“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.”
– Ovid
I must be looking my age. Yesterday Susie came up to my desk and asked what I was doing for my birthday (today).
“I’m not sure. Dinner with J.’s family I think, and my godmother is doing a friends and family dinner on Sunday.”
“That sounds nice,” Susie said. “But what are you doing the day of?”
“Er, not much.”
“Are you taking the day off?”
“Hadn’t really thought of it.”
“You can, you know.”
“Well, thanks, but I’m not sure. I mean, it would be lovely but it’s not like I’m sick or anything. I’m weird and feel guilty about not coming into work when nothing’s actually wrong.”
“Don’t. It’s good to have a day off. You should take one.”
“Uh, ok…”
“Good!”
So I am!
Either I’m looking haggard and everyone has commented to her about it, or she’s planning some kind of office coup and wants me out of the way for the day. No matter. Have a nice day, kittens, Small Dog is in the spa. And not taking phone calls, although you are welcome to join me.
J. and I love this series (Planet Earth and The Blue Planet: Seas of Life) and many a-Sunday is spent oohing and ahhing over schools of fish swirling in the depths or squeals (on my part) of, “Look at the monkeys!” I especially love the deep seas episodes with vampire squids and creepy glowing fish!
So, as you may imagine, when the Discovery Channel announced that they would be airing the new series, I scheduled my Sunday nights around it for weeks…
…only to be dreadfully disappointed when, instead of the soothing, BBC broadcaster-type voice of David Attenborough, I was greeted by the commanding tones of Oprah Winfrey. As if she doesn’t already tell enough people what to buy, love, eat, wear, and watch. After a few episodes, I couldn’t take it anymore and resolved to wait until David and I could be reunited.
Hands up if you agree Attenborough is the only person who should be able to narrate these sorts of things from now on.
“I’d have you lot up in front of the University authorities first thing in the morning, if it wasn’t for the fact that you are the University authorities…”
– Terry Prachett
We are moving into one of the worst months of year at work: June is the month building up to the annual July 4th celebration. This usually involves celebrity VIPs, nearly 100,000 additional people on campus, parades, hiring up to 100 more students for less than a week, and other assorted headaches. Last year I got lucky and got married instead so I was out of town for the final crisis.
This year I may not get as lucky unless J. and I can come up with a cheap vacation idea. And then there’s the guilt. I’d be leaving some of the other girls in an awful lurch skiving off like that. Plus Hennessy is getting married mere days before and it would rather shabby for both of us to disappear.
However, this nobility of purpose doesn’t make the impending event any less irksome. It’s my job to get those darling student employees outfitted and, more importantly, in fear of the personal Hell that will await them if they don’t return every last piece of gear to me. At the end of football season this past year, I was somehow seconded to be responsible for collecting and minding this stuff permanently even though I hadn’t been in charge of distributing it, recording who got what, or when it should be returned at the beginning of the year. You may imagine the resulting confusion. And my attitude about it.
Die.
This year will run much smoother since Hennessy and I have teamed up to tackle it, but problems are already creeping up. Such as the fact that the Special Events department hasn’t given us a time to distribute stuff, and has decided that these students need only three hours of training (to take place three days before this nearly 100,000 people plus pyrotechnics rolls into town).
The real problem with this university is, as I see it, is that it’s a combination of a business, a school district with too many children and not enough teachers, and (due to the religious background and funding) a monastery. Which doesn’t combine too well, professionally speaking. As a bureaucracy, resources are not always well-managed. Administration errors are overlooked in the spirit of Brotherly Kindness, but minor problems lower down on the chain of command are punished with all the fervor of an inquisition. And, completely at odds with religious teaching, good work is not rewarded while bad work is not scrutinized or punished. It’s baffling.
“Remember, kids, the Quail Call is not a toy!”
