The recovery is still going.  It seems like in the past week, I had a sudden surge of healing, and I’m feeling much more like my old self.  At least stamina-wise I am.  I seem to have my normal energy back and that’s a good thing!! Physically I’m still not there yet, but I’m (still) trying to be patient.  I am thinking I might go back to the gym this week.  I think all I’ll be able to manage is walking on the treadmill – and walking slower than normal – but it will feel good to get back and do something.

I also realized last week just how behind I got in my schoolwork.  I knew I was going to get a little behind, but when I actually sat down and looked at what needed to get done, I had a huge “Oh, shit!” moment.

My boy and I are heading up to Canada in another week ago to a big sports conference.  I’m really excited to go to it, since it looks like there’s going to be a lot of interesting panels and presentations.  I mean, it’s a whole conference that revolves around sports – how can I not like it?  I’ve also never really been to Canada.  I say ‘really’ because I did go to Niagara Falls a few years ago, and walked to the Canadian side of the falls, but I don’t count that as legitimately going.  This time I need my passport.

I had one solo paper accepted, and we had one joint paper accepted.  The solo paper is the pilot study for what became my dissertation; I looked at how commentary during the 2008 gymnastics competition in Beijing might have a had a very nationally biased slant to it.  I found evidence of some bias, but I’m honestly surprised that it wasn’t bigger.  I still need to analyze the individual event finals, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do them before we leave.  I’ll try, and if not, I think I have enough data to present with just the team and all-around competitions analyzed.

My boy and I did one where we analyzed the school newspapers of all the schools in the SEC to see if there was a gender bias in the coverage of sports.  I have almost all those numbers run, and there is about a 60/40 split that favors men in actual articles, but the word count of articles about men versus articles about women is just about equal.  The bias isn’t as big as it is in for-profit papers, but (I think) it’s still significant.  I’m excited for that one.

Plus, in the honor of going to a sports conference, I scored us tickets to the Ottawa Senators vs. the NJ Devils hockey game.  I LOVE hockey, and now we’re going to go to a hockey game in Canada.  It’s the land!  I’m a Rangers fan at heart, but I never get to see hockey anymore, so I’ll take the Devils too.  We’ve seen two MLB games so far when we’ve been to conferences, so going to hockey seems like a good fit as well.  One day we’ll have to go to a conference that enables us to hit up an NFL game.

It’s research, right?