2025 Session 1, Week 4

 This week's prompt is cake! It's inspired partly by Susan's lemon drizzle cake last week and partly by the fact that one of my tasks for tomorrow is to bake a cake for my son's birthday. I like baking, but find it stressful doing it for special occasions, as I am not a naturally gifted baker. Tomorrow's cake, thankfully, will be covered with chocolate ganache sufficient to hide almost any defect.

So in the spirit of thinking about treats, what is your favourite cake, particularly when you need a pick-me-up? Do you have a go-to cake to bake for others, or a favourite cake that someone else makes for you? Feel free to share recipes! Mine to eat would be lemon drizzle. My neighbour gave me a wonderful one recently, which I think was the Mary Berry recipe. The best cake I have ever baked for someone else was honey and almond, for my father's birthday, but I've only done it once and now am under pressure in case it isn't as good next time!

Last week's goals:

Dame Eleanor

- keep working on revisions to a chapter
- do some scholarly reading
- process at least 4 grad applications
- finish syllabus
- gym x4, swim x1, yoga x5
- buy more marmelade*

JaneB

1) SELF-CARE (recovery and self-kindness)
* habits: something creative, D&D, read a novel plus three chapters of crusades book, intentional movement 15 minutes x 3 days, a social thing (a long thank you/catching up letter to an old friend)
* Specific things - make sure I eat at least 5 portions of at least three types of fruit/veg a day and don't dive into the bread-and-butter-and-biscuits beige comfort food pit too deeply
2) HOUSE-LIFE CARE
* 75% or more of the weekly minimal chores, tidy up the upstairs landing
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
* marking - all on time third year essays, all extension-having second year essays, first year labs, first year essay one.
* go through coming semester and make teaching preparation plan
* stay in my lane!
* prepare all of next week's teaching and the ViLE for shared module
* stretch goal: go through full draft for MRes student and comment lightly.
4) RESEARCH
* add accepted chapter to university tracking system
* postpone everything else to future weeks

Julie

1. Coursework moderation.
2. Teaching prep: keep minimal
3. Finish full draft of article (due end of January, and next week is busy).
4. Plan January birthdays: mother, son, nephew, brother (in date order).
5. Plan Easter travel.

Daisy

Dust of student thesis tasks and finish at least two major bits
Exercise 4 times
Visiting speaker stuff
Meeting with co-author about paper plans
One section of new/old paper

Heu mihi

1. Preliminary review of research grant applications, even though I now think the process is bizarre
2. Start whipping article into shape
3. Read 1/2 of book that I need to read for article
4. Edit and finalize syllabus
5. Journal catch-up
6. 35 pages of Italian novel

Susan

1. Fix references, spellings and formatting
2. Set up spreadsheet for illustrations
3. Start working on maps
4. Keep up with exercise: 3 days strength, 3 days walking or yoga
5. Keep doing morning prayer
6. Sleep, eating
7. Finish cleaning balcony
8. Make sure I do something nice at the weekend.

Contingent Cassandra

--Set up site to hold study leave project documents; create tracking spreadsheet for documents; add at least one document to site.
--Finish & send email to local-organization leaders
--Answer long-neglected email (I’ll probably see the author at an event on Saturday, so that’s an incentive)
--Figure out a relatively quick way to figure out whether fellowship application makes sense (I think probably not, at least this year, but it might be worth an hour or two’s investigation of the catalog of the relevant archive); write application and solicit letter of support if so
--If time, check out institute possibilities and schedule application-writing if relevant (this could wait for a week or two)
--Keep moving: lift weights 3x and walk and/or climb stairs regularly as weather allows.
--Continue trying to figure out workable daily/weekly routines, starting with establishing an end of day/bedtime routine.
-- Pack up & mail packages (mixture of returns & gifts for family members I didn’t see over Christmas)