– Quailman (Doug)
Once upon a time, Margot began working in the university library in the Children/Young Adult Literature section. I take some credit for helping her get this job as one of the questions they asked her was, “What books are you currently reading?” She responded with a book I’d lent her, entitled “I, Lucifer” (click for Amazon link). Which, as you may have guessed, is not a children’s book, but absolutely fantastic. But apparently she was the only person who didn’t say something like, “The Berenstain Bears,” “The Magic Schoolbus,” or “The Three Little Kittens,” and she got the job because of individuality (not to mention brilliance. She’s annoying like that).
And I’m so glad she did because that meant she could share this gem (which pops up on library computers when an error occurs) with us!
See? Doesn't this make you happy?
I personally think we should set this up on all campus servers (particularly the parking system and its annoying offspring computer problems). Wouldn’t seeing this make your technical issue so much less aggravating? I think all universities should offer some sort of equivalent, though some mascots should not be used (such, as Pinto pointed out, a duck).
Also, the Fail Quail unintentionally reminds me of my youth:
“Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
This is clearly the month for geeks, nerds, Avatards, etc. Earlier in the month we were able to enjoy Star Wars Day, otherwise known as “May the Fourth, be with you.” Now personally I’m a fan of the first three episodes (by which I mean IV-VI) and not so much the second trilogy (by which I mean I-III).
And this mind-warping chronology brings me nicely to today, which is Towel Day, in honor of Douglas Adams’ trilogy-in-five-volumes – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
This is a fan-holiday I can get behind, owning, as I do, the entire “trilogy” as well as (my preferred) Dirk Gently books, and The Salmon of Doubt, a collection of Adams’ speeches, essays, quips, and short stories. Apart from a wonderful absurdist, he was a fantastically intelligent and clever man who despite his love for technology, was not limited to science fiction. My personal favorite is the story of Genghis Khan who storms into Europe “so fast he almost forgot to burn down Asia before he left.” Oh! And God’s final message to his creation: “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
My parents are also fans. They own the original radio series on cassette tape (which I may or may not have purloined when I went to university – sorry Mum and Dad!) which I listened to from a young age. I’ve got them on MP3 now and they still make me laugh.
So yes, I know where my towel is. Which reminds me. J. and I need to do laundry rather badly. So long and thanks for all the fish!
“A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
And if ever this becomes necessary, I've got a crack team on speedial.
I have one friend going to study in Korea for the next few months. His wife is staying here, working, and currently performing in The King and I. Another friend is officially back from her world travels and has found a lovely house to move into in the city. Yet another friend is recovering from morphine withdrawals.* And finally yet another dear friend received and turned down the offer to be a man’s mistress.
I know SUCH fabulous people!
* Post surgery, which doesn’t sound nearly as intriguing.
“If you wait a few minutes you can have a piece of cake. Baked it chock-full of love, actually chock-full of unrelenting, all-consuming rage and hostility. But still tasty.”
-Grey’s Anatomy
I made light of it but yesterday’s brush off (you know, when I delivered fifty years of an otherwise undocumented perspective on the growth of the university, state, and country through some of the most turbulent social decades of the previous century…nothing big) was a crushing blow. I’ve been coasting along blissfully at work ever since my rage stroke without caring too much about the administrative snafus that I seem to see everywhere.
But then this happened and my entire academic life flashed before my eyes. I wondered if all my education even mattered, if I’d ever be able to use it again, what would become of me, blah blah blah. It was rough. To make it worse it was compounded with hormones and J. wanting to talk about our future (grad school, loans, working now, internships). The overwhelming sense of uncertainty blended nicely into the tempest already brewing in my teapot.
Cue minor meltdown. I started baking immediately. I hate cooking of all forms so for me it’s the ultimate cathartic experience: I can take out my emotions by beating eggs, shredding carrots, and pummeling dough into submission, and come out with something sugary at the end. Perfect. Luckily Venice and I met somewhere in the middle – she needed butter, I needed Midol – and I got a nice heaping dose of perspective, as she’d had a pretty wretched day too.
