Flyer time...

16 March 2025: Spent some time today finishing up flyers for some of my fall courses. (No need to "advertise" ENGL 101.) It's a familiar and strange Spring Break tradition.

Decided to go old school for ENGL 345--that is, I just messed around in Word. I wanted to include the images of the books, so that seemed easiest. 

Decided to once again stick with the "America, heck yeah" theme for ENGL 204 because it's eye-catching enough and I just kind of refuse to cede iconic imagery of my country to the right wing. 

Anyway, glad to have them both done. I'll make copies tomorrow and post them around Knutti and then get my mind back to this semester.

Maybe I'm just not good at Spring Break?

14 March 2025: Another Spring Break is winding down and I don't have a single interesting answer for "what did you do over break?" 

It's weird to feel bad about this. Because it wasn't a bad week. I got a lot done, enjoyed being a bit lazy at times, and caught up on sleep. 

But when you measure your life in the units of the academic year, it is a little bummer when, year after year, you don't have much to say about a week off.  

Spring Break!

7 March 2025: Made it to Spring Break! It wasn't the worst slog I can remember; the semester (absent all the world's madness) has moved along just fine, but a break is a break and I'll take it. 

Kicking it off in true old lady/homebody style: take-out, TV, a bath, and then bed. 

Spring Break Recap

17 March 2024: So that's (just about) a wrap on Spring Break 2024. All in all, not bad! I got a lot done, did a couple of fun social things (the Oscars party, lunch with Carrie and Eva, a Friday movie), did a couple of small projects at home, and caught up on sleep and relaxation a bit. Oh, and trivia started up again, too. 

I wish I didn't feel anxious and a bit melancholy about going back to normal tomorrow. But this rough year has just made things really hard. Heading back into it all just as the semester really picks up with advising, paper conferences, and everything else feels extra weighty this year. 

As I type this, I am thinking of ways to push back against the melancholy and anxiety. Spring weather will help, as it always does. So will blocking off days to work from home when I can. And writing progress is great for my morale. So...balance and boundaries, I suppose? 

Lunch with Carrie and Eva

13 March 2024: In a Spring Break filled with (mostly) work (and I am not complaining about that), I am grateful to be racking up some first-class "fun" stuff: the Oscars party with H&C, being back at trivia, and then (today) having lunch with Carrie and Eva (who was in town for the day). So lovely to catch up with her, enjoy an amazing lunch outside at Bistro 112, and remember another way I am very lucky.

And we're back!

21 March 2022: Very busy and long day, but one in which everything went well and several worked-related tasks were very good and even delightful. Of course, teaching my classes fell into the latter category: a terrific discussion Frost's "Design" and "Mending Wall" in ENGL 204 and a much-better-than-I-anticipated discussion of Poe's "Ms. Found in a Bottle" in the seminar. But even things like the Senate meeting went well and were--dare I say?--enjoyable. And I feel like we are actually making progress on some things in Senate, which isn't a guarantee.

So, not a bad way to mark the first day after break. 

The final third...

20 March 2022: Today's the last day of break, so tomorrow marks the beginning of the last third of the semester. That always comes with mixed emotions: the happiness that comes with warmer weather and longer days, the stress of getting everything done (for teachers and students--project/paper preps, advising, conferences with students, and so many other events), the anticipation of summer break, and the bittersweet rituals around commencement. 

Haven't slept very well the past couple of nights and even in just a week, my sleep pattern is off a bit, so tomorrow might be rough, especially combined with a bit of anxiety over everything listed above.

But Call the Midwife is back tonight, along with new episodes of Bob's Burgers and The Great North. And one of  my favorite podcasts just did a watch-along with Troop Beverly Hills, a real delight I hadn't seen before. All of that helps.

So here we go, onto the final third...

Spring Break grading laugh...

15 March 2022: Working through two kind of ambitious (and boring and slightly depressing) Spring Break to-do lists. (Yes: there are two lists.) But making steady progress. And I found myself laughing out loud at this phrase from a paper by one of my seminar students: "intelligent ladies using occult knowledge to outwit death." "Sounds like a cool club," I wrote in my comments. 

"I Hear the Bells"

12 March 2018:

"I hear the bells, they are like emeralds, and
Glints in the night, commas and ampersands
Your moony face, so inaccessible
Your inner mind, so inexpressible" --Mike Doughty, "I Hear the Bells"

I have loved this song since I first heard it on Veronica Mars. With its just-barely-controlled-and-then-it's-not-controlled-at-all energy and its youthful exuberance ("let's go make out/up in the balcony" always makes me smile) expressed through a mature voice, it felt like the right song for the first day of Spring Break. Let's just say that some days--including today--I can relate.

Flowering trees

12 March 2016: Spring is my favorite season, of course, and the flowering trees play a starring role in the reasons why. Today is the first day I noticed that a few are already in bloom--just in time for Spring Break.

Spring Break at Age 35

What's the craziest thing I did today, on the last weekday of Spring Break 2013? I checked off the last item on my (typed) "Spring Cleaning To-Do List" after cleaning every inch of the refrigerator while proudly and loudly and singing Wham's "Freedom." That's how you celebrate Spring Break at 35.

Also, please appreciate Bing helping by sitting in a vegetable drawer.

Spring Break...

And I am living it here in my office on campus, revising revising revising... Trying to make a (sort of self-imposed) March 19 deadline for a "revise and resubmit." After working a couple of hours at Panera this morning, I had originally intended to work from home for the rest of the afternoon. Change of plans when I realized that the file version of most recent incarnation of the essay (the print out of which I had spent all morning making changes to) was on my computer at school. So here I am. I actually think it's working better this way. I think I might have been a bit (more) distracted at home.

With that said, back to work I go.