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. My first semester of school starts next month! It’s the summer semester, which includes residency, and I’ve registered for my classes, paid my tuition bill, and booked my travel plans. Grad school has been a long time coming, and I can’t wait to get started!

2. I had to get a new laptop last week. The screen on my old one wasn’t behaving and the battery wouldn’t hold a full charge, all signs of imminent failure. I didn’t want to wait until the last minute, but never in my experience purchasing and setting up new laptops has the process ever gone smoothly. Usually, I get home thinking I’ve asked the Genius Bar guy all my questions, but then it turns out my office suite is outdated and my spreadsheets look like gibberish, or my calendar events aren’t showing up, or my contacts won’t synch, or a whole bunch of files are hiding somewhere and I can’t find them, or every single application is logged out. I may sound a bit jaded, but after hours in the store, I’ve never come home and had a smooth transition. Well, I am pleased to report, I approached this mission with a very detailed list of ALL POSSIBLE PROBLEMS, and now everything works. I’m almost afraid to say it aloud for fear the laptop gremlins will hear, but it's true. All is well in my tech world, at least for now.

3. We’re leaving Kansas City today, and it was definitely a fun stay! We caught a Royals game with a good friend of ours, and when Ray had to travel for work, I convinced my bestie to get a last minute plane ticket and come explore KC with me. Per usual, we had a great time. We ate some delish barbecue, found a great yoga studio, and binge watched Netflix. A writer friend of mine lives here, and he took us to his favorite spot, a really cool Irish pub with live music. We also crashed his weekly writer’s group gathering, after which we ended up closing down another bar. Kansas City is the site of the very first World Con I ever attended, so I have a soft spot for this city, and it didn’t disappoint!

4. A not so fun thing about the midwest – tornadoes. They’ve been touching down all around us. We left Nebraska just a day before a big one hit a few miles from where we’d been staying, and we’re heading into more unsettled weather. In these places, we have our animal carriers out and ready, we’ve located the storm shelter, and we keep the stuff we need for a quick exit all in one place. Hopefully, we won’t actually have to make a run for it in the middle of the night with four cats and a dog, but you never know!

5. If you are in the Dallas area, I’ll be signing books all weekend at Dallas Fan Expo June 7-9 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. I’ll post my full schedule soon, and maybe I’ll see you there!

“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J.R.R. Tolkien