Insert Boring Title Here

I'm trying to decide whether I should look at another chapter. Part of me thinks it would be best to put off this activity and instead to take to my bed reasonably early (as am exhausted) and then wake up tomorrow all refreshed and rejuvenated to get back on the productivity wagon.

Today was one hell of a day, for it included: Lecturing/discussion-leading for three hours straight, reading most of the introduction of the book I need to write something about in the next, oh, week or so, a speculum, a department meeting, and then a 2-3 hour bath. (No, I'm not kidding- I really was in the tub that long - I just kept adding hot water. I finished The Historian, which I've got to say left me a bit flat. It was all descriptive (and its description of Budapest was dead on) and historical and stuff, but after about 200 pages, well, I was done. And ultimately the plot was kind of lame. Some might call it "nuanced" but that would be code for lame. I think I needed a lame book over the past days, but whatever. It was imperative that I finish it so that I wouldn't be embroiled in what turned out to be the most boring story about the undead ever to be written.

The day also included an email from a friend whom I'd written about the book contract. (Maybe all I needed to do was to blog it and make it happen? Sort of like how the day before I got the email saying they were interested in the book I'd put "get a book contract" down as one of the goals for 2007 on my annual report? Maybe I should just write down everything I want and then I'll get everything as if by magic? But I digress....) I also got the first response for the panel that I'm putting together for next year's MLA and it is from this scholar whom I don't know but whom I TOTALLY admire and whom I totally cite all over said book manuscript. Even more exciting is that this is a scholar connected to the one little subworld of my manuscript in which I've feared to enmesh myself, so perhaps this will lead to yet another connection in the Wide World of Scholarship (not unlike the Wide World of Sports, though all skiing accidents are metaphorical).

But so anyway, do I look at the chapter on the book that features a middle-aged lady giving a party or do I go to bed? This, my friends, is the question. I think I'm going to put off the revision. It will keep (a) and I'm feeling kind of unfocused (b), which isn't ideal for the revision process. Also, I can't face looking at another chapter that overuses the transition phrases, "On the one hand," and "on the other hand," as the chapter that I looked at last night did. Who knew I had so many hands? (This reminds me of Fiddler on the Roof.) I hope I don't do that throughout the whole damned manuscript. That would be a tragedy.

The other thing I need to do is apply for a course release for next semester, as I'm abandoning my quasi-admin post and thus will be back to the traditional 4/4 unless something happens by magic. I'm not in any way guaranteed the course release, and in fact getting it would be a pretty big coup, even though I definitely have the work to back it up.

You'll notice that I have pretty much decided that I'll be here next year, which I think is the only way to go forward from this point without facing utter devastation that stops me from doing all of what I need to do in the next month. Of course, never say never, and I'm still saying a little prayer for another outcome every night, but I'm trying to be realistic about the possibility (probability?) that I'm here for next year. And with that in mind, I need to get some shit together with funding for summer travel and with workload for next year.

But I don't need to do any of this tonight. Tonight, I think I just need to go to bed.