April 5, 2024

Caught Up?

Man, what a semester. I’ve been in the weeds for weeks now, but I finally might be emerging from the swamp. Because of an arbitrary “campus presence” order that seems to only apply to the School of Arts and Letters, this is the first semester that I have had to be on campus everyday. I never realized just how much time is wasted going to campus to teach one class each day, Monday through Thursday. I used to get so much more done being on campus only two days. I’m not sure who is supposed to benefit by increasing my campus presence. I’m certainly getting much less done. Just all a part of EduCorp, I guess.

My writing, exercise, and general health have suffered the most. I’m probably the heaviest I’ve been since 2011, and all I want to do is sleep and drink bourbon. Healthy, I know.

Max wants beer!

I also have manuscript proofing to blame for my lack of time: I finished the page-layout proof of Lipton’s yesterday and helped get the initial copyediting of the Review volume 15 finished—with the generous help of some colleagues in the Norman Mailer Society. Both of these manuscripts will need final proofing, but at least the initial rounds are done.

We’ve all been sick countless times since Max started daycare in January. In fact, Autumn still has something she picked up from our youngest. And speaking of Max: his first birthday is coming up in a coupe of weeks. Wow. Hanging out with Max at night is one of the high points of my life right now.

I did manage to get away for a few days at the end of spring break. I rode down to Inverness to meet Tom at an AirBnB I found. The whole trip was great, but over so quickly. It was good to hang out, and I think we’re going to try to do it more often. The weather was perfect for the BMW R 1200 GS, both riding down and back home.

I had to force myself to write this crappy post. I am obviously rusty, but I’m trying to claw my way back into posting. We’ll see how it goes. At least I’m feeling a bit more caught up as we head into the final days of the semester.