The Office Grand Tour

My office is starting to look legitimate, so I thought I'd post some pictures and give you all the grand tour. This way, those of you who still think I am sharing a custodial closet with four other one-year hires can be schooled in the ways of truth and reality. Let the rumors cease! (I kid....I know you all have better things to do than gossip about how much bigger my office is than yours.)

Okay, my first brag: Brother Samuelsauce is letting me borrow one of his watercolors for the year I am here. He let me yoink it from the halls of the English Department and I felt like Carmen Sandiego, running out of there with a huge framed artwork under my arm. The bandit mask I was wearing at the time didn't help, either. This photo doesn't do it justice. It's a columbine flower and it's beautiful. You can't see half the colors in it from this picture.

I know the sling looks stupid right there but there was a nail in the wall right there, and I had this sling, and anyway I'm just hanging it there until I find a better place. I'm proud of that sling. I refuse to drawer it. What if I need it?

I'm pleased that I can almost fill my bookshelves. I should also add that every time I go home, I'm bringing up more books. Also, I have posters coming. But I can't resist showing off that I have an actual office with actual books on actual bookshelves. Many thanks go out to Chandler and Sharon--Chan for helping me carry in my many books from my car to the my office in 10 degree below zero weather and for Sharon who stayed in my nice warm office categorizing the books and deciding who should sit by whom (she was appalled that I even thought to put Faulkner on the same shelf as Dickens).

Please note my nerdy cross-stitch in the upper left corner. You want a close-up? That's right. It's a cross-stitch about books. I made that. Are you going to judge me or are you going to pat me on the back? That's linen, man. I'm a crazy cross-stitcher. I have the seeds of a homemaker in me yet and don't anybody accuse me otherwise.

Here's a close-up of my favorite corner of my bookshelf. I'm quite proud of that antler, even though it's pretty puny compared to the antlers my wilderness therapy friends have found on the trail. The week I found it was a good week and I tied it to the top of my pack every day to carry it home with me. I was going to cut it up and make a knife handle out of it, but I'm sort of glad I never got around to doing that. The Korean bracelet was a birthday gift from Konrad a few years ago and I made that little bird dish at the primitive skills gathering in Boulder, Utah. I let it oxidize black and the small bits of coloring on its stomach and eyes are from minerals we gathered and crushed into paint. It isn't my best piece--I gave that one to my mom.

The spoons are from the trail. I made the large one from juniper and a small dark one from cottonwood bark. Price made me the red one from manzanita and he also made my remembrance pouch that you see hanging there. The arrowhead was a blanket trade I made with my fine friend and mentor, David Holladay. He had been working on it all day and offered it for a small clay pot I had made. I definitely got the better of the deal. The leather bracelet I made with a boys band once and the wooden girl was a gift from my mom. Let me also point your attention to my wicked cool copy of Lord of the Rings and my illustrated Hobbit.

I can't go anywhere without my Grover doll so he's relaxing up there on the top shelf next to my folders and my Yellow Submarine lunchbox (I have far cooler lunchboxes than that cheap hardly-retro Beatles box, but I like to leave that collection at home. I don't think people would take me seriously if I had a whole row of children's 1970s and 1980s lunchboxes filling up a shelf).

I'm going to do a lot more to this wall, but this is how it looks so far. I've clipped some articles about Anasazi and wilderness therapy programs in Utah--the debates surrounding wilderness therapy intrigue me to no end. I really could spend my life talking about the ideas, stories, and legends of the business. It's really pulled me into Native American lore and the writings of Whitman, Thoreau, Ed Abbey, et cet. I'm hoping if I fill a wall with inspiration I might be able to contribute my own writings to the conversations abounding in outdoor magazines and mental health journals about the camps. Or whatever. I don't know. I'm just a kid.

My view. It's basically an immortal gray sky, snowy ground, and a construction trailer. I'm not bashful at all about staring down construction workers walking around out there. I'm more than pleased that all the equipment I can see is Caterpillar equipment. I always feel like Grandpa Ted is somewhere up there admiring them with me. Oh, also, I'm getting blinds for my window soon (though chances are I'll never close them), but they say the blind guy is in Mexico for another week or so. They sent me an email that said just that. "The blind guy is in Mexico for another two weeks." I thought it was a riddle or something. Some riddle where the punchline goes, "Then he picked up the hammer and saw." Wasn't there a riddle from elementary school like that?

This tablecloth from Iran is a new installment. I had an Iranian student at Utah State a few years ago and he had brought it for me after going home for Spring break. I think it's beautiful. It probably doesn't mesh with everything else going on in my office, but hodge-podge has always been my general decorative theme, hasn't it? If only I could find my old Glen Campbell "Rhinestone Cowboy" blanket. That would look awesome stapled to the ceiling (I kid, Jen, I kid).

Here's my last close-up. A picture of the fam, a "BELIEVE" tin sign from my mom (I couldn't figure out if it is more a "Believe in Santa" or a "Believe in Christ" sign, but then I stared at it so long I just thought, yeah, BELIEVE! Just the vibe of believing....I really dig that), a water gourd that Matt Howard gave me, and a talking stick my good friend Melody made for me on Cherry Creek. I love that stick. She etched my trail name onto it--that seriously must have taken a whole Sunday layover. I used it in all my favorite fire circles, and it has passed through the hands of the finest youngwalkers and trailwalkers who fiddled with it while they spoke their hearts. It has magical properties to me, laugh if you will. I say it straightfaced.

Oh, and right, my desk. Here it is. It's a mess. The screensaver came with the PC....I haven't figured out how to change it and I haven't decided what I'd want to change it to anyway. Every once in a while a unicorn picture and a dolphin picture shows up on it and that makes me giggle every time. Another unicorn is found on my pencil box--on the other side it says "EMILY IS BOSS" in pink paint. One of my favorite New Haven girls made it for me. She had been hard to win over at first, and I cherish that unicorn pencil box. I also found that pack of invisible cards in a box I rummaged through at home. It has some nostalgic properties, too, and I like to mess with them when I am waiting ten minutes nervously before class (I never get nervous in class, just in the ten minutes before).

Well, hey, thanks for visiting my office. It feels cozier now that I've had old friends visit.