Back-to-School Scheming

Most people look at the beginning of a calendar year as a time to review where they’ve been in the last twelve months and what they want to do in the next twelve. This makes sense, of course. The first day of the first month of a new year seems so ripe for new beginnings.

For me, though, the new year always begins at the end of August. When a new school year begins, so do I. I have been living according to the August-to-August year for as long as I can remember. I started Kindergarten in August, 1983, and since then I have been governed by the school year. Thirteen years of primary education (counting Kindergarten), four years of college, seven years of graduate school, and three years of college teaching — this is year four. That’s a lot of years, now that I list it out like that. Twenty-seven years. Damn.

Well, to steer back in the direction of my point: I don’t begin the year anew in January, but now. Now is the time for me to think about goals, hopes, plans, plots, and schemes.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about trying to accomplish this school year:

Stay Organized: Between my campus office, my home office, my teaching, and my research, things can get crazy. I always find myself wishing I had brought home a book or folder that I left at school, or frantically looking for my flash drive. I am attempting to solve this problem by syncing my work-related files with dropbox (AMAZING, simply amazing tool), keeping up with my schedule on iCal and my tasks with teuxdeux.com. My home office will be used mostly for research and writing; my campus office will be prep, teaching, and grading central.

Plan Ahead, Grade Ahead: Hopefully staying organized will help here. My goal is really to avoid last-minute class prep and weekends full of grading hundreds of essays. Do a little at a time until it’s done. SO much easier said, though.

Pack Lunch: My office mate and I are going in together on a mini fridge to use in the office, which will make this easy and convenient. Any lunch I pack, no matter how hasty, will be cheaper and better balanced nutritionally than anything I can find on campus. Period.

Maintain Weight: I am really happy with where I am right now weight-wise. My fitness goals are always growing and changing (with my marathon focus right now and maybe more triathlons in the spring), but I don’t need or want to lose any more pounds. My newest Sports & Wine post over at the Bodies site explains my plans for the food aspect of weight maintenance, should you want to read about it in any more detail.

Bike Commute: I am committing to get to campus by bike instead of by car on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Those are my non-teaching days, where I might go in to grade or prep and thus I’ll be dressed in more casual, bike-friendly clothes. I may also try biking in on Tuesdays and Thursdays if I am wearing trousers, but my road bike with horizontal top bar isn’t ideally suited to biking in skirts (which I wear frequently). I have biked to campus once last week and twice so far this week, and it has made a trip in to the office on my “off” day much more enjoyable!

Dress Nicely: I still run into the problem of looking a little too young for my job, so I’m trying to cultivate a more professional appearance on teaching days so I can feel more confident and authoritative. I think it’s also going to help me to project more professionalism around the halls in general. Plus, clothes shopping is so much more fun now that I can wear standard sizes and therefore can shop in any store (uh, any not-too-expensive store, anyway — I still do have that enviable teacher’s salary). I’m currently finding inspiration from a few academic fashion blogs. See here, here, and here.

Job Market: The academic job market runs concurrent with the school year, meaning that postings for tenure-track assistant-professorships will start appearing soon. I don’t want to talk about this too much because it is an AWFUL topic, but here are my thoughts: I am not going to waste a ton of time and energy throwing myself at any halfway appropriate job just because one “should” go for the tenure-track openings. If something truly great appears on the job list, I will attack it with purpose. Expect not many updates on this one, ’cause, like I said, AWFUL topic.

Open Windows: I am going to try to be open minded about relationships and new people. Not just romantic relationships, but new friendships and social opportunities, too. Even though the guy and I split up, I still believe everything I said in this post. Just because that relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean I have to be like Clooney in Up in the Air, and shit, you know?

What about you guys? Though your lives may not be Ruled by School like mine is, do you have any goals or plans cookin’ right now?

Good Things

Friends visiting from out of town for a wedding:

Cocktails

And people happily gathered ’round a table (or two):

Campus views (and a less-humid, clear-blue sky):

Guilty pleasure reading in bed:

Puppydog eyes:

More friends gathered to celebrate two friends’ soon-to-arrive baby, beautiful gifts:

A glass of wine at the end of a long week:

Fun gifts in the mail – a happy mixtape:

As usual, click on the photo to go through to flickr.com for more information.

What good things have you got going on?

Keeping Busy

The first “week” of school (half-week, honestly) has come and gone and it doesn’t even feel like it really happened yet. I say that mainly because I only taught one day so far, but also because I feel like the summer term never really ended but rather continued on, joining seamlessly and without pause into the fall term. I’m not complaining, though. I like to keep busy right now.

It’s going to be a busy weekend, too: my friends Golightly and Deebeecoooper are both in town this weekend, there’s a wedding to attend, and the social functions have been piling up as well.

