So far, I'd say this sabbatical thing has been working out alright. I'm borrowing a fabulous office off campus, where I sit beside a floor-to-ceiling window looking out over a reflecting pool with baby ducks, and beyond that a park with a lake. There's lots of free food and real tea alongside the coffee. This is office space done right. It's tragic that I'm going to have to give it up soon, and I don't have any plans for afterwards (though I'm working on it).

For a few weeks, I put the office to good use, mostly reading and contemplating while looking out the window. Then, last week, something surprising and uncommon happened without preamble: I started doing research. Something clicked, and I started putting together a project that has been incubating in my mind for about five years. All of a sudden, I was in The Zone, completely infatuated with the initial results I was getting. The infatuation has worn off a bit now; around mid-week, I hit a huge unanticipated wall in the research. That forced me to go back and carefully work my way through the ideas from scratch. I'm still doing that, at the same time that I'm moving other parts of the project forward. I have to put all of this more-or-less on hold now, as I take some time to prepare the first phase of my grant application and throw together two talks for a conference next week in London (I'm leaving on Wednesday).

This level of focus arrived at just the right time. It turns me antisocial, and causes me to guard my time jealously. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have the opportunity for such self-indulgence. But it happens that Nath, Zebula, and Vorlon went to Montreal for six days to visit my family (grandparents and great-grandparents need their fix, after all). I've been alone since Wednesday, and have been using the time to pursue this research project with very little distraction. It's truly a sabbatical-within-a-sabbatical, and while I miss my family, I'm glad I can work like this once in a while.

One happy side effect of Nath's trip is that she's close to Ottawa, where her brand new nephew waits to meet his aunt. If all goes well, she'll leave Montreal a day or two early and come back through Ottawa.

I'm avuncular! Don't worry, it's not contagious. My sister-in-law (actually Nath's brother's wife) delivered a baby boy yesterday morning. He's both heavier and shorter than Vorlon was, which makes him quite a bruiser. Well, in a few years they can get together and rassle.

I don't have many details apart from that. Nath's away with the kids (more on that in a moment), meaning that whatever information she might have extracted from family members over the phone is not within eavesdropping range.

In any case, I'm terribly excited and I look forward to meeting the new blob and welcoming him to the Clan Thingo.

So let's say you go to lunch with your lovely wife, two lovely children, and lovely mother-in-law. You order a cranberry juice, which comes in an enormous glass with a bendy straw. The server also brings your almost-four-year-old daughter a little glass with water. Daughter wants some juice. You typically dilute her juice anyway, so you drink some of her water to make room, then consider the problem of transferring some juice from your glass to hers.

Now, your glass is tall and nearly full. You could try to decant some juice into the smaller glass, but you're sure to make a mess. Your wife, who's more skilled at this very operation, might be more successful, but this looks like a toughie. What do you do?

That's right, baby. You use the straw to make a siphon. The bend in the straw is what provided the inspiration. See, it's these little ridges that give it its whammy. The short end of the straw goes into the tall glass. Suck some juice through the long end, then drop it into the short glass. Daughter's glass receives a steady flow of juice, as if by magic. But it's not magic -- it's SCIENCE. Let's just stop and recognize that my brain hasn't completely stopped working during my sabbatical.

Well, the heat is finally here for real. We escaped it for an abnormally long time this year, but we couldn't outrun it forever. It's 9:30pm Thingo Time. It's 27 degrees outside and 28.5 degrees in the living room. Tonight's forecast low is 24, high tomorrow 34. It's really the high lows that make the heatwaves bad. Our house remains quite comfortable as long as the the low gets down into the teens at night.

In the meantime, we're doing what we can to keep cool. My new idea for the day was to put the spray bottle into the fridge so that I can spritz myself with icy cold mist whenever I walk by. The dishwasher is set to run at about 2:00am. We haven't been cooking very much. Also, yesterday we bought three ceiling fans. My local handynath installed the big one in our bedroom, which helped make last night more tolerable. She tried installing the one in Zebula's room last night, but it doesn't seem to work correctly. She'll try Vorlon's tomorrow for comparison.

In the long run, we'll get central air conditioning. I mean, I need to have it just so that I can be all righteous about not using it, right? Seriously, we'll be able to afford it eventually and I know that we'll use it sparingly (just to take the edge off). But I'm using central air as the reward for a long process of home improvement. In order to make it a worthwhile investment, the house needed new windows (done), a new roof (done), and insulation in the walls (in a year or two).

Now -- where did I put that mint julep?

