Librarisaurus! » work

California or Bust!

Jen — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:44:01 +0000

OK. This is a little embarassing. I’m a bad blogger, because I haven’t yet written about any of the 29282 things that have happened in the last two months.

First, I applied for a job. Actually, I applied for a few jobs. One in New York (Manager of Ask NYPL), one in the Bay Area (Children’s Librarian II in Marin), and lastly one in Eugene, Oregon (managing an undergraduate dorm library). They were all very different and each represented a path I wanted to explore.

We got married. Much more on that later (I did upload tons of new photos to flickr): I’m working on a real, honest-to-gooodness Wedding Post.

The day after we got married, we stopped in Marin on our way through the Bay Area. I met with some folks there and visited the branch where job #2 was centered. I kind of loved it. Fast forward a few weeks (some awesome honeymooning in between), and I did a phone interview while parked in the Post Office parking lot in the middle of Laguna Pueblo. It must have gone well, because I was offered the job as we drove into Seattle on the last day of our trip.*

So now we’re in the middle of some other new, big changes. Tomorrow is my last day at Seattle Public (*sniff*) and I’ll be moving down to California at the beginning of December. Sky’s going to circle round at the back of the wagons with the cats and whatnot, probably in January. Then *BAM!* we’re somewhere new, living different lives. Crazy how fast that can happen.

So there we go. Married, new job, and moving, all in just a handful of months. It’s going to be crazy, but I’m super excited.

* We agonized over accepting, because, first of all we were a “we” which was new. We’ve been a we for a long time but suddenly we were officially and legally a “we” so “we” talked it out a lot more. The day I accepted the Marin job, NYPL called for an interview. Shazam! Maybe the next time around we’ll be New Yorkers.

Taking toll

Jen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:44:35 +0000

Let’s start this post out with a fact. I’m rarely late. I’m one of those people who leaves way early to get to things and ends up reading a book for 30 minutes waiting for everyone else to show up. If I have a flight @ 8pm, I’m happiest when I get to the airport by 5 or 5:30 so I’ll have all sorts of time to meander through security and get situated at my gate with time to spare.

That said, I’ve had two mornings in a row of ridiculous lateness. I think job stress and all of the new stuff learning has taken its toll.

Yesterday I dallied all morning: made a big breakfast, took a long shower, sat with the kitties and did some petting, etc. When I had about 45 minutes until my shift started, I began to gather my things – I was going to walk to work for the first time and I wanted to give myself PLENTY OF TIME! As I looked at the clock I was struck with an awful, awful feeling – it was 10:55, and I was supposed to be at work at 11am. I’ve started my “late” days – days I work until 8pm, at 11:30 for so many years that although I knew my new hours were 11-8, I just plum forgot that as I went through my lazy morning routine. Woops. So I drove to work and arrived 15 minutes late and had to pay astronomical sums to get my car out of the garage at the end of the day.

Whew. Never going to do that again, right?

So this morning I’m having the weirdest dream wherein I keep meaning to leave for my job, but get sucked in watching a documentary with my mom, then eating a piece of cake with my sister, and then stopping in a store. In the dream I know I’m supposed to be at my mystery job by 5pm, and it’s about 6:30pm, but I just keep doing other things. Somehow my conscious thrusts me out of my dream and I’m panicked. I grab my phone and see that it’s 8:30am – the alarm wasn’t even on, ever. My bus to work left at 8:22. Since my lateness yesterday threw my day into a spiral of spacey/stressed/forgetful reactions, I tried to take it calmly. I drove again. This means two days in a row of ridiculously large garage payments. Maybe I needed to learn the lesson extra hard?

Tomorrow I have the day off, and Friday I’ll set 3 alarms. And possibly sleep in my work clothes.

The Holiday Shuffle

Jen — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:15:33 +0000

An email from a friend reminded me that I’d been Facebook status-ing (we need to come up with a verb for that) about job changes but never quite explained what was up.

So here’s what’s up:
Due to the budget cuts required by the city, the branch library hours changed pretty dramatically. In order to staff the new hours, there was some restructuring, or “management initiated transfers.”

My transfer was not to another neighborhood branch, but to the Central branch downtown. I’m going to be working in General Reference Services, on the 5th floor (the Mixing Chamber). It looks like I’ll spend a lot of my off-desk time online answering questions via QuestionPoint, txt, and chat reference. It’s going to be a big change, switching to 100% reference work.

When I first found out I was pretty upset – I’ve worked with the same coworkers and community of patrons for 3 years, and I’m very attached. In this new position I won’t be doing any outreach, programming, or work with teens and schools. I also won’t get the same interactions with patrons – no more reader’s advisory (unless I’m filling in on the Fiction Desk), no Rules of Conduct violation discussions (oh wait, I won’t miss those).

All in all, it’s been a big upheaval for myself and those I work with, but change isn’t always terrible and I’m staying positive.

Bush babies! Bush babies!

Jen — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:48:33 +0000

The problem with blogging:
I think of fascinating – I’m telling you riveting ideas for a post when I’m lying awake in the morning, willing myself to move my body out of the sheets/pillows/blankets/cats. I think to myself “For sure I’ll remember this idea!” and then I do not. I do not remember it and I become frustrated and I futz with sidebars or other minutae on my site instead of actually writing something.

Tres lame.

So here, I’m going to write, without any sort of idea of what I want to write about. Watch me. Here it comes. Right now.

Hm.

I’ve been very preoccupied with work, lately. I’m pondering password protecting some posts so that I can more freely write about my day to day. At the same time, what would be the point of that? I’ll ruminate on that one for awhile longer, I think.

Galagos, a.k.a. Bush Babies

We didn’t get a bird. We went on a field trip to the bird place and found the bird place had gone out of business. We went to the pound instead and met some very cool dogs. One was a really fat pug. We had a insta-fantasy of our life with the pug, but decided we weren’t ready yet. Instead we went to the zoo and sat in the night exhibit for long ass time. I love that place. We are absolute pros at spotting the animals – the trick is to stay in there for about 20 minutes letting your eyes adjust – then you become like some super bat* that can see the smallest details. This time the bush babies were jumping mad, all over the place, super quick. It was so amazing. We stayed until we realized the zoo had closed 20 minutes ago and then creeped out, relieved we had not been locked in the exhibit. Okay, Sky was relieved, I was secretly dissappointed.

* I am aware that bats are blind, but a super seeing armadillo doesn’t sound as imposing

Cozy tables at Le Pichet in Belltown

Last weekend I scooted downtown for the first time – I’ve always been a bit scared to be amongst all of the traffic and the craziness, but Sky and I went together as a scooter gang and it was pretty awesome. We bought some sheets and had some yummy cheese (not at the same place) and just generally people watched.