NYC day 6

I had good intentions about doing some initial reading recommendations today here, but by the time I finished all the other important things, I was all tuckered out! Tomorrow, I think - I've got Zoom meetings with advisees starting around 3 or so but should have some morning time to do a real post here as well as taking care of one or two more logistical things for next week's classes.

It was a good day for me. I had a lovely 1hr as 1:1 jog-walk in the morning (having had quite serious chronic back pain for the last 3 years I finally figured two major fixes out about a month ago and the fact of running and walking without extreme soreness is really helping my mood). I did some rethinking for my Clarissa seminar (Richardson's million-word-long epistolary novel - one of my two classes semester is dedicated just to reading that book from start to finish) and had a great Zoom conversation with about 2/3 of the students in our normal time slot. The university extended spring break through tomorrow, so we didn't have "real" classes yesterday and today, but it was extremely good for my morale to see those faces and hear about how and where everyone is.

Ordered some hot-weather UV+ protective buffs for when the weather gets warmer. I'm using my winter one as a mask outdoors, for running, walking and errands (and yes, it gets washed after each use), but it's a bit scratchy and these ones will be better once I have them in hand.

Predictions are pretty much useless, but I'm figuring I'm home here like this for at least two months. Fingers crossed that I still get to exercise outside during that period!....

Woodsies, buttons

Really I need to go to the library and dig in on this week's teaching stuff (chunks of Tristram Shandy and Rousseau's Confessions plus the inevitable pile of assignments to comment on), but I will close some tabs first. Busy week, but mercifully I was able to collapse at the end of it - did a spin class and hot yoga on Friday, and yesterday I had pretty much the ideal day of exercise: an hour of spinning at Chelsea Piers, an hour of restorative yoga and then eight miles in Prospect Park with L. (we are running the half-marathon in Philadelphia next week). Evenings at home are essential if I want to regain equilibrium, especially as I seem to have multiple nights out this coming week. Much novel-reading, too: in short, I feel finally back to normal for the first time all semester.

Tabs:

The McLeod collator.

Natasha Shapiro offers an amazing list of materials for making altered books.

Dewlaps!

Soothing light reading around the edges:

Luke Barr, Provence, 1970; Joshilyn Jackson's short story (a teaser for her new novel, for which I am very impatient) My Own Miraculous; Jo Nesbo, Police (over-ingenious in a "wink-wink" fashion in its plot twists, but gripping regardless); Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (I liked it much better than rather negative reviews would have led me to expect, though I thought Bridget's weight loss in the opening stretch of the book was implausibly easily accomplished!); Laurie King, Touchstone (rather static and artificial in its opening, though it picked up momentum as it went along - absurd in its premises!); Mira Grant, Parasite (an appealing novel of sapient tapeworms by an emergent genius of light reading). Also, my friend "Lilia"'s erotic SF story The Slave Catcher (very good - I would eagerly read a whole novel set in this world).

About halfway through The Goldfinch - lay on the couch for some hours last night reading with one cat draped over my stomach and the other cat flopped out next to my head. Mixed feelings about it (it's uneven), but the good parts are very good indeed.

Reacher's checklist

Via my father, Jack Reacher's wardrobe choices! (FT site registration required. NB in the middle books of Sara Paretsky, there is too much detail about the washing machine - it is the way of V.I. to wash clothes ruinously dirtied by some investigative enterprise, forget them in the washer and then find them smelling moldy a few days later and run them through another wash cycle - this is also the first set of books I read, other than the novels of Dick Francis, where the detective's exercise habits occupy a significant proportion of the pages, including the question of the affordability of new running shoes on a private investigator's income).

I remain excessively frazzled, but a good play and late dinner were soothing. Last night I needed to be home more than I needed to be at the opera; we sensibly left at the first intermission!

My main feeling right now is intense self-reproach at having dug myself so deep into the fatigue pit this semester that jury duty seemed cataclysmic. Now we have the schedule for the next week, it seems at least doable (in retrospect, based on the intensity of my distress yesterday and today, I probably should have deferred service, but between teaching and travel, it's rare that I am actually available, and I thought I should get it over with). We have Tuesday off and that's one of the two days I had a lot of stuff scheduled for on campus, so I only had to reschedule half, not all. Still slightly stymied as to when and how I will read the large heap of end-of-semester student work and dissertation chapters, but it should be that it will be one week from now and I'll be done with the fall semester work and also, if the trial isn't over, have a week's hiatus for Xmas holiday. Could be worse....

Day in the life

It was an extremely demanding week, full of all the sorts of thing I usually do at work only more so. Everything went fairly smoothly, though, and I've now very beneficially had twenty-four hours off from work: went to see Restoration Comedy at the Flea (it is delightful!) and had dinner afterwards with G. at Petrarca, then had a beautiful morning of exercise at Chelsea Piers. One more day of teaching, and then I've got meetings on Tuesday but few other campus commitments for the rest of the semester, barring end-of-term grading responsibilities and a couple dissertation chapter conferences.

Light reading around the edges: I was rereading the first of Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels for class, and one of the characters is reading Valley of the Dolls, which for some reason I had never read. Amazingly it was available at the Kindle store, so I downloaded it and began reading it immediately. Its portraits of women are at times so grotesque it feels actively malevolent, and I thought several times with relief that times have changed considerably since those days, but it is still a very good read.