Saturday

Happy Saturday! I survived the end of the week. Meeting on department future Thursday afternoon was pretty awful. Some of my colleagues really have no institutional memory, suggesting solutions which they rejected just a few years ago. Their plan for curricular reform merits a metaphor someone used at a summer seminar a couple of years back: "its the equivalent of a bad combover." My friends, the head is still bald.

By contrast yesterday's meeting to talk explicitly about the Language Center rocked. We had excellent presentations from people outside the department and there was a level of energy and excitement that I have found missing within the department for a long time.

It is a rainy, weirdly mild day today. We seem to have England's weather and we would like ours back whoever has taken it. There has been a dearth of snow. I have yet to ski this year.

Just in time

Rachel sent me an absolutely fantastic T-shirt which arrived yesterday. Shall I wear it to the bound to be contentious faculty meeting today?

tick tock, when am I no longer chair?

Things at work are coming to a head; unfortunately I cannot post much that isn't terribly cryptic because I wouldn't want to get myself into trouble. One of my colleagues at another school uses the acronym: FBB (faculty behaving badly) and I can just say that there is quite a bit of that going on. My favorite was someone taking umbrage at us for impugning her integrity, after she had tried to leverage her famous husband's position and grant money to get something out of us she didn't earn on her own merits...

I momentarily misplaced my straight face.

Two big meetings tomorrow and Friday that will reveal a little more of how the department and language center will move forward.