The Good:

• The following email arrived in my mailbox this morning: ”We have finished processing your passport, and it has been mailed to you.”
• Football season is over which means that The Coach and I can have a quiet night at home with frozen pizza and a movie.
• Pre-registration advising is over and the stream of students invading my office has dwindled to a trickle. I might actually get some other work done. It’s about time.
• I’m taking Saturday off to clean my house and plan my turkey day menu. The Coach is going to rake the leaves. We might even make it to the driving range.
• It’s Friday. It’s Sunny. It’s The Coach’s payday. How can it be bad?

The Bad:

• I had a student who assumed that I would come in at 8 this morning to give him a make up test … for a class that’s not my own. WTF? Obviously, I nipped that in the bud.
• I need to figure out what to do about the BPOD. Over the past three weeks, our big dog has developed some very odd behavioral quirks. By odd, I mean scary. He can’t seem to get enough to eat and he attacks the other dogs if they approach either food bowl. He has also started growling at The Coach. I hope this is not a side effect of his epilepsy, but we’ll be making a vet appointment for him very soon.
• On a related note: It seems to be a bad time for pets. My friend down the street? One of her dogs had a stroke two weeks ago and had to be put to sleep. Then today, her other dog had to be put down because his hind legs were paralyzed. One of the secretaries had her hamster die. One of the other professors had a hedgehog die. One of my former students had her hedgehog die. These things make people sad and grumpy. Sigh.

The Ugly:

• Damn, but I really need to get my eyebrows waxed before I end up with a unibrow. And my hair? It needs about 2″ of dead ends chopped off. Maybe I can deal with this over Thanksgiving break.

Since The Coach’s playoff hopes came to a crashing halt last night (although a senior *did* break the school’s rushing record), we are now free! Free, I tell you! No more Friday night games. No more Saturday film swaps. No more Sunday meetings. Of course, both of us are buried in grading (maybe today’s the day that it will finally be finished?), but we are thinking about saying “screw it.” And you know what that means, right? Sunday Road Trip! Woot!

Ever since I dropped the application to renew my passport into the mail, I have been suffering from a bad, bad case of wanderlust. Maybe that’s not the only thing that has made me feel, well, restless. It is that time of the academic year when Dr. Disenchanted starts dreaming of escape. You probably know the feeling: you’re sitting in your office, surrounded by stacks of grading, hounded by students who need to register for classes, pestered by colleagues who should really know how to read the advising sheet (after three years of advising – argh!), and swamped with meetings of all varieties — search committees, curriculum committees, chairs’ meetings, department meetings, meeting, meetings, meetings. It’s dark when you get up and it’s dark when you go home. (Oh yeah, my list of semester goals has now gone out the window.) Your house is filthy because you can’t find the time or energy to actually mop the kitchen floor. Your husband’s football season feels like it’s in its 20th week instead of just starting the playoffs. In fact, the last time you left home was to go to a football game in a town about an hour away. Your plans for this weekend’s escape — to see family — have fallen through.

It’s no wonder that the wanderlust has grown strong.

I do have some trips coming up in the future: conferences in Atlanta and Alexandria, VA; a fun trip to Oaxaca in March; and a family/research trip to New York sometime this summer. The problem is: Will I make it that long without a trip? The last two years, we have taken nice vacations to Arizona and New Mexico at Christmas time. This year, nothing is planned because our break is short and our funds are low. Sigh.

Ah, Monday, you’ve certainly made me your bitch. I have six people signed up for advising appointments today … and I still have a pile of grading to get through. Maybe it’s a good thing that I have to keep my department open until 6 p.m. today? Let’s just hope the traffic slows down after 4:30, shall we?

Of course, right now, I’m hiding in my office with a warm cuppa chai and a piece of pumpkin bread, thinking about all the other stuff I have to do this week. You know, the pesky stuff I’m talking about – prepping classes, grading homework, grading those midterms. Oh, and I should probably start working on our candidates for Honors’ Day. And then there’s that darned schedule to put together.

