And it is August… The days are distinctly shorter than in June, the trees are a deeper green, the delicate pinks and whites of early flowers have been replaced by hardier flowers in shades of yellow, orange, and purple. The berry harvests at all the farm markets are bigger every day, and the late summer feels alternately like it is still stretching ahead, and simultaneously like it is evaporating like mist on a sunny morning… So, in the spirit of celebrating harvests and colour, two of my absolute favourite things about this time of year which are cheering me up considerably at the moment…
First, the wild blueberries are mostly ripe! These were from a work spot today. We sat in the berry patch and ate low bush blueberries for a good half-hour before doing any work at all… A moment of pure fun in a very busy day that started at 5am and I was seriously grumpy about doing at all. A lovely unexpected gift that will be remembered with a smile!
Second, the rudbeckias are flowering! These are my favourite late-summer flowers, and I want my whole garden full of these cheerful, unapologetically bright flowers. Working on that…
If you feel so inclined, share a moment that cheered up a rough day this week. And for the bonus, a plan for how to fit something like that into next week?
Good luck with the first week of August!
Goals below, with placeholders for our traveling friends!
DEH
-
plan out the rest of the summer, mainly work, but also fitting in the fun
summer things plus some Life Admin & Habitat Maintenance
- finish M paper & PowerPoint
- finish W revisions
- finish fracking frelling horrible editing
- swim 2-3 miles, cardio 2-3 times (maybe a bike ride?)
- see friends visiting from out of town
- write letters or e-mail various people, including sending postcards acquired
in France; also send present to youngest great-nephew & organize present
for great-niece
- don't panic! Divide and Conquer!
JaneB
SELF-CARE:
* 3x20 intentional movement, 2 x making, 1 x small things with people, reading
every day
* pacing myself (and knowing the following week is "off", if I work
part days on the two really hot days and then finish some things up on my
non-work Friday that will be fine).
* do a couple of things from the "tasting menu"
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT:
* 75% of chores
* spend half an hour or so researching the living room project
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
* Do at least one block of T prep, one meeting
* finish integrating bits from the meeting last week into first semester slides
for the first years.
* mark any resits/long extension tasks that are submitted on time
RESEARCH:
* complete revisions and resubmit the multi-author paper for the second time.
* work on modelling project 2-4 hours (want to get some long runs set up to go
in the background whilst I'm off)
* meeting about Former Visitor Paper
* Annoying paper with former PhD student and the very slow collaborators has
come back with comments, so go through that and at least list out what needs
doing.
* prepare for meeting the Monday I get back from leave
And try and tick off a few of the small items that still need doing but have
been getting copied from list to list since late May!
Julie
Traveling!
heu mihi
1.
Finish reading materials for promotion letter; draft letter (can do a lot of
this on the train)
2. Write at least three days, no pressure re. how much
3. Help son with his bedroom
4. Exercise three times, in addition to city trekking
5. Enjoy New York!
Susan (held over)
1.
Finish copy-edits for Big Collaboration
2. Do library stuff to plan research trips for summer
3. Contact a few friends about getting together
4. Pick up needlepoint project
5. Read for pleasure
6. Get back into deliberate exercise beyond walking
Daisy
Work on dossier and make actual progress
New
student chapters
Organize next field work trips, one this week, one next week
Wild fieldwork food is always a delight! Small things - waking up and finding that Mr Shoutypants has decided to come sleep next to me and is touching me as he sleeps (he's very friendly but he doesn't sleep on/with me normally, he likes scritchies and petting and even sprawling on the human, but for actual sleep he likes his own bed/chair/windowsill/carpet). finding a loose icepop in my favourite flavour in the freezer when I thought I'd run out. A cancelled meeting!
ReplyDeleteIt's only just August but this summer has been hot and a lot of the country is in drought (not here YET, officially, but close) - the plants are already end-of-summer in appearance, dead grasses on thin ground with a few really tough daisy-relatives the only green-and-yellow, single leaves on trees are starting to turn and trees are starting to look dusty and done (or crispy at the edges). My Fuchsia bush is growing like mad though - those things are TOUGH!
