Today I have...

• Had 11 individual conferences with students.
• Graded 11 papers (in order to be able to return them at said conferences).
• Created an activity for one class for tomorrow.
• Wrote two tests.
• Chatted with two colleagues at length.
• Caught up with A. on the phone. (You may be wondering what's going on with her: she's been dating this guy for a couple of months, and somehow he's morphed into her Fake Live-In Boyfriend. She's a bit concerned about this turn of events, not because she doesn't want to spend as much time with possible with this guy - she does - but because it was never actually a *decision* that it happened. I advised that she needs to have a conversation with him in a non-confrontational situation about it so that they won't fight later because of this development. Fake Boyfriends are one thing; FLIBs are entirely another.)
• (Probably in what was a big mistake) poured myself a glass of wine.

Now. In theory tonight I should do some grading, although I did warn my students that they probably would wait a bit longer than usual for the things that I have because I had the major papers from the other class coming in this week. I should also prep for tomorrow, as I have a lot to cover because Tuesday's class in the one section was... well, it was a pretty relaxed discussion. We're finishing up with this text tomorrow, and if we're going to cover everything that I want to cover, I'll need to be a bit more regimented. This requires prep. I also have to finish up with minor edits on the book manuscript.

The problem is, I'm not terribly motivated to do the "should" list this evening. I may need to trick myself into doing some of it, otherwise tomorrow I will be s-c-r-e-w-e-d. Let's think. What must I absolutely do? Well. I need not necessarily do the book stuff. It will keep until tomorrow. I think that the prep and the grading are the things, with prep coming before grading. Ooh! I just had an idea! Ok, the prep is 75% done, now that this idea has occurred to me. Hurrah! All I need to do tonight is to pick out some passages for the thing that I will do in class and to make some notes about things I should lecture on. Which leaves the grading. Le sigh.

Maybe I actually should work on the book in order to make grading seem more palatable? Perhaps that would be a good thing to do. Ooh! The phone just rang! Yay!

Edited to add: Ok, picked out the passages: prep for tomorrow - done! Hurrah! So grading? Book? Not very motivated.....