tilting at windmills

You people, I love you to pieces, but you're posting too damn fast. There were so many great posts today that I want to savor and contemplate... and there are prizes to award!

I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that Husband and I went to play racquetball (as we do a few times a week), and in the court next to ours, there was an odd sort of treadmill thing installed in the middle of the court. It was just the conveyor-belt part built into the floor, without the usual upright handles or screens or anything. The idea seemed to be that you could get extra exercise (and work on your coordination!) by running in place on the treadmill, at the same time as you tried to keep the ball going. Imagine a George Jetson scenario, arms and legs windmilling around, going top speed just to keep from getting sucked under, and that's sort of what this was supposed to do. In the dream, there were a couple of other players who'd gotten assigned to that court, and they were asking us how the hell it worked, and I described to them what to do, but noted that it seemed a pretty damn stupid idea to me.

Anyhow, over the last few weeks I've been facing this volley of tasks that are getting fired at me (some scheduled from long ago, some unpleasantly unexpected): coordinating student presentations for Honors Week, setting up a student organization banquet, heading a hiring committee for a last-minute search, finishing book revisions that are due soon, working with an ad hoc scholarship committee, working on assessment for our undergraduate program (and merely typing the word "assessment" just made my blood pressure shoot up ten points), writing up and submitting program changes for our department, etc., etc. Every time a new thing comes up, the same image flashes into my head: me as George Jetson flailing around at top speed on the racquetball treadmill, doing a hell of a lot of work and accomplishing absolutely nothing.

But at least it makes me laugh.

And now Scrivener/Scurvy Dave has given me homework!! I mean, thanks. :) Stick around, folks, I'll post more as soon as I figure out how to do the racquetball-treadmill and type at the same time.