No Personal Day In the Red Queen's Race

Water in a bottle, the sound of the rain and tapping keys on my laptop keyboard for music. I need a personal day, I thought I might get a personal hour, now it looks like I have a personal 15 minutes--which I am using to post. *sigh* I have so many balls in the air right now I hardly know which way to turn. I'm to the point where I don't even try to remember what people are asking for--even if it's something I think I'll do in the next 15 minutes. They ask, I add to the scary To Do list. And everything but *everything* goes on the calendar. I cannot be held responsible for remembering anything right now.

Put together a really great class with Becky and Todd yesterday right down to the hourly time break-down. Got the dishwasher fixed last night. Being in the studio right now is like riding the people mover at an airport, but facing backwards. If you walk fast you can get ahead. If you just walk, you stay in one place. But heaven help you if you want to stand still for a moment. Wait a minute! I know where I am...

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"Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run.

Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying `Faster! Faster!' but Alice felt she could not go faster, thought she had not breath left to say so.

The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. `I wonder if all the things move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, `Faster! Don't try to talk!'

Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen cried `Faster! Faster!' and dragged her along. `Are we nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last.

`Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. `Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster! And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.

`Now! Now!' cried the Queen. `Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, `You may rest a little now.'

Alice looked round her in great surprise. `Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

`Of course it is,' said the Queen, `what would you have it?'

`Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little, `you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

`A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. `Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

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from "Through the Looking Glass", by Lewis Carroll

Tomorrow I'll run twice as fast as this.