Hello everyone!
We are in the middle of April, the last few weeks of our session. We will have this week and one more for weekly goals, and then it will be session goals and wrap-up on the weekend of April 29/30… Just a heads-up, I find the end of the session always kind of sneaks up on me!
Spring is slowly creeping up around here. It is interesting being in a completely new place for a new season, I’m enjoying watching the landscape change slowly. The highlight this week was a yard that is on my drive home. Overnight it turned into a solid blue carpet of tiny flowers – I think they are some sort of starflower? I took pictures and will take them to the garden store for ID so I can buy a huge bag of bulbs they are gorgeous! I am making a list of all the bulbs that seem to do well early in the season here, I’m definitely going to plant as many of them as I can find…
For this week, tell us about three things… In keeping with the spring feeling, tell us about your favourite spring flowers! And because we’re near the end of the session and a bit of encouragement would not go amiss… Also tell us about one nice thing that you are going to do for yourself this coming week, and one nice thing that you are going to do for someone else!
And apologies for the late post – I was going to do it earlier today but both cats were asleep on my lap so I had to finish my book while they purred away in dreamland…
Goals below!
Dame Eleanor Hull
- grade undergrad papers
- further grad prep
- keep working on expanding article to chapter
- sleep, walk, yoga in suitable amounts
- do more gardening if time and energy permit
- go to one more medical appointment
- actually write goals in my Moleskine this week!
Daisy
Do revisions on accepted paper
Finish data processing and make pretty figures for co-authored paper
New data processing
Do budget for summer work
Set exams
Heu mihi
1. Submit a proposal in our
curriculum system to split a 500-level class into a 400 and a 600
2. 10 hours of work on ch. 2, at least
3. Bottle beer
4. Regular routines
JaneB
* do the everyday baseline chores
when they need doing, not when I've run out of stuff (we keep trying)
* do some D&D prep, play D&D (because it's fun)
* read another book, do a little crochet
* do the bare minimum to prepare for teaching after Easter, make progress on
the commercial project if the other person gets back to me, mark a lot more
Julie – is in Italy having a marvelous time! Enjoy!!
Susan – we’re thinking of you!!
Sleeping cats definitely take priority! =^..^=
ReplyDeleteFavourite spring flower... umm... celandines for the wild ones, pheasant's eye narcissi in the garden.
Something nice for me - umm. Probably buy some more socks! more seriously, I am going to make a deliberate effort to stop work when I run out of hours, even if I just watch youtube instead... my brain is so tired right now (this is my "SAD" time of year on top of everything else).
For someone else - well, I plan to send my nibling some "revision treats" (they said they ran out of all their Easter chocolate already). And a dear friend has a holiday planned soon, but also has COVID (and is pretty unwell) - so if they don't get to travel, they will be getting flowers (they love flowers) delivered at least. Otherwise I will just... be doing the normal things. Being as kind and responsible a colleague as I can, doing my job as best I can.
Sometimes these questions really bring home how small, boring and repetitive my life is - well, I'm a single introvert at a really busy time of year, that's pretty much how I need life to be to keep going to work...!
LAST WEEK:
it was Easter, we get a bank holiday day off in the UK, and I took another day, so only two official work days...
* do the everyday baseline chores when they need doing, not when I've run out of stuff (we keep trying) did a little better at that this week...
* do some D&D prep, play D&D (because it's fun) I sorted through a load of maps and put them all into a new folder with those clear pockets, and made a little timeline list of all our job-board adventures & which character did what (& therefore knows what). And did an entirely improvised game with nibling because no-one else was free yesterday & nibling had had a bad morning and "just wanted to pretend to hit some bad things" (and whinge to their aunt about the inequities of school life and the unfairness of parents who brought plain chickkie nuggies back from the shops not dino nuggies when everyone knows studying deserves dino nuggies)
* read another book, do a little crochet not really (have started several, nothing is sticking), no
* do the bare minimum to prepare for teaching after Easter, make progress on the commercial project if the other person gets back to me, mark a lot more yes, yes the project is going well. and yes - I decided that I was going to do 1-2 hours of marking a day when I was nominally off just to reduce the guilt about the marking boycott etc.
THE COMING WEEK:
* do the everyday baseline chores when they need doing, not when I've run out of stuff (we keep trying)
* eat more mindfully
* do some D&D prep, play D&D (because it's fun)
* read another book, do a little crochet
* prepare for teaching next week, make progress on the commercial project, mark one more second year assignment and as many late projects as I can, don't obsess about the whole union thing/marking boycott until it happens.
Don't feel your life is small and boring! The D&D sounds really creative. And sending flowers to a friend is a lovely gesture, as is being a great aunt, by the sounds of it. I hear you on the marking boycott. I'm on leave from next week, so the boycott mostly won't affect me, which I feel both guilty and relieved about, but I'm going to ignore ASOS and mark everything I do have this week anyway.
