When I was younger, I would often go into my mother’s office. She has always kept Hershey’s Kisses in a jar and I’d have one or two. Because of what she does, I had occasion to spend a lot of time at her workplace as a child and teenager. Occasionally, I would also go to my father’s office. He didn’t have kisses, but inevitably had a better view. Hers was always a ground floor office and his was a high rise office. Sweeping vistas are ingrained in the American consciousness, even if the vista in question is of other high-rise buildings.

I always admired their degrees on the wall. I read them and then re-read them. They went to the same college, so the bachelors’ degrees looked the same, but their advanced degrees differed and I found their language and appearance very appealing. There was a deep commitment to education as an idea in my family, but the material culture of education also appealed deeply to me. The degrees themselves, the regalia, the places. The verdant landscapes in otherwise normal contexts.

Really, I wanted those pieces of paper. I have some of them now. Four, if you want to know. One of them has a typo. Two of them are framed. I really have no idea where the fourth one is. The “highest” one, as they say, had been sitting in its frame in a closet. I had never put it on a wall anywhere. I had it on top of a bookshelf at home for a while, but then our roof leaked and our office ceiling collapsed and, as I hauled ceiling and insulation out to the trash can, I put it away in the closet to keep it from forming some undeniable bond with the wet insulation.

This weekend, we cleaned out that closet so the house can be re-floored. I found that highest degree in the closet.

This morning, I brought it in to work. The frame had some smudges on it, so I cleaned it a little. I took down a picture I had taken some years ago of a cyclist whose name I don’t know and hung the degree on my wall. I like the language on it more than any of the ones my parents have, “The Regents of the University of California on the recommendation of the Graduate Council of the Academic Senate, Los Angeles Division have conferred upon [insert name here]” Isn’t that great? So florid.

It continues, “…who, by conducting original research has demonstrated thorough knowledge of [insert field here]” So, original research demonstrates thorough knowledge. Good to know. Now, with all of that, you still don’t know what degree it is. Way to bury the lead, UC. Good things come to those who bother to read the whole thing. The degree comes next.

…”The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.” There it is. Whew. Took a while. “with all the rights and privileges thereto pertaining.” I’m not sure what rights it gives me, but it is a privilege (most of the time) to be an Associate Professor for the same state the issued the piece of paper I’m currently discussing.

“Given at Los Angeles This Twenty Sixth Day of March in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Nine.” Note the lack of “of our Lord” language. Secularity is SO rampant in, well, secular institutions. Rightly so. It’s signed, by among others, the ousted former governor of the state. There’s also a gold seal.

It looks nice on the wall, I have to say. It perches right above a picture of a starling eating watermelon and next to my Union Pacific Las Vegas poster. I don’t know why I didn’t hang it there before. I wanted it for so long and then I got it. It belongs in my office with its first floor view. Come by and read it, if you want.

I came back from lunch with a colleague today and walked through our conference/eating area to the bathroom.

My staff eats. A lot. Badly. Do(gh)nuts. Cake. Cheetos. Almost everyday someone brings something in, always high in fat and calories. It drives me wild. I’m not the most food resistant person in the world. I try to resist. Sometimes it works. Other times, less so.

So, today I was walking by and there were two things sitting on the table with those “it’s for everyone” markers recognized the world over. Both items had small plates next to them and food serving devices nearby.

I stopped. I gaped. I may have gasped. I certainly sighed.

On the table was: a VERY gristly steak and next to it (on a seperate plate–a small mercy) there was a chunk of flan swimming in sauce.

Steak and flan. Both room temperature.

Here’s the good news: I had no trouble resisting. For your evening update, I should note that the flan was consumed and the steak is still sitting there. Anyone want some?

I’m not particularly fond of summer in my job. Like most faculty members at colleges and universities, I was spoiled by having a nine month job. Now I have twelve month job and lots to do in the summer. Most of what I have to do is tedious. Very tedious. Writing reports and the like.

There’s nothing I loathe more than having to click on this icon at any point in my day.

