Just another summer weekend

Topics/tags: Overcommitment, Code camps

It’s Friday night. It seems like I should be planning for what I’ll be doing this weekend. It’s summer, so a faculty member’s life is supposed to be calmer. But, well, it’s me. So, while it’s calmer than it normally is, it’s still a bit busy. Let’s see …

This past week has been week two of code camp. And a few other things came up. So I’m behind on sleep. And I’ve had a low-level cold for a while. My first goal for the weekend is, therefore, to catch up on sleep [1]. I’m hoping that’s possible.

I know that there are some things that I need to do around the house, but I’m not quite sure what all of them are. We have some new art, so we’re probably rearranging the front room. At minimum, we’re hanging the new art and moving the old art elsewhere or into storage [2]. But I expect we’ll want to do more than that. Our yard is also suffering from a lack of care this summer. Things grow way too quickly in Iowa. But it’s supposed to rain on Saturday afternoon. And, given that it’s July in Iowa, it’s going to be hot. I think the yard will continue to over-grow for another weekend.

It’s unlikely that I’ll sleep in on Saturday; Saturday is Ridiculous Day in Grinnell, our downtown sidewalk sale. I don’t really need anything, but I enjoy seeing what’s out there. And I usually end up finding some useful supplies at the bookstore [3]. Since Ridiculous Day starts at 8 a.m., I’ll be up by 7:30. Maybe I’ll take a nap in the afternoon.

But there’s a book sort for Friends of Drake Library in the afternoon [4]. I have four boxes of books to take to the sort [5]. And I’ll probably stay and help sort [6].

Those are the summery plans for the weekend: Get sleep, go to Ridiculous Days, sort books, work on the house. That doesn’t seem so bad.

But, well, we only have one week to go until the Language of Code Camp and, while we have a draft schedule for the week, that’s all we have. This week has ended up being busier than any of us planned [7] and I lost about eight hours that I was hoping to use to set up infrastructure to support my students as they built the detailed lesson plans. I had already planned to spend a few hours on code camp this weekend. Now I have to spend eight plus a few hours on code camp. At least that’s work that I find fun.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only work I have to do. I have to spend some time getting back to inbox zero. I’ve been trying to keep up, but the business of code camp has put me behind. There are a few things I need to review; I’m not even sure what they are right now. The code camp work has also put us behind on the port of Project Callisto [8]. We just made some big decisions which are going to require some significant rethinking of what to do next.

Finally, there’s probably a bunch more that I’ve forgotten and that will come up [9].

Will I get everything done? Almost certainly not. Will I try? Almost certainly.

[1] While it is not possible to get ahead on sleep, if you fall behind, it is eventually possible to make up what you’ve lost. At least that’s what I’ve been told. I’m not sure that I’ll ever catch up.

[2] It’s nice to be able to rotate the art once in a while. It gives us some variety.

[3] I might find some books, too. But I’ve been cutting down on my book buying.

[4] We used to be Friends of Stewart Library or FOSL. We could pronounce that as fossil. I wanted to call us Friends of the New Drake Library or FONDL, which we could pronounce fondle. I lost that battle. And it’s not so new any more.

[5] Three and a half of the boxes come from Middle Son. I only managed to get rid of half a box this month.

[6] That may offset the half box I just got rid of.

[7] As I said, I need to catch up on sleep.

[8] Have I written about Callisto? I have a series of musings planned on it, but I think any I’ve written are just rough drafts.

[9] Yes, I know that it should be on my to-do list.

Version 1.0 of 2018-07-13.