I can't tell you why the past 10 days or so have seemed like everything has been in slow motion, but they have been. I've been doing all the right and normal things at home and in the office, and yet in either place, nothing's been getting accomplished. Sometimes it's the end of the day before I even realize how little has gone from "to-do" to "done."

It reminds me of a scene from the second season finale of The West Wing, the episode "Two Cathedrals." Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) has to get one of the network news directors (an old friend played by Peter Michael Goetz) to give her TV time, on short notice, because they're going to reveal that the President of the United States has multiple sclerosis—but she can't tell him yet what the announcement will be, only that it's not related to a different but ongoing crisis in Haiti.

The water's exactly at my head.