I had an unexpected bout with a ruptured appendix — mine, unfortunately — late last week, and as a result ended up missing several days of work. Having returned to the office on Wednesday, I immediately began to reconstruct my schedule of tasks and appointments. If you glanced at my Outlook calendar, you’d see what a Herculean effort this implies. But for all of the tiresomeness of this chore, the one oddly pleasant part of it was (and always is) the postponement of events into the future.