RBOC: Back to school (& blogging) edition

• Today is move-in day at Small College Town U, so I am staying away from campus (as I've done all week, anyway!) D and I usually go shopping on move-in day, but since her tummy is not feeling quite right, we are going tomorrow instead- plus it's supposed to rain off and on all day.
• I feel pretty ready for classes, but need to get research organized. I am VERY excited and optimistic about my new RA for this year. I had met her back in February before offering her the position and thought she would be good. I saw her again this week and am still feeling good about my choice. I only wish I had more than one year of funding left on this grant. She can switch to a teaching assistantship next year if needed (unless I magically get some more money before then). The worst part is that I essentially wasted last year's money on the useless RA (at least s/he is out of my hair now!)
• So I mentioned classes- I've got three of them this semester for the first time since 2006. I've had course releases the last two years (and my first two years here, too) and really enjoyed that! Now I am back to my full load of 3-2 and my 3-course semester HAS to be taught over all five days. I've got labs for my Big Freshmen Course and I can't squeeze everything into just MWF- unless I wanted to teach one of my classes as a once-a-week class. None of my classes are really suited for that, so I am stuck with every day. I will be done at noon every day (other than the day I have all those labs), so that's some consolation.
• D starts next Tuesday and she is also pretty much ready. We don't know which of her friends will be in her class this year- just the ones that won't be! She is not doing girl scouts this year, because our troop leader quit- mainly because of a mother of a girl NOT in our troop making things difficult- such a bummer. She is still doing riding lessons and piano. She did a children's theater workshop last week and LOVED it, so I'll be on the look out for more of those activities for her. I can't believe she'll be in 4th grade (and turning 10 in less than two months!)
• I am hoping to really get myself in gear in this year. I spent way too much time being lazy after tenure, then wallowing in self-pity after the miscarriage (it's been 16 months now) and need to just get back to my life. I am exercising regularly again, and am thinking I might go back on weight watchers (AFTER my birthday in a couple of weeks). I need to lose weight and I don't think exercise alone is going to do it. I think it should fit in well with my plans to be more disciplined about work and everything else. Ugh- I hate dieting, though...
• I would like to be blogging more frequently, too- I'm sure I'll have plenty of things to blog about with my teaching load this semester!

I need a list!

Ugh. Every summer it happens. I go on vacation and when I get back, I have a really hard time getting back in gear. I now have five weeks until classes start (boo hoo) and nothing that really has to get done, but lots of things that should get done before my crazy semester* starts. We're going on another vacation trip right before classes start, so everything needs to be done in the next three weeks, really. OK, here's a list:

• Finish ms review that is due in two days (it will likely be late)
• Get things organized for fall classes (syllabi, reading packets, etc)
• Finish work with summer intern, or rather tie up loose ends before s/he goes home and ideally start writing a paper (I'm not terribly optimistic on this one, but we'll see)
• Have a few planning meetings with collaborators about proposal writing. One of these meetings is to review a declined proposal and consider our options. The other is a new collaboration and should be fun and exciting- especially since it could get me back into the area of research I was in for my graduate work (yay!)
• Attend another planning meeting in Capitol City next week. New venue should make it even more exciting (I won't be going to Big University campus this time).

I guess that's it. Something notably absent here is writing. Ugh. I don't have anything new to write beside the summer intern work (and that may be a bit premature still). I still have a paper that I put on the back burner an embarrassingly long time ago and meant to dig out and finish up. Maybe I can still do it. We'll see... 

Today, I'm off to another late start since I am still in the vicious cycle that is keeping me on West Coast time. I have to go to campus to meet my student this afternoon, so I will likely just do more organizing and planning (and cleaning up my messy desk) this morning before I go in. I hope I can still salvage these last few weeks!

*Teaching five days a week

Am I glad that's over.

Happy new year and goodbye to 2008- you won't be missed. I was talking with H over breakfast this morning, and we agreed that there wasn't much good about 2008. We were both officially granted tenure and promotion (a VERY good thing), but the deal was really done in 2007- this year was just a formality. 

