Dear Board Friends,

It has been sometime since my last post and frankly, one is grateful for the respite.  However, there is startling news to impart and I impart it with a mixture of happiness and trepidation.

Against all expectations, our dear Mlle. de Guerre has been offered a staff position at the D'Lo campus.  By adjusting her work schedule to daylight-only hours, it has been possible to achieve a situation appropriate for her unusual preferred hours.  Of course, the D'Lo campus itself is not a particularly normal place.

The past few days have been a flurry of clothes-shopping and office decorating.  Mlle.'s idea of "business attire" seems to be simply "fewer feathers, no sequins."  I have had to be quite blunt about several items, and have surreptiously returned several others.  However, the battle has been lost on the matter of a rather bright pink suit with matching charmeuse shirt.  Future co-workers, you have been warned.  (At least I was able to forestall the pink stockings, in no small part by mentioning flamingos.)

One has had to remind Mlle. that D'Lo, as a branch of USM, is a state institution and therefore it will not be possible to install a small wine cooler in her office, and there can be no champagne for lunch.  In its place we will have a mini-fridge well-supplied with dark chocolate raspberry creams and brie, and a wonderful coffee maker, very good Fair Trade coffee, and a few extra Limoges cups and saucers from the house.  Fortunately, Mlle.'s taste in art is --- different -- than her taste in apparel, so several charming small watercolors will be hung.  I don't know how she will endure a workday sans chaise, but we are shopping now for a comfortable desk chair, with perhaps an ottoman.  Wish me luck as I oppose the idea of velvet upholstery.

At some point in this process I shall have to quite gently remind Mlle.  that once the wardrobe and the office are perfected, one will be expected to actually perform tasks.  Perhaps it would be better to broach that subject after she selects her new Italian leather diary (what you would call a "day-timer").  She is torn between the purple leather/ gold trimmed pages, or the pale grey ostrich with pink silk lining. 

Do keep a kind thought for your colleagues up at D'Lo.  They will need all the help they can get.  This should be interesting.

Good evening to all,

Hermione Angleterre, Social Secretary to Monique de Guerre