Summer Plans

I'm excited about a bunch of neat stuff we have planned for summer!

a) This month I'm going to a little conference in Savannah, which is a town I've always wanted to visit. There is a just-graduated colleague who wants to collaborate on a potential grant with me and my post doc, so we'll spend some time at that conference brainstorming grant ideas. Also, one of my intellectual heroes will be at the conference too. He's the guy who offered me a job last year that I turned down, and it was all awkward, and I think he was really bummed but he was nice about it. Then I wrote a paper for a monograph and he wrote a commentary on it. Recently he told me he's eager to discuss the paper at this conference, which will be great, I hope, and probably very helpful as I revise the paper for a journal. (Still kind of scary, though. He's so smart and his ideas are so much more sophisticated than mine that I am intimidated.)

Also, Jake is coming down to join me for the latter half and we're staying a couple of days after the conference ends to be tourists and have a little vacation! I am really looking forward to that.

b) Then like a week after that, in June, I'm going to DC for another conference. There I'll be on a panel discussing this particular methodology that I'm just starting to dip my toes into, but everybody else on the panel is super super advanced in this methodology, having done it for years and years. So that's a little nerve wracking, but I think I'll learn a lot and it'll be good for me.

c) Then in July a friend of mine in my field is coming to our town for about a week! She's going to do some work while she's here, and I'll show her around, and then we got this bright idea - what if we invite some other women in our field to town for a mini writing workshop, where we work together on our writing? So we invited 4 other women, and they're all going to come! Two will come in the middle of the week and the other two will come at the end of the week. So fun! I'm really psyched that I get to have visitors and talk and share with people, especially my friend who will be here for a week.

d) Then in early August, I'm going to go to the bay area for my teacher-friends reunion! It will have been almost 2 years since we've all been together, and even more exciting, one of them will have a new baby (due in a few weeks)! So I get to see all of my friends and also meet one of their new babies!

e) Then in late August, we're all going to go to my mom's house for about a week! And my sister and her family will be there too! Super fun. Oh, and supposedly I'm supposed to spend 2 days while I'm there being on an advisory panel, but the idiot budget people at that university haven't been able to pay me for the work I did on that panel over a year ago, so I'm not going to do it if I don't get paid by then. I mean, I'll still help out here and there for free, but I'm not going to take 2 days away from my vacation to sit in advisory panel meetings for free.

Other things: I signed the kids up for swimming lessons again. I also feel like I should get Milo into baseball, since baseball is his preferred sport if he has to pick. But they still all happen during his nap time, so I'm not doing it. I am starting to feel a little bit like the lame parent who doesn't sign her kids up for activities, but, I mean, going to school 4 days a week should count, right? Plus, he still needs his nap. Nora could give hers up, but Milo still sleeps a solid 3 hours in the afternoon, even though he's 4. Who am I to argue with that? He's always been a big sleeper.

Jake's mom is already bugging us about when we'll go up north. I'm prepared to sacrifice one weekend this summer to that, but any more and Jake can take them on his own. Thankfully, they're old enough now for that! It's nice up there, but it is really tough on me not sleeping for a whole weekend, which is what happens every. single. time. There is only one person out of the 4 of us who actually gets any sleep, and it's Jake.

Writing plans:
1) Conference monograph into journal article, goal: out the door this summer
2) Collaborative with post-doc paper, goal: out the door this summer
3) Second collaborative with post-doc paper (her 1st author), goal: help her out on it and follow her timeline (probably it'll go out this summer)
4) New-to-me methodology paper, goal: drafted by the end of the summer
5) New co-authored book with Mentor, goal: Outline by Sept. 30

Another book? I've been saying to myself, no more books for a while! But then this book opportunity came up, and I thought, oh, that one sounds kind of interesting...so I said yes.

Anyway, I'm hoping that these concrete writing plans will get me past the classic post-tenure slump, which I do think has plagued me a bit over the past 6 months or so. Either way, it's going to be an exciting summer!