bewildered

I have no clue what I'm doing these days. I know I worked today; I spent some time crafting an e-mail to my co-panelists at the ASLE conference, in part with the usual stuff (will you be using AV equipment, how would you like to be introduced) but also to find out if they'd be OK with actually doing a jam session, not just a bunch of short papers that have been put together by the conference organizers under a very loose panel title. E-mail went out to five co-panelists: two responded; neither responded to all the bits I needed. Not surprising: I'll need to do lots of follow-up this week. And at the moment, my guess is that the format will be the usual boring thing and not the exciting alternative I have in mind. But I'm very willing to be proven wrong.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time pulling together my last report as the Professional Liaison Coordinator for ASLE, which mostly meant scrolling through a folder of saved e-mails and trying to remember what happened that I need to report on. At first, I didn't think there was anything to say--but I actually do have a report of sorts. But the process also required that I send out a bunch of e-mails, asking people for quick updates--and given the time of year in the academic calendar, I should have done that months ago. Ah well. This is part of why I'm stepping down as PLC: I just don't have the drive to keep on top of it all.

Today I spent some time writing another letter of recommendation for former student and cat-sitter extraordinaire, Naomi, and then started trying to chip through the reworked handouts for the 101 classes (current enrollment: 0 in one section, 3 in the other, 0 in my MDC class, 20 in Mystery and Detective Fiction). I'm really losing track of what I have, what I need--even with my lists of lists. I'm not sure what my work day will be like tomorrow, or if I will work at all, actually, as I have a riding lesson that will gobble up my usual "hour of power" time. Wednesday and Thursday I'm back on campus, starting work on fall adjunct schedules. Friday I'm getting ready to head out of town.

Panic? Me? Pay no attention to the sounds of hyperventilation in the background.

Now, however, I have to engage in a little life maintenance, including getting to the post office before it closes so I can mail Naomi's letter. I'll post again if anything else transpires this week. If not, I reckon I'll be mostly pretty silent until end of July at the earliest, possibly until August. Thanks for reading, everyone.