I should get to bed. Not tired, though. Also, just spilled peanut sauce all over my shirt.

Etiquette question: yesterday, around 3:30 in the afternoon, I emailed my advisor with a question. He emailed me back around 5:30 with the answer and a few questions for me. Answering those questions would be about half an hour of work, at least, and it was already 5:30, so I figured I'd look at it the next day. He then emailed me again at 1:30 in the morning, telling me that he'd put time into answering my questions, and had asked me some questions, and was expecting a reply soon, and now it was hours later and I hadn't replied, so what was going on?

So. Should I have stayed at the office for longer yesterday to be able to answer his questions then? Should I have emailed back to tell him I'd answer the next day? It just didn't occur to me to do that, since it was already 5:30 when he sent me the questions.

Well, it was already Sunday, so I suspect that he didn't think that 5:30 was meaningful, he might have realized it during the week. I would email him back tomorrow morning, bright and early with an apology for not getting back to him, maybe a joke about knocking off for the holiday (if you think he would take it well)

IMHO, you did absolutely fine, Hil.

It starting to look like your advisor thinks he himself should be on the top of your priorities, and not you.

I emailed him this morning with an apology and a quick answer to his question, then again this afternoon with a much more detailed answer.

I really can't see what you have to apologize about.

Sometimes things takes some more time. Is it a life and death issue? Are you that far behind? Because I can't see how waiting the weekend/24 hours could have hurt.

E-mail is not a 911 call. Unless someone specifically says they have a deadline, I don't think there's any requirement to hang over the computer and answer by return electron.

Well, at least now I know that he expects replies like that. So, I'll know to send one next time.

There is a Thor movie in the works, to be directed by Kenneth Branagh.

Trying to picture this.

If he emails me after midnight, with a bunch of new ideas and he wants to know what I think about them, but I'm too tired to think about them now, I don't actually have to email him back to tell him that, right? Because I'm kind of too tired to trust myself to phrase an email politely.

I don't actually have to email him back to tell him that, right? Because I'm kind of too tired to trust myself to phrase an email politely.

No, you don't. You pretend you haven't seen it until a reasonable hour tomorrow morning, along with any intervening "why haven't you responded to my email" emails that he may send. Then come that reasonable hour in the morning, you email something along the lines of, "Oh, dear, I didn't see your message until after breakfast this morning." Unless there is some function in the uni email system that signals him when you do actually read his shit. In which case you just say, "It was 1:30 am. My sleep-deprivation typing is worse than my drunk typing, so I figured we'd both be happier waiting until after the butt-crack of dawn for me to respond."