Dinner at the Chancellor's House

 

Yesterday I worked from home and never left the house except to walk outside, when I could between rainstorms. I did a lot of DuoLingo - check it out.

Yet I'm still not fluent in French.

Today I worked on campus, which is unusual for me on a Tuesday, but there were two events I wanted to attend: a campus-wide University Staff Excellence Awards reception around lunchtime, and a dinner at the Chancellor's house. Also, being on campus allowed me to see the blooming tulip trees. They had a lot of blooms this year.

Surprisingly, the campus-wide University Staff Excellence Awards reception wasn't as well-attended as the one for my college, where my regular readers may remember that I was an honoree. Still, it was a fun time to talk to my Central Committee peeps and eat hummus and spanakopita. The barbecue meatballs scared me. I walked there and back, enjoying the lovely weather. It wasn't going to last.

This evening Travalon got to leave work early, then he picked me up just as it was beginning to sprinkle. I had thought about walking to the Chancellor's house, which is an easy walk from campus, but the weather just seemed too iffy. Sure enough, it began to rain harder, and when we got to the Chancellor's house, it was a real downpour. I'll bet it looked like a waterfall in the sky to people who saw it from a distance. Fortunately we were half an hour early, so we just sat in the car, listening to music and hoping nobody would wonder who those weirdos sitting in a car were.... if they could even see us through the gush of water coming from the sky. I didn't want to go in until we saw some other people going in, and we saw some other cars arrive and park near ours, but nobody got out. Then we saw the Chancellor drive up in a bright red car, so we figured we'd better give it a few more minutes. Finally, just before six, people starting heading to the door so we did too. 

I had a really good time talking to the Chair of the Central Committee and his wife, another member, and someone who was on a committee on ageism that I am on - in fact, she was the one who invited me to join it. She quit the committee, and now I finally know why, so now I'm not sure what to think of the people still on it. I'll stay on it for now, but tread carefully. I was also super surprised to see my old boss from my current job, who is now high up in shared governance for Academic Staff. The place was really beautifully decorated - I just love these flowers.

Check it out - a white poppy! The Chair's wife put this in her mouth like she was going to dance the tango, so my fellow committee member said she should get on the table and dance. That didn't happen, but it was strongly implied that in her younger days such things did happen.

I had thought this was going to be a picnic, so I felt a bit too casually dressed in an ancient sundress that is probably older than the student representatives of shared governance. I don't know the student reps this year; previously, there were some very cool student reps who had no problem hobnobbing with oldsters like us. The Chair may know them, but he is the definition of extraversion and has never met anyone he can't talk to, as far as I can tell. 

Dinner was as if I had planned it, now that I'm trying to be on something of a diet once again: a bunch of salads, veggies, lettuce and tofu wraps, grilled salmon, and hardly any carbs. Travalon and the Chair were not thrilled about the distinct lack of red meat. I did have a really good gin and tonic before dinner made with grapefruit-flavored tonic water, and for dessert there was pavlova with a rhubarb and strawberry compote (my choice) or lemon pound cake (Travalon's choice). There were also some really amazing little chocolate truffles.

I did have a dream a couple of nights ago that I was at this dinner, and the Chancellor told me she had been reading my blog. What an odd dream, but probably just anxiety about saying something stupid to her. She did come over and talk to my fellow committee member and me briefly, and I said I liked her shoes (that's fine), that my best color is bright pink, that moose are the deadliest animals in Alaska (Jilly Moose should appreciate that), and that prednisone is like rocket fuel when you have a respiratory infection. So extremely random and weird, but she meets so many people that she probably barely remembers talking to me. I do get kind of scared around powerful people and say random things, but then I say random things to the people I am most comfortable in the world around. I am just a random conversation generator.

Famous Hat