Southern England

I've just attended a one day conference in Southampton, and took the opportunity to take a nice tour of Southern England and Wales. The family and I went to see Stonehenge (tremendously cool, especially as you drive up to it - it sits right on the side of the road like it was a reststop or something), the Roman Baths in Bath (funny how they decided to build them in a town named Bath, huh...) and a small town in Southern Wales called Abergavenny.

Bath and Stonehenge were great, but the real fun was in Abergavenny. We attended a pretty well known food festival there. Southern Wales is absolutely beautiful. I had been lead to believe that Wales was very rural (and not in the good way...in the West Virginia kinda way) and downtrodden. That impression was completely wrong. Wales was almost idyllic. Small towns with sheep herds traveling along main roads. It's what I envisioned British villages would look like.

Anyway, the Abergavenny Food Festival was great. I attended a session called Perfect Partners, which was a talk about matching different cheeses with beers to maximize the taste of both. I was really impressed. My wife, who is an amateur chef, was loving it. She got to attend a session on chocolate, which she loved. All in all, a really good time if you like food. If you're able, I would highly recommend attending the Abergavenny Food Festival.

Furniture Theft

When I was a graduate assistant working on my Ph.D. I was sharing an office with a guy who would become my best friend (actually, scratch that, by the time of this story, it's safe to say that he was my best friend). We shared the office with various and sundry other people, and we had a reputation within the college as being a bit unorthodox. We had decided that we didn't like the view from our office...namely because we didn't have a view. Rather, we had a 10 foot by 6 foot concrete block cubicle. In order to overcome our lack of view, we had copied a relatively famous painting on the wall of our office...of course, we didn't ask for permission, but that was neither here nor there, and regardless, it is only tangentially important to the current story.

On a relatively quiet Saturday morning, I received a call from my office-mate, who told me that he had found a couch in the hallway of our building that would fit, with slight modifications, nicely in our office. This was kinda fishy to me, but since it was well known that any furniture left in the hallway was going to be picked up by University services to be thrown away, I thought that I had worse ways to spend my Saturday, and I told him that I would be into the office in a few minutes.

When I arrived, I met my friend, who prompty told me that we would have to rearrange our office slightly (actually, this ended up being not so slight a change, and it took us most of the day). Once we were able, we moved the couch in. It was not a perfect fit, the door couldn't open all the way, and we had to remove one of the wooden handles so that he could sit on the end at his desk (which he had done after I had left), but overall, it worked out pretty well.

The fireworks started on Monday morning, at which time, I was confronted by the Dean of the college and told that we had 24 hours to vacate our office and leave the University. A little background, the professor for whom we worked was not well liked by the Dean, and thus, we, by extension, were also not well liked by the Dean. There were several instances when the Dean had made it clear that we were not welcome. Anyway, for the most part, we were successful at combating the Dean's machinations, as mostly they were small minded and easily ignored.

This, however, was too much. As I was soon to learn, the cleaning crew had actually moved the couch into the hallway from the lady's faculty restroom in order to clean the floor. Neither my friend, nor myself being ladies, we had no idea that this is where the couch came from. Either way, the cleaning ladies had arrived early on Monday morning, found the couch was missing, promptly put a note under the Dean's door reporting the couch missing, and then went about their work. We had a pretty good working relationship with the cleaning ladies, and so they were mortified when they found the couch in our office...and not only that, but the couch had been defaced. My friend had not simply removed the arm of the couch, but had actually sawed the wooden arm off.

I, of course, didn't know that the entire college was in an uproar over the case of the missing couch, as I sat quietly in my office. In fact, I sat quietly on the contriband defaced couch. My peaceful morning was shattered by the Dean, who crashed into my office, proceded to verbally berate me, demanded that pictures be taken, and informed me that we had the previously mentioned 24 hours to remove ourselves from the office.

All of this ended up being a tempest in a cubicle, as the Dean didn't really have the authority to kick us out. Of course, we didn't know that. We ended up having a truly uncomfortable meeting with the Dean to discuss this, and we had to paint over our painted wall as well as fix the handle of the couch (all of which we did within 24 hours).

The funny part of this story is that the Dean, within three months of this whole incident, had refurnished the lady's faculty restroom with all new furniture. She, however, could not simply throw the couch out, as this would truly demonstrate how pettily she had acted. For this reason, she placed the couch in the hallway on the second floor of the college, where it still sits to this day. In addition, we moved offices eventually, a new Dean was appointed, and we repainted the wall with our artwork...after asking permission, of course.

Cross posting

This is really a story that works better on my In Flagrante Delicto blog, and I won't write about fantasy football here, but I'm sick of herding cats. I'm not sure about you, but I don't mind having a supervisory role over people in my professional life...I can issue orders, plan strategy and make decisions with the best of them. The problem is when you have the "job" of organizing a social function...for example, a dinner party or a weekly poker game or, in my case, a fantasy football league. Any time anything goes wrong, and trust me...something is guaranteed to go wrong, you're the one that's blamed. Even if you're not blamed, you're the one that is supposed to fix the crap that's happened. I'm willing to take that responsibility in my professional life - it's what I get paid for - but in my social events, I'd rather be one of the guys who goes along to get along. I don't want to have to worry about idiots not being technologically literate, and causing problems that can't be easily fixed.

This brings me to my next point...men can be extremely whiny at times. I know this because I'm a man, and I've been known to be whiny at times (although, I'd like to think that I get over it pretty quickly and with most of my dignity intact). Honestly, after having listened to the morons in my fantasy football league whine about technology problems that have screwed them over, I'm not sure how women actually put up with us for any amount of time...it makes me love my wife even more than I do already.

A beautiful day outside....

and I'm stuck in my office. Damn...nice days come so infrequently to England. I need to get out there and enjoy the sun. Maybe I should take my laptop out and try to work in the courtyard...yeah, like that will happen.

Dashed Hopes

I was hoping that I would be able to celebrate my 100th visitor to the site by pointing him or her out by name, but according to my counter, it was a direct hit, and no address was given. Whoever you were...thanks for coming.