Tom is Away

if i can write 45 pages in the next two days, I will have hit my deadline.

discussing a pretty dense and difficult book on Thursday. Doing my research so I can sound smart.

grading, again.

In case you’re somehow outside the loop of people who check my Facebook fan page and/or my website, my book got reviewed today.

Check it out.

From SI’s Joe Posnanski, on Tiger Woods:

In Tiger Woods’ case, I’m not even sure why I’m supposed to be forgiving him. At least with A-Rod and McGwire and the various PED users and the law breakers, well, you could say that they misled the fans who were cheering for them. But this Tiger thing is different. I don’t know his wife. I don’t know these women that he cheated with. These aren’t close and personal friends of mine. He never promised me that he would lead a chaste life. He never misled me. I may be surprised that he lived the way he lived, and it might lessen my opinion of him as a person (assuming I already had an opinion about him as a person) but all in all, I never really had any intention of asking Tiger Woods to babysit my kids.

watching another deadline as it charges past me, then recedes in the distance, untouched.

prolonging birthday festivities for one more day

I didn’t even realize until today I still had an application pending at USC, but consider that one shot down too. On the bright side, I don’t have to move to LA, which seems, in many ways, to be kind of awful.

it takes a real effort to fail a class by week 5.

recovering from birthday celebration.

tracking down the email addresses of former students so I can harass them into buying my book

self-promotion requires that one abandon all pretense of shame.

yesterday was a day of crises (for about half of my students, not for me). Responding to the emails I neglected yesterday.

aging.

On one hand, Puppy Twitter is kind of a funny joke for a minute (ie- if Maggie could twitter, it would probably be Tila Tequila-esque), but on the other hand, it’s an unbelievably awful idea once it becomes real.

I’ve never had anything against LeBron, but I think I’m kinda rooting against him now. Something about the way they keep showering him with all-stars bothers me, especially since they still haven’t won a championship.

feeling the kind of stress you feel when you’re not sure what’s causing it and are sure it means you’re forgetting something important, which I’m probably not, but, then again, why the stress if I’m not, you know?

This book was in the “customers who bought this book also bought” section on my product page on Amazon.

too many emails.

it’s inexcusable for people to have not shoveled their sidewalks by now, even if they’re shut-ins.