The View From Kalamazoo

I will SO miss my boss when he retires. He returned from 2.5 weeks overseas – UK, Poland to receive an award from the President, and then a coming-going-coming few days when he had to do an all-day meeting in D.C. He brought me something back (and no, this isn’t the norm, usually when he returns, he returns..there are none of that sort of expectation here): Sophie Page’s newest Magic in Medieval Manuscripts! It’s goes nicely with my copy of her Astrology in Medieval Manuscripts, of course, and I’m just tickled pick. And touched – I was remembered. I lurve that man…he’s not only a good person to work for, he’s a really kind, wonderful man and a load of laughs.. Easily the best person I’ve ever worked for, honestly, and probably ever will work for. I admit it, beyond mere admiration for his greatness as a scholar and an administrator and his super-human ability to get more done while watching a baseball game than I can all day…I think of him in an academic-fatherly way..I’m totally incomprehensible to my family, but here I’m just another medievalist, and even thought I’m not an Anglo-Saxonist he’s done as much as he can to give me good advice, talk about Important Things, and mentor in general. If my Dad were an academic, I’d have wanted him to be like Poobah, I guess. Ah, now I’m getting too personal…better quit before I get weepy. (discussion of my considerable weight and diet was not too personal for me but discussion about my employer is. you figure it out…)

In other news, I have an abdominal trocar herniation (and have for some time – first noticed during my pregnancy but I have been in ‘I’m just fat! It’s just wierd fatness!’ denial). I had my gall bladder (destroyed by my gestating and hatching kid #1) out lap, and to do that they cut openings in the abdominal wall for the instruments and the control that pumps gas into the abdomen to all is clear and visible during the surgery. The pressure on my abdominal muscles and forcing of organs into new and interesting places during gestation and hatching of kid #2 done did it, combined with kid #1 lifting, etc. At least it’s not a huge emergency – I get to pick, roughly, when it’s a good time to schedule so I can talk to previously described Grandest of Poobahs and come up with a non-crisis time for me to be out for 2-3 weeks. (yes, everyone who has ever made the pilgrimage to Kalamazoo is exclaiming ‘rut ro, raggy! rongress!’ it’s all ok, folks, all ok…) I hate general anesthesia. It’s all necessary suckage.

The good news is that my ceramics class shouldn’t be a huge problem. The gym, of course, is another story..so I’d better get my too-lazy and too-busy butt back in there and do what I can while I can – for a long while I’ll be hanging out with the treadmills. Ho hum.