Assiduous

I did not mean to be away this long.  I did not mean to be away at all.  My mind is filled with SO VERY MANY things I want to write about and share here.  So, so many different things.  

Yet, I have not been HERE at my blog.  Nothing is "wrong".  But from the moment I returned to the U on the Monday after Thanksgiving.... the sheer volume of needed effort grew exponentially.... and frankly..... rather unexpectedly so as well.  

I cannot fully explain why or how this has occurred, as it caught me off guard.  Sure, we are very near the end of the Semester.  Sure, there are all manner of things to do (exams to write, robust lectures to give, research to do, damnable meetings to attend, things to grade, blah, blah,).  But, this is expected, and is NORMAL for this time of the Semester.  But, for some reason I cannot hypothesize upon nor discern with my senses...... EACH and EVERY thing in my life at the moment seems to have transitioned from "normal size" to "super-sized" (like at McDonalds).  

Here is a basic rundown of every day since Thanksgiving:

• Get up in the dark, well before dawn
•  and go to the track to run
• Get home, clean up & dress, potty the dog, drive to the U
• Lecture for 3-5 hours (depending upon the day).
• Have office hours... that have been ENORMOUSLY BUSY....  EVERY, EVERY DAY with considerably more students than typical!  Sometimes I have been seeing more than a dozen students in my office hour..... every, every day!
• Work in the lab.
• Work in my office.
• Grade things.
• Since Thanksgiving, the normal time I leave the U has been between 5:30 and 6:00pm and my wife and I are trying to maintain our swimming.  If we swim (which we have), we end up getting home sometime around 8:00 and 8:30 and need to eat.  
• We have been eating at ~9:00pm most days, while watching news or a program on the television.

• I have been so exhausted that I end up going to bed by 11:00pm or 11:30 at the latest if I read.

Rinse and repeat the above EVERY DAY since Thanksgiving, other than the Monday evening concerts I am playing, the Wednesday Evening Catholic "Study Group" my wife and I decided to participate in, and other evening events that are scheduled this time of year. These things have made the days even longer on this occasions and we sit down finally to eat at about 10pm.

So... to conclude the "explanation".... I have NOT had any actual time to do ANYTHING outside of the above since Thanksgiving.  Many days I have been so busy I did not eat until dinner.  That is why I have been away.  

* * * 

But, it is my hope/plan for from today.... a return to only being my normal "regularly" busy.  I have SO MANY things I want to write about:

• More about the thoughts/experiences I had at the cemetery talking with my Dad.
• More about the utterly, beyond amazing levels of enjoyment I felt in indulging in that one pipe on his birthday.
• Thoughts about my research.
• Thoughts about which parish we want to belong to.
• Excitement in a POTENTIAL trip that may arise back to CHICAGO!!!!!

And, so very much more.  But, this brief interlude is all I can spare today.  Back to a helluva lot of grading, research, etc.

PipeTobacco

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