vacation

We'll be heading off on vacation next week to Williamsburg, VA. I'm ready for it; I don't know if it's the change in weather or what, but it's getting harder to focus on work at the moment. I probably won't post anything while we're gone; I guess they have high-speed in the business center, but otherwise online access will be pretty limited. That might not be such a bad thing either.

I have my reading lined up:

• Orientalism, by Edward Said--I've been wanting to read it for quite some time, but something else was always more pressing.
• The Way of a Pilgrim, by an anonymous 19th-c. Russian--a classic that I just realized I could get from the public library.
• St. Silouan the Athonite, by Archm. Sophrony--ordered it from Amazon a while back, took a long time to arrive and then to make its way to the top of the stack.

And of course I'll have my usual Scripture and prayer books, if all that isn't enough.

I'm also planning to take the second disc (assuming it arrives from Netflix) of The Idiot--the Russian miniseries rendition that came out in the past few years. I was assigned to read Crime and Punishment over the summer for my senior English class in high school, and found it to be one of the worst experiences of my life. After I got interested in Orthodoxy, I decided I should give Dostoevsky another chance and read The Brothers Karamazov. That went much better, so I started The Possessed but broke it off after the first few chapters because other stuff was more pressing. I heard good things about this series and started the first disc with no prior knowledge about the book. It's interesting, if not quite my usual taste in movies.

I had hoped to visit a Greek parish in Newport News (the closest Orthodox church I could find, about 25 min. away), but my parents will be with us for the day on Sunday. (They live in SC right now, so we thought this might be a bit shorter trip for them to make than to come all the way up to see us at home.) I seem to be the only one who's interested in attending church at all, and I certainly understand wanting to spend the limited time we have together doing something more interactive. Besides, I didn't figure I'd push too hard to drag everyone to a service that's only half in English. No services during the week, either.

Nevertheless, it should be relaxing and enjoyable (at least whenever Ian's sleeping :-) I'll report back when I return.