Thursday 24 September 2009

If your name's not Paul...you'll have to change it

Greetings! We are still alive dear readers, it's just that everyone seems to have gone awol whilst I've been away in France. Wavey and I had a simply super holiday but that post will come later when I have time to put piccies up too. For now, I just wanted to reassure you that we're all still here. But, as it turns out, at slightly different work places.

Yep, I finally got me a new job! Well, I say new job. It's officially a secondment but it certainly feels like a new job. As it's not libraryland. And for that it deserves a very large WOOOOOOO! So this new job is for only 8 weeks, well so they say, but our new boss is already talking about keeping us until Christmas and we don't actually have our new contracts yet so who can really know. We officially started on Monday but they were still re-wiring the place so we had to wait until Wednesday to start, which is probably a good job as I had rather a lot of work to catch up on when I came back from my jollies.

But time to start at the beginning. And introduce you to all the Pauls. First up, we got an email from libraryland Paul asking for volunteers to head to our new campus at Darlington. Ah, thinks T and I, this will be a good opportunity to get lots of experience. So we applied. And we got an interview. I had to have mine early as I was going on holiday 2 days after the deadline (yay!). And on the panel was libraryland Paul. And new boss Paul. And IT guy Paul. Safe to say, if you added the name Paul on the end of any comment, it was a winner. And I got the job. I actually got the phone call about getting the job in the middle of our tent pitch in France which was a truly bizarre experience, and then of course we were obliged to drink mucho vino in celebration that night, and maybe eat a celebratory tart or two, but as I said earlier, more about that when I can actually post some photos along with the tales.

We arrived on Wednesday with new boss Paul. And IT guy Paul was there too. And it's so exciting! Our office, when we first went in, only had 3 chairs and 4 desks. The property is basically an old school which has shut down and it's huge. And when I say huge, I mean HUGE. You have to walk miles to get anywhere. The new library is quite close to our offices, but the classrooms are at opposite ends of very long corridors. It's bloody ace! We've had the run of the place and free access to whatever we wanted. Yesterday was such a fun work day! We spent literally the entire day exploring this huge school, including the haunted block (eeeek!) and scavenging stuff to put in our office. Which looks super homely and has a comfy seat area where we now have all our meetings. And a mini-kitchenette with all our heating up and keeping cool requirements. And the best thing of all is that the office has these huge windows which let in tonnes of lovely delicious natural light. This is such a novelty to us, as we work under all false light in libraryland. I've spent several enjoyable meetings basking in the sunlight now, deeelicious.

Today we went into full work mode. We had loads of visitors and rushing around and making contact with main site again, it was great! I know that new jobs are always novelty and it's exciting at the moment as there's lots to be done, but it feels good you know. It's been a long time since I've been miserable at work and feeling like they weren't using me to my best potential. I don't think anything else will come of this other than the short secondment, but so far so happy. Tomorrow brings more visitors, more informal meetings in our lovely sunny corner of the world, and it's Friday, most brilliant.

And don't forget my new name, from now on you must call me Paul...