and moving forward

No new budget news on campus. My chair showed up (late, she had another meeting) to the student's defense and informed us, "Nothing new, just a lot of unhappy people" from the meeting she was at.

I hear now that maybe the Rainy Day fund for the state IS going to be tapped (this has whipsawed back and forth for a few days). Won't help us; the funds are just going to go to k-12 and Corrections, so we still have to find somewhere else to cut.

I will say there have been a few legislative things that lead to, what I would say, "bad optics." Spending time and effort on things that have little to do with trying to figure out the budget issue and if anything can be done. I also hear through a colleague that someone he knows at one of the Big Flagship Universities in the state, and this person said, "Yeah, we're sweating a little" and my response - and I admit I'm beginning to lose grace here - was "I don't have a lot of sympathy. He's 'sweating' and we are bleeding." Also rumors are flying around like crazy, about layoffs and pay cuts and increased workloads. No one knows anything and morale among faculty is lower than I've ever seen it. I'm betting we hear nothing new before spring break, so we'll be on tenterhooks for another week.

A retired couple I know from church say "it was worse in the early 80s" but I don't know, some of the things that happened then could still happen.

I don't know. Part of my distress is that the two main things my "head is in" (work and church) are not going well right now, and it's hard for me to detach.

I'm trying. I pulled out "Moby-Dick" and started reading on it again with an aim to finishing it this time. I need to make myself a schedule for Spring Break so I get something done - ideally , spend a full day working on a particular project and get a lot done. (I have three things to work on: a talk I agreed to give but that hasn't yet been scheduled, the cedar research I'm starting, the write up of some prairie restoration work that kind of went nowhere but still maybe could be spun into something small). But being sick has eaten into my ability to do anything. Even a mild cold affects my ability to focus and be comfortable to work....my throat is some better this morning but I am still having issues with hives (it seems when my immune system is otherwise upset, I get lots of hives)

I'm just....I still want to return 2016 for a refund, this has been a bad year so far.

What I really need? A hug, a day out to have some fun (can't afford it right now), getting over this darn cold, and for something in my day-to-day life to have some good news attached to it.

The only realistic thing I need that I can easily get is an evening spent knitting or quilting.