Alternatives

In the past two days I spent a nontrivial part of my time and most of my energy discussing hiring policies in our insitution with a number of people, including all the colleagues in my research group and the head of the whole institute. The result is that important information has not been forwarded, and other has been "lost". As a result, a position which we had planned on advertising soon also got "lost", and someone who is in his late forties, married and with a child on the way might or might not be given the tenure track position that was informally promised to him years ago. The same position that prevented him from getting an offer anywehere else "because we know you're going to be hired at XXX".
In particular, I am faced with the following two alternatives:
1) ether the head of the institution, or the head of my research group
is
2) either a liar or imbecile.
I am trying to decide which alternative I like less. Or more.

As a side remark, the head of the institution said several times that I am "cute" and referred to me by a diminutive form of my first name (say Venny instead of Estraven) which in our language would only be appropriate for a child.

I got too many invitations to conferences. When am I ever going to write a paper again?

Some parts of my job I really hate

I spent one hour with WS discussing the precise formulation of the acknowledgements in the paper, since we want to give everybody who helped us their due, but at the same time keep our merits. I then spent another hour with PD#1 and S#6 getting suggestion for a graduate school that I will possibly be giving next year and planning ahead a longer activity for the summer of 2009.
And now I have to go to an administrative meeting, which will be complete waste of time, but if I don't show up my already slim chances of getting a hire in my field will vanish utterly.

.. and in the day, too!

I had lunch with PD#1, who gave me a lot of really good suggestions on how to organize next year's courses and exams. He has spent a lot of time talking to our students, and gave me valuable feedback. We also planned the schedule for our joint work in the next few weeks.
Then I filled in some forms on an official website, and I spent one hour discussing with our secretary some long needed changes in our postdoctoral grants' announcement and application form. I might even participate in the relevant council meeting, as "expert"!
And now it's time to write some proofs. I might have three new papers in arXiv before summer, after all.