vignettes of teenage life

Last night we went out to dinner - me, Catherine, Sam and two of Sam's friends with whom he had been playing pick up soccer for six hours (no school yesterday or today). Afterwards the boys wanted to go bowling so I dropped them off. Proof that boys of that age are wildly different sizes.
Bowling lane employee: "What size shoes do you need?"
Boy 1: "7"
Boy 2 "7 and a half"
Boy 3 "12"

Then Catherine and I went over to the high school parking lot and I let her drive for the first time. She was great!

we have work to do

Today was our department's retention, promotion and tenure meeting. This is the most serious forum in an academic department - the place where careers are made or not. As chair I attend in a purely listening and question answering capacity. So when I hear things such as what I am about to recount, I CAN SAY NOTHING. They were discussing someone up for a crucial review. The candidate has an absolutely exemplary record. There is much praise and discussion of the candidate's stellar research and phenomenal teaching and then one of my thoroughly unreconstructed male colleagues (someone my friend Catherine would describe as "out of compliance with North American standards" remarks: "And she is an excellent mother. She has those two small children and is just superb at balancing all the demands of her life."
I noticed one of my senior and feminist colleagues approaching the minutes taker after the meeting and I am sure it was to suggest that certain comments wouldn't be missed if they never appeared in the formal minutes of the meeting...

smut mongers beware

So, we had a person whose job, among other things, was to order films for faculty. She is no longer with us, in large part because technology had moved on so much since she was hired that we couldn't get her to learn what we needed. Latest discovery reveals that she had developed some technological skills we had no idea about. We also often wondered what she did with her time all day every day with little to show for it. Well, now we know. Turns out that over the years whenever a faculty member would order a film, she would screen it and edit it to remove any salacious content. No wonder she never had time to do anything else. I guess all the movies we think we have in the library are actually sanitized versions...

we have a floor

Craig has been toiling all weekend and we now pretty much have an entire floor. We just need to put up base boards and move furniture and we will be back to having a nice habitable space.