And there’s nothing more likely than summer to make me click the little bastard.
Don’t assume this is an anti-Microsoft rant. I am not anti-Microsoft. I don’t root for them or anything (any more than I root for the Yankees), but they make some fine products. I cleaved to WordPerfect for a long time and then abandoned ship like everyone else. (Bring back WP 5.2, I say!) But I don’t mind Word. I am capable of producing PowerPoint slide shows that aren’t excruciating (and isn’t that the goal, after all?), and I even use Entourage as my e-mail client at work. I say all of this despite a deep loathing for Windows. Deep. The Office suite, though, is fine. Except for that little green thing.

And, no, I’m not going to name it. To name it is to give it power. There it sits waiting for me to click it. It knows where I live. It knows where I work. It haunts my dreams.

Really, it’s ruining my summer. Go ahead, name it defend it, you won’t change my mind. Evil, thy name is……..

Our office doesn’t have a lunchroom per se. We have a conference table that doubles as the lunch table. The area has a sink and years ago someone brought in a small refrigerator which gets complained about regularly. Its maintenance is taken VERY seriously by everyone. If other things were taken that seriously, I would be happy and the office would work better. We can’t replace the refrigerator with state money (it’s against the rules), so that rule also gets discussed with some frequency. I’m usually blamed.

This morning, as happens more regularly than I’d like, one of my staff had a birthday. I suppose they’re all allowed. Given that there aren’t that many of them, though, it seems to me that the birthday thing happens more often than it should.

Some time ago, I dictated a new rule that we would no longer have the office fund (to which I contribute rather disproportionately) pay for lunch or breakfast AND a cake. Instead, I decreed (like Caesar) that the birthday celebrant could choose lunch or breakfast OR a cake and have it be paid for from the fund to which I contribute disproportionately.

Fairness aside: How disproportionately? Between 3 and 6 times more than anyone else. Why so disproportionately? I was told it was my obligation based on a precendent set by my predecessor who makes at least $30K more a year than I do. How do I know what she makes? Because as state employees, all our salaries are published in a book every year which is kept in the library and consulted often by many.

Anyway, my Caesar-like proclamation (I wish I had one of those dudes to go announce what I had decided in the forum like Caesar’s dudes did), was met with some resistance and some negotiation. I capitulated to our newest employee having a lunch/cake combo for her birthday because it was her FIRST birthday with us. It wasn’t her first birthday, mind you. Though her clerical skills would be really notable had it been.

Anyway, this morning, one of my employees was celebrating her birthday and had chosen breakfast as her celebratory meal. Office Manager showed up with the breakfast we had each ordered. This was a change from the last birthday, where two of us didn’t get our food and OM spent a good portion of her meal trying to get me to eat fried chicken livers despite my attempts to avoid said food. This morning, I ate the small thing I had ordered and then got up to walk into my office. I wasn’t being anti-social, I wanted to check the currently ongoing woot-off for stupid stuff that I shouldn’t buy. Why is the woot-off so compelling? Same reason I think garage sales and thrift stores can be. As Honey’s mother says, “you never know.”

As soon as I left, the loudness and mirth level at the table rose. People were talking and laughing as they hadn’t been a few minutes before. After a while, our one year old clerical wonder brought me my water cup, assuming (hoping?) that I was not coming back. I pointed out that breakfast would be followed by staff meeting and that’s why I had left my cup there. She seemed a little deflated by the idea of staff meeting. It happens every Thursday morning. It may be deflating every Thursday morning. I don’t know. I know I don’t exactly go to bed Wednesday night with joyful anticipation in my heart.

As I began this entry, I was waiting for a pod of staff to finish at the lunch table. When they did, I got up and went eat. I eat with them sometimes. After the mirth increase this morning though, I didn’t want to today. When I first started here I remember sitting in my office and listening to them having lunch. It seemed really nice then.

I found salt packets and plastic spoons in my predecessor’s desk. It’s possible that she felt as I did. I’ve pictured her salting her food at her desk.

I’m trying to resist talking about the lunch table in school and the day I asked if I could sit down with a group of kids and was told no. Didn’t resist it very well, did I?

