Today was a fairly quiet day of working at home, with a mild inconvenience of having some drywall work done in our building's hallway so that I had to delay my afternoon break... and then I looked at the list of funds available for the small department that I am helping, and there was a new one for $10,000. That wasn't so weird, except that the Principal Investigator (PI) was... me!!! First of all, a PI is almost always a faculty member; some academic staff can get funding if they really beg for it, but whoever heard of university staff getting a grant? Also, someone clearly had to apply for this grant, which was for a conference on Politics and Religion, and I can assure my readers that I had done no such thing. As much as this is an area of great interest to me, I have no qualifications to run a conference on this topic. I felt a little like I'd discovered someone had gotten a credit card in my name. A couple of emails later I found out which faculty actually owns the money, but no word yet about why it was put in my name.
In the evening I went to my church for the first time since the fire, and some things were out of place, but mostly things look fine. (I could have gone Tuesday for my adoration hour, but I'd had to get a sub to go to dinner at the Chancellor's house.) On the way home there was a beautiful sunset, and then as I passed the Mallards game, I glanced over to see what the score was, but all I could see was a chicken dancing on the Jumbotron. I mean, not in an unnatural way, but you know how they kind of move their necks around like they're grooving to a beat. Then at Night Prayer I told Richard Bonomo, the Dairyman's Daughter, and Jilly Moose about how I was now a PI on a grant, and also how at the book study I'd asked bout the influence of Zoroastrianism on the Early Church and had then been given an assignment to learn about this, so Rich said clearly I should use my new grant money to travel to Iran and study the political and religious influences of Zoroastrianism on early Christianity. Man, don't tempt me! It's like that time years ago at work when a check in my name for over $800 came to my office via campus mail, and it took all my willpower not to cash it. Of course it was a mistake, but the amount of research I had to do to find out where it really belonged was so annoying that I was about five minutes from claiming it. Why am I always being tempted with money in my name at work???
Famous Hat
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