Smooth Sailing

I haven't forgotten about you, dear blog. Let the first song off the iPod today be my apology for having so neglected you (not to mention the post title).

While I was away at the conference, I did something to my hand. It left two of the fingers on my left hand close to numb, and that's made typing more than a little bit of a pain. The caps-lock key is often much too close to the letter "a."

That said, things have been crazy. I've been working to drum up funding for an international conference, and I went through the first year review process required here (even though, I've only been around a term). That went well, though I'm still feeling a bit bothered by the student evals. But what are you going to do? I also put in for course releases for next year and received them, so as things go work-wise, things are smelling like roses.

When the finger feels better, I'll try to write more. Onward, towards Spring Break.

Stuff I've Been Up To

Lordy, it's almost Thanksgiving, which I love. That also means the term is almost over. I also love that.

It's been maddening - two family members have been juggling hospital stays: one in, the other out. Of course, my family doesn't really speak well to each other, so I've juggled more than a bit of that drama. It hasn't quite died down: pulmonary embolisms are nightmares and they don't get dealt with quickly.

Since last I wrote, I've tilted multiple times with the school's curriculum committee and come out with an approved course. I've also been to another conference where I found one of the secret joys of Twitter: watching sycophants scoop quotes from their leader like pearls. I've been to dinners with senior faculty members, filed my expense reports, asked for more money for a conference next term (and been approved), been evaluated, responded to the evaluation, and written yet another biography.

And I am proud to report that I think I'm getting the hang of it. Now if I could just manage to get some actual research done when I wasn't away at a conference.

Walking to a meeting, my department chair said to me something to the effect of : "They're going to ask you to be department chair, one day." I laughed and was then advised "Of course, tell them no."

The Six Word Memoir

After the trip and the plague (which has settled down to a nagging cough, particularly when I laugh), I'm catching up on e-mails, grading, and - of course - blogs. And I found I'd been tagged for exactly the sort of meme I love by Dr. Crazy and by Adjunct Whore. Apologies if I've missed other references - I'm still catching up.

I think I may have mentioned that one of my favorite conversational fallbacks is to listen for odd phrases that somehow - usually in an off-handed or back-handed way - say something about the person who said them and suggest that whatever the phrase was should be their autobiography title (one of my favorites of all time was "Dirty, Sticky, and Loving on Me" for my dear friend Trixie). And I know I've at least referenced the haiku summer with T. and N. where we sent each other haiku post cards about our days over the course of the summer.

I also made a group of students who complained about the length of an assignment write it as a haiku instead. And maybe it explains why I like this and this so much.

So a meme that asks me to do something similar - in this case, write a six word memoir - sounds like loads of fun (and a nice way to take a break from the mountain of student e-mails I've been avoiding in favor of March Madness).

Here are the guidelines (I won't call them rules since I'm going to break one of them):

1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4 Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

So, without further adieu, here's my attempt(s) at a six word memoir (because, honestly, this is too much fun to do just one).:

Looking backwards, he stumbled into it.

or (if I want to be literary), I'll borrow (and butcher) a quote I love by Naguib Mahfouz:

Under watchful stars, he set sail.

or

Watching closely, the joke was revealing.

Now for the part where I violate the meme guidelines. I'm not going to tag anyone, but I do hope a lot of you will do it. And if you don't have a blog, feel free to take a stab at it in the comments here.

Dark was the night, cold was the ground

Okay, it wasn't as bad as all of that.

But it has been a freakin' long week. Meetings over candidates, over the direction of the department (and you know what? no more "men don't ask for directions" crap ever 'cause I feel like my department, currently only me, spends more time asking about direction than any place on Earth has the right to), and today, our annual departmental service event - which I am currently hiding from for just a bit. This week - this month - has been a march, a litany of tedium and obligation.

In the meantime, I've edited three articles for the journal, written its introduction, finished Plath, started Alexie's young adult book, and begun refreshing on "Battlestar Galactica" before it returns shortly. The end of March has been my deadline to decide whether I want to start exploring ways off this ship we call academia.

I'm looking forward to taking tomorrow and doing nothing at all, even if it will be, technically, the first day Friday of the term that I don't have any kind of meeting on the day that was supposed to be spent working on my book.