The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Seems to me you're well within your rights to gripe, AmLitHist! You don't seem to catch many breaks. Especially with that &!*/%(!ing foot.

If I were closer to retirement and they offered a buyout, I'd take no less than one year's salary, would prefer two, but the most important thing would be to keep my insurance at employee rates until I'm eligible for Medicare. My insurance isn't amazing, but it's okay and the cost is reasonable. I've lived below the poverty line before, and don't wish to do so again. I could continue to do the consulting I already do to bring in additional income or would look for an industry job, or if all else fails, go work at a bookstore because I always thought that would be fun, though I'd probably make excessive use of my employee discount and spend most of my income on books.

If I was at retirement age already (quite a ways to go yet--but visible out there on the horizon!), and thinking about it already, at least 1 year salary severance pay (better yet 2) would possibly help make my decision to pull the trigger easier. My place recently did that, but the caveat was that the department where someone takes that option would lose that faculty line! So, it kind of screwed your colleagues over. I am not sure how many folks took the bait (and to heck with their co-workers that can now do more with less!).

I'm an at-will employee, so I guess the best I could expect would be two weeks' notice.  But where would they get somebody else who could/would do the job for what I do it?  I feel pretty secure, so long as the library remains open.

No particularly noteworthy sightings, but I've been enjoying the great variety of birdsong on nice mornings.  I heard geese a couple of mornings ago, which surprised me.  Must be that pair that seems to be hanging around the region instead of going farther north.

AmLitHist... I thought it was supposed to be an incentive. 0_o

FFS!

Aiming to get a large chunk of T1 done today.

Good morning!

A bit past genius with pangram.  Yesterday I got to QBABM! I think my final word was loony.

For LB I had bigamist-topography, bigamist-tomography.

This morning is the ablation consult, so we'll see what that doctor says.

Happy solving!

Coyotes and turkeys have been spotted in Manhattan. I think they come down from the Bronx, as I don't recall any instances of their sightings in the boroughs of Brooklyn or Queens. I've seen turkeys in Manhattan and Staten Island. We went looking for one on a bird walk in Brooklyn, along a path where he'd been sighted for at least a couple of weeks, but didn't see him that day.

The Saturday bird walk was along the shoreline/marshy area where we saw assorted shorebirds--great egrets, snowy egrets, herons, glossy ibises, more than 50 ruddy ducks, other duck species, several migrant warblers, and ospreys, one of them sitting on the ususal nest. Just missed the red-headed woodpecker, which according the the birders standing there had just flown off the tree it's been haunting for about a week. I went again yesterday, and much to my surprise saw it a few trees away from its usual haunt. The coloring was exactly like that in the photo (see link above). After hopping up and down that tree trunk, the bird flew across the path and into the bushes on the other side. It was interesting to see that most everyone had either seen the bird or wanted to know if any of us had seen it. I directed one birder to the spot where I saw it and heard him tell another birder that I had seen the bird. Earlier in the week at another location, I came across a duck with 12 newly hatched ducklings.