Tomorrow is our annual staff retreat. I’ve designed team-building activities. I hope they help.

I wonder if I could design one called “talk to sporks like a human even though she’s the boss.” Probably not.

Now, who do I see about one the Caesar announcement guys?

The building I work in is small. This is especially true for a campus building. Campus buildings, even here in second-floor-pancake-earthquake-zone-SoCal, are fairly large, multiple story deals. My building is not. It is one floor and has two entrances: one for my office and another on the south side of the building and a second entrance on the north side of the building.

The two offices on the south side of the building are busy student service centered ones. The north side of the building holds a number of community service offices.

I should also note that the building my office is in belongs to a college of which we are not a part. (My University, like many, is divided into sub-colleges, each with its own Dean, buildings, and money). I get reminded that the space is someone else’s with some frequency when we have money conflicts. I control the money for a joint program administered by that college and my own. It’s a good deal for me, actually. I’d rather have money than space. Anyway…

The north side of the building underwent a face-lift this summer. It looks really nice–new carpet, new paint, new furniture.

Standard pattern for south-siders is to park in the parking lot on the north side of the building, enter through the north entrance, and come through the rear entrance to our office. It’s what I did. It’s what everyone did.

Ok, so Other College and I are having one of our regular “let’s all get along” meetings and they invite the guy who’s in charge of the money and the space to come to the meeting. In a very roundabout way, he asks if we can stop using the north entrance. It’s a reasonable request actually. They do counseling in that half of the building. They do work with children and adults with disabilities. They don’t need 25 or 30 people walking through the lobby like it’s a thoroughfare.

So, I get back from the meeting and write a very carefully worded request to my staff.

Keep in mind please that I am asking them to walk MAYBE 100 feet farther than they have been.

You’d have thought I asked them to run the L.A. Marathon. Or slog through a jungle on their knees. The hostility with which the request was greeted was palpable.

I made the request last Wednesday, when Office Manager was off. Monday when she came in after the holiday, the drama re-emerged. I’m talking coup d’etat level drama. Because they have to walk around a very small building.

I’ve been contemplating buying them all Table-Mate IIs so they can just live in the office. Or maybe Hover-Rounds?

Change can be hard. I admit as much. When minor change brings such consternation, imagine how they’ll feel when we have to move our offices across campus. Actually don’t imagine it, the horror is too much for the faint of heart.

Maybe Segways?

While my recent office troubles do not match my Honey’s, I have nevertheless been in a state of flux in my day-to-day environs. Over the past two years, I have let everyone in the office order new office furniture. I demurred because until this summer, I was in my current position as an interim. I thought it would look untoward to order furniture until such time as I got the job forever and ever. And thus it came to pass that I did. One morning early this fall, I went up to the furniture store which must exist solely on the revenue it generates from my institution. They saw me coming.

I fretted, measured, and ordered. I chose modern looking furniture with “white aluminum legs” and speckled gray tops. No need to pretend something is wood. Speckled gray pretends to be nothing but what it is–speckled gray.

Twice a month the physical plant people will remove furniture for free. Office Manager was worried that there might be some overlap between the old furniture and the new. So, a month ago they took away my old desk and chair. I hated them both. Buh Bye.

Once they were gone, my office seemed empty. Ok, let’s be honest, my office was empty.

I should note that one more “free take away” day happened between the take away and the arrival of the new furniture. I refrained from pointing this out to OM. I screamed it internally some and said it to other people, but didn’t say anything to her. Instead I would occasionally say things like, “can you tell me the status on the furniture?” See how brave and restrained I am?

A month and no desk? Wherever did I go? Well, I have a small conference table in my office and I set my computer up in the corner. It seemed pitiful. It was pitiful. I climbed over boxes of desk stuff to get to the corner. My gynormous monitor is wider than the table on which it sat.

Monday, my new desk and chair finally arrived. I immediately set up my computer and unloaded every box. I am a happy office dweller.

Instead of drawers, I got rolling half file cabinets with padded tops. Occasional office seating for all!

