Trudge, nudge--oh, fudge!

I started the morning (for the second time) like a Queen making a Royal Progress around her Vast Domain--except that I was trudging tiara-less around a domain few would consider vast. A half-vast domain? Don't say it out loud. (I wish I could take credit for that very bad pun, but sadly, I can't even remember where I first heard it.)

This Royal Progress was not, strictly speaking, necessary. The documents I delivered to (nearly) every department on campus could have been distributed through the campus mail system, but I wanted to deliver them myself for a variety of not very compelling reasons:

1. My schedule is so crowded today that this walk around campus may well be my only chance for exercise. Call it Trudge-Aerobics.

2. I don't often get a chance to visit many of the departments on campus and see what's up, and after this morning I can tell you definitively what's up in many departments at 8:00 or 8:15 or 8:30 a.m.: namely, not much. I was happy to chat with some early-rising colleagues but found several department offices either empty or locked up tight.

3. An early-morning tour of campus seemed like an appropriate penance for my part in the comedy of errors that resulted in the need to distribute this particular document. If I had been a tad more diligent and undistracted, a big fat mistake could have been avoided and this document would not have needed to be created and distributed. (Any obfuscation is entirely intentional.)

4. I hoped that a brisk walk in the cool morning air would wash away the lingering effects of the first start to my morning, when a splitting headache and upset stomach awoke me at 3:45 a.m. and would not allow me to get back to sleep. How am I supposed to attend meetings, prepare classes, and respond to 18 freshman composition drafts on so little sleep? Trudge-Aerobics works for me!

Temporarily, at least. I'm alert now but I don't know how long it will last. If you hear me snoring in the middle of a meeting, do me a favor and give me a nudge. If my lack of alertness spreads, watch out for a vast campus-wide epidemic of Nudge-Aerobics. Or if not vast, maybe half-vast.