THE DEEP SLEEP — Local association planner Marcy Wexler experienced what sleep researchers describe as an unusually vivid dream Tuesday night, one in which she selected a venue, hired a keynote speaker and approved a budget in a single afternoon without consulting a committee, a subcommittee, or a group chat of people whose credentials she has never verified. She woke at 3:14 a.m. and told no one, which she later called the most realistic part.

In the dream, she walked into a hotel ballroom, said 'this one,' and signed. There were no alignment calls. There was no document titled 'Things to Discuss at Some Point.' The venue offered her the room she actually wanted at the rate in the actual budget, and then simply left.

She booked the keynote speaker she had wanted for six years instead of the one whose nephew sits on the education committee. She moved lunch to a time when people are actually hungry, scheduled the closing session early enough that attendees could catch flights like humans, and named the event what she wanted to name it. Nobody suggested 'synergy.' Nobody asked what the ROI of a room would be.

Committee members appeared briefly, to applaud. 'That's the part that made it a dream,' Marcy told reporters. 'In real life, they would have formed a subcommittee to define what applause means.'

She awoke to twenty-three emails, including one asking whether her dream could be added to the November agenda as a discussion item, one asking who had approved the dream, and one from the board chair suggesting it might land better as a breakfast.

By 9 a.m., the dream had been converted into a slide deck, stripped of its two best ideas and tabled until next quarter, when it will be reviewed by the Committee on Dreams. The committee meets on Thursdays, unless Thursday is inconvenient, in which case it doesn't.