pardon the interruption to our regularly scheduled program

Whew. I spent the day with a fellow graduate student, trying to write a book chapter that we've known about for almost a year and worked on for almost a week. Something always got in the way: our classes, her teaching, my vacation, her vacation, my comps, her conference, my proposal (oh yeah, that's not done, either, and it's due in nine days). We've been talking about it for months; we'd bounce around a concept as we sucked our lunch down between meetings or exchange a flurry of emails when a new thought struck, but the sit-down-and-write part just kept getting pushed back. Now we're down to the wire and, however legitimate our excuses may be, they're still excuses. First draft is done now, however, and my charge is to read through, add to and revise before returning it for her edits before we meet on Monday for another go at it before we send off a (more polished) draft Monday afternoon. I can't begin to explain my anguish.