My Blue Castle

So in an attempt to be helpful we make ourselves jump through a LOT of hoops. Just spent all morning putting on reserve new to us titles that we ordered, and taking off reserve the same titles that we borrowed from our other branches to fulfill people's needs until the new ones arrived. Put new ones on reserve. Take old ones OFF reserve. Have people change their minds and want BOTH copies on reserve. So spend all morning chasing my tail. Which is less fun than my cat makes it appear. 

Drug (Dragged?) myself to the theater, after a disastrous "dinner" at the "Diner" next to the theater. I had about 50 minutes and I just wanted some soup, so I thought no problem. Yeah. Took 20 minutes just to get waited on (Lone guy working told me there might be a small delay the kitchen was all backed up.) Um. There were only 6 tables at the point. If that swamps your kitchen ... dude you have bigger problems. So I gulped down some terrible chicken noodle soup in about five minutes and then stood in line which lone worker dude flirted with the table he was checking out ahead of me instead of motoring on through and getting the work done. I appreciate to a point someone telling me "we're sort of busy things might be a little slow" ... until lone worker dude spent more time trying to get his six tables to feel sorry for him for being so overworked that he was NOT WORKING WHILE HE WAS DOING IT. Whatever. I got to the theater on time and got hugs from employees and all was well.

And it was a fabulously fun show. I probably would have enjoyed it MORE if I wasn't so damn tired, but that's okay. Production values YO. amazing.

And I smiled a lot this morning when I fired up twitter and saw that one of the supporting cast members (who must have been following the hashtag) favorited my tweet of the theater marquee and posted that it made him all warm and cosy on a snowing London morning. awwww. bless. 

So now I'm hiding in my office having eaten a healthy lunch and am trying to look busy for the next two hours until our second candidate comes in for his interview. 

Hopefully quitting time arrives SOONEST and I am planning to spend the weekend either in bed with a book, or on the couch starting to watch the Battlestar Gallactica reboot. 

Is it 5:30 yet? ;)

Well I'm pretty much incoherent right now, so naturally I think making an LJ post is a must do. LOL

Sick and tired of being sick and tired.Must eat better ... more real food and less processed stuff. Also feeling an odd pull to give up or cut way back on artificial sweetners. Not sure where that's coming from but might be worth listening to.

Work is crazy and the computer is trying to ruin my life. #oneofthoseisanoverstatement

Last night I got from from work after stopping at the grocery store, ate, and went to bed at 8 pm. And then we had a two hour delay this morning. It might be near a decade since main campus had a delay. Then of course traffic was a nightmare as everyone was trying to come in at once and blah blah blah.

Oh, I have been incepting the new boss. I love subtle revolutions. Like my wearing my crappy old nametage enough times that new!supervisor said the other day she wants to order us new nametags that are nice and shiny and not crappy like mine (not exactly her words) LOL YAY. 

Not that I've been remembered to wear mine the last few days. One of our part-timers has been out with the flu for which I sympathize, but that means I've been filling in at the desk in the mornings and not getting anything else done. 

Oh, and empirical proof that we've been busier lately. They just announced that library gate counts for last semester topped 1 million users. Up 75,000 from other semesters. And they wonder why there are never any available computers. 

So work is good, just exhausting. For all that I am complaining, it feels good to feel useful. But damn, my house is a tip and I would like the energy to tidy it up!!!

Hey remember when I said it would be interesting to see what changes get made now that I have a new supervisor who took over starting yestersday? Well. It's mostly YAY but I have been run off my feet today in meetings and back and forth and doing things I have been asked to do. OMG ITS LIKE I ACTUALLY WORK HERE. LOL. It might get old fast ... but it's kind of nice having some direction and being asked to do useful things. 

I mean, no one LIKES being rushed off their feet, and it sure cuts into my fic reading time LOL, but its rather nice to come to work and feel like I'm accomplishing something. 

Tomorrow will be odd since we're suddenly closed to the public on our two floors so that they can see if they can collapse the building :) They're drilling and doing structural integrity stuff we've been asking them to do for about six months now. Mostly so that we know how many books we can keep/put in our areas before the building implodes. EEP. So tomorrow's all about having our keys handy to work the elevator and hiding in our offices and/or trying to get stuff done in between the little plastic crime scene Torchwood tents that have sprung up today.

