Instability

I'm in such an unstable equilibrium with life in general right now. It's nothing major, though, just the little things that throw me off right now. The sleep schedule is the biggest thing right now, with Chris out the door at 6, I'm still adjusting to that. And then he normally doesn't get home until at least 7 pm and then is asleep around 9-10. I'm trying to continue balancing my research with training and now actually having to do some stuff around the house, as opposed to this summer. Plus the days are definitely getting shorter, colder, and wetter. At least some things have gotten easier, as I don't have any non-research departmental commitments this quarter, and, since it is cross, I don't need to be doing really long rides. I've been pretty stressed nonetheless, and I think my body is fighting some sort of infection right now: swollen lymph nodes and a cough but nothing else. I almost always get sick at the start of school, so it's not really surprising. I hope it doesn't bloom into full-fledged sick. I want to race this weekend, and I have a low-key glaciology conference coming up in two weeks.
But at least some good things have been happening: my training really seems to be having an effect; my cross season has been a ton better than it was last year at this time. With added income, we've been able to actually buy new music (and I have a new office mate with good musical taste to swap with), including MGMT, Los Campesinos, and finally the full Vampire Weekend cd. I've been able to find a little time for knitting and non-science reading, though not as much as I had during the summer. I just attempted to read Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is a piece of fairly seminal (and somewhat controversial) African-American/proto-feminist literature written in the 1930s. I had a really hard time with the dialect-heavy conversations; it would have been much easier if this were a book on tape, but mostly I can't deal with the glossing over of violence against women (or just violence in general, really). Basically, there are phrases like, "he beat her that night," and nothing else about it, so casual and weird. It drives me insane, and I just can't finish it. This is the second book that I can remember which I've not been able to finish, the first of which was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I've got some more straight-forward feminist science fiction waiting at the library when I turn it in, though, so hopefully I can deal with it better. At least I had some time to try!