Apropos of nothing...

...today marked the twenty-year anniversary of my full-time employment at Major Midwestern University. (Yes, twenty years. I was a mere child of almost a quarter-century when I first started.) My boss took me out to lunch, and when we got back, there was a whole surprise party with cake and flowers and cards and everything! I couldn't believe it. Most of my student workers (the ones who hadn't already left on spring break) were there, and some of the faculty & staff from the department my branch library serves stopped by, and some librarians & staff from other departments -- I was amazed at how many people stopped by. The only official recognition one gets from the university is a little pin, so I certainly was not expecting Festivities. It was especially nice because in a couple of months the branch library I've been coordinating for the past 3 years will be closing (being transformed into a technology commons sort of space for the students in the department) and I'll be moving to a new position within the Libraries, so it was just kind of appropriate to have Festivities and a Big To-Do right about now. Then after work I went out to the Irish Lion with a couple of friends, and I stuffed myself to the gills on Blarney Puffballs (delicious little deep-fried balls of potato/cheese/onion, served with sour cream for dipping), fish & chips, and Bass -- enough decadent fried-ness there that I am probably now assured of not surviving for another twenty-year anniversary. Soooo good.

I do not normally like being the center of attention (but since there was cake, I was happy) -- don't normally do much to celebrate my birthdays or anything. But it felt nice to have Festivities today. I felt appreciated, and that's a pretty cool thing to feel at one's place of employment. I still say it would be awfully nice if it were possible to make a living writing poetry, but since it's not, I'm glad that I work in a place where people are mostly pretty nice to me, doing something (library stuff) that feels like a reasonably good and useful thing to do in the world.

I hope you AWPeople are having a good time down there in Austin. Post more! I want pictures and gossip. I want to know who flirted shamelessly with who. I want to know who drank too much and started dancing on the tables. I want ... oh, okay, no, I really don't want that kind of a report. (Feel free to backchannel with all such info, though. Muahaha!)