What's that sucking sound?

It's the sound of time being sucked out of my life. It's my fault. But time is at a premium these days.

I'm teaching two classes (at least it isn't three), and they're both off my list of usuals, so they require a little more reading and prep than normal.

I'm Graduate Chair, meaning I coordinate the graduate program for my department--fielding enquiries and applications; making sure everyone is up on their programs, their funding opportunties, and so on; keeping up with the Faculty of Grad Studies directives; and who knows what else.

I'm still Undergraduate Advisor, meaning I have to talk to incoming majors and minors, advising about coursework, fielding enquiries.

I'm chair of our 'committee' on Clinical and Developmental Linguistics, which advises on coursework and planning for students interested in going on to seek graduate studies in speech-language pathology and audiology. I'm also the committee, since no one else really has anything to do with it.

We're setting up our new lab, which actually isn't as much work, since I don't technically have signing authority on anything and so somebody else has to order furniture, arrange phone and data lines, equipment, etc. But the Faculty of Arts has dumped a serious wad of money on renovating the lab space for us, and they're understandably anxious for it to look good in time for "Arts Celebrating Arts", which is when the Faculty has it's grand lunch (during my teaching hours) hono(u)ring everyone who has accomplished anything, including alumni. There's going to be a tour of the new Arts spaces and apparently our unfinished lab is on the agenda. This is all happening on Friday.

Also on Friday, I'm having a meeting for the grad students, mostly informal, but I've promised to provide snacks, so at some point I have to go shopping.

Next Friday, the department is celebrating our move to new offices (well, everyone but me) with an open house.

The week after that, I have to go home for my parents' 65th wedding anniversary. Apparently, my mother has been hinting that it would be nice if all her children were in the same room at the same time. So we're going to try to all be there for at least one whole day over the weekend, I think Saturday, and probably Sunday too. Which is fair enough, but the last time we tried to do this, my parents didn't bother to show up until dinner time. Which I forbear to remind them, but I try constantly to remind my siblings.

The week after that, we have a guest colloquium speaker coming in, and the 'official' grand opening of the lab. That is assuming we have furniture. At which I am supposed to speak (briefly), acknowledging all the financial assistance from the Faculty and the University, the hard work of everyone who has to sign for things, etc., and extol on the grand schemes we have for bringing the UofM into the forefront of Experimental Linguistics research.

In order to take the pressure off of some others, I've become webmonster for the department. Which isn't so bad, now that everything is set up, but I'm going to have to be diligent about keeping everything up to date. Which is fine. Really. Structure. This is good.

On the private front, in addition to maintaining the Mystery Spectrogram website, and this blog, I've joined Facebook. I joined because one of my Fringe Volunteer friends started a group for "us", and, as frequent readers of this blog you know I'm obsessed with my role as a Fringe Volunteer, I wanted in. So I had to join Facebook. Facebook is a social networking site that allows you to add 'friends' and search for more and join groups and send gifts and play games and (my favo(u)rite) "poke" people, and basically suck up ever spare moment of time you have.

Especially if you find out that people have started groups for some of your professional organizations, and you feel the need to start one for one of the others.

I've never played so much Scrabble (er, um, I mean "Scrabulous") in my life. I haven't started with the Texas Hold'em poker or anything, but I'm on the verge.

So there I am, in my filthy house, with my piles of laundry I need to do, not to mention actual work, and I spend a lot of time poking people and searching for other people I know on the system.

I really need to get back into therap.