Document and Soul Updates

The next draft of the soul-crushing reaccreditation document is complete. I distributed it to faculty and Academic Affairs Committee members late this morning. Comments on the previous draft were surprisingly positive, and very helpful for producing this latest draft. I would be pleased if subsequent comments are as constructive. Somehow I find that the more I read the standards, the less I understand some of them. But I'm trying not to let this bother me.

Ken Hill, who is working on other parts of the reaccreditation report, fell asleep while working on it a few nights ago. He woke up to find his head on the keyboard. His forehead had managed to type seventeen pages of spaces while he was sleeping. So writing these documents is clearly a dangerous endeavor. I actually thought that the seventeen blank pages should be retained in the document. But it doesn't seem like an efficient use of paper.

When Doreen and I were in Philadelphia around Christmas we stopped at a Mexican grocery store. They had a bunch of those candles in tall, skinny glass containers. They were quite inexpensive and I like candles, so I checked a bunch of them out. Most of them had Saints on them, which didn't interest me. One had Pope John Paul, which definitely didn't interest me. But then I found a black candle whose glass jar was decorated with some skeleton-looking dude. I thought it was cool in a Goth sort of way so I bought it.

A few days later Doreen read what was written on the candle. (I couldn't read it because it was in Spanish.) Apparently this is a candle that you're supposed to keep lit when someone is about to die, and the skeleton dude is not a Goth, but some angel or saint of death or something who helps to take your soul away, presumably to heaven or someplace nice. That suddenly made my new candle less fun. However, I have been trying to remember to keep it lit while writing the soul-crushing document. My hope is that the soul-crushing document and the soul-removing candle cancel each other out, keeping me safe.

Thus far, it seems to have worked. My soul has picked up few dents, but it's not crushed.
It could be, however, that my soul has not been crushed because it's frozen. It's currently -6 F outside, and quite chilly inside our house. I will sleep with a hat on tonight.