Welcome to my blog titled “Five Things” where you can expect just that - five random musings or reflections from the previous week or so. For a photo gallery of our life on the road, our pets, and miscellaneous things I find interesting, you can also follow me on Instagram @tabithalord.

So here are this week’s five things…

1. Dallas Fan Expo is right around the corner! In fact, I’m sorting through my table swag as we speak. Since we’ve been on the road, I haven’t attended nearly as many in-person book singings or events as I have in years’ past, so I’m really looking forward to hanging out with my fellow science fiction and fantasy writer pals, meeting new fans, and otherwise soaking up the atmosphere unique to Comic Cons. I’ll be moderating a panel on Saturday at 11 am titled, “A Hero, an Antihero, and a Villain Walk into a Bar,’ where we’ll have a lively discussion on character development. If you’re in the Dallas area June 7-9, come say hello!

2. School started last week! Our first class mostly focused on reviewing the course syllabus, meeting classmates, and navigating our way around the technology we’ll be using for the following few years. Nonetheless, it’s happening! I’m really back in school, and I love it already!

3. You may have noticed I’ve stopped posting our travel schedule at the end of each blog. Lately, we’ve been taking shorter hops as we trek back east, and we’ve also had to be a little more flexible with our plans. It got to be too complicated and time consuming to update the schedule here, however, I can share our general plan along with a few of our longer stops over the coming months. We’re here in Columbus, Ohio until June 14th. We hop around New England for a bit, then spend July 2-10 in Portland, ME before setting up camp in Rhode Island for the rest of the summer. I’ll be flying out to residency in Colorado from RI at the end of July. Looks like a fun summer!

4. For the first time in our travels, I had a small melt-down when we pulled into a site. It had been raining, our plans had to change last minute due to some necessary repair work on the RV, and I’d been driving more than not for a few consecutive days. Exhaustion won out and I had a good cry in the middle of setting up. I’m pleased to report, the cry was cathartic and the feeling passed quickly.

5. We’ve seen and done some amazing things while on the road. We’ve explored National Parks, visited small towns and big cities, muddied up our Jeep off-roading, and so much more. Missing our Rhode Island community has been one of the only difficult things about our nomadic life, but we’ve also been able to spend time with family and friends around the country that we might not have had a chance to see otherwise. In Kansas City we watched a Royals game with a long time work friend, and I got to hang out with writers I’d met years ago at my very first World Con. In Wisconsin, we barbecued with friends who we’d previously known only virtually. In Ohio, we’ve been spending time with family, and Daisy dog is even having a sleep-over at a cousin’s house due to some complicated work travel for Ray and me. We’re making the most of our time, for sure, even as we miss our beloved RI community.