Opening day...

Officially, Monday, the 25th is the first day of my first sabbatical.

Unofficially, it's starting today. This is because:

a) I went to no 'Opening of School' festivities this week! Watching all my colleagues go off to 'Information Security Training', unit retreats and faculty meetings, I have smiled smugly. It's almost as bad as being a Mac user...

b) I am in the middle of running a conference/workshop for planetarium professionals. You might think that sabbatical will not start until the END of this, but I have found that by the time you are past the halfway point, you have the world by the @ss on a downhill slide, and your problem-solving response is so well cultivated that pretty much anything could happen, and you'd just smile and nod. In other words, I planned pretty well, and from here on out, the conference is in 'coast' mode. By Monday, I'll be feeling like a whole other person.

So. One might ask. What are the sabbatical plans, anyway?

a) The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) (Did you even know that YOU own a massive radio observatory?) is very close to the end of a massive project, creating the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA). This just happens to overlap my first sabbatical, so I'm off to Socorro to make myself useful to them. I'll definitely be doing some documentation. I'll definitely be doing some software testing. I'll definitely be doing some radio astronomy. As soon as I remember how... Fortunately, the NRAO is THE place for radio astronomy, so I'm sure someone there will be able to help me remember!

b) WSU has a new environmental focus ('Purple is the new Green'), and the Physics Department has an environment course on the books that hasn't been taught... ever, as far as anyone can tell. Won't it be fun to create such a course and teach it in the fall of 2009, when I'm back from sabbatical? This fits right in with recent interests of mine, and I'm pretty excited to read all about it, and invent fun classroom activities that make the physics of global warming real to my students. Almost certainly, we are going to be reading a lot of the Real Climate blog.

c) We've all of us been doing an enormous amount of work lately, that remains completely undocumented. Science in the Parks. The K-8 core. Studies of learning in the planetarium environment. I've got a lot of papers to write. Oh, and I really should finish that paper that Mike and I worked on, if I can ever get his code to compile in the new IDL... grumble, grumble.

d) Soon, the planetarium is going to need to be updated again. 'Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but someday...' This is a 1 M$ project, probably. Guess I'd better write some grants. grumble, grumble.

e) I am fresh out of ideas. Wrung dry. I got nuthin'. I need to find that place in my head where the ideas just come swimming up, rising like bubbles through my mind, and bursting open with a sweet scent and a flash of light that makes it seem like anything is possible.

f) I am also bent. Just twisted off to one side. See all those grumble, grumbles above? Yesss... those need to go away. Even the things that usually perk me up slide off to the side a little bit, and make me grumble. I suspect that most people don't know this. But J does. T does. C does. This is related to the ideas problem, and mostly means that I'm tired. So by the time I come back, I want to feel like I've got the intestinal fortitude to make all those possibilities into realities.

Too much? Probably. But I'm not known for doing one thing at a time. Really. I'm not.

If Adam's sabbatical is anything to judge by, I'll probably accomplish some random subset of these things. Or other things. Or I'll forget about all things entirely, and go in some other direction.

There is a secret thing. I sort of sidle up to it. Leaning sideways. Not looking directly at it.

I got my MRI done this summer, and have an appointment with a neurologist on 9/15. He will hopefully be able to reassure me that the fate of all the women in my direct line on my mom's side is not also mine. This is terrifying to me, and I procrastinated about it for 11 years. But this is the year to find out if I need brain surgery.

If I don't need brain surgery, then there are a number of secret things that I want to see if I can do: a sprint triathlon before I'm 40; finish my book; learn one-tempi changes; just imagine what I can do if I'm not going to have my head torn open. I might even cut my hair.