Ixnay on the athwray

Note to self: Who made you the Parking Police? Starting the day with a heated altercation over traffic laws is not a brilliant idea, even if the anger grows every time you see that particular colleague violate the one-way street sign until you feel as if you're going to explode. Releasing the pressure with a face-to-face encounter first thing in the morning is only going to sour the rest of the day--and on a day when you have a horde of first-year students coming to conferences, you can't afford to be sour.

So here I am in my office trying to think happy thoughts before my students start arriving. This is all I've got:

• Language Log comments on the new Range Rover model called the Velar, which makes me wonder: will we ever see a Ford Fricative on the market? (Click here for a little linguistics humor--very little.)  
• Speaking of language, if you missed Talk Like a Pirate Day, McSweeney's offers some other options (click here). Hey, I won't even have to practice for "Talk Like a Woman Who's Constantly Freezing at Work Day"!
• In other language-related news, I could have made a real killing points-wise the other day if only Words With Friends would accept Pig-Latin. Ixnay on the ointspay!

Hmmm....this isn't working. Someone tell me something funny--or else! (What? I'm not even authorized to issue parking tickets, much less comedy tickets.)
 

And now she's talking to sequins

A single green sequin sits on the floor in my office, just below the chair where visitors sit. Who left behind that shiny sequin?

Was it the student seeking help on the paper due tomorrow, who admitted that he'd intended to work on it over break but forgot to take home power cord for his laptop computer and so put it off until today? He'd be more likely to leave behind a pork rind than a sequin.

What about the colleague who came in early this morning to ask a question and show me her new rubber duck? She was wearing spectacularly colorful socks but no sequins.

Then there was the student who plopped her backpack down in that spot and then proceeded to pull out one massive text after another--it seemed like a Mary Poppins backpack, capable of comfortably containing a floor lamp, a disco ball, and a Harley Davidson. The magic backpack could have accidentally disgorged a sequined ball gown big enough to clothe a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon portraying Miss Piggy.

Or maybe the sequin hitched a ride to my office on someone's shoe. Does it matter?

Whatever its source, I welcome the unexpected spot of color on an otherwise gray day. In fact, I ought to pick up  the sequin and save it for the next time I need to add a little sparkle to my life. But--where did it go? 

Maybe it walked out the same way it walked in. Good bye, little green sequin! May you bring a glint of light into someone else's life.

Baby got back

"So what's it like to be married to a celebrity?" is what millions of people are not asking me this week--but they could! My husband recently made a big splash at a campus event, so big that his photo was featured on the College's Facebook page. When he first arrived at the retirement party for one of my colleagues, my husband was a total nobody, just a friend dropping by for a piece of cake and a farewell hug. Soon, though, his photo hit the big time and suddenly my husband became the face of the event.

Well, not the face, exactly. 

I never thought my husband's back was particularly photogenic, but surely it wouldn't have ended up in the spotlight if someone hadn't seen it as something special. What a back! Such a great photo is bound to go viral, leading eventually to clickbait lists like "Top ten sartorial secrets of  plaid-backed mystery man." How will such a humble, unassuming Everyman cope with the media attention? Who will handle all the calls from Oprah and ESPN and Vogue?

And what if that celebrated back starts to droop beneath the weight of sudden celebrity? The media spotlight can be fickle; how soon until we see speculation about whether it's time to get the back some botox? 

I don't foresee getting the back its own Twitter feed because most of its tweets would consist of some version of "Ow." It's a back that sometimes works a little too hard and doesn't always get the help it needs. However, now that it's a celebrity, maybe the back will get the pampering it deserves. Hey, here's an idea: auction off an opportunity for the back's fans to deliver back rubs. The adoring fans will get a chance to touch greatness and the back will get some attention. Win-win!

My new office!

Finally, photos of my new happy place!



The view from the doorway. The big window lets in plenty of light, and notice the utter absence of ugly green furniture.

Built-in bookshelves!

Storage closet and nook where I can hang regalia and jackets.

Plenty of room to tuck things away.

Feeling right at home here!

