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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Lots of tops

I finally got that bad cold all my colleagues have had. One week later, and I'm still sick. I worked the last three days of the week. There were meetings booked, and I basically just attended them. I heard the ephemera collection move started last Monday, and there had already been misunderstandings between the movers and the librarian. It was very unprofessional of me, but I just laughed at the librarian when he told me about it.

The first two months of the semester have been very tough at work and I wrote an evaluation of the plan I had done earlier. The outcome was pretty far away from the plan, that's all I'm saying. At the same time as I handed in the evaluation, I told my boss that it can't continue like this and I have to take vacation. It would kill my colleagues if that took effect immediately, so I said to count me out starting April 1st and the rest of the year. (Yes, I mean it). The reactions to this information were mixed...

On a completely different matter, I did some serious shopping this past week. There is a top that I got on mail order earlier that I liked so much that I now got the same one in three more colors. Also got a pair of black jeans, some underwear and a fluffy cardigan. A visit to my favorite mall resulted in a shirt and two tops.

The weather here is not particularly cold, it's 12-14 centigrades and not so much rain as would be expected for this season. But I hear there is a massive rain storm coming in from the southwest tonight, so that will change.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Borås visit

Last week I left work at noon on Wednesday and went by train to Borås. I spent a long weekend with my family there. My sister and her husband celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary by going away to a country inn, so my mother and I were taking care of the kids. We also got to celebrate later, when we all went out to a fancy restaurant for a delicious salmon meal. There was also time to go shopping a little, my mother brought me to an outlet store at one of the mail order companies. There were surplus goods and returns at extremely low prices. Sadly, no clothes in my size, but still interesting to see. I got two tops on sale at the mall instead. We did the usual flea market store round, plus one store I had never been to before.The kids kept us busy with playground visits, lego building and other games. I returned home Monday.

In order to use the remaining vacation days, I have to take every Monday off the rest of the year, so I got back to work Tuesday. When they started telling me what had happened during my absence, I put my hands over my ears and told them I didn't want to know. I wonder why things always go wrong when I'm not there. People got sick and none of the others knew how to print the requests, apparently. Even though I showed them that particular task last week. I have now spent days writing a very detailed instruction, to prevent that from happening again. To add to the mess, our patrons complained about requested but not retrieved books this week. We investigated it, and the technicians noticed that some requests get lost in cyberspace... They were able to fix it after a few days and we also got hold of the missing ones, so all the books are delivered now.

We were rather surprised to learn that we were affected by the US federal agency shut down. The largest fulltext database in education, ERIC, was made unavailable during that time. The entire situation was somewhat odd and we watched the developments with amazement.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Bowling event

Another busy week went by. The manager at the shelving company and the technician were at the storage to discuss the problems with us. They found several new issues that they didn't know about, and suggested that it's the programming that isn't right. Exactly what we have said the entire time. Incredible that it had to take this long for them to get it. No promises were made as to when this will be fixed.

I had a meeting with the colleagues who will be in charge of the ephemera collection move, which will start mid October. My book moving experience is extensive, and I gave them some hints and suggestions to make their move easier. I also had a meeting which resulted in some less favorable things. I have to find space for 1000 meters of folio format books somewhere. I'm still working on that.

Tuesday evening we had the annual dinner and bowling event in Malmö. Great food in Scandinavian style; salmon, herring and several kinds of meat. The bowling tournament was won by one of the recently employed guys, who said he was just lucky to get three strikes in a row.

The hard work shelving at the storage continues. There is still a backlog, but we are beginning to get it under control. Thursday I had to get treatment by the chiropractor and that was not pleasant. The week ended in a good way, with Cinnamon Bun Day. Yes, we have such an official day. I helped myself to more than one bun. After such a week I needed it.