Three Things

(warning: dull list-making post follows)



First of all, thanks to everyone who offered good wishes in the comments on the last post. I've deleted it now, because I've decided (rather belatedly) that there are some things that perhaps I should be keeping out of the blog, even though I took care to obscure the issues and particulars involved (so don't worry if you missed it, because there was absolutely no substance there). But that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the support (I especially liked Alice's assertion that I have a "tribe" -- way cool).**

In the meantime, I'm putting one foot in front of the other, and taking up again a suggestion that my friend The Wonder Chimp (tm) brought up way back when: the idea of doing three things every day. Just three. So here are mine for today:

1. Complete syllabus for senior seminar and get reading list out to students. (This is not as dire as it sounds -- our semester doesn't begin for another week and a half, so y'all can be very, very envious.) [done -- now I just have to order those books for myself!]

2. Get out announcement of annual competition for Outside Project. This is one of those things that is the work of ten minutes, yet manages to get put off for ten weeks. ::sigh:: [also done, at least my end of it: there are some technical things that are out of my control right now.]

3. Go to exercise class, and push myself a bit, rather than just lifting the easy weight. [Done! Hooray! We'll have to see how I feel tomorrow -- there were walking lunges involved.]

Small, achievable goals. I'll amend this post with an update tonight. In the meantime, I hope you all have wonderful, productive days.

[note to self: three things tomorrow...]


**(I seem to have an addiction to parentheses. Em-dashes are a problem, too. I just can't seem to stop interrupting myself.)

The Depths of My Ignorance

There's nothing quite like adding in entries of interesting books from the catalogs picked up at a conference book display to make you realize just how little one actually knows.

Life isn't long enough for this many books. ((makes 18,967th resolution to spend less time dinking around on teh internets...))

"Historians TV"

Seriously?

Can you imagine the conversation in the lobby of the Hilton?

HOTEL GUEST #1: Wow, so many people with badges! What are they here for?

HOTEL GUEST #2: I asked one of them: apparently, they're professional historians, here for their annual convention.

HG1: Really? How fascinating! You know, I've always wondered what it would be like to be a historian. I wonder what they get up to all day... Hey! I know! Let's go back to the hotel room, turn on "Historians TV", and check it out for ourselves!

Honestly, I can't imagine what else it might be for. God knows that, after days long of the AHA, the last thing that any of us wants to do is watch more historians on TV.

AHA report

Well, not so much a report as a brief check-in:

[incredibly detailed post deleted, replaced with the following bullet points]

Friday morning: Got up at a time my body was telling me was Far Too Early; ate my way across New York with fellow blogger Clio's Disciple.

Friday afternoon/evening: Panel and plenary session. Both very inspirational for Shiny New Project.

Saturday morning: Got up at a time my body was telling me was Even Earlier Than Far Too Early; ate $30 yogurt-and-muffin breakfast (seriously); book display (half of it, anyway); lots of meetings with lots of people (including a certain Damned Medievalist and also occasional commenter Susan). Also ran coffee to my department's search committee (who admitted to being "a little slap-happy at this point").

By the time I got back from a couple of very good receptions, I was far too tired to go out to dinner, and so I ended up being completely lame and eating a salad in my room.

In all, it's been very encouraging, and I got encouraging bits on the current book MS, Shiny New Project, and even a co-edited volume project. There will be more details on all these in the future, but I don't want to burden this post.

And now, I'm going to call ID, then go to bed early. Tomorrow, I'm going to utterly ignore the conference and go to the Met. Hope everyone out there is having a good New Year so far, and I'll check back in with you when I'm back in Sunshine City!

"Let it All Hang Out," indeed.

From the Wikipedia entry on Evergreen State College,** whose motto, Omnia Extares, is a bastard Latin translation of "let it all hang out":

"In 2008 the college became one of about 30 college and universities in the country to create a gender neutered option in its campus housing."

Yipes!


**Yours Truly almost matriculated at Evergreen at age 18. The story of why I did not has nothing to do with faux Latin, nor with the fighting Geoducks (pronounced "gooey-duck") themselves. Nor were they neutering students at the time, as far as I know.

New Semester's Resolutions

I have a No Good, Very Busy Semester coming up.

Here's the skinny: I'm not back on duty until January 26th, but once it hits, it's going to be a killer.

1. I am teaching four classes: one senior seminar (with major papers & portfolios), one graduate seminar (underenrolled, so not sure what will happen there), one survey course (old lectures, but new readings), and one upper-division course (for which I'd like to revisit the first 1/3 of the lectures). None of these are new preps, but I'm going to be substantially tinkering with all of them.
2. I'm going to two conferences, one in April, and the other in May. No papers to present, but I'll be chairing panels at both. The main hassle here is the travel.
3. With any luck, I'll be doing pre-publication revisions on the book -- though I still haven't heard from reader #2.
4. Trying to write a conference paper that I hope will be the foundation of a chapter for Shiny New Project. Conference is not until October, but I want it off and running. In any case, I need to get at least 2,500 words (conference paper), and would like to get 8,000 (mini-chapter).
5. Organizing a plan of action for a research trip this summer -- even doing some preliminary reading.
6. Possibly working on edited volume.

I've decided I need to use the next three and a half weeks to get some momentum built up. Desk organized, new lectures and writing project underway. Organization has never been my strong suit, nor has consistency. But that's got to change, if I want to make it through this semester without going utterly batshit insane.

So, the New Semester's Resolutions are as follows:

1. Write every day. And do it first. If this means dragging my lazy ass out of bed at what I would normally consider an ungodly hour, then so be it. 500 words (bearing in mind that they don't have to be good words) should be a nice, attainable goal. I can allow myself exceptions on travel days, though.
2. Take a picture every day. I really like my hobby, but I've gone off the rails here, and I'm in danger of losing that "whole person" thing that I'd been trying to cultivate.
3. Move more. Take a walk, get on the bike, whatever. I need this now, more than ever. I do have time -- if I have time to sit around reading stuff online, I can spare half an hour for this.
4. Read a book a week. I've spent so long focused on The Book that I've developed a bit of tunnel vision. If I could read a book a week per course in grad school and still get my writing churned out while teaching, I can do it now.
   

That's it. Just four. Still, it seems ambitious and idealistic. Wish me luck...

The Break So Far

At 2 p.m. on December 24th, I finished my grading.

If this seems rather late to be grading, please note that our finals week ended on December 19th. So, ID's visit coincided with me giving finals and grading large stacks of bluebooks. Fortunately, he gets along fine without needing to be entertained -- something I still have yet to really internalize.

Anyway, the late start means that we go on for a while -- in fact, I don't have to be back into the classroom until January 26th. So, here are my fascinating plans:

Dec. 25-30: Post-semester, post-holiday, post-visit cleaning/organizing of home & office (about half-done, made less pleasant by the twin facts that our campus has shut off all heat in the buildings until January 3rd in order to save money, and the on-campus coffee emporia are temporarily shuttered for the same reason).

Jan 1-5: AHA. First trip to NYC for me. I wish I had more money to spend, both in the city, and at the book display.

Jan 9-13: visit to ID in... well, I have yet to come up with a good pseudonym for the town where ID is now employed. Hopefully I'll have one by my first post from there on the 9th.

In between all that, I want to get started on researching a new paper (a fragment of Shiny New Project), because I've semi-demi committed to giving a conference paper in October, and I need to know that the paper is actually there before I do, so I don't have another unfortunate conference incident (see here, item #3). I've also been pulling up books to rewrite about 1/3 of my lectures for Favorite Course, because I'm woefully behind on the literature.

Upcoming: the Seasonal Swag Report, and New Semester's Resolutions!