The whining wheel

When I arrived on campus this morning, the very helpful woman who keeps my office clean accosted me with a question: "Are you going to try out every office in the building until you find one you like?"

Not a bad idea! But no, I hope this is my final move. Yesterday my husband and I painted my new office and packed up some boxes and this morning the carpenter came in to fix broken things before a student arrived with a bunch of library book carts to help me move all my books. I've now unpacked and put things where they belong, with the exception of a small pile of stuff on my desk, annoying papers that need to be filed and books that need to be returned to others. (There's nothing like an office move to make missing items miraculously appear.)

Yesterday I overheard a little grumbling about why I got to move upstairs to an office with a window when others who have been in the dungeon even longer were not offered the same option. I could present highly persuasive arguments involving seniority and the need to be close to the rest of my department, but what it all comes down to is whining. I complained--a lot--to the right people. Yes: for two years I have been the squeaky wheel, and finally I found some grease. I think the final straw was when the provost visited my dungeon office on a day when I was bundled up in a blanket and couldn't get my fingers to fly across the keyboard because they were so cold. A little drama, a lot of whining, and here I am in a lovely office with a big window and lots of light.

Hey, I can have plants again! This office seems like the perfect environment for growing things--maybe a philodendron or two and maybe, if I'm lucky, an end to whining and a whole lot of peace.

Musical offices

Someone must have heard me saying that it's time for the fun to start because all week I've been involved in a multi-player game of Musical Offices. At various times during the week I have received the following messages from people involved in the transition:

1. I'd better mark the furniture in my new office so the Physical Plant staff can remove what I don't need!

2. The Physical Plant is working on other projects so no one is available to move furniture.

3. I'd better pick out a paint color so the office can be painted on the earliest rainy day!

4. See point 2, only replace "move furniture" with "paint offices."

5. With no one available to help with this move, maybe we'd better postpone it until winter break.

6. Someone else has been promised my current office but can't move in until I move out, so I'd better get moving!

7. See points 2 and 4.

8. Well okay, maybe some people may be available for moving furniture, but I'll have to do the painting myself, so I'd better hurry up and pick out some paint colors! 

This afternoon I'm playing phone-tag with the person who can give me the final definitive word on the topic. At least I hope it's the definitive word. I'd hate to be the last one standing when the music stops.

The party's over, and the fun begins

I had high hopes for all the things I'd get done yesterday, but instead I walked around the house in a haze, feeling as if I'd been playing all-day whiffleball except I was the ball. Couldn't think straight. Couldn't stay focused. Couldn't keep moving in any given direction without stopping to wonder where I was going. A typical post-party slump, in other words.

Today, though, it's time to get back to action. Classes start four weeks from yesterday (!!) and meetings start the week before that, but I have a pile of things to do before then, starting with moving to a new office!!!! (There really aren't enough exclamation points in the world to express how I feel about getting a real window--and how pathetic am I that all it takes to make me ecstatic is a pane of glass and a little sunshine?)

With short time and many tasks it's time to take stock:

Journal article: waiting for final edits and then it's off to the submission process.

Anthology chapter: lots more research to do; must get to the library.

Syllabi: one done, one needing a few final tweaks, one requiring a final look-through, and one a total mess.

Other course preps: must set up class pages on course management system, post tons of documents, finish a Prezi on deep reading, write paper prompts for two classes, write first-day diagnostic writing prompts for all classes, meet with Learning Community partners to coordinate syllabi and plan events, and other important things I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Committee work: tons of prep work for the tenure and promotion committee (I'm chair, help help!), plus posting a new bulletin board for the English department and scheduling some meetings for the Faculty Publishing Group.

Home: mowing, weeding, cooking, cleaning, the usual.

Fun: a few more canoe outings and a trip to a Cleveland Indians game, hurrah!

That's an awful lot to do in a few weeks' time--and did I mention that I'm moving my office?!!! Must find boxes, pack books, sort through piles of old papers...by the time August is over, I'll need a vacation!

But wait: that's just when the guests will arrive for the next party--the one we call Fall Semester.

Don't call the headhunters!

