• Watching Gustav bearing down on the fam. Not happy about it. #

• @ghw_twits: Thanks! That’s a serious vote of confidence. Now I just have to get it written. #

• @ghw_twits: only a little. It is online (http://www.mlajournals.org/loi/pmla — inst. access required), but the accusation still bears out. #

If you’re a Facebook status watcher and a friend of mine, you may have seen the recent update in which I announced that I have a contract. It’s an advance contract for Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, which will, if all goes according to plan, be released in commentable draft form here and at MediaCommons, revised, and then published simultaneously in electronic form by MediaCommons and in print by NYU Press.

It’s phenomenal news, of course, and enormously exciting. As a friend of mine pointed out to me, though, all good news in academia comes with more work attached, a pricetag of sorts. This one’s a bit daunting: the entire thing is due in just about a year.

I’ve got my work cut out for me, needless to say, but it promises to be an exciting year. More about the project here, of course, as the process becomes clearer…

• Having to get the car smogged so I can renew my registration for which I am paying a $15 late fee because the DMV didn’t correct my address. #
• And no, iPhone autocorrect, I did not mean slogged. #

The return from Paris, a little less than a week ago, went fairly well all things considered: all flights on time, all connections made, all bags arrived. Not too bad, all the way around.

We came home, however, to an apartment that needed some serious attention. I won’t go into the details, except to say that it was Bad. And then there was the twelve weeks’ worth of mail, both at home and in the office, and the million errands that needed to be run, in order to get life back on track here. All of it together was positively overwhelming; as R. said, it feels like you have to eat an elephant.

Of course, the only way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So that’s where I’ve been since our return to SoCal: taking that bite, chewing it thoroughly, trying not to think about how many bites remain.

• @mkirschenbaum @nowviskie: he spent last year with us; we’re really going to miss him. #

• From the window of our landing plane, California sure looked… brown. #

• Off plane in Houston. How utterly bizarre it is to be surrounded by people speaking English. #
• I liked being able to tune out most of the chatter around me. My French is good enough for eavesdropping but not for passive bombardment. #
• @bighandsome: I thought it was a bit crowded in here… #
• The upside is a return to unlimited iPhone data usage. Yes, I’m looking for anything. #

Our twelve weeks in Paris have slid by alarmingly fast, and we’re deep in the thick of packing up for Thursday’s trip back to California. I’ve gotten myself past the initial dread, which was mostly about not wanting the utter freedom of being here to end, and am now really looking forward to a bunch of things about being home.

The process of getting there, perhaps, not so much. We’ve got a couple of days of packing and rearranging stuff to do here, followed by the usual joys of the trip itself. But on the other end of it, there will be our wonderful apartment, and our great friends, and space, and light.

And two pretty cool classes, I think. The start of the fall semester is likely to be pretty crazy — it usually is, and this year’s further crazified by a major committee I’m serving on, all of whose work needs to be done by mid-October (god help us) — so I’m hoping to get as much set up in the next couple of weeks as I can. Which means, to some extent, walking away from my project. But I’m hoping to arrange my schedule for the fall such that I touch base with it for at least a few minutes each day, just to remember where I am in it and what I’m up to.

For now, though, there’s just packing stuff, hauling stuff, saying our various goodbyes, and getting on the road. I’ll hope that there’s nothing of interest to report until we’re safely in California.