I've enjoyed the reminiscences and recipes shared so far! Thank you all. I hope any travellers have had/are having good trips. Contingent Cassandra, I hope you're doing well.
This week's discussion question is about meal plans: do you plan for the week? And if so, how far in advance? That is, do you make a meal plan and buy things for it, or do you go to the store (or farmers' market), see what looks good, and plan from there? Or no plan? And how do your meal planning methods map onto your approach to planning work?
JaneB, next Sunday I'm traveling to a conference, so if you could handle the check-in, that would be great!
Let us know how you did with last week's goals, and we'll cheer you on!
Daisy (held over)
Catch up from conference absence
Extensive journal tasks
Read and edit thesis chapters
Read and edit three student project proposals
Write outline of paper from conference talk
Dame Eleanor Hull
* celebrate birthday and anniversary
* 8 hours work toward first/most important conference paper
* 2 hours planning summer TA work
* gym x 4, yoga x 5
* do some poking at one course proposal
heu mihi
1. Finish and submit abstract (due Friday)
2. Work through copy-edited version of Front Matter, Intro, Chapter 1, Chapter 2--aiming for one document a day for four days
3. Read prospectus (and prepare for Thursday defense)
4. Start Italian novel
5. Maybe?? begin storage room clear-out
6. Exercise
7. Put feedback on essay into one place so that I can easily access it later
JaneB
1) building better habits: three gentle movement sessions, one creative thing with the hands
2) Environment: get caught up on chores, contact decluttering person
3) blocks: make a list of teaching-related blocks for this summer
4) writing: make a list of all the writing projects and where they are on 1st June. Do (much postponed) task for the Wednesday meeting this week.
5) grad students: read things, meetings, prep questions . . .
Julie
1. Mark three dissertations.
2. Mark one exam script that slipped through the net.
3. Reference for former PhD student
4. Read book and write review.
5. Book London train tickets.
6. June birthdays: niece, MIL, FIL.
7. Finish patio furniture
8. Pay in cheques.
9. Self-care: healthy eating, exercise, sleep.
Susan
1. Finish most of last work of Famous Author:
-- Request permissions
--- Read through one last time
(There are a few minor references I will do when I get home, but my hope is that by the middle of the day Wednesday, I can turn my attention to other stuff.
2. Re-read book I'm supposed to write 3000 words on by June 1. (Goal: June 6)
3. Return all books to library stacks, scan stuff that will be useful to scan
4. Pack up my books and get them approved to leave the library
5. Pack up apartment
6. Keep having a good time
7. Try to get some exercise!
With only two of us, one retired and one an academic, it's not as if we need to plan meals in detail. My husband does the shopping, so I decide what dish I'm going to cook for him, he gets the ingredients, I make it and he reheats portions all week. I only ever eat the same things, with minor variations, like substituting spinach for chard. I think this automation may be a factor in what seems like a decreasing ability to plan my work week! I'm not getting a lot of practice in making and executing plans. Hmm. . . I do put a lot of attention toward planning food when I'm traveling.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
* celebrate birthday and anniversary. YES (drank too much champagne for the first, so didn't sleep till 5 a.m. on the second, celebrations thus more on the day after the birthday, but whatever).
* 8 hours work toward first/most important conference paper. Let's say YES in spirit: it was more like 5 hours, but I put in time on the paper on four days, and made progress.
* 2 hours planning summer TA work. NO
* gym x 4, yoga x 5: YES
* do some poking at one course proposal: YES
I just realized I accidentally cut off one goal; I hope I haven't done this to anyone else:
* make appointments for physical and eye exam. YES physical, NO eye exam; ALSO made mammogram appointment and requested refills on prescriptions.
New goals:
* finish first/most important conference paper
* Plan summer TA work to at least first approximation
* gym x 4, yoga x 5
* do some poking at one course proposal
* make appointment for eye exam
* at least 3 hours on garden
* work on organizing either guest room or my study
Glad you enjoyed the birthday and anniversary celebrations. Too much champagne is fine once in a while!
ReplyDeleteIt was fun at the time!
DeleteIsn't that always the way?
DeleteI am definitely a meal planner. While I like the idea of just wandering round a market looking to see what is fresh etc, I don't have that kind of market near enough to me and I'm also very bad at remembering recipes/improvising. So if I were to buy some fancy cut of meat, say, I'd then get home and realise I was missing half the ingredients I needed for the recipe.
ReplyDeleteI plan meals over the weekend and shop Monday mornings at the supermarket, plus a smaller Friday or Saturday shop at our local refills place where I collect a fresh milk order. Once every two months or so I drive to the farm shop to stock up and get a fish delivery because it's better than the supermarket.
