WordPress gives me the productive feeling.

I just found out that I am going live to be 89, so that’s cool. It takes some pressure off. But I still have deadlines, and the one looming is the October 2 deadline for submission of SSHRC standard grant applications to the U of C’s Research Office. I’ve completed the “CV” part of the application, which is really important, but there’s nothing creative there and the much, much more challenging part of any research grant is, of course, the proposal itself, including (and maybe especially) the budget. So I started tapping that out today, hoping–nay, not hoping, intending and planning and for-sure-doing–to get this polished off by next Friday. Brian and I are off to Waterton on the 13th and a few days after that is CIFF (Sept 21-30), and THEN I am off to Germany and Luxembourg (yes, Luxembourg, you have a problem with Luxembourg?) on October 1. What this means as that my non-proverbial balls are to the proverbial wall, so to take the edge off, here I am. Messing around with my WordPress theme.

If you’re reading this on September 1 or thereabouts, you see a sort of simulacrum of a gap-toothed grin for my “custom header” at the top of this page. Is that Alfred E Newman?

Mais non! It’s my first grade class photo:

I’m dating myself in too many ways here.