I have been awful about updating here, but I’m going to turn that around in this, the second half of my year. It’s my half birthday!! so what’s new?
*The semester started a while back, and my seminar is going well so far - no one’s dropped it, amazingly, and the students seem pretty engaged...
*Almost crunch time on the dissertation - I have a bunch of other projects that I am trying to clear off of my plate in the next few weeks, and then it will be teaching and dissertation, 24/7. My plan is to be done in the Spring semester. If possible, I’d like to be done not even at the end of spring semester. Some of these things are out of my hands, but I’m going to write that baby as fast as possible in the meantime. My department seems to be falling apart with alarming rapidity, so I’d like to finish before i’m left holding it, gazing over the rubble that used to be a well-respected hotbed of intellectual life.
*Yep, those other projects are keeping me a little bit busy first though...cranking away at them
*Swimming! The Lake George Marathon Swim (32 miles) took place this past weekend. Perhaps I’ll recap it here sometime, but the shortest version of the event is that the entire thing was shut down after five hours in the water. Not just my swim, but everyone’s (we were a field of 13 solo swimmers plus 13 relay teams). The swim was called off at a dark 8pm, but it took many over five hours to get back to shore. Boats were sinking, police escorts and tows were called. Bad news all around. Sure, we had bad weather, but the more disappointing part of this was just how badly mismanaged the entire event was. The “race” director ignored all warnings, put us all in danger, and then was entirely unreachable for the duration of the event. Some teams never actually got the message that the event had been called! (they managed to have the sense to pull themselves anyway). It should never fall to the swimmer to make these kinds of calls - if you show up to an “event” some amount of expertise and judgement is what you are paying for. A historic debacle in the marathon swimming community - thankfully, and luckily, no one was hurt (*cough* not even the swimmer that the race director hit with his boat). I hope to come back and conquer Lake George solo, without an “event” sometime in the future, as I’m sure many of us will.
While I’m excited to take a bit of an offseason, concentrate on some running, dropping some weight, etc., I COULD NOT let the season end on the sour note that was Lake George. In nine days (count ‘em, 9) I will be swimming around Manhattan. This was maybe not the most financially responsible conservative decision I could have made, but I think it will be worth it for a bunch of reasons (I should probably write a post on those sometime too...). In any case, I am SO looking forward to October 1!! New Yorkers, come wave from shore!!
Next year’s big swim is set and in the works as well, and I am so excited about that...
Gosh, I guess I’ll leave this post here - already too long, isn’t it?
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