It's getting real...

...retirement, that is.

What once seemed comfortably in the future has all of a sudden moved to just around the corner. In fact, in a few days I'll have single digit workdays left!

And I've had not one, but two fine retirement parties...so I guess it must really be happening. The lovely flowers shown above are from the university-wide celebration for all the retiring faculty. It was very nice, and in addition to getting to take home some of the floral decorations, I was given this wonderful watercolor by Bro. Cletus Behlman, the University's talented and prolific artist in residence:

It shows the distinctive main administration building and is now proudly on display in our downstairs powder room, where we've had another of his paintings for some time.

But a more special party was thrown by my wonderful colleagues on Friday. Look at these great decorations (and decorative eats)—a perfect sendoff for a government information librarian.

Here's a closeup of the cake, "painted" by our own cake-artist-in-residence:

Even the cupcakes sported stars and bars!

We had to have the party now since several of my co-workers will be on vacation the rest of the

month, but I'll be working thru May 31.

I have a lot of old emails and documents to sort through, I need to do some final tidying-up of our tangible collection, and I want to go over my research guides again to catch anything that needs updating.

Since they are not replacing my position, my work is being divided up among several of my colleagues, and I want to leave things as shipshape-and-Bristol-fashion for them as I can.

That's the least I can do for this group of friends who went to so much trouble for this great party!