As the academic year took hold, Wendy Heller came by for the annual music department discussion. and then there was the kickoff meeting for the language senior lecturers committee including Toni Turano, Caryl Emerson (Slavic), Jamie Rankin (German), Sukru Hanioglu (Near Eastern Studies), Denis Feeney (Classics), Joowon Suh (East Asian Studies) and Christine Sagnier (French and Italian).

Having fasted the day before for Yom Kippur, we were ready when the food started arriving for the Dean's party and fell into place with Suzanne's flowers which adorned the house

as the Main Street equipment arrived and was assembled with food alternating with flowers and candles with the flowers dominating

as Suzanne continued her arranging while the bar and tent were set with daisies in place as the work continued and the plugs were extended though the basketball hoop survived the scrutiny as the vines climbed to the roof and Suzanne surveyed the territory as the keg was prepared and the tools were there, just in case, along with a lot of machinery needed to create the lobsters not to mention massive amounts of ice and candles as the tables were prepared and I did my tour of flowers

before noting the buffet line with the menu, the entrance to the house complete with the table for smore's and then the covered cords, the basketball storage behind the hoop, the first pitcher of beer being drawn, the storage of glasses and some plantings (all while waiting for the first person to come).

After I took a picture of all the plates and the dessert setup complete with menus and a few last pictures of flowers, people began to arrive and the party began. The first lunch of the year involved Emmanuel Bourbouhakis (Classics), Frederico Marcon (East Asian Studies), Jeff Stout (Religion), Bo Honore (Economics), Christopher Skinner (Mathematics) and Wole Soboyejo (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)

Our first chair's meeting required that I get a photo of Jim Smith.

During this period, Chris Sims and Tom Sargeant won the Nobel Prize and Stan Honda was nice enough to take these pictures of me at the press conference