If you're looking for the skeletons in the closet, I've found them. Or parts of them, anyway. Just the skulls. About six of them, I would estimate--but don't call the headhunters! They're plastic skulls, leering gleefully and decorated in bright red and yellow, the sorts of things you'd use as table decorations for a display about the Mexican Day of the Dead.

Q: Did you find them in a storage cabinet in an office formerly inhabited by a Spanish professor?
A: Yes! And if he gets to the other end of his cross-country move and starts looking for his skulls, he's going to be disappointed. Maybe he should call a headhunter.

Q: What were you doing gazing into a skull-infested storage cabinet in your former colleague's former office? 
A: Trying to determine whether to transform my lamented former colleague's former office into my future office.

Yes, I realize that I just moved to a new office two years ago, and if I move again, the skull-infested office will be my fifth office--in 14 years. Of course, some of those moves where mandatory: the department chair must inhabit the chair's office; the Center for Teaching Excellence director must inhabit the great big new wonderful office in the library; the ex-director of the Center for Teaching Excellence must move to the only office available at the time, even if it's in the dungeon--er, basement.

I've been in the basement for two years now and I've worked very hard to love my office, but I just can't. It's dark, damp, cold, and clammy, and nothing I do to cheer it up makes it feel comfortable. If I can't fall in love with an office in two years of trying, it's not going to happen, so when the Powers That Be suggested that I might want to move upstairs to my former colleague's office, I jumped at the chance.

First, though, I had to have a good look at it. On the plus side: good location, built-in wooden bookshelves, big window with lots of light. On the minus side: skulls. And not just skulls, either, but all kinds of stuff left behind in the desk, on the shelves, and in the storage cabinet: computer printers, books, boxes, party favors, maps, and piles and piles of other stuff. Including skulls.

I told the PTBs that I would be delighted to move upstairs into the skull-infested office, but only if it gets thoroughly cleaned and painted, but now I wonder whether cleaning is enough. Can anyone tell me which campus office is responsible for exorcisms? 

Don't get squirrely in my classroom!

The custodian knocked quietly on the door and whispered, "Do you want to see my babies?"

That's not a solicitation I hear every day, particularly from a person beyond childbearing age, but I moved closer to see what she was hiding under her hoodie: a pair of tiny fuzzy squirrels.

"They were lying on the ground under the tree just outside the door," she said, "And I didn't want to leave them out there because of the hawk."

(We have a hawk living on campus, or perhaps a pair; they can be both entertaining and educational, particularly when they're demonstrating the physics of predation, with small birds or woodland creatures acting as prey. I don't believe they've cleared their activities with the experimental review board.)
 
The squirrels were clinging to her shirt, their eyes shut tight and their fur quivering. "I think they need to be fed," said the custodian.

"We have some leftover egg rolls in the department fridge," I said, but she said no, they need mother's milk. I pointed out that I'm a little lacking in that department and she said, "I don't believe I can nurse them myself, but don't you think I hid my pregnancy well?"

We laughed, but that did not remove the problem of two baby squirrels cuddled under her coat. I suggested that she take the squirrels down to biology and see if any of our scientific colleagues had any suggestions.

"But won't they dissect them?"

I don't recall seeing squirrel-dissecting on the biology curriculum, but you never know. 

"They probably need to be fed every three or four hours, and I can't do that," she explained. "Wouldn't you like to take care of them? You could smuggle them into class under your shirt."

Tempting as that offer might seem, I rejected it and moved on. Not long after, though, the custodian returned to let me know she'd reunited the baby squirrels with their mama, or with an adult squirrel who seemed willing to act as surrogate. "Sad to see them go," said the custodian. "We sort of bonded." 

Right. But if she ever comes to my office bearing bouncing baby skunks, I'm slamming the door shut. 

The office is blowing in the wind

What season is it when you spot a member of the grounds crew using a leaf-blower in the snow?

I know what you're thinking: leaf-blower, snow-blower, same thing really. But no: he was not using the leaf-blower to blow snow but to blow leaves that have been buried under piles of snow for three weeks and are gradually being exposed as the snow melts. Perhaps you've already spotted the flaw in this plan, but if not, I'll give you a hint: when snow melts, where does the water go?

