Call this an experimental post: I give myself 15 min, and I write whatever I write. When the timer goes off, I stop, edit very lightly, and publish.

Here goes.

1. I am reading “Bad Feminist” and enjoying it for the most part. I will have to reconsider my deep love for semicolons. Roxane Gay does very well with short sentences that would, in my case, be longer and connected by semicolons. By the way, if you never read John Scalzi’s “Lock In” (SPOILERS AHEAD!), he wrote it entirely without semicolons. I sort of liked the book, but as one commenter somewhere aptly said — it’s excellent in terms of world building, but the plot is thin. I greatly enjoyed the accompanying free novella “Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome.”

2. I am positively fatigued by all the review requests. I think I definitely did more than my fair share of refereeing this year. I attempted to count how many today, and got exhausted at the enormity of the task. I review for a great many journals and all the requests are in a Completed Reviews folder, but there are first and second reviews, so I would have to look at each to make sure I don’t double count… I took a 5-second look at the list and thought “Nah.” All I will say that the APS (American Physical Society) alone sends me at least one paper per month, which is just as well, because as I publish with them extensively. But they are hardly the only publisher I review for, and I probably review 1 paper per week or 3-4 per month. I think that may be too many for my current overall workload…

3. I am teaching a 100-student sophomore class in the spring, so that’s going to be fun, for the definition of fun being “occasionally excruciatingly painful.”

4. I have a pretty heavy travel schedule in the spring, mostly connected with the funding agencies that graciously give me money and now expect reports and/or service. I cannot say no as I am up for renewal, on which I  am really counting. The trips are 2-day for the most part. I have two weeklong overseas trips in the summer.  2015 hasn’t even started and I am already exhausted thinking of all the work ahead. I will also be becoming the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything in mid 2015.

5. I promised my grad students 4 papers in the pipeline will be out by New Year. I am not sure how I will pull that off, but mid-January sounds plausible. Maybe.

6. Tomorrow is turkey day. We are going to our friends’ place for a party and potluck. Alas, I haven’t bought all the ingredients needed for cooking yet. I am counting on the overpriced store to have the needed vegetables in stock if my regular hunting grounds prove empty.

7. Fifteen minutes is a lot of time — who knew?

Stopped here with 40 seconds to spare. Now just for some light edits…

Happy Thanksgiving to US readers!