DeleteA uni friend who I talk to sometimes has a very busy and attractive looking life - constantly at events with her teens, going to concerts and museums, going hiking, being part of a choir herself, on top of a much more exciting and well paid job (with more travel etc.) than mine, and multiple holidays a year - says she feels like her life is just a constant boring treadmill. It's always a challenge when you see your own life from the inside and others' from the outside.
DeleteVery true... we only see parts of other people.
DeleteNever think that small means unimportant though! In our field the smallest things have some of the biggest impact! The things you are doing for nibling and students and colleagues mean more than you can imagine...
All I really want is for my normal ordinary life to go on pretty much as it is, with the concerts and museums as occasional treats, not regular events. But I do agree that small things can be huge; we never know what offhand kindness will make all the difference to a recipient.
DeleteNice to see everyone again! Hope everyone is doing ok. The break was wonderful, although my daughter came back with Covid and I may also have it (tests are negative so far, but have a bit of a runny nose and am more tired than usual). Son is free so far. Keeping fingers crossed, but if we do all have it, at least we got the holiday first!
ReplyDeleteSpring flowers - all of them make me happy. I had to google pheasant's eye narcissi - I never knew they had a different name from other daffodils. Daffodils are cheerful, like bringing sunshine into the house, and I love the variety of tulips. If I have to choose favourites though, then it would have to be hyacinths, for the colour and the scent, and blossom, of any kind. Round here, different trees have blossom at different times. I've never worked out if it's the kind of tree or the position - it always seems very random, but I love knowing that the blossom will last weeks and not be all over and done in a week.
One nice thing for me - I feel I just had two weeks of amazing things! Perhaps just enjoying looking at the photos. But I also need to book a hairdresser's appointment, which is pampering, so nice.
One nice thing for someone else - if I don't get Covid, I will volunteer to run two of my daughter's team mates with her to their football match on Wednesday evening and watch at least some of the game.
This week's goals:
1. Finish marking the essays I didn't manage to mark before Easter - now quite urgent.
2. Mark undergraduate dissertations before marking boycott kicks in (if it does).
3. Read PhD student's chapter
4. Start reading PhD thesis I agreed to examine
5. Self-care: book dentist, doctor and hairdresser.
Fingers crossed for the COVID staying away, but I'm glad you had a great trip!
DeleteIt's nice that different flowers get favourited by different people! :-) I like hyacinths outside, but inside they are often so scented it feels like its coating my mouth, and it isn't a great taste (sort of like parma violets multiplied)! Possibly this is because my mum loves them and so there were always several bowls in our house at this time of year... in my family we like to say that "net curtains skip a generation" - that is, what one generation loves, their children often dislike, and then THEIR children love it again. Grandma loved her net curtains and washed and starched them regularly, my mum thought they were fuddy-duddy dust traps, my sister is very fond of either nets or that sticky stuff that makes your windows fuzzy. She has a large front garden and is well set back from the road, too. Nets are not my thing... but there again, I currently have a shower curtain at my kitchen window at about shoulder height (as high as I could reach across the sink) as a temporary measure because the pavement is directly outside & I haven't gotten around to sorting out a new blind since the windows were done, so house styling is not my thing!
Six more dissertations turned up today (two week extension) and I'm not going to get them all marked before the boycott, but... we try!
So glad the trip was good! Hope the joy lingers through memories and photos, that is such a nice part of going away and coming back...
DeleteGood luck with the return week!
I'm sorry to hear about the Covid, but it's good that it's mild and that you got your holiday! I think we all enjoyed that vicariously!
DeleteTHanks for the thoughts. The last three weeks have completely derailed me, so I'm going to respond to the prompt.
ReplyDeleteI love spring, and (given California) I've just finished cutting the lilac off the bush, since it's lovely bloom is over. My roses are starting to bloom. And of course all the fruit and tree nuts have been blooming over the past two months. (Allergy season starts in February here!)
A nice thing I am doing for myself: this Friday I leave for 12 days walking the Camino along the Portuguese coast. I'm taking a deep breath and going.
I got my mother out of a rehab hospital where she was becoming increasingly disoriented, and got her home. She's got some home health, but is making slow progress. AT THE SAME TIME, the Exec Director of the local symphony, on whose board I sit and am the treasurer, had a stroke, and NO ONE has access to any of our files because they are all on her computer. So I really needed that!
In the rest of my life, I'm basically dealing with any admin stuff that needs dealing with, and will try to do a few hours of work on big collaborative project before I go.
I wish I could publish pictures here, because next week I could post a picture from Portugal, but I don't have the tech savvy to figure that one out!
