*blows on mic*
Fair warning, this is a very long post!
From the CSA this week we got: 2 kohlrabi, a fennel (with top), some smallish carrots (with tops), a bunch of beets (with tops), lettuce, green beans, fingerling potatoes, some basil, a head of garlic, and 3 small daikon. Still around from previous weeks: beets, kohlrabi, daikon, red radishes, garlic chives, sage. *ponders* I think that's all that was still lurking.
So this week we're having grilled sausages, French potato salad, green bean salad with fire walnuts, steamed fennel, boiled beets, kohlrabi cut in matchsticks and stir-fried with olive oil and thyme, lettuce salad, chicken kebabs, rice, salmon and white bean salad, and a couscous salad that I'm going to whomp up with couscous, cucumber, grape tomatoes, and a vinaigrette with many herbs (basil, sage, and garlic chives from the CSA, plus probably parsley, oregano, and maybe dill from my herb garden). Oh, and chocolate cake from a mix. :-)
I spent most of today cooking, grocery shopping, and doing five loads of laundry, but pretty much all of the above is done except the salmon salad, couscous salad, and cooking the kebabs. The lettuce is all washed and torn up, the chicken is marinating, and all the other things mentioned are cooked. So yay for me.
As I mentioned in one of my brief posts earlier this week, it turns out that I'm getting paid better than I even hoped I would, which is nice. So far the people I work with have all been pretty much friendly and pleasant; starting in summer is good for that since it's relatively slow and low-stress. I have:
The downsides so far are mostly as anticipated, to do with the structural aspects rather than the job itself. Basically I leave at 6:30 am and get home at 6:30 pm, which is a long day, and a long drive. So I'm tired and a little cranky when I get home, and really only have 4 hours at most at home in the evening (and that much only if I get only 7 hours of sleep, which is not quite enough -- I am much happier with 8). I'm around lots of people pretty much all day, or else driving in traffic especially at the end, so I want down time/alone time, whereas SO has usually been pretty much at home alone all day except for Juno (or else on the phone with or in person dealing with assorted repair people), so he wants quality interaction with me. These conflicting wishes have so far not been particularly conducive to harmony, but hopefully we'll find a balance soon. The current agreement is that I will get one hour of alone time, at the moment after 9; when SO is on campus with his regular schedule, it will be the time between my arrival and his.
Owing to the busy-ness of the first week, I have made no progress at all on clearing up my study. Hoping to do some tomorrow. Also I desperately need to weed my tomato bed, as the Bermuda grass is flourishing there.
The nifty expensive new water heater turned out to not be suitable for us, as it requires a hole in the roof for proper venting, plus electrical connections, so we're going back to the original choice; that will not arrive however till next week at soonest.
SO is trying to get someone to do a little restoration on our west windows (he having done much reconstruction of the south ones himself) but there have been some problems in actually connecting with this person, who finally made it here to take a look this morning -- just when SO was out running (training for fall). Since I did not realize that SO had had a hard time getting hold of the guy, and had hoped to set up a time for him to actually start working on it, I did not make such an appointment and there was some ensuing consternation. One of those situations in which everyone feels annoyed and aggrieved.
Even more annoyingly, we got a letter dated June 9, which arrived either yesterday or today (we're not sure since I didn't open it till today, but I'm 99% sure that I cleared out the old stack of mail on Thursday, so it couldn't have been then), from our home insurance company saying that as of today, June 12, our insurance was terminated for non-payment if we didn't get our mortgage holder to pay up. WHAT. So I looked at our credit union statements online, which indicated that a payment had been made from our escrow account in that exact amount, on June 3. Now, that statement does not say to whom the payment was made, but if it cleared, that means that someone got and cashed the check. So unless the credit union both wrote and sent it to the wrong party, there's something very wrong here. But of course today is Saturday and nothing can be done. SO tried calling the parent company's claims line (the local office being closed, and we having no number other than the office one for our contact person), but got no joy there. So he will have the fun of trying to solve this on Monday, I fear. However he has delegated the task of trying to find a different insurance company to me. Fair enough, I suppose, although I did point out to him that I will have to do this in half-hour increments on my cell phone over my lunch breaks this week, so it's not exactly going to be a quick process, which he would prefer.
Uh... in more pleasant news, we did have a nice evening out last night to celebrate my first week on the job -- went to our usual local nice Chinese place which has a live band on Fridays, which we both enjoy. And SO got a check for his jury duty service, which he's going to call about as the number on the actual check is higher than the number on the receipt which tallies his hours/days and the pay. Once he's straightened that out though he wants to spend it on a super-nice meal. Last but not least, we have reservations at a cabin on a lake a couple of hours away to spend three nights (24th, 25th, 26th of this month), and also a dinner reservation in a town about 45 minutes from that cabin, for our 10th anniversary (technically the dinner will be a day late, but since about half of these 10 years, we have not even been in the same country on the correct day, we feel we're doing pretty well). Juno will be going with us. :-) (To the lake cabin, not the dinner, of course.)
