The deep breath before the race

We had a fun game night with our coworkers last night, complete with a "grandma's" recipe (they're the best right?!), milk tea (I would never think to put milk in my tea, and it was good!), 3 games (Split, Ticket to Ride, and Carcassone), and good times all around. It's the last time we'll see Sarah and Dan until November! They're off traveling this weekend, we're off the next, then they leave before we return, and we'll meet up in Malaysia for the International Language Assessment Community (ILAC) conference in November. The crazy fall schedule has arrived. I'm glad we've stored up on mountains to help us survive it! :) Holly'll be moving into our house while we're gone, which is great for us, and good for her too. It'll be nice to come home to a friend in a house that's been watched.

A few important work steps we've taken these past weeks are continuing to get information out there to the community through publications online and continued drafting and refining of papers. Chile, Jamaica, and Panama papers are all in their final stages before posting (Yay!). We also have sent on a very long paper covering 24 deaf communities in the Americas Area where we won't be doing survey but have gathered quite a bit of information. That paper's over 60 pages and it's good to have off my desk for awhile while the copy editors go at it.

The upcoming conference, Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR) will be a great time of reconnecting with coworkers, both within our organization, with partnering ones, and with the whole world that we work with in sign language research. Jason's putting the final finishing touches on our poster and we will be able to send it off for printing today or tomorrow. It's full of information about recorded text testing in sign language research and how it can help people understand sign languages and how better to use and develop resources for deaf communities around the world. That's good, right? :)

We appreciate your thoughts and prayers for all the travels that are coming up. We feel like these last few weeks have been a bit of a deep breath before our fall travel schedule. We'll be driving cross country between Longmont and Washington, D.C. from Sept 27th and Oct 15th. We'll be talking with a lot of people along the way and want to be clear, energetic, engaging communicators. After 2 days at home in mid-October, we'll be flying out for Malaysia and will be helping lead a writer's workshop as well as taking place in the ILAC conference as both a learners and sharers - we'll arrive home Nov 13th from those travel stints. We really want to stay healthy throughout this - in every sense of the word - so pray that we'll be making wise choices along the way.