9/6/2007 Mary's Double Birthday Present

The window. This is a long story. It started as one little joke and now it's a tradition. I'm going to have to go backwards and blog about the early ones now because I can see it's going to be an on-going entry into the blog now. I'm thinking this is not so much my life with the Mainiacs, but their life with me! Oh well. :-)

So, last semester in February or March or so, when the semester was still new and life in the new building was still new (remember, the Education Center opened in January and I got to be the first one to occupy my office space), Kristin walks into my office and tries to get me to look out my window. I do, and there's Mary in her window across the way, flashing her lights on and off. We had been joking about having each other's windows as our "view" but now she's sending Morse code messages to me.

Well, this is too fun. I immediately find a website with the Morse code alphabet on it and print it out and put it in Mary's box so that next time she flashes her lights at me, she can at least be sending me an intelligible message. Then a few days later, Kristin takes me down to "Everyone's Resource Depot"--a cute little shop in the basement of the Education Center that has all the stuff that teachers try to save because they might be able to use them in their classroom: Styrofoam meat trays, miscellaneous pens and pencils, corks, fabric squares, carpet samples, . . . you know the stuff. The whole Farmington community contributes to it and anyone can come and shop there. For less than $2, I bought long paint sticks, sheets of red and yellow card stock, and other supplies. I went back to my office and made a pair of semaphore flags and printed off the directions for the semaphore alphabet. I wrapped it all up in brown paper and string and Allen, one of our great custodians, to let me in and leave it on her desk. The next day, she's standing at her window sending semaphore messages. Wow. That works REALLY well. This goes on for several weeks and then it's time for me to interview for the 3 year position. When I got the call at 7pm that night from the dean saying I got the job, something inspired me to write "I G O T I T !"--one letter per piece of paper--and tape it up in my window so Mary would know. It was a big joke and lots of fun and other people noticed it and stopped in to congratulate me. Mary and Heidi (Mary's next door neighbor who saw the window sign before Mary and told her about it) even put "Congratulations" signs in their windows. A few days later, I took my sign down and then Mary came and scolded me for not putting something else up in my window. Didn't I know it was part of my new job now to keep her entertained by putting new signs up in my window?!

And that's how it all began.

I will definitely go back and find the photos of the other windows and put them here in the blog. On my last day of the spring semester before I left for Texas for the summer, I put up a window display that basically said, "Gone back to Texas". Mary hated that window. When I got back, she bugged me every time she saw me to take it down. I had a new window planned, but didn't have time to get to it. Then I found out it was going to be Mary's birthday and that night, I made a different new window.

So here's Mary's double birthday present:

One part of the present is that I made a window just in honor of her birthday. The other part of the present is that I finally took down the window that she hated so much.