I am back in Postdoc City --- damn I hate red-eye flights! and waiting super long times in the airport too keyed up to actually do anything productive while waiting for those flights! and not being able to sleep on said flights because they are up high in the air and are scary! and I was in the middle seat of the middle section! --- and have now recovered enough that can do useful things. For example:
- scrubbed (really scrubbed!) down my kitchen completely
- cleaned the living room/eating area
- cleaned the downstairs bathroom
- gone on a massive grocery run and got the cat food/litter etc.
- continued to work on a syllabus
- ate goat cheese
Actually, I am still doing that last one. It is nice. I spent a crapload at the grocery store but one of the things I did at the end of the last semester was eat all my "emergency pantry" food, so that I could replace it. And even inside the foil pouches, year-old granola bars taste pretty stale. But now I have a nice full pantry and am ready in case this freezing rain and snow actually hits this week --- or indeed, pretty much ever. (Oh, I still have a bunch of veggies to prep. Remind me to get to those.)
So over break I had this most marvelous fancy meal, and was introduced to pan-seared brussles sprouts with bacon. Wow, that was good! So now I have bacon and brussels sprouts in my fridge ready for me to experiment with. The goat cheese was more of a whim --- although I had a lovely watercress and endive salad with goat cheese crumbles and pomegranate seeds which probably inspired the longing glances toward the specialty cheese section at the back of the store. And that reminds me of my favorite Trader Joe's salad and now I am sad and miss Trader Joes. Sigh.
One drawback of not being here for a month but having the cats here is that the place really really needs cleaning afterwards. I found several dried piles of cat barf that I had to deal with, to say nothing of the general hair and mustiness everywhere. I still have to get to the whole upstairs and I want to do a deep cleaning before school starts again in case I don't really have time to do more than touch-ups during all the teaching madness. And of course I have a lot of work on my syllabi still --- haven't even touched the comp. The Fruit Studies class which was supposedly good and just had to get switched from a T/TH to M/W/F is taking a lot more time than I expected. Which means, of course, that I have probably completely underestimated how long it will take me to work up that damn comp research syllabus.
And to make me even more annoyed, I stopped by campus to deposit some checks and ask some questions about my paycheck, and the student center was closed!!! Presumably with the credit union closed inside it too. Grr. I will have to wait, because I need to talk to a live person.
So I still need to:
- proof/print/copy Fruit Studies syllabus
- update half the Fruit assignments and rewrite the damn Study Questions (thank you, three days a week instead of two! argh.)
- scan and upload the rest of the fruity reading goodness
- drop off stuff at library/pick up other stuff/check ILLs/go to the bank
- figure out the second half of my comp syllabus (??? Eh. I'm at a loss.)
- finish comp syllabus and all homework/ assignment instructions
- update (as in check page #s and edit) Stripy syllabus (and proof and copy etc)
- update comp and stripey websites
- make first day stuff for comp and stripey
- clean the upstairs bathroom (and catbox) my bedroom, and study
- wash massive laundry pile
- pester Dr Does Everything about Floyd
- collapse in exhaustion
Dang. I tired myself out writing that.
I had funny and interesting things to tell you earlier and wanted to say some more about my winter break, but I held off until I couldn't do any more syllabus work and now I'm too tired to think of what I was thinking. It just may continue like this for a while, sorry.
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