What cheer!

Whilst singing goofy songs to Pertelote the Cat, I noticed this morning that I was in quite high spirits. For one thing, I woke up at 6 after 8 hours of sleep (instead of the recently-typical 9) actually feeling capable of clambering out of bed, so perhaps my rhythms are returning to normal. And I have this kick-ass schedule with NO comp. And also? I think that I like being back in the middle of things.

Now of course I adore vacations, and want more of them. And I am not every morning keen to teach, since I still find it somewhat stressful. And there are plenty of highly vexing things that occur more or less constantly. But I like the activity, the people, the politics. Today we have a faculty meeting at which several very aggravating things will be discussed, and it will last forever, and highly annoying things will be said and elaborated upon at length, and I'm looking forward to it. I like this stuff.

(Of course, when the annoying things are being said about something about which I care deeply, I am less pleased. But on the whole I find that these meetings do have entertainment value, and I'm very interested in seeing how they develop.)

However, I need to get myself focused so that it can be a productive day and I won't be overwhelmed with prep for tomorrow--for I said that I would give a demo presentation in my seminar, which means that I actually need to go read a couple of articles and prepare to present them. Here, then, is what I hope to accomplish:

• Review materials for 1 pm class; refine lesson plan.
• Schedule meeting with Honors juniors.
• Finish novel for seminar.
• Read article for seminar.
• Read a bit about the novel's author and influence and make some notes.
• Print out CVs for job candidates that I neglected to print yesterday. (I'm the outside member of a search committee right now. And might I say, job candidates, that it is in poor form to list a book as "published" if it is self-published? And then to slightly alter the name of the "press" so that it looks legit? So that I need to Google it to figure out that it was, in fact, self-published? You're really doing yourself more harm than good there.)
• Concoct some sort of syllabus for Honors juniors who are starting their theses.
• Respond to some emails.
  
• Maybe, if I'm very good, read through (part of) a thesis draft.

That is very likely more than I can do today. So be it! Off I go.