Now that Drew is married off, VBS is almost over, and I have a new computer that works, I can finally get back to dissertating. Yes, my 2019 MacBook Pro bit the dust, so I had to replace it. But this new 2026 MacBook Pro M5 sizzles, and I’m loving it so far. (Two weeks ago, our HP printer that we had since 2016 bit the dust, too. The new one is an HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 3301. That’s a wonderful tool as well, and it produces the sharpest copies we’ve ever made in our home office.)

The main challenge in setting up the new laptop was that I did it from scratch. Not wanting to transfer any bloatware or corruption via the migration assistant, I just took the time needed to reinstall all my apps and reset all my settings. Glad that’s over! The other challenge is that I lost some of my old music. Not sure why, but I’ve had that problem before. Apple Music/iTunes is dreadful when it comes to merging old libraries into a new one, and if I had a massive collection, I would bark about it. Thankfully, I only lost a handful of albums. Alas, they were some of my Enya favorites, so I’ll be replacing those tracks, going all the way back to the beginning.

The main challenge in my current dissertation chapter is having to learn enough Akkadian to be functional. (Last summer it was Sumerian.) I now know enough to be dangerous. It’s a cuneiform language, which is quite interesting to study and observe in action. I never realized how useful it would be, though, to learn cognate languages to help nail down some Hebrew words that don’t have a lot of currency in the First Testament. So, that makes a total of 18 languages beyond English that now that appear in this tome. Yeah, it’s kind of crazy, but I love my topic, and I’m still having a blast researching it.

Enjoy life while I go back down the mine shaft for a while. Hopefully I’ll find some gold nuggets to share with everyone in due course. Be blessed! 💙 💙 💙