A New Year in Review

My 2007 thus far has been spent slugging it out with a head cold, slowing down and already slow semester break. Note to reader: What follows is probably a very boring post for you, but it is helpful for me to get this to-do list out of my head.

I consider myself on the clock again, even though the semester doesn’t start until next Monday, but there aren’t enough days in this week to allow me to reach all my offseason goals by then. Here’s what I did manage to do (and not do):

• Actually shop for Christmas, albeit not until the 23rd. I had a couple of earlier failed attempts, including one with both boys in tow after Carter’s school let out and with a napless Archie. Major plusses, though, for managing to both buy local and stay within a limited budget (the wad of cash in my pocket).
• Work on BlogSchmog. Fixing and tweaking the CSS and layout issues from the original theme I installed a few months back has taken longer than anticipated. The floats and positioning are still not quite right, so I’m completely rebuilding the construction and regressing to some table structure to compensate. Once I finalize that, I’ll upgrade WikiSchmiki to match (it’s still a theme behind). I also finished 2006 by finding a cool new community to explore (). I didn’t get to the blog aggregates I wanted to create, though, and still have some other personal projects to attend to. This will now have to happen in little chunks when I take a break from the academics.
• Think about academic papers. Maybe that’s all I should have expected to do, but I would have liked to have some CHI submissions already written by this point. So this has been the big disappointment of my break. Deadlines aren’t until the 12th. Getting myself into full academic mode now will probably help me be productive next week. Writing is going to be a much bigger focus for me this semester.
• Schedule another unconference. This Saturday afternoon, on January 6th, I’ll be meeting with other locals at the public library for a 3-hour ad-hoc conversation on the “Ideal Bloomington Portal” (). The holidays and illnesses have limited what I could do in terms of getting the word out, but I have managed to make contact with a number of potential stakeholders in such a project and hope to do some more recruiting the rest of this week.
• Watch some sports. The Bears’ record and Colts schedule has been favorable enough to allow me to see the bulk of the football games down the stretch. I can also thank Amy and Tivo for viewing possible. I managed to get to a couple IU games along the way and just watched a good-but-not-good-enough Hoosier challenge to #6 Ohio State last night (again, Tivo aided). I am very excited about my Dad coming into town at the same time the Bears are scheduled to play their first playoff game. Watching football with him on Sundays is a top childhood memory.
• Watch fake sports. My wish was granted (), allowing me to continue to participate in WhatIfSports for another year. Alas, my fake football team has major injury problems, and my championship-caliber basketball team just lost a 6-game conference final in my best shot at another title. The Hardball Dynasty league is also stuck trying to recruit owners, so if there are any baseball fans out there, have I got a game for you …
• Get some rest. I haven’t slept as much as Amy would prefer, but — thanks to sickness — I haven’t stayed up in the wee hours as much as I was used to. I’m trying to change some habits to allow myself more opportunities to sleep, even during school, but the last time I really was regular about 8 hours was when I was able to stay up until 2a and sleep in until 10a. At least with the latter part, those days are long gone.
• Watch my favorite holiday movie. Since first discovering It’s a Wonderful Life in its traditional New Year’s Eve showing on the local Chicago PBS station, I’ve tried to find time to watch it at least once at the end of the year. The past two years I didn’t do this, once because I fell asleep when George was still thinking about proposing to Mary. I got my goodwill cheer and teary eyes when Harry shows up at the end to toast his big brother. It was particularly important to me this year, since the grad school experience on top of parenting has left me feeling pretty disconnected from my friends.

So what’s on the docket for today? … Politic Exchange. I561. CHI paper. Wish me luck.