back to school

... or at the very least, to the Graduate/Faculty Welcome Back Breakfast, and my meeting with graduate students who are still in course work.  I'm so apprehensive about what this year will bring - for the staff in the first instance, and then for the university as a whole, given the enormity of the operating budget deficit, and so on, that I couldn't find it within myself to give my usual rousing Polyanna-ish remarks (luckily at least one other colleague managed much better than I in that respect, but none of us were exactly turning cartwheels). I'm hoping that my start-of-year sense of enthusiasm returns before Monday.  It's not normally so absent ... and I should know since I am, yes, heading into my forty-sixth year of full-time academic employment.  Ouch.