It's been a long last nine months - time for a couple of days' birthday vacation! Here's the view from a rather fine balcony on Kauai; here are some monk seals lounging on the beach (with some stakes and ropes round them, and a notice logging their arrival this morning - three males, estimated ages 4/5/5).
It doesn't escape my consciousness that if I were still in the UK, not only would I be weeping and gnashing my teeth over Brexit, but I would be facing mandatory retirement, at least so far as I remember the terms of my last contract. That's a sobering, chilling thought in a number of ways. Not to say that this Department Chair doesn't, some days, harbor fantasies (of, say, being on a beach in Hawai'i, rather than dealing with admin) - but it's not just that all of us, inside, are surely still 27 or whatever; it's that I'm nowhere near ready to - what's the best metaphor? - relinquish my office key? Hand in my library card? I promise that I'll step down, step away when I think the moment has come, but I'm deeply, deeply grateful not to be told when that moment might be solely on the grounds of my year of birth.
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