RBOC: Party Time

• So I am a wee bit tipsy and just got back from a party at my department chair's house. Indeed, the first party he's had in like a year.
• It was weird: I think that we all missed each other. Indeed, I got involved in all of these lengthy conversations with colleagues, and this actually meant that I spent more time without a drink in hand than with, which I have to say is sort of lame. And I think this was true for everybody, because usually we bust out the Donna Summer at these parties (on LP), and there was no Donna Summer. I don't even know how to talk about this.
  
• Except it was great catching up with people who've been on sabbatical, and people who have teaching schedules opposite to mine. I really do love my colleagues.
  
• I saw my mentor in the department, whom I just LOVE, and we had a great chat, and a few other people whom I really like a great deal. There were also some total assholes there, who shall remain nameless, but who truly and totally suck. Never fear, they said not a word to me, nor to BFF who was the guest of honor at this shindig because it's her going away party. Dude. Why come?
• I want to say mean-spirited things about another colleague, but I'm going to refrain because those things are mean-spirited. Also, I fear that my mean-spirited things reflect my being dead inside more than anything else.
  
• In sad news, I found out a student of mine from my very first comp class in my very first semester here, a student whom I converted into being an English major, who is awesome and sweet and in a band and just all kinds of great (He really was my first student who made me feel like a professor, in my second week yelling across the plaza at me "Hey, Dr. Crazy!") has cancer. It was all I could do not to totally break down and cry (though there were tears, just not the sobs that threatened) when my chair told me. Motherfucker. And I can't say anything to him because he wants everything to seem normal. I am heartbroken for him. It's so fucking bullshit unfair and awful. And I wish I could say something and I can't. Fuck.
• I can't end on that bullet. Let's return to the party. I avoided all political conversations, for the most part. This really should earn me some sort of award. I just can't hang with the fake bleeding-heart-liberal thing. Now, I'm a bleeding-heart-liberal in my own right, but something about being at a party filled with bleeding-heart-academics and talking politics in that particular way makes me cringe.
• That said, I do love my department. My colleagues are, for the most part, totally great. And I kind of love that we missed one another and blabbed the night away.
• If I let myself think about my student in the bullet above I'm totally going to lose it. I know I said I couldn't end on that note, but it's really the only important thing. Shit.