It's not over until it's over.

December 30, my second son was born – 10 weeks premature. When we arrived at the hospital, my wife was fully dilated and he was coming out – breech. She was immediately put under general anesthesia and had an emergency c-section. It was not exciting; it was horrifically scary. Although my newborn son is otherwise healthy (for being premature), he's in a NICU that's a 40 minute drive away. My wife is healing, and we're both processing the trauma of the event. I want to be positive, but the situation is exhausting.

Also: I grew a beard this past summer.

In career news, after a decade of teaching, I was unexpectedly appointed chair of my department at the end of the last spring semester. While this is not really a “promotion” (in the sense of a significant pay raise), it has two useful perks: 1) if the school needs to downsize, they ask the department chair who needs to be cut, which gives me the opportunity to say “1-2-3 not it!” (i.e., de facto job security). 2) I get final say in who teaches which course in my department. Since I taught only Freshman Composition for my first seven years, this is really the “you are now a real English Lit professor” moment.

My odometer reads 218,974.