My most excellent father is taking his bride, my sister, and me to England. Given that he's now married to our favorite high school English teacher, who got all three of us hooked on Jane Austen, we're going to do a bit of a tour of JA country -- places she lived, worked, wrote about, and died.  I did a similar trip many years ago with my best friend from high school who wrote her master's thesis on JA, and I'm looking forward to revisiting some of the places we went.

I'm also going to go north on my own and paint for a week in Yorkshire. I fell in love with the North York moors when I was an exchange student in college, and I've been trying to get back ever since I started to seriously paint outdoors when I traveled. I can't wait.

Above is the stack of watercolor blocks I bought for the trip, and with luck I'll have to buy one or two more....

Watch this space for updates from the trip. I'll be posting snapshots of my work as I go along.