This week has been a roller coaster for me.  I'll be glad when it's over.  First of all, we're entering the final stretch of the school semester and I was scheduled to give the last exam on Wednesday evening.  Preparations for that was an event in itself because my relatively small class of grad students had missed a number of class days prior due to reasons ranging from recalcitrant weather and itinerant strikes to personal ordeals. So I had a backlog of homework exercises to correct and discuss with them prior to the exam.  

Then...

A kidney stone chose the day of my exam to lodge itself strategically within my ureter to cause me the utmost pain and forcing me to the emergency room.  On the way there, I had to stop by the grad school and expend every effort to find someone that could proctor my exam, because (as is wont) it is literally impossible to get students to agree on a makeup date once the semester is over (especially so if that make-up date is to take an exam!).  Fortunately I lucked out and got someone to administer the exam while I dragged myself in supreme pain (on foot) to the emergency room.  There they flooded my veins with painkillers and I had a brief hiatus of supreme ecstasy albeit short lived.  I guess I should consider myself lucky that when they let me out about midnight, I didn't get into an accident on my way home (probably due to the fact that by then there were few cars on the road).

Several broken lightposts later I reached home and as the drugs' effects subsided, I didn't have a resumption of pain (hopefully meaning that the nefarious stone was expunged in the cascades of urine than I engendered from drinking gallons of water).

A.Good.Thing,  because, I had two day long meetings on Friday (one of which I wasn't aware of) and a trip to plan for a conference next Thursday (more on that later).  The meeting I was aware of was for the purpose of revising (in my case) one of the MBA core courses in order to comply with strictures of the accreditation agency.  Although I was assigned to a committee of three professors (responsible for the course), I was the only one who confirmed attendance.  This was good and bad, at the same time.  Good in the sense that I took all the decisions myself and wrapped the agenda up early.  Bad in the sense that the other two will undoubtedly protest my decisions.  Sorry, tough cookies for them!  They didn't show up!

Now about the trip (the only golden lining in this chaotic mess).  I learned of a conference that I wanted to attend and applied for funding which (surprisingly) I got.  However, the paperwork is immense and I had to do all the flight reservations and conference registration myself.  Luckily, I have family in Queens, so I didn't have to deal with the (expensive) hotels.  I took care of most of that on Thursday between correcting my students exams, homework and calculating their semester grades (I have to get all final grades in BEFORE I leave on the trip).

So Friday, I arrived at work before sunrise in order to finalize the paperwork for my trip before the daylong meeting to revise the MBA core course.  During the meeting I learned that I had another meeting that I should have also been attending at the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research.  Since I haven't yet mastered the art of splitting myself in two, I missed the latter for which I will surely be reprimanded when I return from my trip (that is if, at this rate, I do decide to return).

As if that wasn't enough, a close friend of mine was suddenly leaving for her country and needed a place to leave her car (so she would have one when she returned).  I took it and drove it home (where I am sitting now with a deserved drink in my hand writing you this nonsense).  Hopefully, sometime this evening, I will find some nice soul that will drive me back down to the university to recuperate my car.

This is maracatu, signing off for the day..........

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne