Which is already primed for rockiness. Despite multiple warnings, we have been given thirty minutes (or less, in one case) per team to pass out computers. This works out to 11:15-2:30, or just about two and three quarters hours.

Assume we have three hundred and forty students. Assume each one needs two minutes to fill out forms, receive their computers, sign off on what equipment they've actually received and double check serial numbers in our database, all mandated by policy. Two minutes is not much time.

That comes out to eleven hours and twenty minutes of worker time, or close to five times the amount of time we've actually been given. So, to match it, we would need five people at each station, all working without a break.

We have five people. Plus interns here and there.

You do the math. I don't want to. This is going to be ugly.

Now, we tell people about this every year. And every year we end up going way over our time, because you simply can't change the way time works. And frankly, that's just fine. It doesn't hurt us to go over our time at all. If it hurts the rest of the necessary programs -- well, they seem to get over it.

But why plan a schedule you know you can't possibly meet? What's the point of it?

September, and there are signs of sociality in the air. Specifically, an old friend name of Andrea and I are trying to work out how to hook up not next weekend but the weekend after.

How old a friend? I don't mean her age, of course. Well, we met the one year I went to Music Camp, which was sixteen years ago when I was fifteen years old, or 1983. I went for Chorus. I got a relationship out of it (not with Andrea) and friendships -- most notably with a girl named Laurie and Andrea herself.

Laurie and I managed to keep in touch by calling each other every six months and sending letters in a flurry after that straight up to 1991, which is a Hell of a Run any way you look at it, given we had two weeks of knowing each other and that's it. Today, I have no idea where Laurie is. Given her personality, I expect she's married somewhere, with a different last name and a pretty good life. Probably a young professional. Who knows?

Andrea and I have managed irregular contact on a regular basis without trying at all. We seem to have Synchronicity (and Andrea has the best memory on the planet). One day she was helping out at the University of Maine at Farmington, and there was my Dad. Boom. "Hey, do you know an Eric Burns...?"

Most recently, she was websurfing, and she hit my journal. Which means she's reading this now, of course. Hi Andrea!

So, next we figure out how to hook up and what we'll do? She's down in Boston, so it should be doable....

Mason, Van and I are off to see The Muse. Bye!