Stuff and Nonsense
Three Things (The OMG Is It Seriously Wednesday? Edition)
1. I am settling into the new job all right so far. I am drowning in training materials. I've lost track of how many webinars I have to watch, along with training videos, quizzes, handouts, wiki articles, conferences with HR - and it will be days yet before I start actually working with the editorial/CS software. People keep reassuring me that everyone is totally overwhelmed at first, and I'm sure I must be walking around all day with that startled-rabbit new-hire look on my face. But it helps that everyone in the office has been super nice and supportive so far. I like my supervisor a lot (and I see her all the time, since we are in pods of shoulder-height cubicles), people have been patient in explaining things when I'm shadowing in editorial, and I'm getting used to the culture on the intra-office chat program. And there are some nice small perks, like the snack desk and the free sodas and TV in the break room (I'm easy to please, apparently). Also, there is a cute butch lesbian with a mohawk in the cubicle block next to me. :)
2. I got my first alumni call from Stanford tonight! Which, you know, is probably not something that warrants excitement, but it was interesting to see what it's like from the other side (much more fun and much less stressful, unsurprisingly). I had planned for a long time to mess with my student caller a little - nothing mean or unreasonable, just making them work for their gift a little and making sure they were following procedure (since I know how the call script is supposed to go). But I couldn't bring myself to do it, I just chatted with my student a little and told her she was really lucky, because I wouldn't have been able to give if I hadn't started work this week. And then at the end she put me on the phone with Awesome Boss R (who was my boss when I was working there last year, and is, as you can guess, pretty awesome) and I got to thank him for acting as a reference and saying nice things about me, and let him know I got the job. All in all, a very happy-making phone call.
3. I have been reading a book on the trial of the Templars this week - an academic text on the actual history, not anything about the wacky conspiracy theories. It is pretty interesting in itself (I am a massive medievalist nerd, and really fascinated by monastic orders), and giving me a lot of ideas for stories I'd like to write. Some of them are more serious/original, like the one about the knight who survived the trials and got sent off to another order with massive PTSD, and is constantly being pestered by people who think the Templars survived (to which his response is an emphatic OMG FUCK YOU NO). But those ideas keep getting replaced by far far sillier ones. Like the Barcelona RPF historical AU where the Nou Camp is a Templar castle and all the boys are knights. (Sensible in that the order was big in Catalonia, not so sensible in that how do you explain the existence of Leo Messi, Dani Alves, and the rest of the SA players?). Or the Dragon Age story that introduces the Cathar heresy into the Maker/Andraste/Chant cosmology, possibly combining it with elements of elven liberation ideology, because why not? Hey, we've already got elven-centric apocrypha and existence of apostates and heretic sects, I think I could find a way to make it work.
This entry was originally posted at http://masterofmidgets.dreamwidth.org/264554.html. You can also comment there using OpenID.
1. I am settling into the new job all right so far. I am drowning in training materials. I've lost track of how many webinars I have to watch, along with training videos, quizzes, handouts, wiki articles, conferences with HR - and it will be days yet before I start actually working with the editorial/CS software. People keep reassuring me that everyone is totally overwhelmed at first, and I'm sure I must be walking around all day with that startled-rabbit new-hire look on my face. But it helps that everyone in the office has been super nice and supportive so far. I like my supervisor a lot (and I see her all the time, since we are in pods of shoulder-height cubicles), people have been patient in explaining things when I'm shadowing in editorial, and I'm getting used to the culture on the intra-office chat program. And there are some nice small perks, like the snack desk and the free sodas and TV in the break room (I'm easy to please, apparently). Also, there is a cute butch lesbian with a mohawk in the cubicle block next to me. :)
2. I got my first alumni call from Stanford tonight! Which, you know, is probably not something that warrants excitement, but it was interesting to see what it's like from the other side (much more fun and much less stressful, unsurprisingly). I had planned for a long time to mess with my student caller a little - nothing mean or unreasonable, just making them work for their gift a little and making sure they were following procedure (since I know how the call script is supposed to go). But I couldn't bring myself to do it, I just chatted with my student a little and told her she was really lucky, because I wouldn't have been able to give if I hadn't started work this week. And then at the end she put me on the phone with Awesome Boss R (who was my boss when I was working there last year, and is, as you can guess, pretty awesome) and I got to thank him for acting as a reference and saying nice things about me, and let him know I got the job. All in all, a very happy-making phone call.
3. I have been reading a book on the trial of the Templars this week - an academic text on the actual history, not anything about the wacky conspiracy theories. It is pretty interesting in itself (I am a massive medievalist nerd, and really fascinated by monastic orders), and giving me a lot of ideas for stories I'd like to write. Some of them are more serious/original, like the one about the knight who survived the trials and got sent off to another order with massive PTSD, and is constantly being pestered by people who think the Templars survived (to which his response is an emphatic OMG FUCK YOU NO). But those ideas keep getting replaced by far far sillier ones. Like the Barcelona RPF historical AU where the Nou Camp is a Templar castle and all the boys are knights. (Sensible in that the order was big in Catalonia, not so sensible in that how do you explain the existence of Leo Messi, Dani Alves, and the rest of the SA players?). Or the Dragon Age story that introduces the Cathar heresy into the Maker/Andraste/Chant cosmology, possibly combining it with elements of elven liberation ideology, because why not? Hey, we've already got elven-centric apocrypha and existence of apostates and heretic sects, I think I could find a way to make it work.
This entry was originally posted at http://masterofmidgets.dreamwidth.org/264554.html. You can also comment there using OpenID.