bio: March 2006 Archives

CCCC marks a turning point in the semester for me. Now that my travel is done, as well as some of the major programmatic thingamajigs (search committee, graduate admissions) that I worked to complete before I went to Chicago, it's time to turn my attention to weightier matters:

1. Technically, this should be item zero, since I'm going to take advantage of the excellent advice at 43 Folders to reduce my inbox to a smoldering heap of nothingness. The inbox crested over 1000 today, although the 500+ messages sitting in my webmail folder brought it into quadruple digits long ago. So: after a little work this afternoon, we have gone from 1000 messages down to 621. Look for updates as the week progresses.

2. My hair is too long and the weather's warming up. Hello, clippers!

3. Spring cleaning. My apartment may be the single most accurate analogy for my inbox that I can think of--I'm too scared to count, but there are lots of small, stupid organizing, packing, shelving, dusting, and cleaning things I can do to straighten out my living space. 30 minutes a day until I'm satisfied.

4. Get back into an exercise routine. Long overdue. Nuff said.

5. And finally, most importantly, daily forays into the revision process on my book. Until I'm done. April is the month of me. So forgive me ahead of time for light blogging, slow correspondence, other obligations, etc. Everyone and everything else is competing for #2 on my to-do list. Seriously.

That is all.

1. Puddles on the sidewalks, made conscious for me primarily by the fact that the sole of my right shoe is cracked and thus soaked my right sock for much of the day.

2. Faculty, staff, and students in the Writing Program huddled around the radio in the main office today, living and dying with each shot in today's overtime thriller.

3. The ghost town that the SU campus becomes, two full days before spring break actually begins (one colleague reported 5 of 20 students showing up for a noon-ish class).

4. Sinus headaches that ebb and flow with the earth's tides, signalling a change in local atmospheric pressure (could be worse--I used to get 4-day nosebleeds).

and most relevantly,

5. Difficulty sleeping, as opening the window is no longer sufficient to counteract the unadjustable, 80 degree steam heat that literally toasts me (to the delight of moisturizer manufacturers) every winter.

I'm only mildly tempted by the prospect of listing out all of the things I have left to do before I can leave for my annual combination of spring break and CCCC with a clear conscience. Presumably I'll have to do it eventually, but for the moment, I need a day or two to recalibrate the instruments. It's been a long last several months for me, involving a great deal more coordination and event planning than I'm used to doing, and as a result, I'm feeling pretty drained, along multiple dimensions.

Perhaps some of them will air in this space, as I get a handle on them, but the handling is part of what daunts me. Right now, blogging in any serious fashion appeals to me much like sleep appeals when I'm exhausted beyond the ability to sleep, if that makes sense.

So expect it to be both intermittent and potentially light here for the next couple of weeks. I'll certainly get back to bangin out entries once I roll into Chicago, but in the interim? We'll see.