you’re into that sort of thing.