The Now: January 12, 2022

My office opened back up this week.

It's, um, not great.

We moved buildings to allow our space to be completely remodeled. For the time being, we are split between two floors. Services and user "pods" on one floor, offices and staff on another. I also went from a private office to a cubicle. It's a big cubicle with high walls but still a cubicle. I'm not sad about the space or the privacy. I'm sad that I lost my ability to take my mask off. Sure, we're all spaced out, but it's an open area. That means I'm wearing a KN95 all day. I'll get used to it, but I don't have to like it.

Here's what has my attention right now.

WORK

• Set up my cubicle with the stuff from my old office. I also have a list of things I want to buy to make this place feel less sterile. Plus, I attended my first Zoom meeting yesterday and realized the background behind me is a disaster. Need to clean up how boring it is.
• Marketing our relocation every way I can. Classes don't come back in person until next week, but we've already had students go to our old location and wonder where we were. 
• Our research project focusing on how faculty design their students' research projects is entering the interview phase. I sent out an interview request email to our targeted professor group. We already have a few responses.
• Wrote up lots of blog posts for the new semester. They all focus on the changes to the library and how it operates.
• Drafted my first newsletter to go out to our new subscription list. Will send that out tomorrow.

PERSONAL

• Can I say keeping an eye on COVID community transmission rates and pediatric vaccine trials? Cause, I am. I am reading a lot of articles and studies hoping that the spread goes down and trials are effective. 
• I created a yearly content calendar for this year's Green Committee newsletters. Now I just need to make the January edition.
• Thinking about taking our Christmas decorations down...

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