LAST WEEK:
Because I am off this week (yippee!) I ended up working on my non-working day of Friday - we did have one very hot day and a couple with high humidity which were a bit less productive, but overall it was a decent week workwise.
SELF-CARE:
* 3x20 intentional movement, 2 x making, 1 x small things with people, reading every day two times, yes (and I finished the tedious, fiddly bit of the crochet blanket I've been very slowly working at - hopefully it will now make progress again! And it does look the way I wanted it to), two games of D&D, read quite a lot (finished a travel/history book about India which went with the soupy weather rather well!)
* pacing myself (and knowing the following week is "off", if I work part days on the two really hot days and then finish some things up on my non-work Friday that will be fine).did more hours than a full time week should be but it's done now. And there is great pleasure in doing this on a Sunday without any Monday-work-pressures!
* do a couple of things from the "tasting menu" one thing
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT:
* 75% of chores yes
* spend half an hour or so researching the living room project yes! Found Ikea's online design tool and did some messing around with shelving and Kallax units...
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
* Do at least one block of T prep, one meeting most of a block - I now know how I want to revamp a pair of seminar classes, I just need to do it, meeting went well (considering it shouldn't have needed to happen at all)
* finish integrating bits from the meeting last week into first semester slides for the first years not really.
* mark any resits/long extension tasks that are submitted on time yes, that was 5 hours of Friday. One "this looks like AI misuse so decisions need to be made" case, one unexpectedly excellent piece of work which was a pleasure to mark, the rest mediocre
RESEARCH:
Delete* complete revisions and resubmit the multi-author paper for the second time.yes! And resubmit because of tiny formatting fusses. Fingers crossed - it is a better paper now but it is a little too long...
* work on modelling project 2-4 hours (want to get some long runs set up to go in the background whilst I'm off) yes, and everything feels like it is coming together. We were discussing how we might display the data, and what a pain it will be to extract the details we ideally want (because the software we're using was written by a now-retired colleague in a system that no longer exists, and can't easily be recreated - there is a newer version nearly ready but it was at least 2 years full time work by a recent grad student and they're still working on some bug fixes and documentation - and the output formats aren't compatible with the tools we have access to through our universities) and I suddenly had a Memory of doing something similar before my collaborator retired. It took some digging around, but I found some the code/pieces of software that he wrote and they still work with the data I was using then and do what we want - so that was very exciting! We're going to get some of our data ready to test over the next couple of weeks and trying that out is a little treat for the week I get back (oh I hope it works...)
* meeting about Former Visitor Paper yes... and MORE editing of it...
* Annoying paper with former PhD student and the very slow collaborators has come back with comments, so go through that and at least list out what needs doing. yes, and it's still not a very good paper. Sigh!
* prepare for meeting the Monday I get back from leave it got postponed, yay!
And try and tick off a few of the small items that still need doing but have been getting copied from list to list since late May! I did five things and it was very satisfying! (three of them took 15 minutes combined...)
THIS WEEK:
Annual Leave! Plans are to make progress with personal projects... and do some fun things
SELF-CARE:
* 4x20 intentional movement, 3 x making, 2 x small things with people, reading every day
* update the tasting menu and do at least one thing a day
* take the time to make nice attractive meals that are not just "the usual" a couple of days
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT:
* 75% of chores
* make progress on the Living Room Project
* do all the personal finance tasks on the summer list
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
* check the timetable release (it comes out Monday and all changes/errors spotted have to be provided by the Friday before I get back)
* do one high speed email triage (some missing resits, ongoing student support stuff)
RESEARCH:
* set at least one model running
Together those things should take no more than 2 hours
Working on your living room project with a design tool sounds like fun! And a huge "yay!" on finding the software you needed for the data modelling! I love fuchsias, glad to hear yours is doing well.
DeleteThis is such a positive check-in! Hooray for the work success and the progress on living room design, and BIG hooray for the cancelled meeting!
Deletehope you are having a wonderfully restorative and restful week of leave, and that the creative and fun stuff brings lots of joy! Love the design tool idea, that sounds like a great way to experiment with different looks!
