Tropophobia

I knew there would be a name for it, there is for every fear. Tropophobia: the fear of moving. I would impress you with the derivation of the word if I haven't spent so much time in grade school Latin class giggling at words that sounded dirty.

In any case, there is a lot of Tropophobia going on around the building these days. As I mentioned earlier, I'm ready to walk out the front door of this building and toss a grenade over my shoulder, but others don't feel that way. I can understand that moving after being in the same place for 20+ years would be intimidating. Some of the labs around here are crammed full of shit from the Nixon era and I can hardly imagine what will be unearthed when we really do make the move. To me, the move would be a great opportunity for a fresh start, unencumbered by years of built up garbage equipment. But what the hell do I know? Many of the older faculty are looking at the move like it is going to cause an enormous loss of productivity while the lab packs and unpacks, but those who are complaining about this most vocally have time to do so, because they haven't published in ten years and I'm not sure what productivity they are worrying about.

What has not helped is the fact that we don't know when we will actually be moving, but we know it will be "soon". Basically, as soon as we CAN move in, they will want us out of here running, but no one knows when that will be. Rumors swirl around and we get updates like the Bush administration used to update the Terror Alert, post 9-11. I think the current move alert status in yellow, but it could go orange next week.