Grumph. Maybe I need some Red Bull...

Working hard yesterday, I decided I needed a snack from two of the most important food groups: salt and caffeine. Then when I was in the snack food part of the student center I was unable to pick something ---- unfortunately, I looked at the ingredient list of some candies, and was squicked out that every clear candy is basically high-fructose corn syrup. I ingest way too much of that as it is through soda. (I gave up regular candy years ago. Dark chocolate, however, is not candy, but the Elixir of Life.) I noticed that everyone else in line with me was buying Rockstar and Red Bull, so it must be midterm time. That stuff tastes like industrial cough syrup though. I can't imagine actually using it.

I had so much to do yesterday. (And even more today, because I didn't get my stuff done.) I'm freaking out about my chapter and want to get a draft of it in this Friday, except when I counted my subsections, even if I finished one subsection a day it that would be past Friday. Yesterday I got a lot done unbolding problems on one section, but I didn't finish them all. Grumph. Grah. Maybe turn it in on Tuesday?

I worked about three hours on it and was quite proud of myself, since I usually can't stretch it that long. (I have a limited number of moments to successfully write transitions and topic sentences per day.) This was early in the morning. Then I read for class and got most of it done. Then I looked at the stack of papers I needed to grade if I was going to be on track for handing them back.

Then I looked at the stack of papers I needed to grade if I was going to be on track for handing them back.

Then I looked aw, fuckit. I wonder how the primary returns are shaping up? And I clicked over and read blogs too.

Then I had student meetings and sent students emails and had a TA meeting which ran late into the night.

So all of this is to say that I finally put together everyone's comments about how hard it is to do research while on a heavy teaching load ... something which I've always said I understood but thought, "but what if you just crammed a little block of writing early in the morning? I'm sure grading takes different brain muscles anyway." Doesn't matter. Sitting there and writing takes all my willpower and then there's none left to do something else unpleasant. I can see how if you have lots of classes, the effort of forcing yourself to keep up on the grading takes priority. And I didn't even have to write the lecture for yesterday, just listen to it.

I need to:

• finish the last of this week's reading
• prep for section
• grade 10 (?) essays
• get stuff ready for a paper norming session
• do the stuff I said I'd do about the midterm
• help set up a guest lecture
• clean the huge pile of filthy dishes in the kitchen
• oh yeah, either finish revising that chapter subsection or jump into another one

All I want to do is sleep cause I didn't sleep well last night for some reason. Today all I feel is tired ---- except for a nagging start of a sore throat. Uh oh. I'm hoping that the reason I didn't sleep last night is not that I'm fighting off something ... but that is a warning sign of impending sickness for me. Who has time to be sick? Well, at least that Red Bull stuff really coats your throat.