Worst. Birthday. Ever.

1. I was in a meeting all day. An off-campus meeting, and they are talking about making us come back ("please sir may I have another") in a month.
2. I just got back home (well, not home, I'm in my office) less than half an hour ago
3. My ecology lab for next week is listed as "TBA" on the schedule, which means I need to come up with something jolly quick or use the cheat of doing a plant I.D. lab for the plant labs that come in the future.
4. My B.S. detector went off majorly twice during the meetings, and minorly too many times to count (One of the major times: why do education-researcher types, when they tell you that lecture is a bad way to convey information, do so in a 2 1/2 hour lecture?)
5. I am all sinusy and tired, I can't stand being in a "tight" building and one of the cleaning products used in the hotel set off my chemical sensitivities.
6. The bed in the expensive hotel (and I hope to GOD I get reimbursed for the night by the powers that be who made me go to this meeting) was like a sheet of marble. No, not marble, it was too uncomfortably warm to be marble.

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

Well, I did learn one useful piece of information, but it was something that could have been conveyed in a much less inefficient way. And I did get some knitting done, both on the way up and in my room last evening.

But I'm tired, and sad that my birthday was spent in such a frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying way.

Update, as of 9 pm:

well, I figured out the lab exercise. I'm going to teach them how to build a dichotomous key for identification, which will be a sneaky way of making them learn the trees (well, those that don't know them already, which will be most of the class - they are mostly the medical-student types this semester, and unless they have a real outdoor interest or have worked at a garden center, they don't know the trees). And it's easy. I can run out Monday after class and grab eight or ten twigs of each of the important species. And I can have them make the keys, and have them graded and back to them before we actually do the tree lab.

And I graded the bio quizzes, although I did forget the homeworks in my office. And I wrote the ecology exam, or a first draft of it, but didn't get the labs graded.

It depends on how I feel when I get up tomorrow if my heart will be in it to run off and have a fun day of boutiquing like I had originally planned. The sad thing about being so busy is that it sort of kills the joy of taking a day, a full day, to run off and Not Work and be naughty by spending money.

Yes, I could work Sunday afternoon but I don't like to. You know, that old fourth commandment and all.