So here was this guy working really hard to try to dislodge leaves that have been squashed into sticky mulch when he could put the leaf-blower to better use warming up my office. For reasons no one has been able to explain, cold air is continually blowing from the ceiling vents in my office, making it colder than the surrounding offices and even the hallway. Someone standing on my desk with a leaf-blower could conceivably counteract the negative effect of all that cold air on my office's ambiance. I might have to wear earplugs to avoid the noise, but at least I would be a little less cold.

When the outdoor temperatures dipped below zero and then stayed there a while, my office was cozy and comfortable, but now it's actually colder in my office than outside. But hey, if I relocate my office to the great outdoors, that would be a great solution to my claustrophobia problem.

If you need me, follow the growl of distant leaf-blowers. 

What happens when I try to do the homework for my own class

The bowl made from an ash burl sits on my desk serving up Post-It Notes as needed, the bowl yellowy-brown and rugged on the top, the notes screaming in fluorescent pink and orange; the bowl smoothly curved, the notes all right angles and sharp edges. The bowl began as a tree that became a log that my colleague took to a local woodworker to commission a set of bowls to give to friends at Christmas. I know who gave me the bowl and I think of her generosity every day; I know who made the bowl because his signature appears on the bottom. 

But who made the Post-It Notes? I see no signature at the bottom of the pack, no sign that the stack of colorful notes was touched by human hands. Robots? Machines? Whose hands made the robots? Whose mind designed the machines? Who grew and cut the trees, who transported them to the paper mill and transformed them to mush?

The bowl reveals signs of the tree and the hands that put the wood on the lathe and worked with meticulous care around the roughly burled edges, but the Post-It Notes tells me nothing of the tree, prefers instead to boss me around: buy birdseed; change the oil in the Camry; prep tomorrow's classes. The notes move from bowl to desk to trash can while the bowl sits immobile and usually unnoticed on my desk, reminding me of kindness, of careful work, of the long life and forgotten death of a tree.

Welcome to my window well!

So I walk into my office after class and find: a body.

Not a dead body. What do you think this is, CSI? If this were CSI, I would be surrounded by tall, slender, stylishly dressed people who keep whipping off their sunglasses and making dramatic statements; instead, I'm surrounded by ordinary-looking people who don't even wear sunglasses to work because we work in a basement, not a crime lab or a morgue. Although, come to think of it, the basement is not without its morgue-esque qualities (morgue-iness?): it's dank, dark, and musty enough for any morgue, and some of my students do a pretty good impersonation of a corpse in class.

But I digress. 

The body I found in my office was not dead and neither was it, technically in my office. It was sitting in the window well where it would be blocking the sun if we had any sunshine today instead of this horrid dank dark musty cold wintery rainy mess. 

When I first looked up up up, far above my head to my tiny dungeon window, I thought that someone had left a pile of discarded clothes right in my window well, but then it moved. It's alive! But who is it? Nondescript beige jacket, vague gray hat, basic working-man apparel. Homeless person? My window well can't be a particularly comfy place to hang out, so maybe it's one of the tree-removal dudes busily deleting a row of ash trees right next to my building. But why would anyone take a break in my window well others are available closer to the road?

Then I notice: he's smoking. I know a smoker who wears that coat and that hat! It's one of my colleagues seeking shelter from the rain while he takes a smoke break. I call out his name but he can't hear (who knew the glass was that thick?), and he's facing away from the window so he can't see me. I could throw something up there to get his attention, but what would I say? "You're blocking my sun?" There isn't any.

I don't begrudge him a little shelter from the storm--in fact, basic human decency demands that I provide a more hospitable welcome. I ought to equip my window well with a little rug or a soft cushion--or, better yet, heat and light, cheery yellow walls painted with birds, a sturdy desk and comfy chair. If the window well were more like my office, I'd be tempted to hang out there myself!
 

Get the Gripe-O-Matic Today!

Want to hear a complaint? You don't even have to insert a quarter or press a button--just walk into my building and listen, and within seconds you'll hear someone, possibly me, complaining about how cold it is.

