Perhaps the most productive part of yesterday was the hour I met with Ashley, starting to figure out ways she can actually be of use as a research assistant. If this goes well, who knows -- I may keep paying her after the department money runs out. She only costs $8/hr, and I think it might be worth giving up a few meals out during the week in order to have someone who is paid to keep me on track, essentially. Right now, she's taken on: being PR person for the SLF, generating and sending out questions for the SLF mentorship program, attending various DesiLit events in Chicago and working the door as needed, walking around putting up flyers for our upcoming events, and most importantly, working out both an annual and a 2006 calendar for my SLF/DesiLit activities. Yes, I should have done the latter a long time ago. I can't wait to have it. It's going to be a huge help. I may put posters of it all over my apartment. :-)
I just have to be careful not to load her up with so much stuff that she burns out completely!
Today, I've been catching up on e-mail. Down to only about sixty more messages, yay! Hopefully I can deal with at least ten more before I run out of time. Soon I need to scan in some essays for my students, upload them, exercise, shower, get groceries so Kevin doesn't starve while I'm gone, eat lunch, pack, go downtown, pick up repaired shoes, get on a train and go. Not sure if I'll have e-mail access Saturday.
My dream is to one day have a part-time admin assistant for the two working artists who live in this house. It’d totally be worth the money. But right now our incomes are too uncertain to commit to paying someone regularly. Until that improves, I’ll keep working at getting the many years’ worth of paper documents in some kind of broad order, rather than piled randomly in whatever container or on whatever surface was nearby at the time. Getting there, slowly.