I've been quiet lately because, well, my head is likely to explode at any minute. Between a smidgen of poor planning (four sets of major assignments collected over four days, and fifth coming Friday), bad weather that's kept me shovelling snow when I could be doing other things, and unforeseen work, I have been more swamped than I'd like to be. Here's the mismash of what I'm doing/ thinking about right now:

* Finals and final grades: 1 set of portfolios down and that class' grades entered. One set of final papers down, with that class' final exams halfway done. Those grades should be entered by midday tomorrow. One set of paper left to go, with grades on them by Friday at 3, when that class takes their final, which I'll grade over the weekend. By Monday, c'est finis!

*Though the rest of the faculty submit them in August, new faculty must do "annual reports" based on the first semester here, which means I need to do a narrative of all the service, teaching and research I've done since I arrived in August. Surprisingly, my narrative description goes onto six pages single spaced, plus 15-odd documents in support and all the data entry into the database program that swtores this stuff for our file. The bad news is that this is a big pain in the butt. Apparently, though, the good news is that when tenure review comes up, most everything's right there in the file already.

* The London Theatre Tour class didn't enroll well enough to go. I was one student short, and with a slightly looser deadline, I probably could've gotten the numbers. What that means is that this year, I'll likely get a 3/1 instead of a 3/2, and next year teach a 3/3. I can hardly complain about the 3/3, except that it will impact my publication schedule. This means that I need to essentially treat next spring as an early sabbatical, and write and revise a lot.

* Right now, I've got 3 publishable articles to revise, and three conference papers to write. I also want to turn out a CFP and proposal for a book I'm co-editing, and oh yeah, get the diss cleaned up for publisher shopping. Not much to do, really.

*I'm getting LASIK surgery done next Tuesday. I've had glasses since I was in the 2nd grade, and probably should've had them years before that: I failed "throwing and catching" in Kindergarten, but am not a particularly uncoordinated person. Since I kind of read for a living, I am a little nervous about this, but most people I know use words like "miraculous" to describe their experiences with it, and apparently, besides being misshapen, my eyes are otherwise very healthy.

*Guests for the holidays: Because we're new here, and haven't had opportunity to make lots of new friendships, visitors have been a godsend. The holidays will test that notion. From the 23rd to the 8th, we will have 5 guests in three shifts, and only about 2 days off in between. Fortunately, our friend Erin is coming in last, and she's hardly a guest anymore. We ask her to make herself at home, and then hold her to it.

So there it is. What could've been six posts in one. As the holidays get closer, if I can both think and see, I may have a post on our family gift practices, which involve several specific categories of gifts. But I'll save that for later.