Return of Blogging (?)

Maybe. There are so many reasons for my long hiatus of blogging that there's no point in going over them all. But here goes anyway: I said "yes" to too many things; I had to go to Bucknell, Italy and Kalamazoo all within a month and give 3 different papers. I had to finish a book chapter and a major article by the beginning of May. I had to edit the first issue of Tolkien Studies. Etc., etc.

But now I had a new computer, some of the other crap is done (not enough) and it is blissful, sweet summer.

Summer is probably a good 50% of the reason that I'm in academia. Even though I probably put in just as many hours of work per week in the summers (and in fact I've been in my office more hours/days per week in June than I was during the semester) as I do during the semester, summers are still golden. I think it's a deep psychological thing implanted by growing up on the Jersey Shore.

Anyway, while I was blog-silent, a few good things happened. I was given the Faculty Appreciation Award at Wheaton, which is a huge honor and was a total surprise. I gave well-received papers at Bucknell (on Tolkien's Mythology for Anglo-Saxon England), Palermo (on the intellectual history of the study of Monsters -- teratology), and Kalamazoo (on Tolkien's Beowulf translation). I finished my book chapter for Jane Chance and my article for Tolkien Studies. I've gotten the grammar book revision rolling. I put up a screen door, planted trees and shrubs, built a vegetable garden planter out of 4x4's (all squirrels must die!), and the New Jersey Devils won the Stanley Cup(!!!!)

Tomorrow's post will be about Kalamazoo and it's significance in medieval studies. I'm hoping to post daily from now on.