Spring?

At any rate, the start of the “spring” semester. We’re also getting unseasonal warmth with rain instead of the snow and sub-freezing temperatures that are more usual in these parts at this time of year. This makes me feel strangely adrift in time and place. But at least I don’t feel like I need to stay indoors in my iguana cage. Though Sir John dislikes cloudy rainy weather, I’m okay with it. That is, I can stand cold if it’s bright, and I can stand gloomy if it’s warm(ish); what really gets me down is the combination of dark and cold.

I just hope the plants realize they’d better hang on for a few months before putting out buds, because I’m sure we’ll get real winter eventually.

At any rate, it’s a new year, and not only that, we’re well into it already. Halfway through January! I’m back from a delightful week in the company of Queen Joan and Lady Maud, spent in the land of bougainvillea and rosemary hedges. We visited the sites, we cooked together, we did some vintage shopping (just as we did in college), we worked a jigsaw puzzle (and had to give up on a second one). We survived what the locals saw as a fearsome rainstorm (in the midwest, we call that sort of rain “summer”). Unfortunately, on a previous stage of Queen Joan’s royal progress, she caught a cold, which she generously shared with her attendant ladies; fortunately, it was no worse ailment, and I had warning enough to go get zinc lozenges and start on prevention / amelioration in good time, so I’m only rather snuffly. But I’m pretty damned tired of being sick, and I hope that I can be healthier in the rest of the coming year.

I am not up to making resolutions or even picking a theme for the year. I am in the mode of putting one foot in front of the other, and my main hope is that things can just keep keeping on much as they are right now. Life is pretty good, as I have indicated in my posts about retirement, and I would like to keep enjoying this pleasant state of affairs.

Anyway, hello blogosphere! I’m sorry I haven’t been commenting much lately, though I do read. Happy belated birthday to Ganching, and I look forward to hearing about more of Carolbaby‘s creative explorations; I hope MLA went well for those, like Undine, who attended. May all the academics have good semesters, with delightful hard-working students and plenty of writing time!

Wearing my grumpy boots

Lately I never seem to take them off.

Unfortunately, in the week since I got back from a trip, I haven’t been able to re-set to this time zone. I’ve gone in the wrong direction and seem to be living (well, sleeping, anyway) in Hawaii. This disrupts all my routines, and probably has a lot to do with the grumpy miasma around here.

Fortunately classes are over and I don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time, these days.

People who don’t accelerate quickly when they get on a highway on-ramp infuriate me. Yesterday I was behind a mini-van moseying along at 30 . . . 35 . . . 40 . . . while I was hollering “There are TWO TRUCKS BEARING DOWN ON US AT 65 MPH!!!! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHERE TO FIND YOUR ACCELERATOR???“

Fortunately the trucks were able to shift left so this all ended happily. The mini-van ended up going much faster than I did. All I want is to get to the speed limit and stay there.

Filling out LRU’s travel-reimbursement forms is a task I dread with approximately the force of tax-filing misery. All the efforts to get the right info in the right spot, to find the correct receipts, to check on exchange rates if I was out of the country, the worry that I’ll do something wrong and the form will come back to me with incomprehensible requests to fix errors that I wouldn’t have made in the first place if I knew what the hell the request meant . . . It’s almost enough to make me decide just to pay for conference travel myself.

Fortunately, Sir John understands this feeling (after years of similar filing for corporate travel). I would be even grumpier if I lived with someone who cared about such minutiae (unless said person were willing to do the forms for me).

