Sabbath-ical

Today is the first day of my sabbatical term, which I have asked (and obtained) so I could work on writing the books $-$ the BCEA book had been commissioned for a while and it's not far from a nearly finalised version, while the 2nd edition of Bayesian Approaches to Clinical Trials and Health Care Evaluation (which I am co-authoring with relatively minor and unknown researchers, as some may say...) is slightly behind.

Although it wasn't a formal sabbatical, on another occasion I spent a relatively large chunk of time working from home $-$ that's back when I was working in Siena and was also collaborating to the write up of another book. Back then, it was a strange experience $-$ after a while, I wasn't really enjoying very much not going to the office every day and was actually, actively missing it. Part of it is probably that the office was bang in the middle of Siena (and this was the view)...

This time it will be probably quite different, as I will still go to the office once/twice a week (mostly for meetings and stuff), but at least I got to dump (in the friendliest way possible, I hope!) most of my teaching to Aidan, who's been so kind to cover for me, this term. Anyway, I keep telling people that, because I'm on sabbatical, this term will be good as I'll be able to do lots of work $-$ I just hope I've not already overbooked (pun intended!) myself...