It's Monday.

What do you expect to find when you come into your office after a weekend? Maybe a precariously stacked pile of papers slid onto the floor? Your least-favorite student shoved a term paper (due Friday) under your door sometime between 5 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Monday? The custodian unplugged your computer so that she could plug in her vacuum cleaner? My colleague in the office next door once left her windows open and a squirrel came in and partied all weekend long -- what a mess!

But me? The last thing I expect is to see two big, brown, sagging ceiling tiles and puddles of brown tea on my desk. There are gooey, sticky puddles around my keyboard, mouse, and coffee cup, and my monitor is covered with brown "splash." All this in itself would be bad enough, but guess what was under those ceiling tiles...

...First editions. First editions of books by authors with names like "James," "Scheffé," "Student," and "Luce," many with the original dust jackets, dust jackets now hopelessly pasted together. Some were signed by the author. Some were given to me by the author, and some were given to me by other authors whose work I have admired and studied and who were inspired by these books. While they are still valuable to me because I know where they came from and I can still read the words, they are now worthless to anyone else who cares about books.

I can't even cry. I'm too numb.

Update: I spent yesterday afternoon assessing the damage. It looks like only two important books were seriously damaged. Two others had some water damage but not enough to make me cry. The three that were completely destroyed were my (my) undergraduate textbooks in my main discipline and Methods, plus a softcover on critical thinking.

I found this link, and spent a lot of time playing with paper towels. Unfortunately the two books I really wanted to save were printed on glossy stock, and it wasn't so much a matter of drying them out as it was getting the pages unstuck. I managed, but not without damaging a few pages.

I'm going to ask my chair about compensation. I read over the university rulebook yesterday, and I didn't see anything in there about liability.