Uff-Da

That's what my Minnesota in-laws would say about my day/week so far: "Uff-da!" (Having them here is such a funny reminder of MN-speak. After being away from the region for almost 4 years now, their accents and sayings have my husband and I crackin grins at one another, "dontcha know.")

Class itself is busy, fo sho, but I also have other responsibilities with my work and those have been busy lately as well. See, just like it's important for college students to have those clubs and organizations on their resume, it's important for college faculty to engage in similar "extra-curricular" activities for professional development. That means committee membership, department posts, research, publishing, etc. Currently, I have 3 extra-curricular activities that I'm involved in:

• I'm the English department liaison with the library (it's my job to order books on behalf of my department -- awesome job -- and my job to be the department expert on the library).
• I serve on the campus' library committee (can you tell that I like the library? my mom was a librarian, after all, so much of my childhood was spent there and I have great affection for it).
• And, I'm currently serving on the department's handbook committee.

That last one? It's the one that has me very busy right now. Every 3 years, the English department chooses the almighty handbook (you bought one when you were a freshman in college -- spiral bound grammar book -- remember it?) that we will use for the next 3 years. Exclusively. So, we have about 12 texts to examine and choose from. And that means we have about 6 publishing reps stopping by to try and push their particular two texts (textbook reps are to college faculty as drug reps are to doctors).

So, this morning instead of getting the extra time I usually enjoy -- surfing blogs -- I had to go to what are, essentially, sales pitches for 2 handbooks. And if there's anything more boring than trying to make a handbook sound interesting? It's two of them.

Anyway, add those meetings (which have been occurring every day this week), to my regular classes, and the fact that I'm staying today to help a colleague with a presentation (she's applying for a research grant and I have been helping her the past two weeks tweak her presentation), and I'm glad that today is a rest day for running.

Tomorrow, I run another 3 miler, Saturday I rest and Sunday is the half, so light running during the week to save up those "mighty" legs. Thus, even though it's only 3 pm, I am really looking forward to getting home this evening, sitting down to a nice dinner (in laws bought us a shiz-load of good food -- tonight, it's gonna be a seafood extravaganza with shrimp and crab legs!), and a beer.

Wait. That gives me a thought! I'm bringing a case of beer to our next committee meeting! Wa-hoo!