In a way, it's perfect timing. Fall Quarter starts up soon - faculty are back on campus Tuesday, and students a week after that. Gone are my short weeks and long sunny weekends. I am doing my morning exercises in the dark and watching the sun set on our evening walls, and gearing up to get used to being busy again.
Summer is the time for working on projects - campus is slower without students or faculty, just us year-round administrative types around, and we can make some headway on strategic stuff instead of always being in reactive mode, putting out fires. Fall is crank-up-the-engine time: high energy, bustling, and full of promise - and work.
This fall will be particularly busy for me. On top of my usual work, I am enrolled in a post-master's certificate program, I am attending a week-long leadership academy, and I am participating in a site visit for our accrediting body. That's on top of the usual state commissions and conferences.
I'll mark my 62nd birthday soon, and will hopefully have a adventure to report about that. I want to keep up on my exercises and biking - much harder to maintain a regimen in the wet and cold and dark, but I've lost about 40 pounds this year and want to continue to feel this good. Besides school stuff, I have a stack of Barbara Ehrenreich and Cory Doctorow to read, and the customary nightly NYT crossword will continue. Maybe I'll even fit some gaming in around the edges.
Yeah, it's gonna be busy.
But that's tomorrow. Today read my last weekend day of summer, and my sweetie and I spent it together, doing chores, attending an 85th birthday celebration, sharing meals, and taking a walk along the bay during a break in the rain. And we close the night snuggled on the couch watching Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.
Tomorrow and fall will come soon enough, but if you ask me, this is a perfect way to end a summer.
