We have made it to the start of a new year, despite a last-minute sucker-punch of a winter storm that dropped temperatures here to -15* F (with the wind chill factored in), blew 6 inches of snow in all directions, closed the interstate and just generally wreaked havoc with a lot of New Year's Eve plans. But we had a lovely evening at a friend's house with good food and good company. Minus, unfortunately, the hosts, who were stranded in Denver overnight. They'll have great leftovers, though.
Today is a lovely day with snowdrifts glittering in the sun. The New Year's Day menu was served as planned and we looked forward to enjoying a slow afternoon. I have a quilt to bind and send off. The teacakes arrived in Afghanistan safely and have been consumed to the last crumb, from the reports, so another batch is on the horizon.
It was going to be the last truly slow day for a few months. My boss has taken a well-deserved retirement, after 31+ years of service as a professor and curator. Effective tomorrow, I will be the acting director of the museum until the position is filled. I did not see this one coming and am looking forward to this with some excitement but much more apprehension. I'll be posting on the perspective from the director's office periodically. We all hope that the search will go smoothly and that we'll get someone with the vision to make our museum a leader in the field.
Instead of resting up, I plunged in headfirst today when I got a call that a malfunctioning sprinkler head had flooded the building. Because we have the best colleagues, faculty, staff and students ever, we had a dozen people there in 20 minutes to move boxes and get archives and publications into dry boxes. It is a bit of a nightmare right now, and there will be a lot of drying and recovery to do, but the problem was caught early enough to be a nuisance rather than a disaster.
We are hoping that this gets our bad luck out of the way for the year. Had our security guy not come by today and noticed the problem, we would have had a massive disaster to deal with on Monday. As it is, we will get everything dried out and back in place over the next week.
I am thankful for the people I work with. Museum work does not make any of us billionaires, but it puts us in touch with the best, brightest, most dedicated people I have ever known in my life, believing so strongly that we are blessed to be able to preserve a vital legacy for the future. It is good to remind myself that that is the point of all of this work. Maybe I can do this.
Happy New Year to all.
1 comment:
Which building? Museum or Paleo? Glad to hear it was minimal and not a total disaster!
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