Yes, I know it's the middle of winter, and yes, I know that only wimps complain about single-digit temperatures in January, but I'm talking about the indoor temperature. The Powers That Be tell us that there's something wrong with the heater but the part has been ordered and it should be fixed, quote, soon. Meanwhile, I sit in my office with my coat on and a shawl over my legs and try to get some work done.

How does my office hate me? Let me count the ways: One, dust from sanding down floors in the big lecture hall sparked an allergy attack that still has me coughing two weeks later. Two, every time I touch my desk, it gives me a shock. Three, broken heater, too much cold exacerbating cough, unable to get all the way through a class session because I'm cold and coughing too much to talk.

That's it, office! I give up! You've defeated me! I'm going to pack up my things and go home!

Except I car-pooled this morning so I have no transportation. Which is worse, walking 20 miles in 12 degrees or making peace with my murderous office? 

Maybe we should all storm the administration building. I'll bet they've got heat over there!  

Why O why?

Why I purchased a print of Nathan O. Marsh's illustration of the letter O from his Alphabet Apocrypha:

Nathan O. Marsh, Alphabet Apocrypha

1. Everyone loves an ornery orphan--especially one with outrageous organizational skills.
2. Okra--so often in the garden, so rarely on the wall.
3. Oligarchsburg, Ohio, of course.
4. An offal and onion offering. 
5. Obstructionist oafs--so often in committee meetings, so rarely on the wall.

6. The word with which I conclude almost all of my e-mails: Onward!
 

Bulletin bored

I've been in a crabby, cranky, cynical mood all day, ever since a cavalcade of pickup trucks went speeding past me during my morning walk on a gravel road, kicking up a dust cloud that seems to be following me wherever I go. It's time to spray some Cloud-B-Gon to clear the air, so let's write some poetry!


Colored paper, printed words,
Thumbtacks, staples, scissors:
time to decorate bulletin boards!
Mine's finished!  How's yours?

Okay, that's pretty pathetic. I'm clearly out of practice. But it's true: I didn't realize when I moved offices that I would have not one but TWO bulletin boards to decorate, and that makes me really happy. My bulletin boards tend to be colorful and eclectic and maybe a little sloppy, with many lines verging from the perpendicular to varying degrees. Over in the Education building they dangle a weighted line from a thumbtack to keep lines straight on their perfectly balanced bulletin boards, but they're getting a grade. I'm just posting stuff that interests me and hoping someone occasionally takes a look. 

The little board outside my office offers some helpful information (office hours, class schedule, how to contact the former resident of my office) plus some poetry and a mess of funny cartoons, while the larger one down the hall is called "Recommended Reading" and features photos of books recommended by faculty plus little blurbs about why they're good. Colorful. Eclectic. Interesting. Sometimes a little silly. I'd give my bulletin boards a solid B+, although the Education folks might quibble.

Bringing sunshine to the dungeon

Millipedes were waiting to greet me when I arrived at my office this morning. They were gathered, hundreds of them, just inside the door and all along the stairwell, and many of them had found their way down the steps to my hallway.

I don't care to share my space with millipedes, but there they were, advancing slowly but inexorably in the direction of my new office. A basement office with a dungeon-style window already feels creepy enough without the invasion of many-legged creepy-crawlies.

Good thing I brought along my daughter to dispel the dungeon ambience. She stood on a stepladder and painted all morning and afternoon, often with her arms stretched above her head to reach high along the wall. Soon a clematis vine was creeping down from that distant window, and fluttering nearby were a goldfinch, chickadee, hummingbird, and hummingbird moth. 

Years ago she embellished my first office here with a kitten reaching for a butterfly, but the next resident painted right over it. The birds she painted in my second office still flutter around the window for the current resident, but I never asked her to paint anything on the walls of my library office. (New building, new rules. I believe I would have been run out of town on a rail if an unapproved drop of paint had appeared on those walls.)

My new office, though, needed a touch of sunshine to offset the gloom, so today I set Laura loose to mark my territory. I didn't ask permission and I doubt if anyone cares--except for me. I resisted moving to this office and I'm tempted to obsess over its flaws and dampness and creepy-crawly visitors, so I welcome the touch of brightness and life provided by the birds.

