Valentine's Day

It's Monday, and the Patuxent Building (that' where my office is) officially joined the campus Can the Can program today.  The Facilities folks took away my trash can and replaced it with a similarly-sized recycle-only bin augmented by a cute little desktop trash receptacle that can comfortably fit a couple of used tissues and a candy wrapper or two.  The idea is to make it easy to recycle and hard not to.  Since I don't generate a lot of trash (at least at work), this didn't impact me too much other than to require me to make room on my desk for my little trash bin.


I had lunch with all the President's men--at least, all of his IT men--both of them.  We made the most of the balmy weather by walking to a new place in College Park, Krazi Kebob, where I had spicy chicken in a naan wrap.  Delicious.  And good conversation, too.  We chatted about everything from politics to personal computing, and I offered myself up as a resource (as I do every time I meet with my colleagues) to facilitate communication or otherwise help in any way I can to better leverage IT resources--whether centrally or departmentally based--in support of whatever needs doing and can actually be accomplished.  Or some such.


Before and after lunch, I spent most of the day at my computer, responding to email, finishing up paperwork related to a search committee I chaired, and summarizing a conversation I had last week with the Dean of Architecture and company to discuss the possibility of collaborating on a project to roll out a new computing infrastructure in support of the school's academic program.  I dabbled a bit into CRM and accessibility, but there's substantial follow-up work I need to do in both areas before the week is out.


Then there were the 50 or more miles per hour winds that seemed determined to blow my little Saturn SC2 to hither and yon on my otherwise mercifully uneventful ride home.  The cat was happy to see me, at least for a minute or two before saw me pull out my Dell Mini, sit down on the couch, and start reading email.  At that point, he correctly surmised that I was not about to feed him his dinner any time soon, and silent skulked off elsewhere to sulk in private.


After dinner (mine and the cat's), I watched the Academy Award nominated documentary, "Exit through the Gift Shop," a film that starts out being about street art and artists and a guy who's obsessed with videotaping them, but it winds up being about the videotaper as he turns into a self-styled, strangely successful street artist himself.  A strange commentary on the nature of art.


Oh, yes.  It's also Valentine's Day, and in lieu of a card, I sent Evelyn a nice little email inviting her to a special dinner somewhere sometime whenever our tight-fitting schedules permit.  She reciprocated by giving me a card and cookie in the shape of a heart.  28 years (almost) and still going strong.