When not contemplating dogs, new notebooks, or cheeseburgers, my mind launches into frenzied dreams about next summer, when I (at last!) cross the Atlantic again to spend a solid month in England (and hopefully a week in Ireland!).

I’ll take Art and Humanities at Cambridge University. I think that merits the use of an emoticon.

=]

I’m going to completely clean out my life savings and return absolutely penniless, probably in a good bit of debt, but hopefully it’ll all be worth it.

I really don’t shut up about this trip. It’s a study abroad thing… Since I first found out I’m going (all the Teaching Fellows at UNC Asheville do it), I’ve harbored a big, giddy colony of monarch butterflies in my tummy.

Seriously.

Whenever my life runs amok, I stop, inhale deeply, and in a dramatic internal stage whisper utter:

“CAMBRIDGE!!!”

and immediately my spirits soar.

Ah, it just soothes me to know I’ll be on the wrong side of the road again with a bellyful of little McDonald’s cheeseburgers!