Admittedly late afternoon is not a great time for taking pictures out bright windows.

My new bag looks good in context.

Herewith some details.

My picture of Red, my sweetgrass basket with sequoia cones, and my Sequoia National Park Nalgene bottle.

Biscuit has her picture on the desk, too.

My bendy squishy avocado guy, the gel-e star I ordered to promote my program, my teeny Zen Garden and the pot that used to hold my bamboo. Also, emollient. Gotta emmolliate.

The devil ducks really want to See Rock City but never have. The chiflera is dying, but I’m efforting keeping it alive.

Obviously, there’s more in my office, but better to show too little than too much. I happy to be out of the corner and firmly ensconced in my new gray and white aluminum world.

I arrived from my two days of jury duty fun (I was never called into the box), to discover that Halloween had come to my office environs. October had arrived. Still. If this is what had found, I would have been happy.

It was not what I found.

I don’t like the aesthetics of my office as a whole. But, like a “make your own decisions” kind of boss, I let the mahogany and black happen. I have carpet. No one else does. I just ordered non-faux wood (it’s just faux) for an office make-over. But furniture is not the subject here. It’s shiny skeletons. Shiny pumpkins. Shiny witches.

Kind of like this (only bigger and more shiny):

It’s horrifying. Not boo scary. Scary bad. Scary shiny. But, what can I say? I make noise about secular winter decorations and that results in a lot of snowmen (some shiny) in December. We are a state institution after all. But in October? Nothing I can say. Other than, “you decorated.” Think flat tone there.

I shudder internally every time I walk out of my office. I don’t mind the inflatable spider and would be fine with some leaves an a gourd or two.

So, here are the questions, blogfriends:

Do you decorate your office/office spaces?

For which holidays?

What’s your aesthetic for that decoration?

Anyone want to trade some gourds for a shiny skeleton?

Oh, and if you like shiny jointed skeletons, speak up and tell me why!

By the way, I was looking for an image and discovered that “fallgourds.com” is available. Now’s your chance!

Tomorrow is the first day of the fall semester at my campus. Traffic will be horrifying. And my assistant director suggested in no uncertain terms that it was my turn to bring in “happy treats.” She’s right, it is my turn. And she’s also right that treats make the office crowd happy. I think I’ll get bagels. It seems healthier than most of the alternatives.

I’m just off the phone with one of the bath people. If I never hear another word about bathing, it will be too soon. Math either. The good news is that I have a new knife that clips to my bag. It’s long and tough looking. The bad news is that assault is still illegal. Assault thoughts aren’t. Being a twelve month administrator has its drawbacks at a nine month place. One of them is that you can’t take the summer off from math.

On the plus side, Alejandro Valverde is winning the Vuelta. Move on the next paragraph.

Hi! Glad you made it past that last bit…

I wish fall were more, well, autumnal in Southern California. It was over 100 today and hot and dry. When I was in college, fall in Washington always pleased me. It actually got crisp. Of course it also usually rained. But youth is best seen through the gauze of “aww.” I was just talking on Friday night about the wettest I’ve ever been after getting caught in a rain storm in D.C. in the fall. My car was so wet that for weeks, my shirt and pants would get wet from sitting in the seat. And woe unto the passenger, for he or she would be extra wet. And that was all from three people getting caught in the rain and then getting into the car.

New beginnings are nice, even if they seem inserted into my otherwise rolling existence. I decided to go to a lunch for new faculty. I’m not really new, but I am. Tomorrow is a Tuesday, but it’s also a beginning. And being a beginner means the promise of things to come. It also means you can screw up sometimes and attribute it to your beginner status. So, I think I’ll look forward.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a new phenomenon about which I was trained today:

Apparently what happens is that one is given a little plastic card with the above logo on it. And one can use that little plastic card to buy…

Do you want to guess? I had to! Think. Ok, fine, I’ll tell you.

Goods

and

Services!

Well slap my ass and call me me Sporks. Goods and services. No shit.

