happy holiday parties; and, congratulations, graduates!

Emily had a holiday celebration with her co-workers last week, and though I'm going to offer her the chance to do a guest entry about that later on, I do want to use her picture of the tree at the Unity library to lead this post--notice the archive-box decorations on the tree . . .

well, on Friday, we went to Tom Tuozzo's for a philosophy department holiday party, which was great--good food, good stuff to drink, heat lamps on the deck for the smokers . . . and the people were okay too
(especially, I should say, as the hour got later--when, for example, the smokers just moved inside the house & gave up on the heat lamps)
Sadly, this weekend Emily & I forgot to bring our camera with us, so all I can offer are blurry photos from my cell phone, like this one:

Here Rodd offers Dodie some sort of house-plant (Christmas cactus, I'm told), towards the end of the party . . .

On Sunday, Deron invited us to attend the December graduation ceremony for the Journalism School. Deron receives his masters degree this month--well done

My friend Kengo, who took that free Spanish class with me a couple years ago, also graduated, with a bachelors in journalism


Mimi and Haley with our graduate himself--congratulations, Deron!
(& yes, if you're wondering, he did keep his collar up like that even as he crossed the stage . . . that's our Deron)


I know this is quite blurry, but here's a photo of the J-school faculty and graduates singing the KU alma mater to close the ceremony

well, there's still 45 papers I'm supposed to be grading, so that's all for now
though I just wanted to mention that I think I may set up a second blog (no, Deron, not about basketball--though I'd gladly read it if you started one)--people (well, at least two people) have asked about some of the 'fancier' things I've been doing on here lately, so I think that from now on, for anyone interested, I'll keep a tally of any web-design tricks I run across . . . so I guess that's something to look forward to in the next few days (?)
(the address will be www.yancy9b.blogspot.com)
cheers