Big Bites

We were supposed to go to Philadelphia for our birthdays this year. Yep, supposed to. The husband was going to present a paper at a Political Philosophy conference there, and I was going to tag along since I'd never seen the city before. A perk of grad school, I'm told, is a conference in a cool city. Unfortunately, the research didn't come together for the husband's paper, so he decided to withdraw it from the conference. Withdrawing the paper also meant withdrawing our travel plans from the docket. (Practical note: We were even going to fly there for free, thanks to me complaining on Twitter about a delay on a Southwest Airlines flight. I recommend you follow airlines/hotels you frequent and be vocal, but not rude, about your experiences. I got some serious Southwest dollars for my comments.)

A little back story: both my and my husband's birthdays are around Halloween. When I was a child, fall celebrations started popping up in September. The St. Peter's Oktoberfest carnival was the big event in my hometown, followed by a harvest fest at school, my birthday, then Halloween. I was convinced at a young age that the world celebrated me for a good 6 weeks. My parents called it Amanda's Fall Festival. And the sentiment has stuck. I adore the fall, and Halloween, and pumpkins, and (except in Louisiana) cooler weather.

This year was supposed to be a new kind of Amanda's Fall Festival since I got to travel on our birthdays to a cool new city. Now, we must come up with a Plan B. The trouble is, I'm just not feeling it this year. The husband bit off more than he could chew with this conference paper whose focus was a little outside his research area, and I think I've bit off more than I can chew with the idea of big plans for birthdays, pumpkin carving, and Halloween. My sights were set on a weekend of travel and a weekend prior filled with events. Now all the plans are kind of up-in-the-air, and I just don't feel like sorting them out.


The husband always says his birthday comes at exactly the right time: the day after mine to stop the insanity of Amanda's Fall Festival. This year, I think he might be right.