First of all: if you sent me e-mail in the last 36 hours, please re-send it. I'm now getting spam but am not getting any of the backlog of e-mails (or comment notifications). It's aggravating. (K., I received your last e-mail; I'm holding off on responding until I'm sure the wonkiness is out of the system.)

Well, this morning was good until about 5 minutes ago.

We went out and did fieldwork from about 7:30 to 9:30 - me, a colleague, and his lab class. It was cold - the first cold front of the season moved in last night - but it felt good. And it just felt good to work. And the sky looked like a winter sky.

And then I bopped back in to campus to get ready for my one class of the day and the meeting I called.

And because of a Big Change that took place last night at a meeting I was not at (in fact, when the e-mail was sent notifying me of the changes, I was already down at church teaching the Youth Lesson) informing me that the meeting that I called - of the committee I am no longer a member of but am still de facto chair because they never picked a new one - has to be cancelled because the make up of the committee was being changed.

NO NO NO NO NO NO! For one thing, I'm already receiving materials we need to act on. For another - the person who sent me the email is on the committee and she knows that you can't do things on a turn-on-a-dime notification here. So now, I'm going to have to CALL all of the committee members (they don't check their emails regularly it seems) and tell them.

The fact that the email was sent to me after 6 pm - I realize that maybe that's when the decision came down but it makes me particularly angry - do they really expect that I am sitting in my office waiting for information at 6 pm on a Wednesday? Especially Wednesday in the Bible Belt, where some 40% of people are going to be involved with church stuff - or, for that matter, Wednesday of Homecoming week, where I could have been involved with festivities.

I HATE this. I HATE the fact that I'm now going to have to juggle people's schedules again and call ANOTHER meeting - and next week is mid-fall break, so you KNOW that people will resent/refuse to attend any meeting called that week.

I called the person in charge of the committee "above" this one to vent - she had not even HEARD about the information. So she's tracking it down and she offered to tell them the new committee membership had to APPOINT a chair, and that I shouldn't have to be involved with the meeting. Which is the way it should be anyway....

She just called. I'm OFF THE HOOK. The person who led to the cancellation and who sent me the short-notice e-mail is going to do it. Which is only fair anyway.