A few more random observations

• I’m reading two sets of archives at the same time (Dr Medusa’s and KulturFluff, and how I regret Frenchie Foo having disappeared her whole blog). I should sync them up, because one is starting the summer and the other is writing about Thanksgiving, and it’s making my head spin.
• That’s okay because it makes me go back to work.
• Students. Oy. I was assigned a class at the eleventh hour, so made sure that for the first few weeks, all readings were available online, since there was no way the bookstore would get books in for the first week. But this week we’re starting to read Actual Real Books. I showed everyone the books in the first week of classes, reminded them periodically about buying books, have posted announcements on the electronic course thingy, etc. And now students are “confused” and don’t know what they’re supposed to read.
• Like heu mihi, I’m reading Malory. In this case, re-reading. There is some serious timeline-slippage in the Book of Tristram, which I’m only now picking up on. Hmmmmm.
• Is February over yet? I’m not sure I can take another week of this weather. I appreciate the lengthening days; they’re great. But I have actually started wishing for snow (yes, I, the desert creature who spends the winter imagining she’s an iguana) in preference to any more freezing rain. I hate freezing rain. (I do love the meteorologists’ abbreviation fzdz for freezing drizzle, however.)
• Maybe I should have done these bullets as a Fortunately/Unfortunately series, but I’m too lazy and the items are too random.

All the tea in China

Fortunately, road work is slacking off and I got home in tolerably good time last night.

Unfortunately, I messed around for awhile before feeding the cats and heading to the bathtub.

Fortunately, my lovely husband likes to talk to me when he gets home.

Unfortunately, chatting meant it was very late before I picked up the book I wanted to finish (Foundryside).

Fortunately, I enjoyed it, despite what I thought was a bit of hand-waving at several key points (aka Thing That Has to Happen just Happens, OK?).

Unfortunately, staying up to read meant it was midnight before I went to bed.

Fortunately, I fell asleep quickly.

Unfortunately, when Sir John came to bed, he snored in every position he tried. Also I was hot and a bit congested. Further, Basement Cat thought he should get up around 5:30.

Fortunately, we have a large house and a comfortable couch, so I could try to go back to sleep in a quiet space.

Unfortunately, our new next-door neighbors’ bathroom window faces the window of our quiet-room-with-couch, and they turned on their FIVE THOUSAND WATT bathroom light at 6:20 a.m., at which point I gave up on sleeping any more.

Fortunately, I have my choice of lots of flavors of tea around here, and have now sucked down three cups of Russian Caravan.

Unfortunately, that may interfere with sleep tonight.

Fortunately, I have managed to get at least a few tasks done this morning, and will keep trying to work on the list. If my brain gives out, I can go dig out more oregano roots.

What is all that green stuff?

Fortunately, there is sunlight and something approaching warmth.

Unfortunately, that means the creeping bellflower is coming back.

Fortunately (at least for my back), the returning bellflower is in the graveled bit around the garage where I feel justified in using weedkiller rather than painstakingly digging it out.

Unfortunately, I haven’t even got around to that small task.

Fortunately, I do have this afternoon free, because Sir John is going out (which I had forgotten all about).

Unfortunately, I have lots of worky-work that needs to get done rather soon, and I may be doing that rather than gardening.

Fortunately, I’m still feeling very calm about work.

Unfortunately, I think I might need to feel rather more urgency about it, so that I get on with it instead of blogging and making extra cups of tea and all those other not-working activities.

Fortunately, I probably have good blog-fodder in a series of e-mails between my brothers.

Unfortunately (for any remaining readers) I can’t face going through them to pull out the good bits.

Fortunately for my brothers.

Unfortunately, I think I have run out of excuses.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I have only two more teaching days. Not much prep left, and not even a huge amount of grading, but various other deadlines and ancillary projects (like “buy new laptop”) are now looming large.

 

Not entirely unfortunate

Unfortunately, I did not get nearly enough sleep.

Fortunately, waking up early meant I got to campus in plenty of time to make copies for my first class, a process that (unfortunately) was more complicated than it used to be, thanks to unfortunate cost-cutting measures imposed by the Powers That Be.

Unfortunately, no deus ex machina prevented today’s main event.

Fortunately, I was teaching during it and was able to spend the morning communing with Great Minds from the past and thinking about topics I love, instead of being subjected to the news. I may spend a lot of time living far in the past, over the next few years, unless that deus shows up at some point.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t prepared my documents for annual evaluations. I spent the afternoon grading, instead, which might seem unfortunate except for the alternatives. I avoided the news successfully and felt like a wonderfully efficient and dedicated professor.

Fortunately, I have the weekend to do the damned evil documents. “Eval,” that should read, but thank you, autocorrect, that is a fortuitous correction.