My approach to work is similar in that without a plan, I tend to be less productive, or miss stuff that has a deadline attached. I'm quite bad at predicting time involved, however, so my attempts at monthly plans are always wildly optimistic and I'm bad at choosing what to do when projects are longer-term.
Last week:
1. Mark three dissertations. - YES
2. Mark one exam script that slipped through the net. - YES
3. Reference for former PhD student - YES
4. Read book and write review. - NO (final chapter still to read)
5. Book London train tickets. - ONE TRIP
6. June birthdays: niece, MIL, FIL. - YES (fingers crossed arrives on time), YES. YES
7. Finish patio furniture - NO (turns out to be faulty, grrr)
8. Pay in cheques. - YES
9. Self-care: healthy eating, exercise, sleep. - YES. YES, SOME
This week:
1. Finish book and write review
2. Chase workshop participants, finalise programme ahead of organisers' meeting on Thursday
3. Read a PhD thesis in my research area.
4. Boring work admin: do mandatory online training, book Windows update, book train travel.
5. Boring home admin: cancel a subscription, chase patio furniture company, change son's orthodontist appointment, pack for weekend away.
6. Self-care: continue healthy eating (at least until weekend), exercise, sleep, journal, read.
Lots of YES! Sorry to hear about the faulty patio furniture; that is so annoying, and the sort of thing that leads me, at least, to putting off doing things b/c of fearing such problems cropping up and turning what should be a small task into a big one. Estimating time, yep, that's a big problem for me, as well! It sounds like you have a routine down for shopping and meal planning, which is a great help.
DeleteI can't do time estimates well - I used to feel very incompetent, but at least now I know I have ADHD I feel a bit less to blame for being bad at time, although it's still a constant ongoing tussle...
DeleteHi!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed last week's memories and food!
For June I'm officially throwing in the towel and taking a break from goals. I am away for the next two weeks on a super-stressful family-related trip to a place I really do not want to go with people that I would rather not see. I will attempt to enjoy the parts that will be fun (place has very little internet but a lot of wine so that is a plus), and enjoy the time with the subset of wonderful people I have not seen in a very long time.
Happy June, I hope it is fun and has enough restful and restorative spring things to be satisfying.
Best wishes for the trip! It sounds draining, but I hope you'll be able to make the best of it, that the time with wonderful people is even better than you dare to hope, and that the other people behave themselves better than you expect. Enjoy the wine!
DeleteOh, gosh, good luck and enjoy the wine! Feel free to report in if that would be enjoyable for you!
DeleteGood luck! We'll miss you, but see you on the other side. Enjoy the wine and hopefully other things.
DeleteThat does not sound like a great trip for this time of the summer... I hope you can find a lot of glimmers of good things (and miraculously delicious wine)
DeleteI'm so sorry. To go to a nice place with people you don't like...
DeleteSometimes a break from goals is the most realistic goal! In my in person version of this group, when it ran pre-COVID, one colleague set their goal to "write the names of my three projects on my whiteboard" in an especially busy week (& did it 5 minutes before the check in...)...
DeleteHa, I hardly plan at all! My husband does most of the meal planning and cooking. He plans pretty fully. When I do cook, I plan ahead, because I need to know it's coming. Tomorrow I'll make a spinach frittata to serve with tomato soup (out of the freezer--last year's prep) and *maybe* homemade bread, if I feel like it.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. Finish and submit abstract (due Friday) - YES
2. Work through copy-edited version of Front Matter, Intro, Chapter 1, Chapter 2--aiming for one document a day for four days - YES--chapter 1 was THE WORST in terms of Latin citations and tracking down obscure editions--I thought my notes were pretty clean, but good lord.
3. Read prospectus (and prepare for Thursday defense) - YES, had to
4. Start Italian novel - YES: vol. 2 of L'Amica geniale
5. Maybe?? begin storage room clear-out - YES! A frenzy of Buy Nothing posts and took some stuff to Goodwill. There's still a huge pile, but most of it needs to wait for my kid to go through it this summer.
6. Exercise - YES
7. Put feedback on essay into one place so that I can easily access it later - YES, this was easy
This week:
1. Italian novel to p. 98
2. Finish copy-edits
3. Kid's birthday prep
4. See some friends
5. Go for a walk in the woods
Yay, what a lot of YES! You're inspiring! This week sounds like you'll have a lot of fun stuff.
DeleteWow, that is impressive progress. And I love spinach frittata.
DeleteIt's astonishing how final footnote checking finds us out. But YAY!!!
