No sewing, but...

So I haven't had a whole lot of time for sewing or knitting (or indeed much of anything) over the last few weeks. Here's what I have been doing since my last post a month ago:

1. I was at a weeklong conference in Austin, TX. I ate too much barbeque and now feel sick at the mere thought of beef brisket or pulled pork. The conference was good, but busy, and I was able to spend some time with some great friends and colleagues that I haven't seen in a while.

2. I have been teaching a new class for the first time. Each lecture is taking me ~12 hours to put together. Add to this the time required for creating homework assignments, grading homework assignments, and developing the lab and presentation components of the course, and I have easily been spending 40 hours per week on just this class.

3. It's proposal season. I have four proposals I'm hoping to submit by the deadline on Feb 24. I put one together this week and have sent it to collaborators for comment, one was written last year and just needs to be modified this time around (some modifications accomplished yesterday), another that will require some preliminary results to justify the proposal (analysis started yesterday), and another that may or may not get off the ground in time.

4. James was offered and accepted a job while I was in Austin, and has been working full time since I got back home. His schedule has been all over the map, and it quickly became clear that we couldn't both get to and from work with a single vehicle. So extraneous free time has been spent researching vehicles online, and culminated with the purchase of a 2009 certified used Honda CR-V EX 4WD in silver last weekend. The freedom to come and go on my own schedule has been really nice this week!

5. We're hiring some additional faculty and have had ~60 job applications to read and 3 meetings to discuss and rank candidates.

I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting, but isn't this enough? I feel tired just reading this list. I can't wait for February to end, and with it, all the craziness I've been living under for the last 6 weeks. The proposals will be submitted, for better or worse, spring break will happen, my class will move from being lecture-heavy to being student presentation and project-heavy, and I'll be spending more time interacting with interviewees in person and going out to dinner with them than trying to learn about people from what they decided to write on a piece of paper.

I think I will try to spend a little time sewing or knitting this weekend (even though I need to put together a homework assignment and a lecture for Monday) just so I can try to relax a bit.