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Next weekend? We’re welcoming a new kitten into our home. (A Siberian, a breed to which my husband is amazingly NON-reactive.) He’s one of the kittens from this litter (the paler colouring like the one playing inside the tunnel.)

Thanks to Siberlynx Siberians for making this possible.

It’s not prep for the new term that has me down. It’s every other darned thing in my life that’s sucking away my time and focus and peace of mind.

Some things big and somewhat scary. Some things small and only annoying. Most of them are definitely unbloggable.

Let’s just say that I will need every hour of every working day between now and the start of term to feel even halfway ready. At least my course outlines are prepared!

We’re enjoying scads of sunshine, here, with even a break in the brutal humidity. Cool breezes course into the house via one set of windows and chase themselves out the other side.

We’ll have lasagna and salad for dinner, accompanied by a a lovely red wine. We went out and restocked our “wine cellar” (aka as the bottom shelf of the pantry) with a few bottles of their merlot. And now that our hammock’s assembled and installed in a corner of our back deck, I think I’ll read another couple of chapters from New Media, 1740-1915 out there after dinner.

Yes, it’s a pretty darned good day.

I’ve been driving a lot the past two weeks (hence, little time to blog). Thank goodness for audiobooks. I’m on my third now or, at least I will be, as soon as I finish burning the eleven CDs required to transfer the library’s e-book to a form I can listen to in the car as the Overdrive DRM they use isn’t compatible with my three-year-old MP3 player. That means that I’ll probably give the library’s audiobooks a miss because if I have to buy dozens of CDs just to listen to a few, I’d be better off buying the recordings, myself!

Of other audiobooks I’ve consumed lately, I heartily enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers which was compatible with the old Sansa (thanks to Audible.com’s rather more functional DRM features). Less enchanted with the abridged Persuasion which I’d bought from eMusic a while back. (The narration was great but the editorial slashing was painful.)

Finally, summer is around the corner. I have flowers, in bloom and in bud, taking over my front garden. And a three-day weekend to boot! (Thank you, Queen Victoria!)

We transplanted and planted lots today: now we have a raised bed at the front of our house populated by five winter-hardy shrub rose varietals: Hansa, Morden Centennial, Champlain, John Cabot and Martin Frobisher.

Why, yes, we both are quite fond of historical explorer references and would have included Henry Hudson had that been available at our nursery. We count Hansa as an honourary historical reference (Hanseatic League) and Morden Centennial has a historically minded name so it’s all good.

Of course, youngest thinks this will be better when they actually bloom!

As with many academics, my boundaries between work and not-work are rather porous. One daughter has said that she definitely doesn’t want to be an academic because she sees how I’m always bringing work home and even if, like today, I’m not 100% focused on the job, I’ve still put in more than an hour and a half in on work today when I, technically, am not on duty.

There are sixteen weeks until the fall 2010 term is underway. Fifteen if I count the week before which will be crammed with meetings and is also when I’ll have to have my syllabi complete and online course components (new platform is supposedly coming into play this summer — do teaching faculty even get to know what platform and iteration, no!) all in place.

I’m balancing teaching prep with article and chapter writing, editorial duties, writing and presenting (hopefully) a conference paper along with all the various other administrative and service duties that crop up during the summer and cramming all of that into the season begins to be worrisome. Especially given how short-term some of the notices are for some things at the U (a week’s notice to get a department committee to identify and make a case for university-wide scholarship competition? Oh boy!) and how up-in-the-air we are over vital personnel issues.

Now, do that and still make time for vacation? Real vacation time that my kids recognize that mom is not working but simply spending time with them? Real vacation in order to give my body time to rest and recharge (so that hopefully I don’t have a repeat of last year’s disastrous viral arthritis). That’s the real challenge, isn’t it? Over at ProfHacker they’re tackling some of the logistical elements of summer planning but the difficult part of figuring out what can best be done when and how much space to leave for the inevitable crises while still protecting some family time? That’s the tough question.

The several inches of snow outside contributed to my resolution to not go anywhere. News of a fatal road accident at an intersection we regularly pass through only confirmed that resolution.

Today I’ve done bugger all (excepting dealing with a few loads of laundry, feeding family members, obsessively polishing the stove and other mundane chores). I’ve listened to several hours of music while reading a densely thought-provoking work of comparative media history: Always Already New.

Dang. Some of that actually sounds productive and even possibly work-related. I’ll fix that: maybe this evening I’ll watch some mindless TV!

Ordered in June of 1998: Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia. (I’m not counting the gifts I had sent to others in 1997 when I was testing the service out).

Still, a very awesome book!

Not typing or writing much due to an ill-timed bout of enthusiastic dandelion weeding that left me with a badly blistered palm. On my writing hand, of course! Both typing and handwriting are awkward. Of course, this would be when I have a big batch of marks to enter and share around. Tomorrow I’m hoping for enough functionality to get those out (and that’d be everything except for the exams and final marks for the sophomore survey).