Overwhelmed

I started out this semester behind and have not even begun to catch up. There is too much going on. The worst is that in August, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She found out almost accidentally - a chance x-ray for something else revealed a 3 cm growth "highly suspicious for malignancy". Six weeks of testing later (yes, six weeks) and we have a diagnosis. It isn't good: Stage IV. One small lesion on a rib means it is metastatic lung cancer. She started chemo a week ago.

Last month, when they thought it was operable, she went through all sorts of testing. Turns out, she is incredibly healthy. Not even any heart disease, which her mother had in abundance. She is in a non-blind clinical trial of a newer chemotherapy agent - one that is already approved for other types of cancers. She's on the new stuff, not the standard therapy. Everyone is optimistic she may have longer than most. Which is great, because the statistics for stage IV lung cancer really, really suck.

No cat day cat blogging

The new kittens:

About the Cat.

Curie: Where did Alex go when she died?

Dr. H: We don't know.

Curie: Why not?

Dr. H: Well, no one knows what happens, it's one of the great mysteries of life.

Curie: Where do people go after they die?

Dr. H.: No one knows that either.

Curie: Why not?

Dr. H.: Well, as I said, it's one of the mysteries of life. No one who is alive has gone through it, so no one knows.

Curie: The people at Kids' Club know.

Dr. H.: What?

(Kid's Club is the afterschool program run by the local park district.)

Your academic advisor? That would be me.

I'm a first year advisor this year and my advisees are all in my first year experience class. This week, I fielded multiple requests from football players to drop from four course to three. Two colleagues mentioned the same issue. We are division III people, your coach isn't supposed to tell you how many course to take.

E-mail

Last summer, I stumbled upon Inbox Zero after seeing a comment on this post over at the Angry Professor. I was inspired. I don't know why, exactly. I've never been a fan of productivity or organizing literature. The answer always seems to be "hey, just be organized" and "put stuff away where it belongs". If I did either of those things naturally or easily, I wouldn't be buying the book or reading the website.

But it was summer, I had about 2700 messages in my Inbox and I was really, really tired of being afraid of looking at my e-mail. The system spoke to me. So, I read all the info and committed myself to keeping my e-mail under one screen. I'm not Inbox Zero, but I had been Inbox < 20 for a year. It felt good.

It was some work at first - being disciplined about dealing with e-mail. After a few months it felt more natural. I only have to really work at it when things are insanely busy. Like now. A two weeks ago I gave myself permission to go up to 40 for a bit.

I'm thinking that this probably wasn't the best idea in the world. Twice this week I never even opened my e-mail.

In other news, it is fairly clear that my productivity and blogging have been negatively impacted by Facebook.