Happy day

Did I mention that we have had a faculty search in our department? This time last week, we had just heard the last candidate give his job talk. And today, we have a new ethnomusicologist in our department. I will wait for the official announcement to go up on the department page before I give a name, just in case, but I am really delighted. This lovely happy place is growing, and in a direction that makes me very excited about the next few years here.
And just because it makes me happy, I must mention that I just had a meeting with a professor that I expect to work with very closely in the next few years, and it was really a productive time. Our work has some interesting intersections, and it felt really good to talk through some of them today. And just to put the cherry on top, he invited me to participate in a potentially very exciting bit of research that is in the early stages of development right now, and that I will post more on when I have more info. I wish I didn't have to be so cryptic, but I am constantly aware of how publishing things that are not fully-formed yet can go horribly wrong.
Still I am having a happy day.
Yay.
So now to channel some of that happy energy into some serious work. I'm reading Encountering Development at the moment, and preparing a short paper on some of the issues raised. Very interesting book so far, though I am still only on the introduction.