A week ago, we hosted a brunch for orbifold and teaphile so that the local crowd could see them before they headed off to Melbourne. They got on the plane in Toronto yesterday, and I think they'll be landing in Australia very soon now. Alas, we see them so seldom, and now seldom will become seldomer. I did say seldomer. It's a word. Deal with it.

During the brunch, we received a phone call. The call was from someone I had never met before, who had been passed our contact information by a mutual friend in Seattle. It seems that our caller and his wife were taking a year to travel all around North America. They call it a sabbatical year, though given that they aren't in academia this means "quit our jobs and find new ones when we get back". (Note to self: don't stop being a professor.) They were about to start the Canadian leg of their journey in Toronto via a day at Niagara Falls. They were wondering if they could stay with us for a couple of days before heading east to the maritimes.

It's hard to pass up a request like that, if for no other reason than that I could hope to vicariously experience something of their trip during their visit. And if I were undertaking a similar adventure, I too would hope to find some hospitality along the way. As a result, Jeff and Shelly arrived in their VW Westfalia Tuesday evening and stayed until Thursday morning. We had a very friendly visit. They enjoy cooking, and made dinner for us one night (simple, delicious salad: dice half a watermelon and toss with feta and basil. Yum!). They play a lot of folk music, and played some songs for us on Wednesday (including Cows With Guns, which evokes memories of Seattle Center). And Jeff caused something of a household epiphany. He showed us that underneath the ugly carpet on our main floor is real tongue-and-groove hardwood, not the rotten pine that the previous owners told us was there. Now, we don't know what kind of shape it's in, or whether it covers the whole floor, but we can tentatively say: Score!

Less than two days after arriving, Jeff and Shelly were off again, apparently headed to the Shoe Museum and thereafter in search of a campground north or east of Toronto. Happy trails!

Their visit is just part of what has been a very busy couple of weeks. I believe the brunch was the fourth or fifth party that week. Jeff and Shelly came two days later. Nath's stepmom arrived the day they left. She just left today. All of it has been tons of fun, but can I stop running around now?

Today is the first day of the second week of my six-month sabbatical. Between now and the end of the calendar year, I'm free of virtually all of the tedious duties of academia, and able to devote all of my time to research.

Alright, not all of my time. There are a few odds and ends that don't qualify as pure research. The big one is that I'll be applying to renew my grant. The application process isn't too onerous, but it is crucial to get it right. I've already taken care of another task, asnwering some interview-style questions for a new recruiting brochure (I think there are forces at work that want to makeme over into a poster child for the department). I'll also be giving a one-hour talk to new students in September, to introduce them to the field and disabuse them of any misconceptions they may have accumulated. Finally, I've got one conference, a family vacation in August, and possibly a small amount of additional travel in the US. That's a variety of small things, which collectively shouldn't interfere too much with the time I can devote to research.

I'm certainly filled with excitement about my sabbatical, but also with a measure of apprehension. There's no question that the pressure's on for me to produce some serious research results and get them published. I'm expected to apply for tenure almost exactly a year from now, and a couple of major publications will put me comfortably over the bar. Without them, life's a bit less certain. Alas, this is one case where I can't fall back on my teaching and service records.

The trouble, of course, is that research doesn't come to me naturally the way that teaching does. I enjoy research, but to some extent I also find it agonizing. Part of that agony might stem from the constant need to switch gears and navigate distractions, both on campus and at home. In that case, this sabbatical's just what I need: a long period of focus. Hopefully I can build up momentum and start cranking out results. But beyond that, I might simply be a researcher of only moderate ability. And that's fine: A long, moderate career would be great, as long as the coming year exceeds that standard. Or perhaps that's just the Impostor Syndrome talking...

I'm also disappointed with the reality of my sabbatical situation. Here's what I really wanted to do: read for six months. In the pressure to write papers, I've often been forced to dive into a book, extract the few pages that matter for a particular paper, and put the book back on the shelf. I want to study these works slowly and patiently, without an agenda. Now I realize that's not practical. I have to produce results. I'm going to try to pick a few works to study, but most of the time will have to be devoted to the usual frenzied paper writing. On the other hand, this leaves me optimitistic for the next sabbatical. I should be out from under all this pressure, and able to read as much as I darn well please.

Hey ho, as John would say. That's certainly my quota of soul-searching for the summer; indeed, this post sat nearly complete for a long time while I decided whether to issue a long, whiny rant in public. Then again, that's what blogs are for, no? Anyway, I suspect that in the long run, I'll find some traction, do a chunk of research, publish a couple of papers, and get tenure. Because looming in the distance is a true terror: If I'm denied tenure, I'll have to go out and get a real job.