Thankfully, nothing really awful happened to us, either- although having a miscarriage was pretty awful, I have to say. It shattered what we thought our family was to become and I think it made us even more persistent to keep trying. The failures of our attempts have taken a toll on us too, though and we've decided to throw in the towel for good. This decision has freed me to give away all of D's remaining baby stuff and I've had some fun the last few days picking out a few select things to send to my sister (who had a baby in May) and a good friend (who had a baby in October). We are giving some furniture and things to a friend's daughter and her husband who are due next summer and the rest is going to be donated. I've been reluctant the last year to really get rid of things with so much uncertainty. What if I get pregnant and we need those things? Now that we are done and getting ready to finish the basement, we really need to get things out of there. It feels kind of liberating and I really hated all the uncertainty, so it feels good to actually make a decision. It's not that I don't feel sad at all- I still do sometimes. But I find myself wishing more that we'd had another baby years ago, so that they would have been close in age. Even if we had succeeded in having a baby now, the age gap would have defined their relationship differently than siblings who are only a few years apart. 

I am not going to make any grand resolutions for 2009, but I do want to focus on a couple things:

• health- I have really let exercise slide over the last year and used lots of things to continue my lack of exercise: being pregnant, having a miscarriage, my skin surgery, my neck problems, etc. I will probably write a post over at the Active Academic about this, too. I also want to eat a more vegan diet. I already eat 99% vegan at home, but when we go out, I falter, or when there is frozen pizza around, I also eat it. 
• work- I need to get my act together and get out of the post-tenure, post-miscarriage slump I've been in. I am trying to have a positive attitude about things, so I hope that helps.

I know it's purely psychological to see a new year as a time make changes and say goodbye to unpleasant things from the past, but it works for me! I'll just leave you with one of the perks of living in Small College Town:

The bags come off next Monday!

Whoops! Where did the week go?

I haven't posted since Monday? I'm not sure how that happened...

This week was supposed to be an organizational week for the summer. H starts teaching summer classes next week and D is still in school (although she's home sick today), so I am trying to have a productive beginning to the summer. That way, I won't feel like such a loser when I end up doing no work in July. I have a lot of things to do this summer, including finally submitting a paper that should have been submitted LAST summer, writing a new paper for a special issue (due in July), plus grant work and supervising a visiting undergrad researcher. I am also going to a BIG conference in August, so I need to prepare the poster for that at some point. Because I have so many things to do, I want to make a plan for actually getting them done. For now, we are assuming the international travel is off- we still haven't gotten H's ceremony date, so we can't really plan for that right now. 

Another goal I have for the summer is to get healthy. I've really been eating like crap for the past month and it just can't go on. I've really used all kinds of things as excuses for not eating well: the miscarriage, end of the semester, getting tenure, etc., etc... So next Monday- it all stops.

Today, I am going to be making lists and plans for the summer. I was supposed to be on a field trip with D's class today, but since she is home sick, we both miss it. I was kind of hoping for it to be canceled, because I'm tired and D was up too late last night. My sister-in-law lost her apartment in a fire two nights ago and lost EVERYTHING. We went to take her to dinner after D's piano lesson, then bought her some clothes and things to get through the next few days. It looks like she found another apartment, so we'll probably buy her some furniture and stuff at IKEA this weekend. 

Today is another planning day that I didn't expect to have, so I am going to get busy with my list-making and planning. I hope I can avoid squandering my summer this year!! 

No more slacking off

I've always preferred to overload the front part of my week, so that I can feel like the worst is over by mid-week. This semester is no exception. Monday afternoon has labs for my freshmen class, which I don't teach myself, but feel that I should be around and available to the students and my TA. Last week, there was no lab (after-exam break), the week before I was on doctor-ordered "rest", so this was the first Monday in a while that I actually put in my long day.  It wasn't bad, either. I went to lunch with a few friends from work- we took a nice walk across campus in the sunny spring weather. I also got some research stuff done this afternoon and made some progress with my RA-replacement issue (we have a current applicant that may be a good fit). When I got home, I wasn't even that tired. Instead of collapsing on the couch, I did some cleaning before dinner! I just got finished playing a game with D and am now watching MSNBC with H. I'm feeling really good to have the end of the semester in sight- even though I have lots of grading to do before then. I hope to hit the ground running to get a couple of papers out this summer. I have one paper that should have gone out last summer and another new one that I need to write for a special issue. I say this every summer, but I REALLY don't want to squander this summer away. I don't have tenure pressure any more, but hope to be productive. 

So how much more time until your summer begins (what ever it may be)??? What plans do you have?