Day 137

I'm sorry for not writing this week, but it's been pretty quiet around here. I really don't feel like getting into the governor's budget suggestions and Yudoff's response, because it's all just talk at this point, and we've heard it all before. We know that no budgets are going to pass until next October at the earliest, and Arnold is approaching the point of being nothing but a sitting duck if he isn't there already, so I have a hard time doing much but rolling my eyes at the whole thing. Hardly any of the faculty have returned, and I haven't yet seen any students, so all is quiet. Most everyone stayed put for the holidays, so no one has much to say about being broke or worrying about money. I think everything is going to start rolling again next week, so I'll be back, I promise. For now, late on this Friday afternoon, I'm going to join my colleagues in trying to get through this last hour with chit-chat and problem solving plans for the coming rush of the beginning of the semester. Happy weekend!

Day 130

Remember my story a while back about a colleague who I believed would be wooed away by a sweeter deal at some other, stabler, private university? As it turns out, she left UC Berkeley for just such a deal within about a month of my writing about it. Before she left, she had taken over some of the duties of two of her colleagues who had been laid off and she consequently found the quality of all of her work slipping because of the added burdens. Her old department is now looking to replace her at 50% of the time she was working before. And to think that very soon, students will be paying 30% more for the services of that department...


I recently discovered an irreparable hole in my practical black dress shoes, but have worn them three times since then. My winter jacket has permanent ink stains down the front of it, but I wear it every day. I have had ramen noodles for dinner twice this week. And we are only 130 days into this furlough? I sense that my tax return will simply disappear into my financial abyss, assuming of course that the government doesn't send me an IOU instead of a check.

Day 129

Waking up to an alarm this morning for the first time in nearly three weeks was rotten. The good news is that I returned to fewer than 100 emails in my inbox, which I read through after catching up with coworkers about their various non-activities over the long break (we are all living on tighter budgets, after all). During the furlough, I read about half a dozen books and watched "An Affair to Remember" at least a half dozen times. I wrote a song, knitted a scarf, and learned how to make a classic French Bechamel sauce. I most definitely spent more time in my pajamas than in all other forms of attire combined. But the best part was the long periods of quality time I was able to spend with friends and family. Overall, the break was wonderful.

But now, back to business...

In his last State of the State address, Governor Schwarzenegger recommended that we amend the state constitution to require that we spend less on prisons than on higher education (state spending is currently quite the opposite). While I am absolutely delighted with his acknowledgment that state funding priorities are a bit out of whack, I frankly believe that the last thing this state needs is more bench-marked spending. I'm not saying the idea is a bad one, but that perhaps it is a bad one for this state in particular with the current state of our government and budget. One of the greatest problems with our budget is that the legislature has so little to play around with after all of the legally bound funds, that if we mandate educational spending without fixing the rest of the system, all the state will have is prisons and universities with a few dollars to spare for all the rest. But again, I'm relieved that he at least acknowledged the twisted priorities of a state that will allow it's education system to crumble in the interest of larger and better equipped prisons, which we will of course need to house all of our uneducated criminals.