moving day

Today I had to move out of my office. We all had to move. The Center is changing hands. Politics. It will be renovated, shut down completely, we will be displaced to various parts of the university (me to a 4th floor windowless office that's nowhere near the university), and we don't know if we will ever return. They say 4 months, but everything is changing, people (including my whole project) are being kicked out in stages, and no one is telling us anything. Politics.

It was a sad day, because in spite of the fact that we're not the kind of work environment where everyone is all chummy and eats lunch together on a regular basis, we don't want to be broken up. We don't want to not know when we'll be together again-- if ever. We're the kind of place where we hardly see each other, where most days the building is half-empty, where people are always in another country or under the pressure of various deadlines, where it's taken me, quite frankly, a long time to get to know people. But I have, a year and a half later, built some significant relationships, that I am sad to see go.

There is my colleague that I see sometimes at mass, who is also hiding a fervent faith under her professional academic persona, who passes on to me rich morsels of her Catholic faith. She is a very deep person, who if you can get her to talk about herself and her experiences, always has amazing things to say. Today as we were all packing up, wandering in and out of offices, feeling sad and in-transition, talking more than usual, I got several incredible stories. A rather famous friend of hers just made her the godmother of his child, but what I didn't know is that his family has also just adopted an African baby that was abandoned in a latrine. An unexpected encounter today brought up a connection from her past, a close friend who got AIDS (and later died) while shooting up with his 4 brothers-- they all got AIDS. And then, while packing up a framed (and beautiful) Oscar Romero quote, she got more animated than I had ever seen her while talking about her "main men", the Jesuits, and passed on this quote:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything. (Fr. Pedro Arrupe, 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus)

In other news, I won a huge, gigantic, nearly 1-lb. Toblerone today. I frequently participate in psychology studies for the extra cash. Sometimes I earn quite a bit of money. I have now beaten the odds with such diverse talents as winning simplified computer versions of Texas Hold 'Em, showing very selfish/anti-social behavior in a version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, and discerning which line is infinitesimally longer in hundreds of computer trials. But I think this study was the most exciting ever-- the regular money PLUS a giant Toblerone.

Our other big news is Joel finally got a job! Three days before our six month anniversary! It was quite a weekend.