There is too much--let me sum up

(the above seems apt. . . and is a pretty hot looking bike, in my opinion)

I spent some time yesterday afternoon cleaning up, lubing, tuning my bike. I've not had it out on the road in a long time. Here's the frustrating thing: now that it's all ready to go, I get a leaden sensation in my limbs when I think about taking it out on the road. Nah. Why bother? It's a whole lot of trouble, and there's gonna be a damn dog at some house, and what are you hoping to achieve, anyway? It's the same story no matter what kind of exercise I think about doing.

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Preparing to teach my summer classes starting on Monday. Course documents are ready to go; material is quite familiar. The only variables: the students themselves, and whether I'll have enough of them. Right now it's looking like about 8 per class.

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The word "mono" has been thrown around a lot at our house recently. I'm pretty sure that the galloping grippe that wiped all the boys out wasn't mono, but a bug that acts a lot like it (with the critical difference that it's much faster). Fortunately, everyone is healthy now, and The Spouse never succumbed to it. In fact, the other three all spent late yesterday afternoon playing with the sprinkler and the slip-n-slide.

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Meanwhile, I am attempting to resurrect a completely moribund research programme. I had momentum at one point, but the challenges of the past ten months have pretty much undone whatever progress I might have made up to this point. Frankly, I'm completely out of ideas, and if it weren't for the tenure clock and a couple of additional deadlines, I'm not sure I'd care. Whence comes the apathy? Excellent question, Glaucon. I'm not sure that diploma in front of me isn't more of a rebuke than anything else.

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Waiting for word from Atlanta about Mamaw. She's not apt to be with us for much longer, but then, we've been saying that for a few weeks now.

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On the bright side:
The new MacBook is doing quite nicely. It seems blazing fast when compared to ol' trusty Jack, the Powerbook G4. I like OSX 10.5.7 quite a lot as well, and the version of iLife this machine has.

Also: looks like we're making headway on getting a new roof, and a new windshield for Zippy.

We've tried a new gardening method this year, and the plants look incredibly healthy--for now. Still, it's far more success than we've enjoyed in previous summers. If this works like it looks like it will, expect us to triple or quadruple our efforts next year.

Strawberry shortcake, barbecue, beer-can chicken: all have been featured on the menu within the past four days. And yes, I'm putting some weight on again, though I'm still way down in pants & shirt size. No two ways about it: I shrunk.

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In countless ways. But enough now.