Totally unrelated, I've made copies of a whole bunch of old teaching files -- syllabi, lectures, assignments, the works -- and am sending those off to several former grad students plus one of my old grad school friends (although I'm not sure when I'll make it to the post office -- next Saturday at soonest, or else I'll have to ask SO to do it for me).
And finally, fandom-what-fandom. I dictated nothing at all this week, wrote nothing in any other context either. Partly I think because I just wasn't on my own computer more than a few minutes all week, and it's been so long since I wrote anything now that I don't remember where I was on any of my fics-in-progress... which means that it's really hard to pick up again, and I don't do well at writing stuff out of order. *sighs* I do have a draft of the next HotM chapter, and close-to-complete drafts of the two things I owe juniperus, so maybe I'll manage to do a little with those tomorrow (in between the weeding and the cooking). I've also read no fic at all, I don't think. I have this despondent feeling that I'm going to take a not-exactly-voluntary break from fandom for a month or six weeks. I'll be pleased if it doesn't happen, mind you, but right now there's just so much else going on that I don't want fandom participation to feel like an obligation, you know? Maybe I'll consider doing a round of drabble requests, or something, just to feel a little connected...
{{hugs flist tight}}
If you made it all the way to the end of this very long post, I'm impressed!
From the CSA this week we got: 2 kohlrabi, a fennel (with top), some smallish carrots (with tops), a bunch of beets (with tops), lettuce, green beans, fingerling potatoes, some basil, a head of garlic, and 3 small daikon. Still around from previous weeks: beets, kohlrabi, daikon, red radishes, garlic chives, sage. *ponders* I think that's all that was still lurking.
So this week we're having grilled sausages, French potato salad, green bean salad with fire walnuts, steamed fennel, boiled beets, kohlrabi cut in matchsticks and stir-fried with olive oil and thyme, lettuce salad, chicken kebabs, rice, salmon and white bean salad, and a couscous salad that I'm going to whomp up with couscous, cucumber, grape tomatoes, and a vinaigrette with many herbs (basil, sage, and garlic chives from the CSA, plus probably parsley, oregano, and maybe dill from my herb garden). Oh, and chocolate cake from a mix. :-)
I spent most of today cooking, grocery shopping, and doing five loads of laundry, but pretty much all of the above is done except the salmon salad, couscous salad, and cooking the kebabs. The lettuce is all washed and torn up, the chicken is marinating, and all the other things mentioned are cooked. So yay for me.
As I mentioned in one of my brief posts earlier this week, it turns out that I'm getting paid better than I even hoped I would, which is nice. So far the people I work with have all been pretty much friendly and pleasant; starting in summer is good for that since it's relatively slow and low-stress. I have:
- learned how the circulation checkout program works, and have the basics mostly down although I am slow and do make mistakes
- gone with my predecessor (who's here through June and training me) through her files, both computer files (accessible through the campus network drive, so I'll have those) and paper files (we got rid of some, and there's more that can be shredded once I verify retention policy)
- talked some with my staff (3 people) and I'll be shadowing each of them for several hours one day next week, to see better what all they do and how they do it
- met a couple of times with my boss (although since all of us are in one large office, and I'm temporarily at a student desk which is right in front of his with no cubicle wall, he sees me most of the day)
- shadowed at the circ desk and met some of the student assistants (SAs) who are working this summer
- met a few people from other areas of my department and other departments in the library -- my boss will probably take me around next week sometime and introduce me to the other department heads (he is a dept. head himself)
- talked with my boss about possibly taking the leadership training program the campus offers (suggested by the woman who heads the interlibrary services section, and is organizationally my peer; she has evidently been urged to do this but seems to want company in the process, and I'm fine with that)
- learned how to do one or two of the other things that this position entails, such as keeping track of some of the circ stats, and processing leave requests from my staff
- taken a lot of notes, and typed them up trying to organize them more logically
- started making lists of questions to ask various people (and have asked some)
- started making a list of things I want/need to do in the short term (by the end of the month), medium term (by the end of summer), and longer term
- started making a schedule of things that I will need to do daily, weekly, monthly, each semester, once a year (need to pick my predecessor's brain about this more)
- learn more about the circ process, the more advanced sorts of things
- help move circ from where it's been temporarily housed for many months back to the newly-renovated central area
- shadow staff, as noted above (plus one other person who doesn't actually report to me -- the guy in charge of laptops, who is my equal in terms of organizational flowchart structure but has less overall authority and no regular staff under him, plus he works a regular evening shift in the semesters as my staff also do; I however will rotate through taking a different evening each week)
- learn how to do payroll (Monday); probably other similar things, either that I will personally do most of the time, or that staff mostly do but I should know how
- check in on various administrative and technical things, like making sure I have access to everything I need access to, that my employment records are all straight, and so on
- keep working on notes/lists of questions/lists of things to do, to get a handle on the work and work flow overall
- doubtless many more things that either I've forgotten or don't know about yet
The downsides so far are mostly as anticipated, to do with the structural aspects rather than the job itself. Basically I leave at 6:30 am and get home at 6:30 pm, which is a long day, and a long drive. So I'm tired and a little cranky when I get home, and really only have 4 hours at most at home in the evening (and that much only if I get only 7 hours of sleep, which is not quite enough -- I am much happier with 8). I'm around lots of people pretty much all day, or else driving in traffic especially at the end, so I want down time/alone time, whereas SO has usually been pretty much at home alone all day except for Juno (or else on the phone with or in person dealing with assorted repair people), so he wants quality interaction with me. These conflicting wishes have so far not been particularly conducive to harmony, but hopefully we'll find a balance soon. The current agreement is that I will get one hour of alone time, at the moment after 9; when SO is on campus with his regular schedule, it will be the time between my arrival and his.
