Today is my first day of working back upstairs, in my office. Sophie still has stitches (she gets them out 12/1), we still have the stairs blocked with a baby gate, and yesterday when I had to be at my consulting site, she had to wear the elizabethan collar. But I am becoming so crippled up from using the laptop in the living room that I decided to come upstairs today. I have so much work to do at this point in the semester, can't cut productivity due to ergonomics! I don't have the collar on her, because she has been about 95% compliant when one of us are here. I heard some licking just now and ran downstairs (my ankle is doing so well at this point! Power walked a good distance yesterday) only to discover Sam was the one grooming (himself). So far, so good.

We let her go downstairs to the yard now when we are here and can watch her go up and down, she doesn't have to be leash walked, and she is doing great. Last day of antibiotics will be tomorrow. She hasn't taken a pain pill in several days, although I considered giving her one in the middle of last night. She was very restless. I think with more activity, comes a little more discomfort. Tomorrow night we head to Samsonville. That house is a ranch so it will be easier, but the ride and the yard there will be a challenge. I think I will have to put the e-collar on her so I can have Thanksgiving dinner, since she is always more anxious in Samsonville.

I had a Murphy's Law kind of day yesterday. There were more reasons than this, but I'll just detail a couple. I was exhausted Sunday night, went to bed a lot earlier than usual. Shortly before falling asleep I remembered I had a major deadline in my online class that I had completely forgotten. I'd been so distracted by consulting work that it completely slipped my mind, something I don't think has ever happened in the 10 years I've been teaching online. But I had to attend to a meeting in the morning and I was so tired. So I resolved to update the course site in the morning with a brief note saying there would be a delay of a couple of hours. I also had to print some documents for the meeting. I hadn't done it earlier in the weekend because I was waiting for feedback (which never came).

I planned to be at the site at 8:15 AM - really, really early for me. But I got up! Victory. Shortly before I had to leave I ran upstairs with my flash drive to print the documents and update the online class with that note. I hadn't used my printer in a while - since I started working downstairs. The light was blinking that said it needed paper and a print job of Bob's was partially done. (He said it was from three weeks ago.) I loaded paper and it started to print. After about a half page it stopped and started "thinking." Then all sorts of error messages started flashing - "carriage error" "paper jam" etc. getting worse each time I tried to correct it. Finally I gave up and turned off the machine. I took my flash drive and hoped that I could print on site, if the documents were needed. In the car as he was preparing to drive away, I asked Bob to email me the documents, so that I could review them on my smart phone before the meeting. Uh-oh. He deleted the email where I shared them (without reading them, I might add...). So I ran back inside with my flash drive, emailed them to myself. Going to be late! Never fails.

Once I was on site and observing, an assistant to one of the people I was meeting with found me and announced the meeting was canceled! So on the good side, I didn't need those documents, but on the bad side - I'd missed my online class deadline for no reason. Also, I thought it was pretty rude, some of the participants travel quite a distance and the meeting was on the books for a long time. Oh well. 

When I got home, the printer was still "shutting down." Uh-oh again. I killed the main power switch and forgot about it until today. When I turned it on this morning, it was fine. Or at least I think it is, I haven't tried to print anything yet. 

Lesson 1. Something I already knew. I can't really go into details on the situation, but afterwards I was thinking about today’s meeting being canceled, and how it was done – and it occurs to me that the conclusion I had in the program evaluation that was my dissertation (that the reason innovative programs do not succeed as well as they might has little to do with goal achievement and positive results, or even with enthusiasm of the participants - and more to do with lack of broad support from policy makers) is true for the object of the consulting project as well. Administrative leadership is not interested.

Lesson 2. Something I should have known already. Real job is higher priority than consulting.

Lesson 3. Something I didn't know, but should have suspected. Don't leave your printer flashing an error message for three weeks.