I just wish the birds would swoop down and snatch up those pesky little millipedes milling about the halls.

Wallflowers

Before

After

Midway through

Hurray for my artistic daughter who brings birds into my basement office!

Notes from the Bev-Cave

After I spent the morning Monday pinballing around amongst various offices and delivering rants to anyone willing (or unwilling) to listen, I finally persuaded the Powers That Be to look away from their paperwork and toward my unfinished office, at which point the campus was suddenly beset by an outbreak of the passive voice. Mistakes were made, I was told. The office will be painted on Monday. The floor will be stripped and waxed on Wednesday. The boxes will be moved on Friday.

And they were.

For three years I've been blessed with a wonderful office in the library, the best part being the big beautiful windows that let in lots of light and reveal a pleasing view. I may never have an office that nice so I'm grateful I inhabited it for a while.

My new office, on the other hand, is in the basement of a much older building. The ceilings are high and the one small window is so far out of reach that it would be appropriate in a dungeon. I had the walls painted a cheery yellow to counteract the cavelike ambiance, but I'm not sure it's working. I ought to play up the cave motif, painting the walls the color of moss and rocks and mold and bats and calling the place the Bev-Cave, but one day someone would come in and find me curled up on the floor in a fetal position, so maybe not a good idea.

I'm trying to embrace my new office because I may be here for a while. Unless things change in a pretty big way, I don't foresee seeking other offices in the near or even distant future, and I hate the process of moving so much that I'd rather stay in a cave than pack everything up again. So here I sit surrounded by boxes of books and trying to make the Bev-Cave feel like home.

The game is underfoot

So I'm out at the big-box store looking for a rug for my new office (because making plans for my new office distracts me from my distress over losing my old office) and my heart isn't really in it because all the affordable rugs look pretty similar--same range of geometric shapes, same range of colors--but I manage to narrow it down to three rugs that would suit just fine and then I have to decide: the vaguely Frank Lloyd Wright stained-glass pattern, the swoopy curvy colorful shapes, or the muted misshapen checks. Not one of them really makes me stand up and sing, but singing isn't really part of my office repertoire. All I need is something to walk all over and all three are within the right price range, so how do I pick? Draw straws? Throw dice? I don't know how to play rock/paper/scissors with a rug.

Then my eyes land on the names of the rugs. All these patterns have names, of course, not Fred and Norm and Valerie but names reminiscent of apartment complexes: Green Leaf, Winchester, Halsey Court, Fireside. The names of two of the finalists are so generic I've already forgotten them, but the third stands out:

Scrabble.

How could an English professor say no to a rug called Scrabble?

Come summertime, this rug is MINE! 

Bigger on the inside

As much as I hate the thought of packing up all my books and saying goodbye to my beautiful big windows and sage-green walls, I'm getting ready to move to a new office. My three-year term in the Worthington Center is coming to a close so at some point this summer I'll invite all my friends to a moving party so we can shift all my stuff across campus.


My new office is in an older building--built the year I was born, so I wouldn't call it decrepit. Seasoned, yes; a bit eccentric in spots, certainly; but not exactly an antique. The best office available is oddly shaped: taller than it is wide, with a window set so high in the wall that you'd have to climb up the bookshelves to get a good look out, and then you'd just see the feet of passersby. It's a basement office, but it's in a great neighborhood, surrounded by friendly and interesting people.

To make the room less cramped and dungeon-like, I'll paint the walls a sunshiny shade, bring in a colorful rug, and get rid of any excess furniture. (Four filing cabinets? Who needs four filing cabinets?) I'd like to ask the physical plant to blast out a big part of the outer wall, shove the dirt to the side, and install a walk-out porch--or wait, the ceiling is surely high enough to allow the installation of a loft!

I'm dreaming, of course--but wouldn't it be great to find a way to make my office bigger on the inside than it is on the outside? Sort of like a Tardis--which would also simplify the task of moving all those books. Where's Doctor Who when I need him?