Wow ... time flies when you're having fun. I took a few weeks off. Not to go to some desert island, not to go climbing mountains, or to discover new museums, but instead to spend some time at home and take care of some dental work that was way overdue. Now "vacation time" is over and it is back to work. This is orientation week at Jacobs University and we will be welcoming the new students. Vuvuzelas are far away indeed and there are lots of exciting things to come in the next few weeks, also for my own research, including the new eCUTE project that I will at some point also write ...

So summer was also a quiet time for this blog, but of course it is never a quiet time in my head when it comes to emotions. I used the time to plan a bit what to write about in the next few weeks. I think I will definitely discuss a bit more two topics that are inspired by my summer in the dentist chair: 1) The importance of the smile - as a social signal and 2) how difficult it is to disentangle emotion and emotion regulation. Let me tell you, there was a lot of emotion on the chair and off the chair and there was a lot of regulation.