Times they are achanging. There's even an outside possibility that I might get a new office out of this. New supervisor said she'd like all of us staff (me + one or two new others that'll be incoming) to have offices near each other and ideally near the elevator. I'm dubious about getting closer to the elevators given the high powered current tennants of those offices but maybe we can get a little staff enclave going somewhere. We;ll see. 

There's been a lot of we'll see-ing going on today :) And a to do list that's now at a  page and a half!!

So every year my Dad and I got out in a desperate attempt to purchase my mom's christmas presents. She is notoriously hard to shop for. This year she wouldn't even give us a list. So that was extra fun. But we got her a few things ... mostly books and sweaters, and there's a few things coming from a catalog. Guess who gets to wrap it all? LOL. 

We used to follow up the shopping with fast food. A couple years ago we switched to going to someplace where we could get drinks! My Dad loves a good Manhattan, so its a nice treat. Usually we do lunch, but this year we switched to dinner so we could go and see Lincoln after. It's nice father/daughter time. He couldn't hear most of the movie, but I'll get him the DVD when it comes out so he can read the closed-captioning and then hopefully it will make more sense!

And he followed up his usual tradition of shoving a wad of cash at me and telling me to get myself something from him. Which meant that this morning I could go online and hit BUY and get myself a newer iTouch ... one with a camera and all the bells and whistles. I won't know how to deal with upgrading from the 8GB one to the 32GB! Huzzah! I am full of such plans for many pictures next year. Might even start updating my rl blog I never update with a picture a day. 

Super busy week at work, with two parties there, a dinner with friends, a Christmas Carol reading next weekend and all kinds of holiday fun. Trying my best to stay positive and not get swaped over with the horror of current events. I've been lighting a candle every Sunday night in December. Rarely has there been a better time to light a candle and send thoughts of peace out into the Universe!

Dear Universe, 

Please explain to me why I'm spending my afternoon helping my supervisor back up her computer, so they can do lifecycle re-imaging tomorrow ... when she's retiring at the end of next week. And they'll just have to re-image her machine for whoever ends up in that office... 

ugh. 

Still it's something to do other than sit in my office and sigh. Keep trying to tell myself this isn't a depressive spell. But, yeah...

From the not-quite-a-Christmas-miracle department ... today I had an email exchange with the invisible BFF!! Just a couple sentences, but that's more than I've gotten in about a year. We're having dinner with a mutual friend next Friday night. I'd like him back in my life, but I'm also not sitting around waiting for a sentence or two every six months or so. sigh. bittersweet all of that.

Hanging in there. Still looking for someone to SPAG my Lewis secret santa fic. I spent years getting paid to spag my own stuff, so I'm okay doing it if I have to, but another pair of eyes is always helpful. Dear Santa, send me a writing buddy for Christmas, maybe?

Have a cup of something comforting and watch something makes you laugh for me will ya? That would make a good Wednesday, right?

It turns out that when you wear a black button down shirt and a black vest you feel like a waiter at a bad wine bar. :) This is my life lesson for a rainy monday morning. 

So much to do at work ... and so much to sneak in doing at work!

Fic to finish. 

Love note to write. Stumbling around the crafty-sphere of the internet I found a project I signed up for and for the next three weeks I have to write a love note each week to a stranger. And I'll get one from my own stranger. We get a writing prompt and don't have to write more than just a postcard (although I have some note cards I'm using). Because who doesn't love real mail in their mail boxes instead of just bills. Awesome. Now if I'd just get off my ass and write mine!

Work work to do.

Also have to order some stuff from a catalog my Dad shoved at me yesterday when I got to their house saying "here's some stuff I want you to order for your mother for christmas. Oh and if there's something in there you want me to give you for christmas order that too." LOLS.

Was sad for no reason most of the weekend. Here's hoping this week is better! And more productive!!!!

So I guess the thing I keep having to relearn/remind myself of is that as a single person with very few friends of the local variety I have to make my own fun events. I've been bad about taking myself to the movies lately. I think somehow I'm programmed to think that once the time change happens and its dark when I leave work that I have to take myself straight home and stay there. 

