Let’s start with this recent classic Calvin and Hobbes strip recently posted to gocomics.com:

I’m about to board a plane that will take me to a place I’ve never been that’s also a place where there’s a lot of nothing to do.  Which both is and isn’t correct.  After spending a night in San Antonio, I’ll be spending three nights at Laity Lodge, a retreat center deep in the heart of Texas that I’ve heard about for years.  I’ll be off-the-grid and learning from the likes of James K. A. Smith and Alan Jacobs about “attending to God in an Age of Distraction.”  I’ve been looking forward to this for months now.

Next is this recent Frazz comic strip by Jef Mallett, also posted to gocomics.com:

I booked the retreat at the beginning of the second semester, when I realized how tired I was feeling after a busy semester at school.  And so part of what I  hope to do, beyond a healthy chunk of nothing, is to decompress in light of the past year.  Clear the decks, perhaps, get things in order because the new school year is just under a month away for me.  That and I need to make a bigger space for God in my life, not just in the way that He weaves in and out of things, but in seeing Him as the Bigger Context for what’s going on around me.

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Not sure if I’ll be posting here much over the next few days.  I’ve posted at least one thing a day for the last two-and-a-half years.  And while it’s fun for me, it might also be nice to step away for a moment or two.  I’ll probably post some pictures to the Flickr sidebar, of course, since I’m traveling.  But I hope to do a lot of writing by hand over the next few days, too.  That and lots of walking and talking and, here and there, catching up with family and friends.