By my long-term absence here, you can tell that work won out over blog for most of fall 2011. But now that the big job of last fall is done and I have some grading to catch up on, blog can take its rightful place in the pantheon of work-avoidance tasks.
John and I took on a BIG translating job that was due in mid-December, and as the deadline drew nearer, we found ourselves putting in 40-hour weeks on the translating in addition to our teaching jobs (him full-time, me part-time). It was hard to enjoy the holiday season when our normally cheer-inducing advent's calendars
...were reminders that we were one day closer to our doom. DOOOOM!
This is what my office looked like afterward:
All those bits of paper taped on the glass to the right are the various items that were completed over the course of our project. They started on the pinboard behind my laptop and got taped on the glass when they were done. And of course there was always a new bit of paper to take their place, until xmas eve, that is. Booyah!
Hannah was basically a feral child during this period. (What else is new?) She is getting so grown up that we could trust her with things like arranging for take-out for us or cooking dinner. She really was a big help.
I barely had time for keeping us clothed and fed, much less cleaning or baking, but I did manage this:
Those are the poinsettias I forced. Luckily, they live in my office, so when it started to get dark in the late afternoon, I would just throw a couple of plastic blags over them to block out any other light and keep working. Then in the morning, pull the bags off and work some more. The red one has bigger, showy-er blooms, but the pink one makes up for it by putting out smaller blooms all over. I didn't think the pink one would manage it this year, but it was just a slow starter. I probably didn't pay more than 3 bucks each for them at the grocery store back when I bought them, and I actually have no idea what I am doing with them. I think you are supposed to let them "rest" with a cool period after they bloom, something something, but I just keep watering them all year round.
That's what I do with the mystery citrus, too. Now I know not to freak out when the leaves fall off despite the watering and some sticky, webby stuff starts showing up on the tips of the stems. Neither of those things has killed it yet. And now I have 2 new mystery citrus plants.
I threw some seeds in my balcony planters upstairs, but then the wooden railing on the outside edge started to break apart, so I set the planter on the floor of the balcony and forgot about it. Imagine my surprise when I peeked outside and saw a little tree sprouting. I scooped it into a pot, and after a while more little trees started sprouting out of that pot. The rest were pretty puny, so I recycled them, but this is what I have left for the moment.
I got a Kindle for xmas, and now I am off to add something to it, another worthy work-avoidance task.
