There is nothing quite like a weekend full of shin-bruising, arm-killing, brick-moving labor to make me nearly ecstatic to return to some of the desk tasks that fill my weekdays: reading stuff for colleagues, booking travel (some pleasure, some business), administering a course, assembling materials for my grad seminar, trekking to the library. The last one was in fact a little difficult because I have what a lot of athletes call "dead legs," and also because I decided to take with me a stack of books that needed to be returned. This hurt the insides of my forearms, which are quite sore from carrying bricks. My forearms feel like they used to feel when I was in high school and volleyball practice started up. Big, heavy, old bricks are not the same as a high-velocity volleyball, but on the day following repetitive motion with either, my forearms know no difference.