Owing to the busy-ness of the first week, I have made no progress at all on clearing up my study. Hoping to do some tomorrow. Also I desperately need to weed my tomato bed, as the Bermuda grass is flourishing there.
The nifty expensive new water heater turned out to not be suitable for us, as it requires a hole in the roof for proper venting, plus electrical connections, so we're going back to the original choice; that will not arrive however till next week at soonest.
SO is trying to get someone to do a little restoration on our west windows (he having done much reconstruction of the south ones himself) but there have been some problems in actually connecting with this person, who finally made it here to take a look this morning -- just when SO was out running (training for fall). Since I did not realize that SO had had a hard time getting hold of the guy, and had hoped to set up a time for him to actually start working on it, I did not make such an appointment and there was some ensuing consternation. One of those situations in which everyone feels annoyed and aggrieved.
Even more annoyingly, we got a letter dated June 9, which arrived either yesterday or today (we're not sure since I didn't open it till today, but I'm 99% sure that I cleared out the old stack of mail on Thursday, so it couldn't have been then), from our home insurance company saying that as of today, June 12, our insurance was terminated for non-payment if we didn't get our mortgage holder to pay up. WHAT. So I looked at our credit union statements online, which indicated that a payment had been made from our escrow account in that exact amount, on June 3. Now, that statement does not say to whom the payment was made, but if it cleared, that means that someone got and cashed the check. So unless the credit union both wrote and sent it to the wrong party, there's something very wrong here. But of course today is Saturday and nothing can be done. SO tried calling the parent company's claims line (the local office being closed, and we having no number other than the office one for our contact person), but got no joy there. So he will have the fun of trying to solve this on Monday, I fear. However he has delegated the task of trying to find a different insurance company to me. Fair enough, I suppose, although I did point out to him that I will have to do this in half-hour increments on my cell phone over my lunch breaks this week, so it's not exactly going to be a quick process, which he would prefer.
Uh... in more pleasant news, we did have a nice evening out last night to celebrate my first week on the job -- went to our usual local nice Chinese place which has a live band on Fridays, which we both enjoy. And SO got a check for his jury duty service, which he's going to call about as the number on the actual check is higher than the number on the receipt which tallies his hours/days and the pay. Once he's straightened that out though he wants to spend it on a super-nice meal. Last but not least, we have reservations at a cabin on a lake a couple of hours away to spend three nights (24th, 25th, 26th of this month), and also a dinner reservation in a town about 45 minutes from that cabin, for our 10th anniversary (technically the dinner will be a day late, but since about half of these 10 years, we have not even been in the same country on the correct day, we feel we're doing pretty well). Juno will be going with us. :-) (To the lake cabin, not the dinner, of course.)
Totally unrelated, I've made copies of a whole bunch of old teaching files -- syllabi, lectures, assignments, the works -- and am sending those off to several former grad students plus one of my old grad school friends (although I'm not sure when I'll make it to the post office -- next Saturday at soonest, or else I'll have to ask SO to do it for me).
And finally, fandom-what-fandom. I dictated nothing at all this week, wrote nothing in any other context either. Partly I think because I just wasn't on my own computer more than a few minutes all week, and it's been so long since I wrote anything now that I don't remember where I was on any of my fics-in-progress... which means that it's really hard to pick up again, and I don't do well at writing stuff out of order. *sighs* I do have a draft of the next HotM chapter, and close-to-complete drafts of the two things I owe juniperus, so maybe I'll manage to do a little with those tomorrow (in between the weeding and the cooking). I've also read no fic at all, I don't think. I have this despondent feeling that I'm going to take a not-exactly-voluntary break from fandom for a month or six weeks. I'll be pleased if it doesn't happen, mind you, but right now there's just so much else going on that I don't want fandom participation to feel like an obligation, you know? Maybe I'll consider doing a round of drabble requests, or something, just to feel a little connected...
{{hugs flist tight}}
If you made it all the way to the end of this very long post, I'm impressed!