Unfortunately, I have a considerable number of Life Stuff tasks that I would like to take care of this weekend, without facing up to what I have achieved in recent years. I have done those things I ought not to have done, and left undone those things I ought to have done, and there is no health in me—could I just write that in place of my scholarship report?

Fortunately, I have one truly awesome comment from a student evaluation of my teaching, which I can report on the teaching form: one of the most discerning and intelligent students it has ever been my pleasure to teach compared me to Minerva McGonagall. That made my day, week, and month. A small thing, but a definite consolation.

Friday’s fortunately/unfortunately narration

This is really yesterday’s post, but I was traveling then.

Fortunately, I got to see the dawn. I do this fairly frequently, wherever I am, but it was especially pretty, with a pink glow over the mountains, reflected in the bay.

Unfortunately, it was my last day of that view.

Fortunately, I had time for one more walk on the beach, where I picked up a few pieces of pink quartz and white beach glass to remind me of the place.

Unfortunately, going down to the beach meant toiling up the hill one more time, afterwards.

Fortunately, I was able to recover with brunch on the balcony, watching bright yellow birds (goldfinches?) and bright blue ones (no idea) flashing through the trees, with the occasional dancing orange butterfly adding even more color interest.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of food left over.

Fortunately, that meant the feral cats on the corner got a feast.

Unfortunately, the taxi came earlier than we expected, and I was running up and down stairs communicating with the driver and letting in the rental agent, while Queen Joan was still getting dressed, and I still had lots of things to throw in my suitcase.

Fortunately, my Spanish was adequate to the task, the driver was patient, and everything got done.

Unfortunately, when we were in the taxi and jouncing to the airport, I couldn’t find my passport.

Fortunately, once we got to the airport and I could get to my suitcase, it was in the first place I looked, scooped up along with other to-be-packed items at the last minute.

Unfortunately, that meant I had to get on a plane and leave the tropical paradise.

Fortunately, I was looking forward to seeing Sir John and our cats, and I had a whole book to read that I’d saved for the trip home.

Unfortunately, there was an 80 degree drop in temperature between the place/time I left and the one where I arrived.

Fortunately, Sir John brought my down coat to meet me. I won’t say I was happier to see it than I was to see him, but I would have refused to leave the airport without it.

Unfortunately, in spite of all our added insulation, new windows, new curtains on the old windows, the replaced front door, and whatever other energy-related improvements I’m forgetting, our house still is fairly chilly, especially in the front room downstairs. I hate living in an old house, in this climate.

Fortunately, I was very successful in sticking to my complicated diet while I was gone (Queen Joan helped a lot, and taught me to cook some things I’d never tried before), so I’m feeling very well and tolerably energetic. If I can keep managing the diet, then I hope to have enough energy to sort out this house (file, give away, pack up, throw out, as necessary) and get it on the market this spring. We’ll see what happens, since of course I will also be teaching and I do not handle multiple tasks, or switching among them, especially well.

Unfortunately, my grad class for the spring (on a very cool and most excellent topic, which I was looking forward to teaching) was cancelled due to low enrollment, as I learned when I checked e-mail at the tropical airport.

Fortunately, oh very fortunately, I have been granted a research release in its place.

 

 

Friday, fortunately/unfortunately

Fortunately I could sleep till I woke up.

Unfortunately, that was later than I hoped I’d be up.

Fortunately, I have finished writing the final exam I will give next week.

Unfortunately, I have still not finished the R&R I hoped to be done with last month.

Fortunately, now I have some time to work on it.

Unfortunately, if I work on the R&R, I will not get the undergrad papers graded today. Or maybe that’s a “fortunately.”

Fortunately, I can also grade papers tomorrow or Monday.

Unfortunately, I may have to go to campus Monday for one single meeting.

Fortunately, since it is now noon and no agenda has been posted, there is a good chance that that meeting may not happen.

Unfortunately, needing to finish writing the final exam, combined with late rising, means I didn’t go to the yoga class I hoped to attend this morning.

Fortunately, the same teacher gives another class tomorrow.