What it takes to get me to write an entry..... in shiny things

Is severe boredom, apparently. We’re currently experiencing our annual biggest downtime phase at work, which is nice, but it’s also booooring. And I even have something I need to be working on – a handbook for our advisors so they will stop giving students completely inaccurate information on pretty much every topic possible - but apparently I don’t want to do it, so here I am, doing this instead. Well, it’s not that I don’t want to do it- I volunteered to do it because I am sick to death of trying to fix advisor-generated fuck-ups- but it’s one of those things I can’t sit here doing all day long. I need breaks. For this!

We just got a new dean in our college, which is traumatic since our previous dean had been here nine years - she and I started at the exact same time- and we all loved her. I’m sure the new dean will be fine, but it’s always stressful to have a new boss who could potentially make huge changes which we might not like. And to make it even more disconcerting, she looks JUST like Mrs. Gideon in The Mighty Boosh. I spent ages trying to find a good Mrs. Gideon clip, especially when she keeps asking Howard “And who are you again??” every time she sees him, but this will have to do. You should watch the whole thing, but if you just want to see Mrs. Gideon, she shows up almost exactly halfway through.

It’s been hard to get used to Mrs. Gideon being my new boss. Well, boss of my boss. Who interviewed for the job himself, but they passed him over for Mrs. Gideon. He doesn’t seem to be taking it too personally, but I know he was disappointed. We were all torn - it would be great to have him as our ultimate leader, but it would also mean someone else becoming our immediate boss. At least he doesn’t seem inclined to resign in a snit.

That’s pretty much the most exciting thing I’ve had going on this summer. Oh, I do have some excitement coming up in a couple of weeks - my cousins and I are getting together for another Girls Weekend! “Girls” being very much a euphemism, as we are currently all in our 50s. YIKES. The last time we did this - and the first time, as well - was when we went to New York two years ago. We swore we’d do it again every year but of course that’s difficult - two of them have kids still at home, and it’s not easy to wrangle all the schedules around when you’re trying to do something that involves everyone getting to get away from their house and family for a few days. But we did it this summer, and we’re actually having a boat weekend. Cousin J has a boat that is docked at a marina in Delaware, so we’re hanging out on the boat. I guess we’ll be taking the boat out - oddly I don’t know. They’ve had it for ages, and I’m sure J can drive it - pilot it?? - whatever you do to get a boat to go somewhere that you want it to go. They use it a lot in the summer for short vacations.

OMG! I’m a total idiot, and for some reason, despite having looked it up earlier, I thought it was on the bay – it’s on the ocean!!! Right below Dewey Beach!!! Well, the marina is bayside but it’s right at the ocean. I thought it was associated with a much more inland waterway - no idea why I thought that. Now I’m even more excited to be going! It’s in a state park, too. J said it was like camping, but with electricity and hot water. That’s my kind of camping. Anyhow, we’re going weekend after next, and I also am flying to Philly because it’s a nine-hour drive from here, a little too much for a weekend, so I’m excited about that too. I looooove flying, and don’t get to all that often.

SO, that will be fun! I’ve never stayed on a boat, other than the canal boat in England the first time Kim and I went - which we just slept on and didn’t venture out into the canals with. That itself was quite fun. OH, and some of you may remember one of the cousins from our OD days - she was Cousin E there.

Well, I really do need to go at least make a pretense of working. OH OH, the other thing I’ve been doing is working on jewelry. I’d made some posts ages ago about stuff I was making, but I have actually opened an Etsy shop, and I’ve even sold some stuff. Then of course I slacked off with it (helloooo, Gemini!) and haven’t updated it in a couple of months. I’ll post a link the next time I do an entry– that will give me a push to get it updated. But I will see if I can post a picture of one of the kinds of things I’ve been doing –

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Okay, now I remember Flickr has apparently stopped cooperating with PB, and includes weird text with huge photos, so hopefully that showed up. I’ve been making a lot of stuff using old watch parts, which is really really fun, but it’s also amazingly difficult to get a good photo of. I think actually that’s kind of discouraged me - they look SO much better in person, and I even have a good camera. This picture is actually using a weird macro lens extension that I bought - works like a macro lens, is MUCH cheaper, no idea how that is - but was experimenting here and don’t really have a good grasp on it yet. BUT you can at least get an idea of it.

Last updated July 21, 2016