I made a course design. The catalogue title is “Emergent Technologies in Scientific & Technical Communication,” but I’m calling it “Web 2.0 in STC.” We’re going to be planning, writing, and media re-visioning a wiki on scientific, technical, and social aspects of the 35W bridge collapse. As always, the topic and readings attrition was difficult, but I’m encouraged that all three people who’ve reviewed the syllabus have said, “I want to take this course!” Hell, I want to take the course, since it nicely dovetails with my research interests. (I am not so accustomed to this feeling, since I’ve been mostly graduate-instructing service courses for the past five years.) We’ll see if I’m the only one who still feels that way in a few months, or if the students are still along for the ride. My predictor feels a bit off this time, but I’m hopeful: I have four grad students and seven repeaters out of the 20 registered so far. Anyway, if you’re interested in such things, the syllabus is here.

I also made this apple cake, substituting dried cherries and golden raisins for the cranberries because I had them on hand. It turned out to be a rustic and fabulous recipe. Too fabulous, in fact. I’m foisting half of it off on the well-metabolized Compatriot G so I won’t finish the whole thing. I’m sitting across from him right now in a coffee shop, and he has no idea that I have half a cake in my backpack. (Or that I’m blogging when I’m supposed to be Being Scholarly. But I am limbering up, dammit.) This fact amuses me inordinately.

I am also making a dissertation, as it turns out. All this time I’ve been feeling distinctly un-started. Thoroughly convinced that I’m unstarted, in fact. Then last week one of my chairs nicely said what amounted to, “Send me something NOW.” After silently panicking and hearing my internal voice squeal, “But I have nothing! Nothing!” I looked around and realized that I have 80 pages. There is no mathematical way in which 80 pages = Unstarted. Let that be a lesson unto me.