the rest of it

I've not written here in a while, and, as usual, that's because things have been going fine. I'm grateful for things in the day and don't feel the need to sit down and write about it. In fact, things have been going so easily, I'm a bit superstitious about saying anything about it. But, you know, I like having a record. And this is the last day of our Easter break. I've been back to work three days, but until a meeting this afternoon, it's all been self-directed work, little stress. So, before I get to work, let me write down some things I've been feeling grateful for: Our stupid academic calendar with three weeks off teaching before the last week of term. G's two weeks off from school, and so: mostly no alarm clock!  Phil's and my trip to Glasgow. It's six or seven weeks till our anniversary, but going there to see Sparks was our early anniversary gift to ourselves. It was a great time. Lots of interesting things to see and to eat, with so...

It's become common in academia to put messages like "My working hours vary. Please don't feel that you have to reply out of hours." (or similar) in email signatures. I have to say it annoys me because (a) it gives the message "Look at me, I'm working so hard out of hours, but I don't expect you to be as dedicated to the job as me" and (b) there is a much better solution ! Most email programs have a 'send later' function. On Outlook, if I hit 'send later' the default time it gives me is the next weekday at 9am—you can change that, but it's usually perfect. I write my emails at all sorts of hours of the day (and especially night), but I try to make sure no one gets them out of business hours. This both obviates the need for a 'look at me I'm working late' signature line AND reduces email traffic out of hours. If I send my colleagues a message at 9pm, I might get responses at 9:30pm, which create responses at 11pm, which...