Today is going to be a "me" day, dammit [work]

Yesterday was one of those anticlimactic end-of-semester days. I am not complaining. I informed my students of their grades towards the end of the day on Monday, then posted their final grades yesterday at around 11 am. I had one student point out a discrepancy, and had another student finish things out with a late final, but that was it. Not too bad. The majority of students were able to bring their overall course grades up by doing better on the final exam than on the last two midterms, which was reassuring. The final wasn't impossibly hard, but it wasn't easy, either.

The rest of the day was then somewhat aimless. Again, I'm not complaining. Aimless time is incredibly important for me, as it's often a precursor to being able to think about and do stuff that is difficult to tackle in the middle of everything else. I got caught up on reading tables of contents for a couple of scientific journals, and filed away a half-dozen articles on the "read later" list. I don't always actually get to them, but that's at least one step in clearing out email inboxes. I also got the papers on my desk cleaned up and organized, including completely filling the recycling bin in my office. Give me another year or three and I might actually have a good overall workable office organizational system. Part of this included starting to get organized for Animal Physiology in the spring. I also realized that I needed to do something about the next steps of a small experiment: due to being short on time during the semester, I'd left a couple trays of (dry) ant food sitting out. But seeing as Office Mouse stuck his nose out yesterday, I can't assume anything edible is safe if it's left out in the open. So I got that project contained for now.

I also decided that today, Wednesday, is going to be a "me" day. On a certain level, this feels extravagant, but on another level, how often do I actually do this sort of thing? Besides, technically campus is closed for 2 weeks, starting today.

The thing about that is: I will still go in tomorrow and Friday to tend to animals. Living animals don't respect notions of work-life balance, after all. And I still have that general tension/frustration over the all-too-precious days between the end of the fall semester and start of spring semester. There are papers to write, and a conference to attend.

And I have just submitted my intention to apply for tenure next year, so I'll need to get to work on those things ASAP.

Just...not today. Today I will lounge around the house, drink some tea, and work on a handful of small projects I really want to get wrapped up.

Go home, weather, you're drunk [travel]

At around 8 pm last night, I received a text from Amtrak, informing me that the second train leg of my journey had been canceled. At around 8:30 pm, this message was reiterated in an email that I read shortly before drifting peacefully off to sleep. At around 9:30 pm, I was jarred awake by a phone call, where an automated voice informed me that I would probably want to have a pen and paper handy to take notes. For the record, most human beings know very well that they shouldn't call me after 9 pm except in a serious emergency. Ahem, Amtrak. I scrambled out of bed in a dazed stupor, found a pen and an envelope, and then listened as the exact same message was reiterated to me as I'd received via text and email already.

After I got the first message, I decided I'd put off making any decisions until the following morning. It seemed unlikely that I'd be able to do anything immediate that would make any kind of difference. I believe there's just one daily train that goes from Chicago to Minneapolis, so I'd need to do some thinking about my various options before making a decision about how to proceed. I don't want to leave any earlier than I'd originally planned, and at the same time, I don't really want to leave later, either. Should I opt for a leg on the bus instead, rent a car, or ... ?

By the time morning rolled around, I checked the various airplane options and settled on flying instead, sigh.

If you look at the National Weather Service's US map today, you'll observe it's festooned with all sorts of interesting hues, because there's all sorts of interesting weather happening across the US right now and over the next couple of days.

It may very well be the case that I don't get all the way to my destination on Friday, but history tells me that if I get waylaid somewhere, Southwest will at least do its very best to be nice to me, and they have more than a single daily option for travel. This is just how life is for those of us in the US; when the trains run into issues, impressive delays can result, and often the shortfalls must be addressed by some number of hours spent crammed into a bus instead. No matter how hard I might wish it were otherwise, it isn't. However, the US has dumped incredible amounts of money into airports, so airplane travel is generally more expedient. We are not continental Europe.

In the middle of the day today, the whole series of alarms and klaxons went off again, because Amtrak apparently has also canceled the other leg of the train trip now, too, and needed to be completely sure that I knew. I just went ahead and submitted a request for a refund; we'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, today was almost entirely eaten up by activities involving addressing envelopes and applying stamps to them. I'm certainly doing my part to try and keep the US Postal Service operational, Congress be damned.

I might need to rethink my holiday card mailing list and strategy. Maybe I will just send cards once every four years or so? I definitely need to do something to simplify. But I also had fun with aspects of the project this year; this is the kind of thing that qualifies as 'me time' around here. We shall see.