Why is it always a surprise to come back from a trip and find all the messes I left behind still waiting for me? I mean, I know no one's going to break into my house to take down my Christmas tree or clean up the plumbing-repair mess from the bathroom floor, but it's a shock to come home and find that the house has not cleaned itself, and neither have the syllabi written themselves or the annoying tasks checked themselves off my to-do list.
A few insights from a half-week of getting stuff done:
Putting course content on Canvas is much easier the second time around. Prettier, too. Experience matters.
Maybe linking all my recurring payments to the same credit card is not a great idea, because if, for instance, some miscreant steals my card number and tries to purchase $2.99 worth of random items in Mexico City on Christmas Eve, and if my credit card company recognizes the transaction as bogus and informs me that my card has been compromised and cancels my card, I'm going to have my hands full deleting the old card number from all my subscriptions and accounts and replacing it with the new card number. I thought I'd updated everything yesterday, but today I was reminded that the old card was also linked to my MLA membership, my cloud storage subscription, and my Zappos account. Back to work.
My new driver's license finally arrived, confirming that the DMV still uses those special cameras designed to make everyone look like a homeless serial killer, but I had to have a chat with our local postmaster about how it arrived, because it's apparent that the new mail carrier who sometimes substitutes for our regular rural mail carrier does not actually know where our house is located. In the past month we've had packages delivered to the drainage ditch next to our mailbox, to our neighbor's front porch, and to our neighbor's back porch, which was a problem because she didn't see that pile of Christmas gifts and loose mail for a full week. Good thing the high winds didn't blow them away! I'd hate to have to go to the DMV all over again.
The peace and calm that result from time away from campus can hold on for a little while after the trip is over, surviving even through Canvas clicking and credit-card fiascos and complicated chats with kindly postmasters, but a certain kind of email related to faculty governance is sufficient to dissipate all traces of travel euphoria. I guess I'm glad that I didn't have to think about campus financial shenanigans for a week or two, but here we are again scrambling under the sofa cushions for a few million dollars, and I keep wondering why these messes didn't clean themselves up while I was gone.
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