Well, all I got done knit-wise yesterday was maybe four rows on a sock heel.

After teaching all day (on campus from 7 until after 3), I had a long evening meeting (the good news is, we voted in favor of bringing in the best candidate to be our new minister, and we can pay him pretty much what he was asking for).

Today, I give an exam (am typing one right now for another class...which I really need to get back to). Then at noon is a meeting that will probably be more a time-suck than a benefit. Then I teach lab. Then I have the town beautification council meeting this afternoon.

So, no giving blood for me, even if I knew it would be more than 56 days before the church blood drive. I simply don't have time. I will not be free for long enough between 10 and 4 to get in and give blood.

So, if anyone gets on me for not doing "day of service" stuff, I'm going to point out that very frequently my regular days are "days of service." Srsly, the volunteer work I do, like, every month (every week, for that matter) should count. Just because I "already" do it shouldn't make me have to take on something more.

And, here is another of my frustrations with the modern world, and how we get preached at: you never hear that what you are doing is "enough." There always can be more productivity. You can always eat more servings of vegetables in a day. You can always do another 10 minutes of exercise. You can always give more money to charity.

And there HAS to be a point where you say, wait, darn it, I'm already doing pretty well.

For once, for STINKING once, I'd like to hear a doctor tell me, "Wow, that's great, how much exercise you do." or "Good on you for making an effort to eat healthfully." Or hear some person on one of the groups I belong to go, "You know, you really do do an awful lot of volunteer work." But instead, I constantly get asked for, or told to, do more. More more more more more. And I'm tired of it.

I suspect that a lot of the "guidelines" of stuff are upped to keep the people making the guidelines in business: if we all dutifully choked down our nine servings of daily vegetables, they'd tell us to eat 12. Or if we all exercised for 2 hours a day, they'd propose two-and-a-half.

(And I think of tithing: God only asks for 10%. But when charities ask me for money and I say, "Okay, I can give $40," they press for $60.)

Perhaps I'm feeling irked about this because we are in the middle of writing the many assessment reports we are expected to write every year, and seeing how the requirements of what must be put in and documented goes up every year, without some of the requirements being removed...