DeleteI'm late! And no, I don't really plan - I pretty much just top up the same groups of ingredients every week I shop along with some "safe" prepared foods (e.g. felafels, frozen vegetarian patties) and prepare variants on a limited list of oven-tray or one pot meals (I am struggling with washing up and kitchen stuff at the moment, since I was ill last year there's always some part of domestic basics that are teetering on the brink of disaster, just part of the joys of being a burnt out stressed out middle aged neurodivergent!). I do plan for packed food for work each week, again picking from a fairly limited set of options with a lot of variants within them (the variety of vegetables I can eat and herbs/spices available in the world allows for a lot of options) - there are so many kinds of spanish omelette or salad/fruit-and-cheese-and-nuts snack mix to explore. There's only me and Shoutypants to consider, and Shoutypants gets mixed boxes of wet cat food sachets - his views on which ones are delicious (inhaled and the bowl licked), acceptable (over half eaten when put down, the rest finished off over the next hour or so), annoying (licks off any jelly or gravy when presented, eats a bit of the meat over the next hour or so) or pathetic (sneered at, leads to some pathetic performative eating of dull kibble with breaks to stare at me disapprovingly) varies week to week, making selecting which box to buy each week a bit more exciting.
ReplyDeleteWell, last week went quite well, but this week is going really poorly so far - mostly because of the Mental Weather which is "hey, marks are IN! We don't want to do ANYTHING EVER AGAIN", not helped by foot pain (possibly plantar fasciitis. Sigh.)
LAST WEEK'S GOALS
1) building better habits: three gentle movement sessions, one creative thing with the hands no because hurty foot was hurty (I did stretch a bit but not enough to properly count), sort of (knitted during a meeting)
2) Environment: get caught up on chores, contact decluttering person no, did that this Monday so... not within last week
3) blocks: make a list of teaching-related blocks for this summer no. Brain does Not Want To
4) writing: make a list of all the writing projects and where they are on 1st June. Do (much postponed) task for the Wednesday meeting this week. yes, yes
5) grad students: read things, meetings, prep questions yes, yes and yes. Student seems to be very well prepared for the defense which happens tomorrow...
THIS WEEK'S GOALS:
1) building better habits: one creative thing with the hands, keep reading for pleasure
1b) pay contact lens replacement bill, book GP appointment re Hurty Foot which is Not Going Away
2) Environment: get caught up on chores, make booking to see decluttering person
3) blocks: make a list of teaching-related blocks for this summer
4) writing: do at least one hour on each of two different writing projects (in addition to meetings/emails with people about projects).
5) grad students: meetings, hope defense goes really well
6) be kind to myself because some weeks are just grey and low energy and that is just HOW IT GOES.
Oh, I haven't had plantar fasciitis, but people I know who have say it is really painful. I hope it eases soon or that GP can help. And yes, this is quite a weird week weather and energy-wise. But grad students seem to thrive under your direction, so take credit for that.
DeleteOh, Shoutypants! Give us a clue; we only want to make you happy.
DeleteI have just ordered a very large pack of the kind of wet food ShoutyPants has been LOVING for the last week. This morning he ate half and wandered off looking disappointed. He likes to keep me on my toes...
DeleteI am not a meal planner. I have some general ideas, but living alone I get into ruts. In recent years I've tried to make something every week, and I usually manage. I go to our local (small) farmer's market on Saturday morning, and sometimes get inspired there. But I have a bunch of fallback meals (veggie burgers and salad anyone?) that vary a little between summer and winter. Also, the grocery store is on my way home from work, so I can easily top up as needed.
ReplyDeleteChecking in on Friday, just so I've done it :)
1. Finish most of last work of Famous Author:
-- Request permissions
--- Read through one last time
(There are a few minor references I will do when I get home, but my hope is that by the middle of the day Wednesday, I can turn my attention to other stuff. YES
2. Re-read book I'm supposed to write 3000 words on by June 1. (Goal: June 6) NO
3. Return all books to library stacks, scan stuff that will be useful to scan YES
4. Pack up my books and get them approved to leave the library
5. Pack up apartment YES
6. Keep having a good time YES
7. Try to get some exercise! NOT REALLY
A pretty good week, but when I got home I discovered how much my tenants had reorganized my house so I am still (slowly) unpacking and getting it back to the way *I* like it.
Goals for this week (pretend I wrote these on Monday):
1. Finish everything for book and share file on Monday
2. Write review essay
3. Unpack, get house organized
4. All the appointments
5. Find new home insurance
6. Get exercise
I hope you get to reclaim your house and its order! When my parents were able to travel and visited regularly, I had to reorganise my kitchen after every visit - my Mum is shorter than me and very flexible, whereas I am stiff and have dodgy knees and hips, so I like the most used things to be UP and she likes them to be DOWN....
Delete