You want to know what’s great about the little plastic card I learned about today? Well, I guess the aforementioned goods and services have to be paid for by somebody. You know what? The nice people in Accounts Payable pay them. Isn’t that fantastic?

There are rules, I guess. No firearms can be purchased without prior approval. Got it. And it seems that when you have one of these little dandy dealios, you can’t just loan it out to people to use. Check.

The motivator (and that really is the only word for him) who told us about the plastic miracle liked the track and field coach who was sitting behind me. Our motivator was, in fact, much more impressed with the man who taught others to throw things than he was with me. How do I know?

Well, Mr. Motivator shared his Myers-Briggs personality type. Why did he share it? Because we were trapped and had to listen to him. The problem was, he couldn’t think of the name of the test. Like the sullen student I was channeling, I mumbled it under my breath. He then wanted to know what each of his letters stood for. I told him. Dr. INTJ didn’t so much resonate with Mr. ESFP but she knew what the letters stood for. Still Mr Motivator/ESFP was more interested in the fact that Coach Thrower had taken Potential Freshwoman Thrower to Chili’s. To Chili’s! Can you imagine? And used this little plastic thingy. And Mr. Motivator could show us the Chili’s charge on the computer. And Coach Thrower had spent $40. And then Accounts Payable had paid Chili’s. Can you see how riveting this all is?

Mr. Motivator began the day by asking our objective for the session. People said chirpy things about how excited they were to learn about this new phenomenon. I should note, I guess, that we had plastic things before. They had logos that looked like this:

These new ones, boy, they sure are different. What with the goods and services and everything.

I ate a donut on the break. I didn’t want a donut. I ate one anyway. I asked a famous blogger via e-mail to call in a bomb threat. I asked Assistant Director (also via e-mail) to come over to the building and pull the fire alarm. Both FB and AD refused. Where’s the love? I ask you.

FB did try later. But by then, I was free. Still, she’s my new hero. AD just laughed at me.

Three hours. That’s how long it took to learn about this plastic miracle.

All of what was worth knowing, I have just condensed into this entry. You can thank me later. By using a plastic thing to buy me goods and services. Who knows? Maybe Accounts Payable will pay. Anyone want to meet at Chili’s?

This morning I got up to work-out. As promised, I got my honey up too. I started working out and just didn’t have it in me. My legs hurt, my head hurt. None of it was acute, but I felt restless and a little nauseated.

I’ve not gotten much done at work today. I have stuff to do. I should do it.

AD told me that I was “a good boss” today because I told her that because she worked so hard, she should just take a day off soon. She told me that my predecessor had denied her some comp time when she was very pregnant because she hadn’t gotten it approved before hand. It’s the kind of thing I would never do. She knows it. I know it.

My predecessor can be righteous in her sense that people should do what they should do. I gather she looked over people’s shoulders more than I do. So my predecessor’s efficiency lurks. And it is fighting with my ennui today. I’m pretty sure ennui will always lose a fight.

I can’t get into the week, truth be told. I came in late Monday. Today I haven’t worked very hard.

Things I’ve done instead of working:

Bought Angels tickets for a game in September

Re-read parts of my blog

Written this blog entry

Tried to find this IHE (and then my two almas mater) on U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of colleges. Results: Third tier, #85, and #3 or #25 (what they’re ranked in varies, but there they are).

Gone to the student union to get a ticket to an event tomorrow.

Went from the student union to the bookstore to buy my nephew a IHE t-shirt. My brother insists on giving everybody Yale crap (#3 on the scale my almas mater ranked #25 and #85 above, but who’s bitter? Not me.). Thusly, I’m blanketing their asses with crap from Third Tier U.

Rode bike of the week back to my office. It’s windy as hell. And I’m slightly sweaty.

Did some business on the phone. Which included succeeding in getting a meeting cut short so I can go the event I got a ticket for tomorrow.

Ok, I’ve written enough that I now feel guilty. I’m sure AD needs to talk to me about sumpin. I’ll wander in her office. It will make me feel SOOOO productive.

Feel free to tell me what non-productive things you did today in the comment field. Most ennui wins. Or loses. Whatever.

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