I am supposed to be at a conference. I present tomorrow. My paper isn't yet written, so I am skipping the panels today and writing my paper instead, though I hope to get to the late afternoon panel, because there is someone there whose ass I want to kiss. Yesterday I had a meeting with my chair, to tell her that I will be applying for a few other jobs. She is a woman of principle, and she will not abuse me for it, but it was kind of clear she wasn't thrilled. Still, I saw no way of not telling her both because it seems shitty not to, and because I decided to ask her for a letter, given that she knows more about my actual on-job performance than my other referees. The night before last, pseudonymous kid, perhaps jazzed from his day in Big City, woke up at 2:30 all excited about Halloween coming up and basically refused to let me sleep for the rest of the night, which is another reason I'm not attending conference panels today: I need to recover a bit, still, because I was up lateish again last night trying to piece together the backbone of this paper. The conference runs over the weekend, so I won't be recovering then, and it's at Big City Research U, so I have to commute. Book orders are due Monday, I found out yesterday, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to teach for one of my classes next semester. The others are either repeats (thank god) or service courses, which though new, are somewhat easier to plan: pick a standard textbook and go with it. Page proofs for an article arrived yesterday and need to be turned around next week. Papers for one class will also be coming in next week. The big, exciting, innovative, I've-never-done-this-before assignment for my huge lecture course starts in two weeks, and I have no idea how I'm actually going to do it or find time to figure it out.

My dad is hassling me because I never return his calls. And the weather sucks.

I do have coffee, though. Thank god for coffee.