And we have cake!
Cake as both a celebration of the said Neville's birth and the lighter days was provided for Library staff by Cataloguing. Neville was a cataloguer in his day and his day was a couple of decades ago. Cataloguing staff kept up the tradition after he left the Library.
So cheers Neville, wherever you are!
It is 25 minutes until I can leave for home. It is too hot and I am too tired todo anything. everything is sticky and I just want to sleep.
So writing up minutes it is then, as I really can't hit the refresh button on my fiends page anymore...
nmg too, I suppose.No outdoor sex for me this morning, as I volunteered to do the morning shift on the enquiry desk at work. so far I have been here 33 minutes and although numerous students have walked past, not one has needed to enquire of my knowledge. Just as well I've got some work to be going on with.
Contrary to earlier weather forecasts, it isn't raining despite it being a Bank Holiday Monday. The sun is shining but the ground is sopping as it rained overnight instead. Not that I am complaining. We spent the day in the garden yesterday (I was up and out by 8am as I had woken ridiculously early and just got up - what was I thinking?) and the garden could do with a good soaking. I removed all the horrible broken paving slabs which had been used to "edge" the side border, dug out a new border edge (it is now straight), sieved the soil (our soil is very, very stony) and then, finally, planted and seeded the border. Nick meanwhile, lopped branches off the rowan tree so the washing line can now be pulled to maximum height, mowed the lawns front and back, scarified the back lawn, and made me lots of cups of tea. By the end of yesterday afternoon, I was feeling rather accomplished.
Must really update (not to mention move to gark.net) the Gark Villa site as the interior of the house is pretty unrecognisible from what it was when we bought it, and the garden is beginning to go that way as well.
Must get back to work...
The sky is clear, the sun is shining and I want to go home and do stuff around the house!
Instead I'm going to be writing a quiz on Blackboard for students to do on Monday afternoon. What I really want to be doing is sorting out more of the house in preparation for Nick's parents coming tomorrow. I'd like to get everything done to give me time to make two cushion covers this evening and spend tomorrow morning prepping the ground for my fruit and nut trees which should be arriving on the morrow and need to be planted as soon as possible because they are bare-rooted.
Lunch today was spent very pleasurably by myself.
I went to the cafe at the Nuffield Theatre on campus. It was quiet, but not so quiet that you felt as if the staff were watching you and only you. The music was laid back even if it did veer dangerously close to modern jazz from time to time and the food was tasty. I had a grilled goats cheese salad, a sparkling mineral water and a filter cofee for just over a fiver. And I have space and room to myself to catch up on some reading and some list making.
Lovely.
Librarians 'suffer most stress' (BBC)
Stress? Shhhhh . . . (The Times)/p>
What the researcher describes doesn't sound much like a professional librarian's job to be me. Don't know the last time I was stuck between book shelves (in fact, I wish I did get out into the book stacks a bit more often). And as for my work being repetitive and unchallenging, and having very little job satisfaction? That's certainly not the lot of an academic librarian.
Perhaps he mistakenly interviewed library assistants rather than librarians? A bit like interviewing vetinary nurses rather than vets, or hotel receptionists rather than hotel managers, or lawyers clerks rather than lawyers.
Have spent most of the day (when not on enquiry desk duty, or looking through old Chemistry books, reading the judgement in the Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District (i.e. the 'can Intelligent Design be taught in schools' case). Very fun reading. As it is the last day before the Christmas closure, I don't feel guilty about doing it either.
( Collapse )I thought many of you wonderful people on my f-l, would be interested in the following programme from the Beeb, in collaboration with the OED:
Balderdash and Piffle
The OED need help tracking down earlier evidence of words and phrases such as Cyberspace, Beeb, boffin, nerd, something for the weekend, pear-shaped and many more. Full details on the website.
Stack Envy, n. envy by the lesser librarian of the greater librarian's possession of a well-organised and designed stack.
I suffer from it. Oh Bolderwood, would but your stack were mine!