I had an awesome birthday (#36, for those keeping track) on Thursday. Fang wrote me a very sweet blog post. Lots of thoughtful gifts came my way. A colleague was kind enough to bring me flowers and a fancy cake:
I received my first evaluation as a faculty member here. The chair was very kind in his review, and he (very thoughtfully!) took the time to point out that although I’ll likely meet the traditional requirements for tenure, the work I’ll do will look quite different from that of other department members, and that I shouldn’t be adversely affected by that difference in future reviews. After five years of job-market beat-downs, I’m glad to see I’m fitting in, even though it means there has to be a recognition that I’m on a slightly different path from my (exceptionally supportive) colleagues.
I took the boy to the local nature center today because he said he wanted to go to “that place with the dead animals.” He was way into the taxidermy today:
I’m (still) wondering how the boy managed to get ringworm on his butt.
The boy can sing most of Tom Jones’s “Did Trouble Me”:
(Clearly the video owes a huge debt to Johnny Cash’s video for Hurt.) This latest earworm is a big improvement over the boy’s perpetual singing of phrases from Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and Queen’s “Radio Gaga.”
The boy has taken to drawing everyone–even his dear mother–with a penis.
Because it took until, oh, today for the weather to get nice, I’ve been getting my craft on during the evenings. This week has featured watercolor sketches and miniature landscape dioramas.
I’m having middle-of-the-night panic attacks over a grant deadline. I can only work on it for so many hours a day before the quality of my research and writing begins to decline. (The crafts are currently more a therapeutic outlet than a creative one.)
I sent off an article to a publication I really admire. Only once I sent it off did I realize I cited 75% of the authors appearing in the first issue of its relaunch. I’m hoping that means it’s a good venue for my work, and not that I’m a huge kiss-up.
Last weekend we went to see Shoshone Falls. They’re going full-force. The photos I took don’t really do them justice, but here’s one:
I found some lovely white nectarines at our local produce stand. Yes, they came here on a truck from California, but their sweetness was a much-needed reminder that summer should be here any minute. (We seemed to have skipped spring.)
I walked through a shadow cast by a tree yesterday and was startled and delighted, both because the trees have taken forever to leaf out and because it was sunny.
Many of the seeds I started committed suicide. Or, rather, that’s what I’m telling myself–it certainly wasn’t my fault. :\ I don’t think they had sufficient sunlight, which is certainly not something I could control this spring. Anyway, they grew all lanky and never put out true leaves, then they fell over from the weight and shriveled up. Grrrrrrrr.
What are you up to this summer?
