Early February, Early Mornings

Whooooooooowwww

Its now, what, 4 weeks into this full time working/ part time teaching thing and I am... Tired.

Here's the routine for a week: up at 6:15am every day, shower, to the office by 7:45am. Work through the day till 4:45pm, when I dash out the door to the gym. Exercise for an hour, then home for dinner. After dinner is devoted to working on class lectures and slides.

I've found that I can't lecture without a slide show. Talking about history, especially historic built landscapes is such a visual thing. So lecture preps bounce back and forth between searching for the image I want and fact checking what I want to talk about.

I've probably spent an average of 6-8 hours on every lecture. This is the first time the course is being taught, so I'm totally building it from scratch. And because I wasn't sure what I'd want to change after a few weeks, I didn't plan lectures or slideshows very far in advance. So its a lot of work.

I knew it would be a lot of work. Its work I enjoy, really, but it's been a bit of a relentless grind building this thing. Even something like a lovely surprise weekend from my sister can throw my whole "things to get done and when to do them" schedule off.

And every week I seem to fall into a pattern of totally nailing the Tuesday lecture, walking out feeling on top of the world, and then falling flat on my face for the Thursday lecture. Or vice-versa. Its unnerving and confidence-killing. Nothing to do but get back on the horse though. Especially since I'm getting paid to do this.

DJ has been awesome, absolutely awesome about giving me time to work on class stuff. I've neglected housekeeping, demanded he turn off the light by 9:45pm so I could go to sleep (oh the irony!) and generally demanded that all things fit my schedule. He's made dinners, hung out with the dog and kept the house stocked with toilet paper.

And I have a wonderful sister and friends, did I mention that? I turned 29 on Tuesday. And Harlow turned 2. In advance of the birthday, Gretch drove over from Pullman and Ali drove down from Helena for a Chico Hot Springs afternoon and Livingston Saturday night. We stayed at the Murray Hotel (awesome historic hotel across the street from the train station), had dinner at the rib and Chop house and then did a Livingston bars lap. The most entertaining portion of the evening was walking into the Mint Bar and finding it FULL of hipsters. HIPSTERS. In LIVINGSTON. That.... Was unexpected. With their serious black oversize glasses and serious conversations.

Dusty made a delicious dinner of salmon, mashed potatoes, garlic bread and broccoli for my birthday. I received flowers, cards and phone calls. It was a nice, low key day. Which is my style for birthdays. 


This weekend is packed with getting my poop in a group. Writing the handout for the paper my students have due at the end of the month, prepping this week's lectures, prepping some AOII stuff for the annual Corporation meeting at the end of the month. Budgets, agendas, membership, etc. I'm good at that end of the organizational spectrum, I hope. 


And with that, I think I heard the coffee ding that it's ready. Time to get to work!