Why Yes, I Am Working On 'Sabbatical Things'

Many, many years ago, I remember my Speech Team coach saying 'the grist mill of God works exceedingly slow, yet exceedingly fine.' As I struggle with exceedingly slow progress on work I'd like to get done this sabbatical, I decided to look up the exact quote.

It appears to be attributed to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -

Though the mills of God grind slowly; Yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, With exactness grinds He all.

Further reading seems to indicate it references divine retribution. While I feel like that may be a stretch when it comes to research, the phrase certainly resonates with my 'sabbatical work.'

My first project, the not-the-purpose-of-my-sabbatical-project, is going ok. In August, I recruited participants for a blood pressure study at the Minnesota State Fair. It was a lot of fun. I submitted the manuscript in December. It was rejected, and kind of torn apart. I have yet to re-submit to another journal, but soon. About a week ago, I took this work, and previous blood pressure work to implement a 'serial blood pressures' QI project at my clinic. In a nutshell, and if you are curious, I am trying to implement serial blood pressures as standard procedure in clinic when blood pressure is elevated on rooming. I think this is going well, and in true QI fashion, we've already made some improvements.

The other project, that has to do with my sabbatical hit a huge and disappointing roadblock last week. I don't want to say too much about it here, because who knows who reads this blog, but I am still hoping to salvage something from it. (And if I do, you'll hear about it).

But that grist mill, I tell you - so. dang. slow.

In non-academic sabbatical news, I guess I have taken up quilting? I have made quite a few cloth face masks in the past 2 years. Now that they have fallen out of favor (and I lost my gusto to make them) I had all of these masks cut out, but not sewn. So I decided to cut them into 4" squares and sew them together. The result is a lap-sized quilt, shown below. It actually still needs to be quilted, which may take some time to get to. My mom is going to bring up the 'special foot' you need to use to quilt when she visits in April.