My Latest Affliction

I tried to watch the Superbowl last night (anticipating sleeping in a bit today, which I thought was a holiday -- more about that in a moment). I didn't set my alarm, but when I woke up at 2 a.m., I went over to our television room and searched the sports channels and found the pre-game show. I watched the coin toss and found myself dozing so went to bed.

I slept soundly for about an hour, and then I started feeling very uncomfortable around my neck. I felt it and realized there was a welt-like condition on my skin from the base of my neck almost to my shoulder. I must have had a Nairobi fly on my pillow. I didn't manage to get back to sleep, so I have been dragging all day long.

Now about the holiday. I had put Maulid Day (the prophet's birthday) on the calendar for the 4th of February. My policy is that the school does not wait to hear which day the lunar-based holidays will be celebrated, I choose one and we go with it, and if it is another day than the one specified, Muslim employees can take that day off but show up for work on the holiday.

Soooo, because I expected Maulid to be on a Saturday, I had to move our monthly examinations to Wednesday - Friday (from the customary Thursday - Saturday). And then I discovered that I'd chosen the date for the festival as celebrated by whichever is the minority here -- Suni or Shiite, I can't remember which. So, I moved the holiday to Monday and explained that we would celebrate it on that day even if it was to fall on Tuesday. Well, it ended up falling on Sunday! And that means, we lost two class days, because we could have had examinations on Saturday and I didn't have to grant today's holiday. Argh!