last day of school! Alice's jubilación

Today was Alice's last ever day of teaching.  So I wasn't going to let the day go unmarked, of course ... and gathered a little group who surprised her - really surprised her - jumping out of a classroom at her after she ended the final class, with disco balloons and flowers, and marched her off to the Art History Seminar Room, where champagne and wine and a hastily gathered assortment of snacks from TJs were consumed, and a Spotify playlist of Black Funk Disco put on, and her health drunk.  I discovered yesterday that the Faculty Club would be closed - my original plan had been to go there - but this was much more fun, it turned out.

And jubilación is so much more sun as a word than the ominous Retirement, so I decided to go with the Spanish.

Of course, Alice still has grading to do, and her office to empty, and so on - but this, really, is It.  More celebrations follow ...

 

end of semester, end of an era

Three very hastily snatched photos to commemorate today: our Art History Holiday Party.  In the past, this has been a spectacular event - at the Gamble House, the LA Athletic Club, the Grammy Museum.  But this year - university strict budget rules - we weren't allowed to spend any funds on such an event.  So instead, a faculty-sponsored event in the University Club, which didn't have the same glitz, by any means (though I have to say that the Chipotle Margarita may have been the best drink I've ever had on any of these occasions).  And we weren't huge in numbers, this year, so it was actually very friendly and comfortable.

But what made it so poignant, and indeed awful, is that our two wonderful office admin staff, Beth and Tracey, won't be with us going forwards.  Beth has been given a position running Scheduling and Staffing for all the Humanities - that means lining up classes, faculty, and rooms, and is a logistical fiddly nightmare that makes cat herding look like an orderly procession.  Tracey - as of this moment, inexplicably, and cruelly, nada.  Our Office Manager will be shared with two other departments - and who, but who, will do all the manifold tasks that have to be done that Beth and Tracey have been so good at?  More than that - much more than that - they've been instrumental in making the department one of the friendliest, most cohesive, welcoming, caring, and efficient places that I've ever worked in.  I couldn't have been Chair as much, or DGS, without them.  I feel that the administration's shift to a new, streamlined managerial system (and yes, it comes with much managerial speak) has been carried out in a ruthless and cruel way. with the minimum of consultation of the people it affects the most.  We owe Beth and Tracey so much: they were quietly feted earlier in the day, and I'm so very pleased that they came to celebrate (hold a wake?) with us all this evening.

 

Mothy - recovering well!

For a cat who's been through major dental surgery, Moth is recovering remarkably well - quite possibly better than us.  She had us very worried in the night - sitting in her litter tray - could she pee? could she not?  and by one in the morning, we were stumbling around wondering whether to call the emergency vet, or rush her off there - and then we realized that yes, she had peed ... but the uncertainty remained during the first part of the day, at a time when Alice was still at home, but I was starting the beginning process of navigating the administrative reorganization and chaos that has been dealt us (oh yes, and teaching, and meeting with my honors student, and all the rest of it).  But all's well now.  Gramsci still thinks that she smells very strange, and is wary of her (probably a good thing), and we hope that we'll soon be able to breathe again.

 

Moth's day at the dentist

As many of you know, I've spent an inordinate amount of time over the last decade or so having complicated dental work done.  Today it was Moth's turn to go to a specialty dentist ...

(she had dental resorption, which is basically like a kind of decay from below).

I love my dentists - my main dentist, anyway, and the more sadistic one has done plenty of technically very good work.  But no one has ever written my name both inside and outside the surgery room;

nor prepared a folder for me with my name illuminated (with a drawing of a moth);

nor texted Alice with a picture of my dentistry team, presumably since I don't look quite so cute in the dentist's chair.  (Moth's dentist comes from Manchester, quite bizarrely.  Or not bizarrely - a quick bit of googling tells me he used to be married to Sophie Ward - actor, writer, Simon Ward's daughter - before she got involved with the playwright Rena Brannan.  That's somehow a very LA story, and I don't know whether Moth was aware of all of it).

Our dear cat seems to have made it through ok - she's home, more than a little wobbly, but ravenously hungry.