DeleteCheering up a rough day? Chocolate, always chocolate. Attractive tea mugs or pots are always a good thing; I got a new one in Carcassonne & have been enjoying it. Time with cats . . .
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- plan out the rest of the summer, mainly work, but also fitting in the fun summer things plus some Life Admin & Habitat Maintenance. SORT OF? I made some lists; I looked at my calendar; I added up days I have to work; I despaired.
- finish M paper & PowerPoint: NO. Getting close, though!
- finish W revisions: NO. Very little progress.
- finish fracking frelling horrible editing: MAYBE? Depends on whether my co-editor picks up what she was supposed to be doing, or whether I have to do her bit as well (which would be okay if she'd just tell me!).
- swim 2-3 miles, cardio 2-3 times (maybe a bike ride?): swam one mile, cardio twice, gym closed for 3 days due to storms & a power outage, conditions not great for outdoor exercise ditto.
- see friends visiting from out of town: YES
- write letters or e-mail various people, including sending postcards acquired in France; also send present to youngest great-nephew & organize present for great-niece: NO
- don't panic! Divide and Conquer! YES! Limited panic, anyway, & I did keep working on both M and Editing, even though W only got 15 minutes.
ALSO: Managed to keep working despite storm & 24-hour power outage, thanks to being good about charging laptop overnight; enjoyed an architecture tour with our visiting friend; liver panel came back normal, so yay/relief; did half an hour of reading for the next project; cut back grapevines & did some weeding today; got an idea from an old post at Grumpy Rumblings about ways to begin classes so that's a start toward fall planning; did various bits of academic admin; bought topsoil to fill holes in "lawn"; ordered new pair of hiking shoes.
New goals:
- cut & shape M paper, finish PowerPoint
- pack, prep food, check in for flight, that sort of thing
- pay bills
- mail present to great-nephew
- enjoy the conference!
Great news about the liver panel! It sounds like divide and conquer/don't panic are good strategies; I'm glad that you've made good progress despite the weather!
DeleteSounds like a really positive week, especially with medical stuff and a power outage in there - that could easily derail me for a couple days in summer. Fingers crossed co-editor shapes up!
DeleteHave a marvellous conference :)
DeleteApologies for being AWOL -- I seem very discombobulated right now, and have great difficulty focusing.
ReplyDeleteNice things: last week I was traveling for a few days, and attended choral evensong in two different cathedrals on Monday and Tuesday. The peacefulness and the music were so refreshing.
Goals from (I think) two weeks ago
1. Finish copy-edits for Big Collaboration ACTUALLY DONE
2. Do library stuff to plan research trips for summer MOSTLY
3. Contact a few friends about getting together NO, but on my research trip I met with three different colleagues, and saw an old friend.
4. Pick up needlepoint project NO
5. Read for pleasure YES
6. Get back into deliberate exercise beyond walking NOT REALLY
AND also - did a combined research/pleasure trip to an archive I worked in 20 years ago; attended what I thought was a last meeting for the committee that will not end and a key person didn't show up, so it is rescheduled; edited the (very bad) draft index for Big Collaboration.
I'm having difficulty focusing both because I'm tired, and because I'm at a stage in my project where I'm trying to find the shape -- I told someone I was looking for needles in haystacks but right now I just need to find the haystacks. The final details of Big Collaboration have mostly been solved, but then we got an index which did not appear to have been written by a human being so I had to read it, and start figuring out how much to try to fix. It's now with my co-editor, so it's been good to jointly moan about HOW terrible it was. It didn't help that two people I know died last week -- one elderly, not unexpected, the other relatively young (late 40s) and very sudden. The second was someone I hired and worked with regularly (and she bought my mother's house), and I've had to work had to say I'm retired and shouldn't try to run things that I don't control. I had to stop myself from suggesting strategy to competent people. Add to this, I haven't been sleeping well.
Right now I think I'm getting a cold, so this will be a quiet week.
1. Figure out two more research trips
2. Plan social events
3. Finish index work
4. Do last meeting of the committee which will not end
5. Find ways to exercise
I'm sure there is something else, but right now, that's it.
It sounds like a lot is going on to account for the inability to concentrate. The losses alone would be enough--I sorry to hear about them.
