Christmas challenge

So, the staff in our office, probably like office staff everywhere, love to decorate. They don't need much of a pretext before the place is dripping with festive cheer. Halloween and Thanksgiving were all out - the latter quite weird. I don't know, but a large cardboard turkey on all the adminstrators' doors sends some sort of message...
Of course once the turkeys went back into their boxes, out came the tree, garlands and other sparkly bits of holiday cheer. It wasn't long before one of the faculty complained. We had a long disucssion on the separation of church and state and I promised to look into the matter. Well it turns out the US Supreme Court has actually ruled on this issue, and the tree is not a religious symbol. You just have to call it a 'holiday' tree and it's all good. Personally I think that is some serious semantic slight of hand. Of course it's part of Christmas! However this does move the issue to one we can discuss as a department. When I had suggested that option to said faculty member, he asked if we were "really going to debate the Constitution". Now that it's no longer a constitutional issue, just one of personal preference, well, I guess we can have at it in a department meeting... That should be fun.

Winter has arrived

We have had a dry fall and the ski resorts are still mostly not open, but yesterday it snowed. Here is a picture Catherine took of the front garden.

Thanksgiving

Through the miracle that is divorced parenting, Craig and I ended up alone on Thanksgiving. I made a roast beef dinner because I think turkey is horribly overrated and I don't live in England so can't just go round making this meal every week. After we ate, we went to see 'Dan in Real Life' which was charming. We brought our red wine to go bottle and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The next evening friends converged and Catherine and Sam were back. Catherine and I had picked up a massively on sale version of the game 'Scene It' the TV edition. We forced the guests to play, but this was fair as a couple of them forced their nowhere near ready plum wine on the rest of us. It was bit of disappointment for C and S as the shows featured were all relics from before they were born. Some who protested loudly that they never watch tv and wouldn't be able to play were outed as 'Welcome Back Kotter' watchers in their distant past...
We went to bed late with the kitchen an utter mess. Craig and I slept in and got up to find a clean kitchen and a freshly baked batch of muffins. Thank you Catherine! Sam mumbled 'suck-up' in disgust, but ate a few of the muffins.

O Canada

Up late last night - that problem of reaching the point of being really tired when not yet possible to go to bed and then not being able to fall asleep when at last bed is available. At least a chance to watch bad cable channels we don't subscribe to AND more importantly imbibe some Canadian content. Most curious was an ad/public service announcement entitled "Canadian Trailblazers". The one I saw was a vignette about a research geneticist working in Vancouver. I thought, how quaint to be a small enough place where we can all feel a community and celebrate the Vancouver trail blazer even on TV in Montreal.

1920s party

Here we are at a do last night.

Extroverts Unite

More on the subject of Myers Briggs. So there were about 15 of us this session this morning. We all shuffle in at 8:30, grab coffee and sit at one of the tables around the room. We had a really interesting presentation on Jung and the test and so on. We also did some worksheets to see what we thought were are preferences in the four areas of the test. Finallly they gave back our profiles -- lovely packets with lots of graphs and snippets of "this is you" types of information. They then talked about how extroverts and introverts are pretty evenly distributed in the population and said they wanted to begin by having each type group together and talk about being extroverts and being introverts. Pause. No one moves. Why, because we have already segregrated ourselves. All introverts on one side of the room, extroverts on the other. That was a good laugh.

Understanding your triggers

So, the leadershiIp development workshop that I attend every three weeks or so on a Friday morning today focussed on Myers Brigg's analyses of the participants. It was a riot. The nickname for my particular personality combination: "life's adminstrator". So all you family members who suspected that I was born to chair.... you are right on the nose.
We also got tid bits on what are likely triggers or stressors for us- not a surprise to learn that people not willing to pull their weight was one of mine. And on that note, let me share an email from one of my colleagues. The background is the dept executive committee's proposal to state that basic merit (we evaluate everyone once a year for research, teaching and service) in the category of adminstrative service requires that a faculty member: 1) attend monthly department meetings; 2) attend the annual department retreat; 3) serve on 2 committees per year.

"One additional thought: if we make attendance of meetings & such a
condition for basic merit (conversely, if non-attendance is penalized
by "demerit"), we may find ourselves astray from the regulations of
the Faculty Handbook & under potential legal scrutiny from those who
want to challenge such procedures."

The latest is his threat to dig up his yellowing, ancient contract -- 'legally binding' he is quick to assure us -- and prove that nowhere does it say that he has to attend faculty meetings. Did I say that I love my job!