Summer News

Hi Everyone,

well, not much too offer you all but I do have some summer news. My office has moved to new digs. Unfortunately we've moved off campus. In my old office in Cramer Hall, we were right on the Park Blocks and I had a beautiful view of the park from my window. I could watch the seasons change and watch people at the same time. The new office is on the 8th floor of a building two blocks east of the campus. The building was formerly the AT&T Building but now called the Market Center Building. AT&T still has 3 floors of the 9 story building but the rest of it, with the exception of a few separate businesses here and there, is now almost exclusively Portland State offices. So my office, Academic Affairs has joined Human Resources, the Finance and Administration office, University Communications and the entire Theater Arts Dept in taking over the building. PSU has received permission from the State Board of Higher Education to buy the building eventually which makes sense. It will become the administrative building for the campus.

Here's a picture of my new office. It's quite large, in fact, I'm kind of embarassed about the amount of room I have when I compare it to colleagues on other floors in the building. The woman I work with publishing the catalog just moved to the 7th floor and her space is about 1/3 the size of mine. Hey, I'm not going to give it up. I love the view which looks west towards the campus and I look directly down on top of St. Mary's Academy.

The overall feel of the new space is very "professional". Our staff have always been very good and dress appropriate but we're still not requiring dress shirts or pants, thank heavens. That's one of the perks of working at a public university. We're very casual but still need to maintain a professional demeanor.

Dave and I gutted our tv room a couple of months ago, so we could recapture some space that will eventually be used in the bathroom remodel. The tv room is bare bones now with just the studs etc. showing. We were hoping to have the new sheetrock in by the time we have our summer party, but that may not happen. Dave and our friend Jon have been rewiring the room which has to happen before the sheetrocking, but they got sidetracked the last couple of weekends. They ended up rewiring the entire basement, which they figured was as important to get done as the rewiring upstairs. So now the basement is finished. But then they had to rewire our bedroom upstairs for a new air conditioner that we're installing. When we gutted the tv room, the vent that gave the heat and air conditioning from the furnace and heat pump was removed and not replaced. It never was strong enough to really cool the upstairs down or heat it up so we figured the new splitter (heat pump) that we're installing is the better way to go. So that should be finished by the end of this week. Then they can finish the tv room. I hope.

We're looking forward to seeing Deb and Ken in July when they come to Portland to visit. Deb and I and Gary will have breakfast together just the three of us so we can talk "family" without our respective other halves. That will be fun.

Dave and I don't have a lot of summer vacation plans this year. I'm taking a couple of Fridays off so I can have some 3-day weekends, and we'll be going on our annual "all boys camping" trip in July. We used to go tent-camping with our friends but as we got older we all decided that sleeping on the ground and not showering for four days didn't hold the allure that it used to, so now we rent a house somewhere and the only "camping" that happens is inside the house after some good drinks. We're going to the coast this year. We've rented a house that's directly on the beach and has a hot tub. It'll be relaxing and fun.

Well, I'd better get to work so I'll end now and will try to add more later this month.

Love to you all.