By about 2pm today, I'd decided that the afternoon would be better spent under my desk. (Thinking: it's quiet there, no-one can see me, and perhaps two inches of old, nondescript desk would give some protection from the meteor storm of trouble that hit my office today.) But the keyboard would not reach, and so the plan was sadly abandoned.
For a day in which very little got done, a lot seems to have happened, and most of it made me want to gnaw off my hand. I believe that the traditional metaphor for trying to organise large groups of academics is herding cats, but I'd like to contest this on the grounds that cats are smart, independent creatures who are easily capable of looking after themselves if the herding enterprise goes awry. Organising academics is not like herding cats. Organising academics is more like playing Lemmings. That, plus issues with scheduling student workers, plus working with some troublesome documents that by five o'clock I was close to convinced had achieved sentience just to plague me, plus an ongoing battle with my ex-ISP who refuse to accept we broke up, is all why I came home to an evening of pampering myself (viz. a blanket, a mug of coffee, a stack of good books and a Walking With Dinosaurs DVD).
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