But I'm trying. 

To that end I've printed off the schedule of the town's big Victorian Christmas celebration this weekend. And I just ordered a ticket for a one person reading of A Christmas Carol that I've long wanted to see. A local professor has been doing it for years and I've never gone. Well this year I am. And I might follow it up with a screening of It's a Wonderful Life on the big screen at the Performing Arts Center. I mean, as long as I'm there anyway... I will not miss my annual weep! (It's playing a handful of other times that week so I'm sure I can get to one of the showings at any rate!)

I'm bad at making myself go out and experience things. But actually, keeping my scrapbooks (2012 will run to 4 volumes!) seems to help with this as it helps me to think "hey this will be a fun thing to make a scrapbook layout about." I could easily fill those books with 7,000 pictures of Jinx the cat and my feet on the couch as I watch tv, but its not the MOST exciting things to document over and over ;)!!

I've been sort of all over the place lately in my head. But doing some thinking about stuff that worked this year, and stuff that didn't and trying to figure out what to work on for next year. And I think I have my focus word for 2013 ... but I'm still thinking about that too. 

Plus I've got to finish up my secret santa fic this week so I can rustle up a quick beta at some point next week. Must carve out some time for that actually. I'm at that stage where I'm telling myself its going to suck and thats' making it hard to keep working on it. Stupid writing pains!

But on the plus side ... there's only 12 more working days this year...

So, the way ours are structured, we have the faculty and staff portion first, and then us staff members leave and the faculty discuss whatever arcane matters they deal with. All well and good, but when we've been excused my soon to be retired (yay) supervisor will always trap me into a conversation just outside the conference room and bitch about all the decisions/conversations we just had in the meeting that she doesn't agree with. I will SO not miss her negativity which has basically been the only downer about working over here in this department. 

But we did plan our holiday party ... we've expanded to include another department under our purview and they do the BEST party food, so we're happy about that, even if we did more or less dump the planning of the party onto them as well. But we don't have any departmental traditions, so we're happy to let them start some!

But I listened to my supervisor's bitching and tried to make non-committal noises, and then happily she got onto telling me about how her newish kitten reacted when she put up her Christmas tree last night. That was way better than getting into a fit about having to close our service desk at 2 am instead of midnight. !!!

But now COFFEE!!!!!

Finally got to Skyfall last night. Which I liked okay but wasn't totally faboo or anything. But I appreciate a movie where the main plot point is 'lets blow shit up." However. HOWEVER I have enormous coat kink lust for that pea coat with the leather collar band Le Craig was wearing in Seoul (Was it Seoul? The bit before Macau anyway). Not sure what it was about coats ... spent way too long thinking about Judy's coat in the final sequence and wondering if she had time to grab it when escaping that giant hail of bullets. 

Also inappropriate (but lovely) lust for Ben Whishaw's hair. LOLS

On account of eating a sandwich before I went I squeaked in with only a few minutes to spare which wouldn't have been any big deal ... there were plenty of empty seats, but I really wanted a soda but the concessions line was SO LONG. So no soda for me. #mostboringljsentenceseversorry

The highlight of the work day so far was teaching my supervisor how to make double sided copies. *sigh* (Well, letting her watch me make double sided copies for her, actually).

Well that and laughing when I was downstairs and noticed the tv in the learning commons that's usually turned to CNN was showing CSI:NY. :))

Sleeeeeeeepy. Kept yawning though my Thursday morning desk shift. But thankfully (I think) we were pretty busy so there wasn't too much time to fall over snoring. 

Thinking to yourself over and over "one more day until vacation!!" is not super great way to be productive at work. Just saying.

Also trying to pin down, for fic purposes some illness that would require at least bed rest if not a short hospital stay and include fever/deliriousness. Something that makes you really damn sick for a little while, but isn't likely to kill you. I'm writing around it for now, but I will have to decide on something at some point. In which case I'll probably default to some particularly virulent strain of the flu. Anyone wanna give me suggestions for what sort of sickness to inflict on my imaginary character?

Also someone come over and keep me from ordering more Christmas scrapbooking supplies. I probably didn't NEED that Christmas ticket stamp set, but it was SO CUTE!