The Curse of the Confidential (and the Tedious)

Part of the recent silence has been produced by the fact that everything I’ve been doing over the last however many days it’s been since I got back to Claremont (just checked; it’s eleven. I can’t decide if it seems like it’s been more or less than that) is either (a) bloody tedious or (b) various levels of confidential. Days have been like this:

6.00 am: get up, put in contacts, brush teeth

6.15 am: feed cats, make tea

6.20 am: sit down and either spend two and a half hours madly preparing for classes, or spend an hour madly preparing for classes and then go to the gym

9.00 am: hop in shower

10.00 am: arrive in office, meet with students, teach classes, attend job talks, interview candidates, go to meetings.

6.00 pm: either sit in office and actually attempt to get something done for an hour, or go to dinner with job candidate, or–miracle of miracles!–go have a drink with a friend

9.00 pm: arrive home exhausted and despite intentions to do some work so less needs to be done in the morning, instead check email

10.00 pm: look up to discover an hour has gone by and no work has gotten done; feed cats

10.15 pm: go to bed

Not a lot to report there, and what’s actually been interesting can’t be written about. The good news is that the sheer drudgery of it really didn’t bother me for the first week; everytime I’d get the slightest bit aggravated, I’d remember my utterly blissful two weeks in Paris, and find myself smiling like a fool. That, alas, wore off sometime last week. Now all I can think about is everything I ought to be getting done right now instead of writing this.

But hey, John McCain’s been talking on his cell phone nonstop for the last half-hour (or is that a cell faux?), so I oughta be able to blog.