When I lived in New England, I planted gazillion bulbs -- daffodils, snowdrops, starflowers (love those), tulips. I love lilacs, and somewhat later in spring, peonies. It's just the sense that life is returning!
DeleteYour trip!!!!! So amazing, it will be a wonderful adventure! I cannot wait to hear about it!
DeleteGood that you got your mum home where she is morecomfortable and can recover better. And I love your list of spring blooms, the more the better...
I hope the trip is everything you hope for it, and that your mother continues to improve steadily and comfortably. The symphony board situation sounds intense! I hope that works out well too, and that the executive director makes a full recovery. So stressful for all of you!
DeleteI'm sorry about the late check-in! We were away Sunday-Tuesday for my youngest nephew's wedding, and Wednesday was even longer than it usually is. The wedding was lovely, held at a garden center, so loads of bright spring flowers. I particularly liked the primroses, especially an unusual double one in solid dark red. In general, I love flowering trees: magnolias, ornamental cherries, wild plums, hawthornes. They are so lovely on the tree, and then you get a petal carpet on the ground. A nice thing I'll do for someone else: write a note to Queen Joan and her consort for cooking us dinner. For me: I'm hoping I'll finally get around to making carrot muffins (sort of carrot-cake-ish but not so sweet; between bread and cake).
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- grade undergrad papers: YES (except for 3 that are still late, sigh)
- further grad prep: YES
- keep working on expanding article to chapter: YES though only a little
- sleep, walk, yoga in suitable amounts: MOSTLY
- do more gardening if time and energy permit: NO
- go to one more medical appointment: YES
- actually write goals in my Moleskine this week! YES
The week is mostly over, and thanks to a flight cancellation (thus an extra night at home) I got all this week's class prep done before the trip, so here are some goals for the remaining few days:
- dead language group prep
- finish prepping next grad lecture
- more work on expanding article
- review copy-edited Other Article
- assign points to a worksheet
- make carrot muffins
Big flowering trees are the best! I remember my very first North American spring on a campus covered in pink and white dogwoods... It was glorious! Really brought home why people make a fuss about spring... Where I grew up it was usually two days long, and went from warmish with dry grass and not much for leaves of trees to scorching hot with somewhat dryer grass and green trees over a weekend...
DeleteLove the idea of a wedding in a garden centre, glad you got to have a nice trip for that!
Favourite flowers for Spring have to be daffodils and anything in that family! I just love the splashes of colour. I am planning to buy an industrial quantity of bulbs for planting this Fall, I want a happy yellow and white yard full of them!
ReplyDeleteIn the “wild” my favourites are trout lilies and trilliums. They don’t come up here for ages yet, but I always associate them with the early May weeks of field work and I love searching for them. We also have mayflowers in some of the highlands areas here, they are tiny and delicate and smell amazing, and they don’t flower every year so they are quite a treat to find. We don’t usually get them until late May or early June, so something to look forward to!
Well this week is not going the way I was hoping… All kinds of chaos going on everywhere, lots of changes, not a lot of them are good. Only way out is through, but that is really messing with my concentration… I should have checked in when I posted… Oh well…
For a nice thing for someone else this week I took a good friend some home-made chocolate cake for a rough week. For me I already took a few hours off to go have Monday afternoon wine with a new friend. On Wednesday I had dental surgery and took the rest of the afternoon off after that but that is technically necessary and not exactly nice but whatever…
I am going to skip goals, they will all be the same next week and they will all be urgent, but I can definitely check off marking and exams and final grading so I’m fine with that! I have a lovely student field trip this week with my two favourite colleagues, most of the students have flaked out but a few are still coming so it will be a nice small group. It goes to the real ocean so I will be happy!
Yay ocean, also chocolate cake and wine! I always find it necessary to take the rest of the day off after the dentist. I'm sorry about the chaos and messed-up concentration; I hope you can use the weekend to re-group and make next week better or at least get through so it's better after that.
DeleteWell, I'm writing on Saturday, and I'm on a train where the wifi is spotty, so basically I'll just say this (and then go back and read the comments):
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. Submit a proposal in our curriculum system to split a 500-level class into a 400 and a 600 - NEARLY (it's being voted on by my department, then I can submit it)
2. 10 hours of work on ch. 2, at least - YES?
3. Bottle beer - YES
4. Regular routines - MOSTLY
This week: my son and I went to visit my husband at the seminar where he's a visiting scholar, so I didn't work my main project at all. I did, however, manage to read the proofs of just over half of our edited collection and do an article review on the train, so I'm in good shape with other work!
So this week's goals, only partly after the fact (I'm about to begin a 7-hour train ride in which I'll try to complete the others):
1. Read over proofs of 7/10 essays
2. Article review
3. Draft short (15-minute?) talk for student event
4. Have fun on our trip
Looking forward to actually reading this post and the comments!