Still here!

I'm sorry I've been such a bad blogger of late. I have been busy, but I don't think that is the only reason I haven't been blogging. I haven't been reading blogs either- my Google Reader now has over 200 unread, so I doubt that I will actually get to read everything. I was glued to the TV on Tuesday night watching the election results, but most nights I am crashing out pretty early. You see, I'm teaching at 8:00 three days a week, so my schedule has shifted to sleeping earlier. The semester is going along smoothly so far. I am giving my first exam to the Big Freshman class tomorrow, so we'll see if I made it too easy or not. We got the almost final word on tenure last week- the Provost and President gave their seals of approval. As of July 1, I will be Associate Professor with tenure. I had been told this was practically a formality, but I just learned that someone in another department (also in another college) was denied by the Provost! I don't really understand how someone can pass through their department, college, and a university committee and then have one person decide they don't get it. I'm glad I didn't know that before or I would have been freaking out! That really sucks.

I am also busy chairing a search committee. We are about to invite people for interview, so it's pretty exciting. I got to call a few of them to ask for missing letters and they sounded very excited to hear from me. And I understand why! You send out applications and just jump every time the phone rings that they are going to call you. It's very interesting being on this side of it- I've been on search committees before, but not chaired one, so this is my first chance to do those sorts of things. I am also working on another proposal- just a small teaching-related one. I have no idea how competitive it is, but we're sending it in next week. I have so much work to do on The Grant stuff. I have two RAs, but some of the work is too complicated for them and I have to do it. And I have no time. And I keep putting it off. I have two work-at-home days per week and that work keeps getting pushed aside for other things- getting ready for classes, working on that proposal, search committee meetings at our other campus... I am presenting at two conference in April and need to use some of the results... I should be OK, but would feel better if things were out of my hands and passed on to the RAs!

So, I have no real excuse for the blogging silence. I wanted to do a Scientiae post, but missed that one, too. I hope you are all having good semesters (or quarters) out there!