Now, you might be thinking that I could have worked on these things over the weekend. I did have every intention of grading those papers on Sunday. I even carted them home. Sadly, eleven hours of my Sunday went to curriculum subcommittee work. You know those course petitions I had to read, all sixty of them? The ones that we had to turn around in less than a week? Granted I did go to the laundromat to wash my blankets, but I got through eight petitions while watching my laundry spin around in the dryer. Oh, and I did go to Panera for lunch, but I got through another eight petitions while slurping on my French onion soup. And, I’ll admit to making a Barnes and Noble run, but after buying my Christmas cards, I did plow through another 15 proposals while drinking chai in the cafe.

Just remember, Monday, I’ll get you back. There will come a time — this summer perhaps? — when I spent all Monday in bed, curled up with an assortment of critters, reading trashy novels, and eating bon-bons. Okay, maybe I won’t eat the bon-bons (what the hell is a bon-bon anyways), but I’ll be relaxed and calm and free from the piles of work that seem to have accumulated on my desk.

Until then, I’ll eek through.

Happy Halloween!

We ran out of candy halfway through the official T&T times. Argh!
We are now hiding in our house, making plans to go to the movies.

… and into the fire! A cliché, I know, but completely descriptive of what’s going to happen to me next week! As you may remember (from my extensive whining on this blog), I have had the October from hell. It was one thing after another: first, the program review; second, the first research presentation; and finally, the conference presentation. Now that I’m beginning to feel back to normal, the psycho work load is gearing up again. I have a (virtual) pile of midterms, a stack of undergrad homework assignments to sort through, and an entire list of piddling little tasks (little things, but time-consuming) to take care of. Now, I could handle that except that I must have the department’s schedule submitted before Thanksgiving, our honors’ days awards submitted by December 1, and then there’s that ongoing thing called a search committee. Even this I could handle, but …

… next week is the start of student pre-registration.

We have about 140 majors plus another 30 graduate students. We have four faculty members. Given these numbers, each individual should have 42.5 advisees. I checked my list and I’m sitting at 41. Not too bad, right? The problem is, I seem to have attracted quite a few “unofficial” advisees. You know what I’m talking about — the students who just can’t seem to (1) get it together enough to look up who their advisor actually is or (2) the students who like me better than all the other advisors in the department. Sigh.

Even though I have tried to combat this problem of advisee creep, my personal efforts seem to have failed. Usually, I will advise the person, look up their ACTUAL advisor, and tell them that they have to sign up with that person for their next appointment. This worked for a while — but derailed itself this semester.

Ideas? Suggestions?

For the record: I don’t mind advising, but I have so much other work to do as the department head that extra advisees mean long, long hours in the office. Seeing how I’ve been clocking ~60 hour weeks … well, you can see why I’m slightly tired/bitter/annoyed.

I just noticed this tonight. I didn’t do this on purpose.
But yes, that’s the Virgin Mary,
stashed behind two books that talk about teen sex and promiscuity.

I’m alive. And soon, I’ll be back to blogging. This chair gig takes up way more time than I thought it would.

He sure looks like he ate the puppy!
Getting old is a bitch, eh?

The Good:

• The Coach’s team will be playing for the district championship tonight and the weather has finally cleared up! No need for umbrellas! No need for boots! No need for raincoats!
• My classes are over for the day. Right now, I’m sitting in my office waiting for a student to show up for mentoring. I’m so out of here @ 3 p.m.
• Three of my big projects are finally off my plate. Of course, I still have an amazing amount of piddly shit to do.
• It’s Friday. What’s not to love?

The Bad:

• I need a (media) fallout shelter. Don’t ask. Let’s just say that I am not answering my phone right now.
• I forgot to bring my lunch. So not only am I cranky, but I’m hungry too.
• All that piddly shit on my list equals weekend work for Dr. Disenchanted. There goes my Sunday.

The Ugly:

• I liked this grey sweater last winter, but today it looks like shit. I think it must have stretched out or something. I’m keeping it for weekend use around the house, but I won’t be wearing it to work again.