A recycling bin of one’s own

Spent large amounts of today clearing out filing cabinet in order to make it my friend when terms starts. Rainforests relocated to recycling bin. It’s the semblance of order that matters, you see.

Get annoyed with a supplier who charges too much and then complains that we chose the wrong package. Er, yes, we wanted the full service but your price was through the roof. Don’t actually say this; retain enough residual diplomacy to avoid confrontation but colleagues get the rant track as usual.

Let repositories repose and timetables be suspended: I’m off to Poppy Cottage for a week to sit in the hot tub with a glass of wine and a good book. Enjoy the rest of August and I’ll be back in September with more nonsense, moans, gripes and the occasional thought.

Anything for a free lunch

Feeling more sluggish than Malfoy… could it be the after effects of the burger and chips I got free for helping out with the intensive summer school? Should never have followed this with a blueberry Geobar. It’s slightly scary that the new batch of students were born in the 1990s. I am not officially Past It.

It’s fitting then that my mental distraction (everyone should have one of these on a Friday afternoon!) is coming up with a songlist for the guys. Let’s not call ourselves a band. More a motley crew of three guys whose wives want them out from under their feet occasionally, plus one more guy and his wife (moi) who’s stupid enough to go along and attempt to screech vocals over their combined racket. Latest plot is for everyone to suggest half a dozen songs, we agree a common list and work on those. But what to suggest…?

Suppliers have all crept out from under their stones this morning. One little victory – finally get new resource up and running. This will save on aggrieved phone calls from the engineers. Villain of the dfay is the company who seem to think we belong in the same pricing tier as institutions four or five times our size. Er, how?

Tomorrow will be rolling up sleeves and tackling the final revisions to the draft CDG Strategy. After which I shall have earned something red and fermented.

Had we but world enough and time

A day of both unexpected progress and unforeseen setbacks.

That scary paper I was wrestling with? I sent a long email with lots of answers to the academic’s questions, and he is happy. The paper itself doesn’t need any further redrafting before its public debut. Result

Manage to send a few more emails by way of information literacy liaison. Most of the computing staff are away anyhow so no great hurry except that I would like my tasklist to major in black rather than red tasks.

Go to a rather confusing-yet-enlightening meeting about the summer school that is not the proper summer school but involves all the subject areas and and doesn’t have a name. The session I will be running for it is uncannily similar to the one for ‘proper’ summer school. Needless to say everyone wants to camp out in nice library teaching room for the duration of the entire fortnight-long performance. Explain at least six times that I can only take 25 students at a time…

Our local public library no longer has a complete set of British Standards. This is a major blow since they are our backup and we are currently between e-resources! “Oh bother” said Pooh.

Update the freshly minted library portal pages with the new Shibboleth URLs. Great phone call from an engineering colleague: ‘Amanda, what’s this thing beginning with S that I can’t pronounce?’

The shipping news

Level 5 Computing Subject Assessment Board. Not a meeting I’ve been invited to before, but in the current climate of strategic visibility, yada yada yada, I thought having been invited I should probably turn up. Spent most of an hour and a half listening to the shipping news… Smith, Fred. Fail. MF7. Bloggs, Joe. Fail. NS0. And so on and so forth until I really was drifting in and out of consciousness and was in every danger of falling into the upright nap, you know the one where your head lolls against a stranger’s and you wake up with your mouth open?

Trying to write programme report for biomedical science. It’s already about 7 pages and it was supposed to be succinct.

Finally start writing a resource evaluation for a new e-book collection and discover can’t get into said collection. Again. Gah. That’s them off my Christmas card list.

On plus side, indulge in end-of-year spending bonanza on market reports, precious things that only savvy printwise students discover (unless they come to our sessions).

Time to brave the June showers, Tesco and all manner of other obstacles before I get to the weekend proper. Off to the wedding of hubby’s PhD student tomorrow: will we be the oldest people there? Should just be pipped by parents of the B and G so that’s something to be thankful for. And finally after 4 years I get to see inside St Salvator’s Chapel.

Happy weekend everybody, go out and do something less boring than reading blogs…