So … today was a bit crazy.

I’ve been a great big ball of stress the past week or so.  Saturday, I did the orientation for the trip to Egypt I’m leading.  Maybe I should have thought through that, “Oh, I can do this all myself” thing a little more fully.

Tomorrow, I’m off to the Rio Grande Valley.  Back late Thursday night, doing a high school visit on Friday morning first thing, departmental reception on Sunday.  Class presentations on Monday morning.  Colleague from out of town coming Monday afternoon for workshop all day Tuesday.  Next Saturday is the big university open house.  The following Wednesday, I have a dentist appointment in the early morning, an appointment in the evening, and the following day at 1:30 in the afternoon I get on a plane to fly to Cairo.

It’s probably no big surprise that I’m a little stressed.  Ironically, when I started having problems sleeping last week, it took me a little time to figure out why.

Today, I had a to-do list several miles long.  However, the best parts came in the late afternoon.

I’ve worked with one of the people in the Valley before, and she’s … crazy.  Last time we were there, she announced over lunch that she carries a gun in her truck everywhere she goes.

“OK … “
”Yeah, you know,” she said, “They’ll come over from over there in the middle of the night and they’ll steal your kidneys.”

Come again?

In some lengthy detail, she described the organ harvesters of Mexico, who are, apparently, wont to jump the Rio Grande, stop American cars traversing US 84 between Laredo and the lower valley, and steal the internal organs of their occupants.

“You’re all young and fit,” she observed, barely breaking from her fast chewing.  “They’d take yours in a heartbeat.  That’s why I carry.”

She’s been sending messages to me of a variety that I barely understood.  There was a long, rambling one that involved lunch time, and when we wanted to schedule it (usually we take our cue from our hosts, not the other way around), and then a very, very long explanation of how the place where our session will be is staffed and whether we wanted … well, let’s just say that three people read the message, and none of them understood it.

In the meantime, as I’m trying to put things together to leave, remember what I need to do now so that I’m set for next week, and putting in the request for the cash advance for the trip to Egypt so that it’ll be ready in time for me to jump through hoops at my bank, the shelf on my bookcase just randomly decided to collapse downward.  Again.

That may have been the point where I decided that I was done working and gathered my things up to leave.  If my bookcase falls over between now and Friday, so be it.

And I’m kind of hoping that I still have all my kidneys then, too.  Good golly…