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O Glorious Day

This day started creakily–I had insomnia last night for two hours, so had to push myself out of bed, and was flapping my wings and squawking as I raced out of the house–but then it ascended into glory.

First there was yet another site visit to one of the campus libraries. I enjoyed meeting with them (hi, Dan!), I enjoyed hearing what they had to share, I enjoyed learning about their services even as a part of me sat back and marveled how librarians tend to resemble their collections. From the natty suits at Law to the NPR-tweediness of Music, these folks are absolutely, perfectly out of Librarian Central Casting (as am I; a library aide whispered to me one day, as I fiddled with my Bluetooth headset, “Gotta look the part, right?”).

Then the day was packed solid with activity, so much that I lunched out of my desk drawer (on low-carb cheese without anything else–perhaps that was not so glorious). I puffed up when a Higher-Up praised my new vest–a lovely brocade affair, bought on sale I rarely get to buy vests, as they need to be petite-sized, and I was feeling excited about wearing clothes to work, as I put it, having worn sweats to my virtual office for five years. Virtual librarianship taught me a lot about communication, but face-to-face meatware is still the most efficient tool I know of to make things happen… and let us not underestimate the ability, and the need, to accessorize.

I love a full day; I would have liked one more hour in it, in order to squeeze in a letter I needed to get done, but otherwise I enjoy the movement of an active job. I wrote and signed important letters and talked budgets and got things moving on the fix-it front and had a great meeting with two units that have really needed to talk… a meeting that started very formally and ended much later with laughter.

Near the end of the work day, I ran through my slides for the 2007 tech plan, and four of the folks from systems came in and critiqued it. Their input was invaluable and I was workshoppin’ as they talked. How will we get it all done? Do I need to drop the axe here and there? What about the timeline? Do I care if I’m the “acting” muckety-muck? (The answer there is “no.” It’s not as if I can say, “Hey–I’m the acting AD–so we won’t be partipating in the statewide Aleph upgrade, thankyouveddymuch.”) We talked about tools to enable the USB ports on the public PCs… plans to improve our email/calendar setup… and so forth. As I pulled on my coat a few minutes later, I realized how good it was to talk with experts who know their stuff.

Then I came home to find that a well-regarded journal wants to publish one of my essays. I am completely, entirely excited by this, so much so that I have passed the peak of excitement and am on the 5th mesa of Nirvana.

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This was written by K.G. Schneider. Posted on Friday, January 5, 2007, at 7:37 pm. Filed under This and That. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.