DeleteI like the image of looking for haystacks! That about describes where I would be with my next research project if I actually tried working on it.
I am very sorry to hear about these losses. That plus retirement and travel are plenty to affect concentration. Massive UGH in solidarity on the indexing problem. I hope you have a peaceful and restorative week.
DeleteI'm not surprised you're discombolutated, even the thought of retiring OR moving OR travelling as much as you have this summer sounds unsettling, and with losses on top that, well... you're doing really well! I've never got to do indexing, it sounds kind of fun to do but I imagine it must be a nightmare if done badly!
DeleteMay the haystack search lead to excellent options... It is such a strange phase in any project!
DeleteYou have been dealing with huge changes, I feel like it takes more than a few months for all those things to settle in, so I would say free pass on discombobulation for the next 6 months at least while things percolate, settle, and evolve... Hang in there!
Yesterday I stood in our front wildflower garden and watched the bumble bees sleeping on the purple coneflowers. The first time I saw this, some years ago, I thought that the bee had died, but it waved its legs at me when I blew on it, and since then I've seen many bees take a rest atop the flowers. What a nice place to sleep! And then eventually they fly away.
ReplyDeleteLast week: New York was fun but tiring, as cities always are. I seem to have brought home a virus of some sort--I don't feel too bad, but I'm tired and my throat has been vaguely scratchy for going on four days now. Ugh.
1. Finish reading materials for promotion letter; draft letter (can do a lot of this on the train) - DONE and SUBMITTED
2. Write at least three days, no pressure re. how much - TWO
3. Help son with his bedroom - YES, found him a $25 bookcase yesterday; shelves help!
4. Exercise three times, in addition to city trekking - TWO plus trekking; no run on Saturday because I was/am sick
5. Enjoy New York! - YES, but good lord, cities are $$$$
This week:
We leave for a week at the beach on Saturday--too much travel!--so I'm trying to move some things through the pipeline before then.
1. Write 4000 words (I'm trying to get back into this project before it falls apart altogether)
2. Clean the bathroom ceiling, which gets mildewy every year--stupid popcorn ceiling is SO HARD to clean!
3. Finish reading actual academic monograph that I've been trying to read all summer (it's good, I don't know what my problem is)
4. Select and arrange photos for anniversary book
5. Read student's exam documents
OK, you & Susan both need to have quiet weeks looking after yourselves! I hope you feel better soon. Somehow I feel sure that one of your future projects is going to be replacing that bathroom ceiling. But for now, writing & reading sound good, and I hope they go well.
DeleteCities are a LOT! But a sleeping bee sounds adorable and very soothing. Oh I hate those popcorn ceilings...
DeleteHope you got some good rest and recovery this week along with satisfying writing!
DeleteWow, Friday… Part of me says why bother checking in, but maybe I can check off a few things anyway…
ReplyDeleteLast week’s goals
Work on dossier and make actual progress NOPE
New student chapters NOPE
Organize next field work trips, one this week, one next week YES WITH EXTRAS
I was all set to take the weekend off, but that got put off because an unexpected field permit showed up, and arrangements for a logistically challenging trip worked out surprisingly well, and we just had to take advantage of the weird confluence of events. So I left for a 5 day trip two days after getting back from the last one, and staggered back on Tuesday. Everything that got done really needed to be done, a student project for a thesis is all sorted out with samples and sites. I’m happy we did it, but also pretty done, drove 2000km in 5 days… That was kind of a lot, and so was the student wrangling.
This week’s goals
Work on dossier and make actual progress
New student chapters
Major admin task
Major grant task
Sort out new faculty arrivals and on-boarding
New week coming!
Checking in is always worth it, I find, just for helping me feel like I'm keeping in touch with the TLQ things. unexpected fieldwork sounds like it went well, but oh, we all need "Augtember" (an extra four weeks, two to rest and two to work in peace, slotted in at the end of the summer vacation which my work friends and I have been fantasising about for decades...)
DeleteO Great Cat, yes please to Augember!
DeleteConference went wonderfully & I keep noticing all the rocks around campus, thanks to you!