After I wrote the previous post about what looked to be a soul-sucking master's defense and a committee chair trying to intimidate me into signing off on a horrible paper, I got another voice mail from said committee chair. On my cell phone. In the message, the chair said, "I'll be sitting here by my phone, waiting for you to call me back."

Sigh.

I knew that I would get no rest until I called the chair back, so I did. And in our conversation, I realized that this chair didn't really understand that what he/she was doing was verging on intimidation OR that we could get the student to do revisions and then sign, and that it was no big deal to do so OR that I was really not going to change my mind.

So I made all of that clear to the chair (nicely, mind you) and went to bed feeling much better about it. The defense the next morning turned out to be rather nice. We had a great conversation about the topic -- because the student is a great thinker and talker, really, just not such a great writer -- and the student was very willing to make revisions, recognized his/her shortcomings as a writer and in this paper, and all was very civilized and gracious.

In other news, it finally got warm here this weekend (yeah!), which means that we finally finished putting in flowers in our brand new garden out front:

That's silvermound, Shasta daisies, delphinium, columbines, cone flowers, and lavender in the bed. Should be really nice -- in a couple of years!







And it means that the cat mint that I planted last year is blooming nicely.







And it means that we got to go take a short walk up in the mountains.

So, a lovely day all told.





P.S. Today is our 6th wedding anniversary. Yes, we've only been married for 6 years, though we've been together for 10 -- and it feels as though we've always been together. We celebrated with our beautiful walk in the mountains and a breakfast out.