She’s been suffering at work for years now. And unlike me, she doesn’t have lots of really great co-workers and supervisors to make the stupidity and drudgery less irksome. (Don’t go, Venice! Er…ahem…) Twenty minutes complaining about work, mutual resolve to learn to cope better, and I was ready to talk grad school with J.
Summary: Friends and muffins make everything, even the occasional crisis of faith, better.
“We have top men working on it right now.”
“Who?”
“Top men.”
– Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Pictured: a villain immediately preceeding his revalation of exactly how badly he has been behaving for the last hour and a half.
In almost every movie there is that incredibly silly moment when the villain is confronted with the fruits of his or her destruction and, looking over the rivers of lava/ looming black hole/ annihilation of an entire civilization/ etc., murmurs in despair, “My god, what have I done?!”
I had one of those moments today. After getting all the archives into chronological order (which you’d think they’d already be in, right? Hah!), tagging them by date, pulling original photos and making notes on when/where they originally occurred in print, and hauling it one massive armload at a time to the library, I asked for the archivist. Student employees helped me carry the stacks of papers and binders and asked what I was doing. I couldn’t very well shout, “Saving history!” in the library, so I quietly whispered the tale of the iniquitous order to dispose of fifty years of information.
“He told you to shred it!” one girl squeaked in horror.
“I know,” I squeaked back.
We were all awash with the enthusiasm of the young until the archivist appeared. He looked like Eeyore the donkey in human form: droopy, awkward, exhausted, and less than thrilled to see me with my arms full of documents.
“Hi, I’m C. from the police department. We talked on the phone and–”
“Oh, right,” he sighed, “Follow me.”
The whole cavalcade meandered down some halls and through secured doors…to a lonely room, lined with shelves and piled with papers.
“Here’s a project for you,” he mumbled to what appeared to be a heinously overworked student employee, and ordered us to drop the whole pile on her (already covered) desk.
My project is somewhere alongside the Ark, I'm sure.
Which is when I had my cinema-villain-is-confronted-by-what-she’s-done moment. I’d committed the most rookie of cardinal sins: I’d just turned over fifty years of history to a bureaucracy!
I’ve gained all sorts of skills and experiences at this job, but law enforcement is not my calling, to say the least. But history! Oh, yes. And this project is the first thing in over a year and a half that’s come close to the things I’ve studied and feel passionate about. Certainly it’s the only thing that’s got me excited enough to annoy my co-workers with my near constant cries of, “Read this!” And now, I’ve an awful premonition that my precious bundles are only going to slowly decompose in the bowels of the library. There is no justice in the world.
“All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon.”
-Voltaire
Yesterday Lt. Citrus called me into his office and waved his hand at a pile of binders. It was the media files archives of our department, newspaper clippings mostly, and it went back to 1960.
“We don’t need these anymore,” he said. “Can you get rid of them and save the binders?”
?!?!?!?!
I stretched out my hands dumbly and let him plop a stack in my hands and then tottered back to my desk where I opened them up.
The Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the first female officer to graduate from the state’s police academy…the earliest documented complaints about parking (an as yet unresolved problem!) when we had a fraction of the student number we do now…a completely unique perspective on the history of the campus was sitting on my desk and I was supposed to just shred it?! Clearly they forgot I majored in history!
I begged off my other chores and began putting things in order. I’ve spent the last day and a half scanning articles and photos that document the history of the department (beginning back when we had an ex-LA cop fish a bunch of wallets out of the campus pond and search for the owners, all the way to the 40+ full time, state-certified officers we have now along with nearly 200 student employees). And come across some real gems!
Throw this stuff away. Pfft! I’m already in contact with the university archivist.
Showing off items abandoned in the Lost and Found. The one on the right kind of looks like Peggy Olson from Mad Men.Contrary to popular belief, we neither live in Mayberry, nor whistle frequently.
!
Small Dog Syndrome 