Poop in the grout

Last night I dreamed about poop. My poop. It just kept coming and coming, and it was all over the bathroom floor. I was trying to clean it up with toilet paper, but that just smeared it into the grout. I woke up with a stomach ache.

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I applied for a promotion this year. A week ago I had an interview. Me and a room full of provosts. I think I answered most of the questions well, but not all. I gave the true answers, but possibly not the best answers or the correct answers. You never know in a room full of provosts.

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November means spring. Late spring. The trees have full leaves. The magpies aren't swooping anymore, as they're spending their time shoveling grubs into the beaks of nearly full grown juveniles. Sunset gets later and later. We can walk in the park after 7:30 and it is still sunny. The boy has allergies, and there have been spring rainstorms. But spring was always my favorite season, even when it happened in May rather than November.

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I have a great fellowship at work that allows me to devote 80% of my time to research. By contract, I must devote 80% of my time to research. Because of that, I've been cut back from a 40% to a 15% teaching load. But then on top of that, I've had a pretty heavy admin position in the department, overseeing research. I did a little math, and added up the numbers, and realized that I was working at least 115%, and no one was paying me for that extra 15%. So I said some words, and I'm now officially getting out of the admin research role. But not before the poop gets smeared all over the floor: see first paragraph. We are updating our list of what counts as  a "quality" research output. While the decisions ultimately fall upon someone else, communicating those decisions falls on me. And I just can't get the gunk out of the grout with only a roll of toilet paper.

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