I meant to upload this earlier, but things have been crazy. The above pic is the tenure “file” itself as it gets ready to head out of the department and up the bureaucratic ladder. Note that the above was still missing about a year’s worth of teaching evaluations (the blue-striped things at the top of the pile), which had gotten misplaced in one of my merit review files (found them!). I think I said this before, but if not, the department voted unanimously for tenure, which was gratifying.

It’s kind of sad that all the courses and research successes and blind alleys over my career can be transmogrified so easily into paper form. As our Chair, Paul Rosenthal, asked when he came into Jane’s office, “How’s it feel to see your entire life in a pile of paper?” I answered that it was one of the few times in my life I’ve been happy to put on some weight.

In research news, Matt and I have completed the revisions to War Stories and sent them along (the figures, in particular, were all kinds of Hell), and have also sent out the Shot by the Messenger edited volume piece. We decided against resubmitting Tabloid until we get the results of our post-election Polimetrix results back at the end of January... we’re hoping to swing for the APSR with that one. Speaking of the APSR, we’d sent Elasticity to them back in August (before APSA), but--apparently because of our UCLA connection--it appears they had to shop it to their outside editors and it is just now going out to the referees. I’m glad I wasn’t desperate for that to come through quickly. The NSF pre-proposal grant went out on time and in good shape (although I’m still hoping to get more social science tie-ins before we proceed to the final proposal), and it appears the California Endowment funding for the Archive has finally started flowing after months and months and months of bureaucratic squabbling (I typed “hobbling,” which also works). Erik Engstrom and I have made a lot of progress gathering data for the partisan paper project and have proposed it to APSA for the 2009 meeting as a commitment device. While a few other projects are crying out for work (Sins of the Father, in particular, but also the MTP tie-in and the congressional rhetoric project), my dance card in the short term is filled up with revisions to When Politicians Attack and to my Winter course syllabi.

I’ll also need to find time for snow, pulled pork sandwiches, and some squad-level coop work. And sadly, dental work.