I survived July and survived August and somehow survived my dissertation and seem to have survived my move. Now it's September, and I don't know what to do with myself. Except that in fact, I still have my work cut out for me.

Teaching

( Lectures )

It's now September, which means that my giant August to-do list of doom has expired. I'm now safely home in Vernon for a few weeks, which means that it's time to start a giant new to-do list of September doom as I undertake a new round of preparation for France.

( Arriving in France stuff )

Here it is: my comprehensive list of everything I need to do by the end of August in order to be ready to move out of Boston and fly home to Vernon for three weeks before I move to Rennes for eight months. It will be lurking at the top of my journal until the end of August, and spawning (hopefully) daily spinoffs.

( Visa stuff... )

It's still pretty windy, but we seem to have come through Irene unscathed in our little corner of Brighton. The power never so much as flickered, which makes us luckier than a lot of other people in Massachusetts and along the eastern seaboard right now ( Read more... )

So, I'm still here so far this morning. The weather is foul, and noticeably more so in the hour since I got up and shut my bedroom window and made my morning cup of tea. Happily, however, the banging of my window frames in the wind, which I think started around six, didn't keep me awake like I was fearing, after a truly insufficient night of sleep ( Read more... )

My occasionally-cranky digestive system is warning me in no uncertain terms this morning that things are getting down to the wire as far as packing up my life in Boston for the year. I'm hoping it will settle down enough in the space of me posting this that I'll be able to go running in order to calm down the HIDEOUS FANGY BUTTERFLIES that are ( Read more... )

So, the part yesterday where I said I was leaving Boston in two weeks, but put reconsidering my date of departure on my to-do list? Yeah, I reconsidered. I now have my ticket home, and I'll be leaving Boston the evening of August 30th, that is, twelve days from now. FLAIL. There is so much to do!

Here's what has to happen today:

( To do, August 18 )

My master plan for the next month and three days before I leave for France involves flying home two weeks today, and... *gurgle of panic.* You can look my master to-do list up for yourselves and see what all I have left to do. Between the hideous panic and the fact that it's a beautiful (and nice-smelling!) morning, all I really want to do is keep ( Read more... )

My shiny new iPad and shiny new French visa, although both continue to be extremely happy-making, are also sort of symbols of the end of an era in my life. In eighteen days roommate J and I will both have moved out of our house, where we've both been living (with various third roommates, turning over annually) since we started grad school in the ( Read more... )

I'm currently sitting on the floor of my bedroom amongst piles of crap that are not going to get cleaned up before I leave, because my bed is covered with the crap I'm supposed to be packing and that is not responding to the POWER OF MY MIND and putting itself in my suitcase. Ah, packing ( Read more... )