Last night I met my friend Brunbec at the local hippy grocery store for a wine tasting and to shop for snacks for our happy-hour-at-the-pool evening. Of all the people gathered around the wine guy quaffing samples, I was the only one to get asked for ID. My friend’s mom even joked about it, going, “What? This professor at the university gets ID-ed and no one else does?!” But in defense of the wine guy, I did roll up wearing a tee shirt and a denim miniskirt and looking a little unkempt.

As you can see, I also clearly had no idea what I was doing and got behind on my tastings, winding up with two samples at one time. Oops! Drinking problem!

(Can we also note the sheer size of my forehead there? Don’t get too close to me lest you get sucked into its orbit, never to escape!)

We ladies from the department + out-of-town guests spent the evening snacking, drinking, and floating around the pool, as we love to do in summer and as you have heard about countless times if you are a regular reader ’round these parts. What can I say? It’s the perfect way to relax, cool down, and shed the stresses of the week.

This morning I am about to head off to Saturday morning yoga with the girls, and then lunch, and then the wedding, reception, and post-reception cocktails. Busy, busy, busy!

I do owe the blog a post about my fall marathon training plans, so maybe I will get around to that later this weekend. I should also have a new post at the Sports & Wine blog coming up soon, so I’ll link to that when it happens. I know y’all are on the edges of your seats there.

Hope you’re having a lovely weekend, friends!

Embarrassing Confessions

When you gain and then lose 100 pounds, some of your skin starts looking like crepe paper. Neat trick? Pinch some of it and then watch how long it takes to settle back into its place. Still waiting here. FUNSIES!

This guy friend of mine is out of town for a while and I can’t shake the feeling that when he comes back it will be the time for him to tell me he doesn’t want to be seeing me any more and maybe we should just be friends. It’s that 90-Days: Shit-or-Get-Off-the-Pot stage.

When you think about it, in this context, neither shitting nor getting off the pot is a very appealing metaphor.

I have been listening to Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone non-stop for the past three months, and I love it so much that I am now afraid something will happen to taint my enjoyment of it.

I have been vegan for almost two years and in that time have avoided buying anything made of leather, but I desperately want new boots for fall. I can’t find any good non-leather ones. I am trying to make excuses.

I bought a $4 tee shirt with huge horizontal stripes today, mainly because it’s something I never would have worn when I was overweight and it’s something my mother would have told me never to wear — because it would “make me look wider.”

I am 32 years old and I still get enjoyment out of doing things my mother would hate, just because I can.

I cry during every single episode of Friday Night Lights.

I am trying to eat more calories for my “maintenance” level right now but I got so used to eating fewer calories that it is hard to get to the number I am trying to hit. Those folks out there on a weight-loss mission probably want to kick me right now and I SO UNDERSTAND. But it has been OVER A YEAR of operating on a calorie deficit. It’s hard to make a change. Confession? Tonight I am filling the gap with wine. Hence this list.

I don’t know whether a post like this is refreshingly honest or humiliatingly pathetic. It’s all ME ME ME, which seems bad, right? But at least I still have the sense not to be writing about anyone else.

Signs of Summer

Just in case we weren’t sure if it was summer, the following signs have appeared to put an end to all doubt. Let me show you:

5. Baking Hot Sidewalks

It is so hot out today that when I briefly stepped outside in my bare feet, I got a very rude awakening indeed. Spotted on the sidewalk on my way back into the house: two dead bugs, their many legs pointing skyward (yes, I did photograph that and no I won’t put it here because I realized that one was a giant cockroach and I don’t want to make it seem like my apartment is dirty) (it’s too late now isn’t it?).

4. Cats Drunk on Sunshine

Basically one of the only times my cat isn’t either crying for more food, trying to kill the dog, or thinking of ways to make sure I slip in the shower and die so she can feast upon my delicious remains is when she is basking happily in the sunshine that streams in through the window in my office. Another good reason to keep the blinds open.

3. Swimming Pool Nights

Yes, I go on and on about the swimming at night with the cocktails. Well, doesn’t this look perfectly, beautifully serene? Toldja. Now I suddenly feel the need for a Vodka and Fresca.

2. Watermelon

How happy am I to be enjoying the local, in-season produce from the farm? Very. I got a watermelon two weeks ago, three (!!!) more this past week, and might get still more at tomorrow’s pick-up. Don’t worry; it’s as delicious as it looks.

And finally, the number one sign it is summer:

1. Minor League Baseball

Yes, Thursday night was spent cheering on the Montgomery Biscuits (who came back from 7-0 to lose with a slightly more respectable score of 11-6), listening to the crowd around us heckle the hapless third-base coach (who kept stopping runners at third instead of letting them try to run home), drinking light beer and eating salty soft pretzels.

Summer? CHECK.