Spurious Thoughts

I am still planning on a "comments" post, but today cannot be the day..... I am in too much of a "rambly-jambly" mood to be able to do anything but prattle on about what is randomly swirling about in my neuronal circuitry today.

Part of the reason for "swirling" thoughts is that in the wisdom that only a U Administrator could fathom.... the administrators have deemed this Saturday, right ahead of Final Exam week as the time for the annual "U Extravaganza" which is basically a “dog and pony show” where folks are supposed to goad their students into presenting their work from across the year at a day-long event.  

I have six of my research students who I HAVE goaded attending...... but it’s not like they should instead be studying for..... uh, their FINAL EXAMS. But, neither is it also not like all us faculty are also up to our fuzzy eyebrows in business with the various machinations of doing various types of accounting maneuvers related to grades, and preparing final exams. Additionally, we are trying to schedule out ways to....      ...after exams are administered..... grade, compute, and enter results for the damn things..... AND THEN compute final grades for the semester…. with a deadline newly established by the U of FINAL SEMESTER GRADES due only TWO days after final exam week.  

So, instead of doing the normal "professory" things like preparing the exams, etc.... I am spending most of my time OUTSIDE of my normal lecturing and my normal research and my normal committee work, trying to help my six students navigate the needs and requirements of the "U Extravaganza".   

But.... thinking like the Stoic Philosophers... since there isn't really a helluva lot I can do about it..... I should just let it "go".  I am trying to do just that as best as I can.

I did have a most WONDERFUL dream, however, last night.  I have had this dream before, but it must have been at least 10-15 years since I had a similar dream.  I think somehow all the "accounting" work I have been doing with grades may have stirred up this old dream from the detritus of my mind.  But also, perhaps it was because I was reminiscing in my mind about the old sci-fi program, "The Prisoner" that I feel is perhaps the best (err.... my favorite) science fiction story ever on television.  Much of the dream had a bit of that same sort of surrealism.  

I am not sure if it was a marketing analysis group, or a newspaper conglomerate (hah, newspapers, I miss them), or a group of psychologists, or a group of tobacconists.... but some group hired me (not sure how or IF I even applied) to be a "Taste Tester" sort of reporter for them and sample and write about what appeared to be 200 different pipe tobaccos.  I went into my office, and it was a large, boardroom-like space perhaps 30 feet by 50 feet, with a large table which had a large, stone ashtray on it, and a comfortable office chair nearby.  And, there was a large, cardboard box on the floor near the table.  I opened the box, and inside were my instructions, a large, spiral bound notebook for my writings, and ~200 small pouches of pipe tobaccos, probably enough for roughly three bowls of each type. Each small pouch had a code number printed on the outside.  

I was just starting to read the instructions on how to go about my job, reading about how I was to write opinion essays on each..... when my damn alarm clock (aka my gizmo phone) jolted me awake.  I wish I could have remained asleep to experience much more of that dream.

PipeTobacco