Spent  yesterday visiting wineries in northern Virginia with seminary friends. I'd planned to spend the day at a local coffee shop reading, but I think I made the right choice: riding around hilly Loudon County in the snow, tasting the Virginia varietals (lots of viogniers and petit verdots) with my friends Andrew and Greg seemed the absolute right thing before delving back into school full force on Monday. We did four different tastings at three of the dozens and dozens of wineries in the area (who knew there were 150 Virginia wineries??), plus a wine flight at lunch beforehand, so it was a full day of swirling and sniffing (and one that ended with me being a little loopy). Andrew and Greg, Californians well-practiced in wine tasting, were great tutors for my first winery experience.

And this brings up the issue of balance. I think I was so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of reading last semester that I rarely did much exploring around the area. This is not to say that I was always reading; I wasn't. I was just a little scared to separate myself too much from the books that needed to be read, if that makes sense. So, rather than take some time on the weekend to go into DC and visit a museum, I would sit in a coffee shop, or in the library or in my room with the books open but waste a lot of time on facebook, for example. This semester, I hope to take better advantage of all that's around me, to put down the work for a while and take real breaks.

This is the plan anyway. We'll see how it goes after we begin again on Monday. (Happily, on Monday we start on Paul!)