Dog tired

I know how you feel, Wiley. I know how you feel. It's hard sleeping on the floor of my study for days on end while I work non-stop from waking until sleep for week after week, isn't it?

OK, for those of you keeping track, here's what I've accomplished in the last two weeks. Note the passive voice -- I don't feel like I've been doing anything very actively:

• Book proofs have been corrected, FedEx'd to India, and received there.
• The book index has been written, e-mailed to India, and received there. It remains to be seen if they send it back to me, telling me it's an incompetent piece o' crap and that I might as well have said "see entire book" for most of the entries.
• 25 Shakespeare essays have been graded.
• 30 short close-reading exercises on Marie de France's Lais have been graded.
• Classes have been taught -- some well, some not so much.
• The Master's Exam has been written (1/2 by me; 1/2 by Victoria) and proctored (by me); all 11 exams have been carefully read; and as of today, the fates of these 11 souls have been determined.
• The graduate committee has met and decided on the major round of admissions and funding for graduate students next year.
• Offer letters have been drafted.
• Students with incomplete files have been contacted.
• Many miles have been run.
• Guidelines for student research projects in the medieval class have been written and distributed.
• Feedback on failed application for an NEH Summer Stipend has been requested and received. Grumbling has been done, followed by realization that the feedback is actually very useful, even if it doesn't come with $5000.

Things remaining to be done in the next week:

• Grade 30 essays on various medieval subjects turned in on the 15th.
  
• Grade 30 close-reading papers on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
• Contact and give feedback to 11 souls who did or did not pass Master's Exam.
• Send out offer letters to admitted grad students.
  
• Run 20 miles tomorrow.
• Celebrate 38th birthday on Saturday night or Sunday (the actual day) -- if there's time and energy to do so. At least open presents. Thank people.
  
• Buy cards and presents for April birthdays.
• Write to recommenders for NEH Stipend to tell them I didn't get it. Feel like loser even though the feedback was really useful.
• Dammit, reserve hotel for K'zoo already!
• Buy airline tickets for summer London trip before prices go up to $1500 instead of a mere $1200.
• Once again start pulling my weight on things like cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping.
• Take Wiley to the park on Sunday if weather is gloomy (because that means fewer other dogs and fewer instances of me having to restrain an insanely barking Wiley).
  
• Sleep. Maybe.
• Continue teaching classes, perhaps with more energy. Try not to let discussion of I Henry IV suck as much as discussion of King Lear did. Try not to let enthusiastic but odd dude dominate discussion with bizarre theories. Write blog post about such students and what to do about them.
• Watch final episodes of Rome (forever! boo-hoo!) and Battlestar Galactica (thank god it's just a season finale, not a series one).
• Shut down computer for entire day tomorrow for Shutdown Day.
• Catch up with blog reading. (OK, how on earth is it that Dr. Crazy has some 30-odd new posts that I haven't read yet? UPDATE: Good god, it's actually 40-almost-50-something new posts! 49 at the moment, in fact, and that's just in the last 20 days!)
  
• Drink lots of wine.
• Collapse.
  

But now I'm going to run out and buy some Gu energy gel for my run tomorrow, and *then* I'll get started on the rest of that list.