Wednesday, March 29, 2006

An involuntary hiatus

When I left the office on Friday, my desk was clean--cleaner than it's been all semester--and I was caught up on everything. Today, after spending two days at home fighting the meanest virus I've ever encountered, I arrived to find an avalanche of papers on my desk. I'm still pretty wobbly so it was all I could do to shove them into a semi-neat pile and turn my back on them. One of these days I'll get caught up.

Some things, though, I'll never get caught up on. For two days I barely glanced at a newspaper, didn't open the mail, and let the e-mail messages accumulate unread. If any newsworthy events occurred in the past two days, I missed 'em. What's more, I don't have the energy to go back and find out whether some aging movie star finally kicked the bucket or some third-world dictator committed a military incursion or scientists discovered a new species of newt. People could make up news events and tell me about them and as long as they were plausible enough, I'd just nod and smile and say "How interesting." It would be cruel, but at this point I'm so happy to be back in the office that nothing can faze me. Not even an avalanche of papers.

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