What is the difference between a goal and an objective?

THE ROBOT

But I don't need your goofy 3-D glasses! I'm a robot!

CINEMA EMPLOYEE

It's policy. Management requires it.

THE ROBOT

Let me see your manager, then.

CINEMA EMPLOYEE

I'm sorry, Sir, the managers are in a strategic planning meeting for the next three days.

************************************

So I'm going to Chicago onthe 21st. With The Russian (which ma belle ptite Armenienne told me is how she and Jessica Rabbit referred to him as well). I think it is going to be fun. But also stressful. He seems to have planned every moment of our time, which includes a lot of dinners with people I don't know but who when I google them, turn up a lot of hits. This automatically intimidates me, which is silly, but sometimes I am silly. I am also more of a lone wolf kind of traveler. I like to visit places, not people. Unless I am going to visit people. We also have to sleep on a couch at his friend's apartment which he shares with his girlfriend, so no privacy or alone time for the whole 5 days. But...lots of great art, lots of interesting architecture, the zoo, and we are traveling together! Pretty damn couple-y.

We have also been talking a lot about moving in together, which seems bananas to me. But, like anything, the more I talk about it, the closer and more tangible it becomes. It would be crazy, though. I will just be back form Spain, out of school for the first time in 20 years, looking for job, nowhere to live, and broke, broke, broke. In an economic crisis. Not really the context I imagined when I imagined moving in with someone. Play it, bass playa.

In any case, I should be working on a paper which is due tomorrow and which was the inspiration for the scene above. I have to provide an organization with a strategic plan with goals and objectives which I then translate into operational plans. I am kind of unsure what that means, exactly, but it is depressing to think that I am required to do this. That feeling of not quite getting the question happened to me yesterday when I was writing an online exam for an archivist job at Library and Archives Canada:

Question 1. (Knowledge of the general trends of the evolution of Canadian society). Former Dominion Archivist, Sir Arthur Doughty wrote that "Of all our national assets, Archives are the most precious; they are the gift of one generation to another and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization."Write a short essay which examines one general theme that you know well in the evolution of Canadian society and explain how your understanding of that theme has been influenced by the preservation of archival records.

What? What is a general theme in the evolution of Canadian society? I stared at the screen for quite some time, wrote the second essay question and stared some more. The Russian, over g-chat, suggested multiculturalism, so I went with it, but...

We'll see.

The Russian also forwarded me this today: