The Update for Everybody Else

[anvi]

Very sorry to hear, JBrase.  It's wonderful your family made it out to see her.  That always means the most.

[anvi]

A couple hours ago my mother passed away. So I am probably going to be off for a little while. While this is the saddest I've ever felt, I am still greatly comforted knowing that her suffering is over and that she is in a better place now.

Take good care, JBrase.  Hope you and your family can keep your mother with you always. 

[anvi]

After I first moved out of my parents' house, the guy I rented the main floor of a house with used to sleepwalk all the time.  Sometimes he would talk to me while asleep.  Once, he even put his clothes in the washer, went back to bed, got up when the buzzer went off, put them in the dryer, and went back to bed.  The next morning he got up, and the first thing he said to me when he came out of his room was; "damn, I forgot to do my laundry last night."  Yep, did an entire load of laundry while sleeping.  Actually, I wasn't freaked out at all by that--on the contrary, I was pretty impressed! 

At the moment, I'm procrastinating from working on an assessment plan for my department's graduate program.  Doing these things just depresses and irritates me--they're a waste of time, and they show just how little school administrators trust faculty members and vice-versa.  Boo.

[anvi]

I got turned down for a job that I really wanted in Singapore about two weeks ago.  But I am getting offered a one-year position at a university in Canada next year that will allow me to take a leave of absence in Illinois.  So, I guess from May, 2014 to August of 2015, I'll be at least temporarily replacing my Illinois avatar with a Nova Scotia one, so long as that doesn't offend the good folks on the forum from Canada.   

[anvi]

Well, they're in for something...the jury is still out on what...

[anvi]

I've just learned that the manuscript I wrote last year will be published as my second book next year.  Woohoo! 

[anvi]

Thanks much, guys!  Lots of work, so it's always nice to learn that, in the end, it paid off! 

[anvi]

Overwhelming surge of self-hatred in me right now. Can't go to sleep until I've dealt with it. Convinced I'm worthless, stupid, an incompetent and fraudulent student of my major, deserve to die, et cetera.

Hope you feel better, Nathan.  Try not to feel so bad when certain things go poorly.  I feel worthless, stupid and incompetent every time I get in front of an undergraduate class these days.  So, fwiw, people feel that way on both sides of the classroom sometimes.  From what I've seen on here, you're an outstanding student of your major, so don't even think about that.