A list and a story

I'm taking a cue from my friend Brittany who thinks that blogging via list format is easier. She is an authority in my book for how to make life easier, since she is both graduate student extraordinaire and mother to two young (and wonderful!) children.

1. Teaching this semester is a blast! There are some corresponding challenges, and I'm feeling probably more than my share of anxiety, but my students are top notch learners and very fun to have in class.
2. I am branching out into spinning art yarn! This means adding in other fun things, like beads, thread, found objects, ribbon, etc to my usual wool bases. It's very fun to play with texture and color, and I will post pics as soon as they are finished (that's a fancy word for washing handspun yarn to make it prettier).
3. The flu sucks! Bill and I both got sick shortly after my last blog entry, and my respiratory system is still not happy (I think it's also cause of the mold and pollen that are especially problematic this year. Cool, wet weather....blegh).
4. Work is intense right now. Besides teaching, I've got lots of projects cooking in the lab and even more being analyzed and written into papers and grants. I've got great help from an undergrad worker and a new, rotating grad student, though, so I'm hopeful I'll muddle through the semester relatively easily.

And now for a story, related to item 4. I'm big on organization of my data, my writing, etc. I spend lots of time making lists in Excel describing my data and ways to manage and analyze it. Last night I was having a dream about entering data into a spreadsheet. I woke up at 3 am, sitting up cross-legged in bed, and I was TYPING on my BLANKET in front of me. No wonder I'm so tired these days...I work all day, and apparently work all night, too! Then I remembered something I forgot to do related to work, and I felt the compulsion to get out of bed and send an e-mail apologizing to a colleague for not getting it done. Sheesh. High strung, much?