prima donnas

So, I had an email from a faculty member asking who should move two folding trestle tables from our building to the neighboring building for a reception next week. The list of possibles included, the custodial staff or our staff. I replied that I thought we faculty could do it.
Here is the reply. Names have been omitted to protect the feeble.



Thank you for your consideration of this matter. However, you might not
have considered all implications of this decision: As far as I remember,
________ has terrible back problems as it is; _______ has a shoulder and neck
injury; and I am simply not willing to carry tables and possibly get
injured in the process. In addition, asking a junior faculty member (who
might not feel empowered enough to say no) to carry tables has all kinds
of problems of its own.

I have advised the caterer to bring his own tables and reduce the amount
of food to offset the cost.

its finally paying off

I am enjoying Catherine this school year. She is doing really interesting work at school in the pre-International Baccalaureate program and is working very hard. We have had many conversations about the John Knowles novel, A Separate Peace, as she has worked on various writing assignments connected with it. It is magical to see her maturing into a thoughtful student.

students...

Hello professor:



I'm afraid I have to beg your pardon, again, and ask for that lady's E-mail address, the one that schedules which cultural event we'd like to attend.

I had to walk home in the rain and my backpack got wet. I thought it was more water-proof than I found that it was. The piece of paper that you wrote the E-mail address got wet and your ink ran; I couldn't make the address out.



Thank you again,

Marking

I am teaching a class with 42 students this semester. Second year general course on language and society. Shocking range of ability/literacy. My favorite from the pile of papers I just went through: In response to the question: What are some positive reasons for using a local dialect? "Makes them more trustworthy, "more dust of the earth."

Mad Men

We are now addicted to Mad Men. I saw four episodes on the plane back from England and immediately got Craig hooked when season three started. Alison and Sian, this could be your next box set!

work wonderful work

Yesterday when Craig got home from work, I said, "I have to tell you what happened at work today; you will be amazed." And he said, "no, I won't." Because, well, basically he has heard so much crazy shit about my work that its probably true that he cannot be surprised anymore.
But just imagine that your heard the following (of course, entirely hypothetically). Someone who works in a large organization, lets say a university, has a colleague who has over many years become increasingly disaffected and badly behaved. Events transpire that lead said person to pursue legal recourse against perceived aggressors/transgressors. Months pass as the legal machinery grinds along and then you find yourself in a meeting, not with the disgruntled colleague, but with the head of a key affiliated unit and you learn that disgruntled one has been in possession of a master key to that unit for years and still has it and well, has had access to all files, all everything while the legal action has been wending its way along. And no one thought to take the key away? Or more likely, no one really remembered that it was in this person's possession.
Of course the above story is really just hypothetical, a aren't you glad that hasn't happened to you story...

the good streak had to end

so far this trip has been a miracle of excellent planning and serendipity. I was particularly pleased with my layover in Paris on the way here, where I bought a pass to the lounge to spend my nine hour layover and had a free 15 minute massage, wrote a large chunk of my paper, and napped for three hours in the quiet room. The overnight hotel in Zagreb was sleek and had a delicious breakfast included in the price. The flight to Zadar went off without a hitch and I walked out of the airport to a bus that dropped me across the street from the hotel.
This morning I overslept. Fortunately I had booked a taxi and they called me from the front desk at 5:37 when I hadn't appeared. Flight to Paris uneventful, but now we have had the dreaded "slight delay" announcement which I am pesimistically envisioning not to be slight.