20150314.0800

I am on Spring Break, although, as I have noted, it will not be much of a break. Today, for example, I will be putting together several thousand words for pay, and during the week, I expect to have more such words to write, as well as some job applications left to send out and interviews for which to prepare. (Fortunately, I will be treating much the same materials in the interviews, so I will be able to prepare a short version and a long version of a single lesson for my teaching demonstrations.) I probably ought to get a paper or two written, as well, although I will admit that that will take a bit more doing, happening alongside the other things I need to do. (That said, I do need to get the papers written. If I am going to be moving along to a tenure-line job, or if I am going to continue to seek it, I need to have more publications out--and not the kind that the freelance work earns me.)

The weather around Sherwood Cottage seems to suit the spring celebration, though. Temperatures are largely comfortable, neither too warm nor too cool, and the recent rain has lent a freshness to the outside air that even I, indoorsman that I am, find agreeable. Birds have begun to sing again, and the trees that bloom are beginning to do so. This means, of course, that allergies are beginning to act up, and I think Ms. 8 has one or more of them with which to contend. I know the Mrs. does, as do I. The oak is yet to spread its seed through the air, but that firm and gnarled wood will soon do so, and that moneyshot scene is not one in which I wish to star, certainly not as the receiver.

I am always able to find the cloud behind the silver lining, after all.

That does not mean, though, that I do not recognize the silver. It will be good to have a bit narrower a focus for a time and perhaps to get a bit ahead on the work that is mine to do. It will be good also to rely less on artificial sources for the comfort of my personal climate and open the house to the world for a time. It is cheaper, for one, and it helps to blow out the stink that a winter largely sequestered and with the windows filmed over against the draft and in the hope of creating just a little bit more insulation inevitably provokes. I expect to do both in the week before I must away for job interviews and the few days after until I return once again to the work of teaching. Hopefully, the students and I will all be refreshed therefrom.