Last semester was my hardest (psychologically and physically) in the 10 years at my institution – all self-induced.  Came up with fourteen new labs for our sophomore-level Population and Evolutionary Biology course. I also did the entire semester of lecture when I normally do ~ 1/3 so I came up with about 150 pages of lecture notes and hopefully we can turn this into a textbook and matching lab manual.

One the downside, I did not exercise at all and did not submit a single manuscript. The other course I had last semester, Archosaurs, was terribly neglected (although we had fun).  I’m also study abroad director and I didn’t get to do some of the things I had wanted to.  I also wanted to participate more in our DNA barcoding project and our camera trapping project.

But that semester is behind me and today is a snow day. The walk is shoveled and the only thing on my non-work itinerary is to give our woodsy smelling dog a bath.  Today’s plans are a part of the semester’s plans: work on a book chapter in the book I am editing. There are seven chapters in and in review and I’m late to my own book. So it goes. There will be 25 chapters so we’re nearly all a bit late. This is the biggest project of my career so I’m excited about it.

I’m “only” teaching our biostatistics course so I have time to work out (4 trips to the Y since the 1st and that’s good for me!). I have time to work on the study abroad website (trying to build a how-to guide for faculty and students). Working on two smaller manuscripts – one on rodent habitat preferences and the other on how urbanization affects predation on model (clay) caterpillars.

I can also update this blog!

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