This is one of those "challenging" weeks. You know, where I'm never home.

Monday: Had the usual 5-7 pm class, had an evening meeting right after the class, didn't get home until 9.

Tuesday: Did get home for a bit in the afternoon but had book club in the evening (and had to run to walmart for Youth Group supplies); didn't get home until almost 9.

Wednesday: was in meetings allllll daaaaaaay looooooong (in their defense, they were meetings I chose to go to). Had the usual Wednesday night thing, didn't get home until just after 8.

I'm ready to not go out tonight.

Wednesday's meetings were over in Ardmore. They were some meetings on writing grant proposals for the NSF. Probably worthwhile, except for the discouraging piece of information that the funding rate in the division I'd be writing to is about 13%, because there's been no budget increase but the number of proposals submitted has roughly doubled in two years.

I don't know. I also had that uncomfortable feeling I get when I'm in a room full of people who are all jockeying to show how important and intelligent and all that they are. I felt kind of stupid and insignificant, but that's generally how I feel when I try to run with the "big dogs." (It's funny: I spent most of my teenage and at least part of my college/grad school years being told how I was going to do Great Grand Things with my career. But when the rubber hits the road, I don't know - I don't know if it's a function of being at a primarily-teaching school, and it's really hard to fit a research program around 14 contact hours, or if I really am that lame at doing research. [I will say, in my defense, that I would never want to be one of those eat-sleep-live research people, who keep a sleeping bag in the corner of their lab for those nights when they don't want to leave their data...]. But it is sort of distressing. It's an anxiety I have regularly - I feel like nothing I ever do is quite good enough, that I'm not living up to what people expected of me, that there's some strange mismatch between their expectations and what I could actually achieve. Maybe the problem IS that I am relishing a night off this evening; maybe I do need to learn to be one of those eat-sleep-live research people. I don't know.)

I will say I'm going to make an effort to cut back on websurfing during the day, and write instead. Even if it's crap writing. Even if it's projects that will never see the light of day.

I did take a little time after the meetings - I mean, I had already burned the gas to get over there, so I did go shopping. (Yes, yes, I know I said "no unnecessary spending" but I was almost out of the lemon moisturizer I use...) So I went to the mall there, which has both a Bath and Body Works and a Hobby Lobby. I got my moisturizer and also another jar of the "Stress Relief Sea Salt Soak" (may they never discontinue it; taking a bath with that is the only thing that helps when I'm insomniacal). And at the Hobby Lobby, a few skeins of Kool Wool (which I believe has been discontinued; at least, it's not in the most recent Lion catalog) for a hat and scarf, and also I fell prey to the charms of two skeins of the Lion Suede "prints" - it's Monet colors, which I love. So that will also become a simple scarf.

And their needles were half off; I bought a couple sets to fill in where I had only had aluminum straight needles or as extra pairs.

As you can guess, not much knitting has gone on. (I took the purple socks in my purse to the meetings, but felt that taking them out to work on during breaks would only seal my appearence of being out of my league; this was not a group of people that included knitters, unlike some scientific meetings I've been to). I've picked away at the second armwarmer, but that's about it.

I hope to rectify the "no knitting this week" this evening, if I can get my rear in gear today and:

1. prep for tomorrow's Biostats class
2. write next week's Biostats exams
3. Grade Biostats homework, GIS homework, Ecology labs
4. Review the outline for a presentation a colleague and I are going to give
5. Put together some kind of a project outline for a seed-and-bud bank study I want to do
6. Maybe, resurrect the stalled tension zone paper and try to write more/revise on it.