Where the Hell Are My Shelves
The mindless project which does not require reading a chart across every row turned out to be one of Colinette's "Love It" cardigans, in the "Blackberry" colorway:
Useful project for coming back into regular life and work -- I like the colors, I like the feel of the yarns, and I don't have to pay attention, so it's a little vacation. I'll return to the more difficult projects cheerfully. Later.
And OH what fun it's been coming back into work schedule. This week I've been trying to churn out my syllabi for the fall semester, which is starting up pretty soon. But I do this when I'm not trying to pull my office together.
Long, long ago, at the beginning of the summer, before I left for the research trip, I packed up my office, and Movers I Never Saw moved my boxes (along with boxes belonging to the rest of the department -- it's not like I got singled out for this horror) three flights up, to my new office. But they couldn't fit the furniture in my office. So before I left for England, I drew up a new floor plan for my office, but I wasn't able to put the books away. Or anything else.
Came back after a month away, found some of the furniture in the office, the books in the hall, not as many bookshelves as I needed, and two pieces of vital file-holding furniture unusable, on account of one hadn't been hung up on the wall yet -- though I'd been told it was going to have been hung up a month beforehand -- and the other was simply missing. And, as it turns out, non-existent. Oh, and I couldn't use my computer because it required a cable which (I was told) had been ordered a month beforehand but didn't exist yet.
Had fits. Stole bookshelf from The Room Where They Had Put Stuff They Couldn't Fit Elsewhere. Put books away. Found teakettle and teapot. Had tay for the love of Jaysus. Went to South Carolina for two weeks.
Came back. Discovered no, absolutely no, changes in the office. Had fits. Exclaimed that the university clearly didn't want the graduate director of the department to register graduate students for the semester, since it had failed to provide her with the means to do it. The graduate student working in the office over the summer (God help her -- what a summer for it; we're ALL having fits; luckily for her, she seems to find this all fairly amusing) went downstairs and stole a cable for me. I put the computer together. File cabinets still missing. Had more fits.
Yesterday I fixed up the cords to the computer, which were running across the floor and hence were unseemly. So that helped. Had been told that someone was coming by to hang up the damn file cabinets, but luckily I had the good sense not to hold my breath, so I'm still among the living.
I'm going to go buy a nightstand this weekend, to hold the mugs and the tea (crucial to the sanity, such as it is, of me). That'll get more of the boxes off the floor. But I've still got stacks of files around.
I'm now told that the college is hiring an independent contractor to come hang up our necessaries and art, since apparently the university maintenance squad can't get to it, because they have, like, you know, lots to do. I have discussed the university maintenance squad in this blog earlier, concerning the several years it took them to cause my old office door to be openable without performing police squad moves on it. Yeah. Let's hire outside. Cause otherwise we'll all be sitting on our files and artwork till the university decides to move us again, in another 10 years.
To be honest, however, my new office, though smaller than my last one, is much nicer, on account of the higher ceiling and the better view. And since I am farther away from the department office, I get more exercise walking my mail down the hall. Oh, right, and also we're on the 6th floor now, which provides LOTS more exercise than the 3rd floor, which is where we were before. Right now, I can make it up to the 5th floor before I have to stop and look out the window for a while. By October, I intend to be getting up the entire 6 flights without a breather. Fast.
Now it's time for me to stop having fits, and learn to live cheerfully with the piles of files, cause a couple of us still don't have bookshelves, and as it turns out the three new professors who are arriving this week don't even have desks.
Thank God I've got the tea service together. We can make it! Desks will arrive, bookshelves will appear, cabinets will become useful, art will magically attach itself to the walls. We'll be drinking uncut Assam. We're the English Department!
I'll be down the hall, reading, if you need me.
Useful project for coming back into regular life and work -- I like the colors, I like the feel of the yarns, and I don't have to pay attention, so it's a little vacation. I'll return to the more difficult projects cheerfully. Later.
And OH what fun it's been coming back into work schedule. This week I've been trying to churn out my syllabi for the fall semester, which is starting up pretty soon. But I do this when I'm not trying to pull my office together.
Long, long ago, at the beginning of the summer, before I left for the research trip, I packed up my office, and Movers I Never Saw moved my boxes (along with boxes belonging to the rest of the department -- it's not like I got singled out for this horror) three flights up, to my new office. But they couldn't fit the furniture in my office. So before I left for England, I drew up a new floor plan for my office, but I wasn't able to put the books away. Or anything else.
Came back after a month away, found some of the furniture in the office, the books in the hall, not as many bookshelves as I needed, and two pieces of vital file-holding furniture unusable, on account of one hadn't been hung up on the wall yet -- though I'd been told it was going to have been hung up a month beforehand -- and the other was simply missing. And, as it turns out, non-existent. Oh, and I couldn't use my computer because it required a cable which (I was told) had been ordered a month beforehand but didn't exist yet.
Had fits. Stole bookshelf from The Room Where They Had Put Stuff They Couldn't Fit Elsewhere. Put books away. Found teakettle and teapot. Had tay for the love of Jaysus. Went to South Carolina for two weeks.
Came back. Discovered no, absolutely no, changes in the office. Had fits. Exclaimed that the university clearly didn't want the graduate director of the department to register graduate students for the semester, since it had failed to provide her with the means to do it. The graduate student working in the office over the summer (God help her -- what a summer for it; we're ALL having fits; luckily for her, she seems to find this all fairly amusing) went downstairs and stole a cable for me. I put the computer together. File cabinets still missing. Had more fits.
Yesterday I fixed up the cords to the computer, which were running across the floor and hence were unseemly. So that helped. Had been told that someone was coming by to hang up the damn file cabinets, but luckily I had the good sense not to hold my breath, so I'm still among the living.
I'm going to go buy a nightstand this weekend, to hold the mugs and the tea (crucial to the sanity, such as it is, of me). That'll get more of the boxes off the floor. But I've still got stacks of files around.
I'm now told that the college is hiring an independent contractor to come hang up our necessaries and art, since apparently the university maintenance squad can't get to it, because they have, like, you know, lots to do. I have discussed the university maintenance squad in this blog earlier, concerning the several years it took them to cause my old office door to be openable without performing police squad moves on it. Yeah. Let's hire outside. Cause otherwise we'll all be sitting on our files and artwork till the university decides to move us again, in another 10 years.
To be honest, however, my new office, though smaller than my last one, is much nicer, on account of the higher ceiling and the better view. And since I am farther away from the department office, I get more exercise walking my mail down the hall. Oh, right, and also we're on the 6th floor now, which provides LOTS more exercise than the 3rd floor, which is where we were before. Right now, I can make it up to the 5th floor before I have to stop and look out the window for a while. By October, I intend to be getting up the entire 6 flights without a breather. Fast.
Now it's time for me to stop having fits, and learn to live cheerfully with the piles of files, cause a couple of us still don't have bookshelves, and as it turns out the three new professors who are arriving this week don't even have desks.
Thank God I've got the tea service together. We can make it! Desks will arrive, bookshelves will appear, cabinets will become useful, art will magically attach itself to the walls. We'll be drinking uncut Assam. We're the English Department!
I'll be down the hall, reading, if you need me.
<< Home