Not a turning-fifty post

Beautiful sun-draped early morning Thursday and the top was down on the Miata all the way in. Heater was cranked, though, to combat the low 40's (about 6° C) — I'm not that crazy. Bird song was in evidence everywhere along my casual short commute.

Thursday is the great pretender, trying to trick us into believing the weekend is almost here. When he robes himself in golden sunlight he is even more plausible. I can almost taste the weekend, with it's promised mid-seventies (mid-20's) sunny weather. So nice to look at a weather app and see only sun globes for a change.


There is a Board meeting this evening, where I will present our budget for next year, for first consideration. This will be the first year since I have been in this position that the legislature hasn't applied new cuts to our state funding. There are still the cuts for this coming year that were doled out at the start of the biennium, so we still see a further reduction in our state allocation, but at least it doesn't get compounded with more new cuts. [Here I shout a weak hurrah!] Our college has had our state allocation reduced over 30% in the last four years, so stitching a budget together that allows us to continue to serve our mission in our community remains a challenge. We have slid a long way down this bank, and there will be many years of climbing back up to do, assuming this still-fragile economic recovery holds.

Earlier this week I suppose I should have written a post on turning fifty, some short bit on the accumulated wisdom of my ages or something, but I didn't feel any urge to do so. Like calendars crossing century lines, turning fifty is one of those supposedly-meaningful boundaries. And maybe it is, when you eye it from afar and on the lower end perspective of the number line. It must seem impossibly old and far away. I don't remember. To those on the higher end of the number line it probably looks, peering back, as insignificant as any other mile post once you have walked past it a few more miles. I'm not really a calendars-as-significance sort of person, though. Calendars are for scheduling things that must be scheduled to keep track of, not for anticipating or recording major events. Take the calendar away and there is no significance to turning fifty (or any other age). So this paragraph is as close to a turning-fifty post as I intend to offer. I did get an offer from AARP in yesterday's mail, though.

I've been in a Sigur Rós playlist mood again lately, maybe because I am anticipating the release of their new album later this month. Good music to write to, build a budget and budget presentation to, or just to quietly turn fifty to.

Today's playlist (all Sigur Rós or Jonsi):
- Syndir Guös (opinberun frelsarans)
- Ba Ba
- Saint Naive - Live (Jonsi)
- Svefn-G-Englar


- Posted via Hermes.