The Now: January 19, 2022

One weird thing about being in a new office is trying to get used to all the noises. This is a big open area filled with huge cubicles that tends to eat sound... but not always. My cubicle is on the side of a building that faces a major avenue. I sit below an air vent. All of this means that the acoustics of the office are rather distracting. In time, I'll get use to it. Right now I'm very much in "squirrel!" mode.

Here's what else has my attention.

WORK

• I started converting some "deeper" pages of our website to the new look. That necessitated a slight tweak on the main pages and some more coding. It's working, but one page took me over an hour to figure out. Hopefully the rest of the process is a bit faster. I made a checklist to help me remember everything I need to do on these pages.
• We are about to hit the main interview stage of our research project on how faculty create their students' research assignments. I'm reading a book about interview best practices. I also sent out the initial response for interviewees. Happily, a few folks are already on board. 
• Our spring webinar series is off to a great start. We held our first session and I'm managing the logistics and marketing for the upcoming sessions. 
• Still trying to let students know that we moved. It's not easy. At some point, I might just turn into a twirly sign person.
• I had my first session on the Reference Desk in our new space. It's going to take a few weeks to learn the new set-up, the quirks of questions that come with the space (mostly directional questions at the moment), and how to best function for our students in this temporary area that also includes classrooms and faculty offices.

PERSONAL

• We ordered new appliances for our kitchen. Our new fridge is going to necessitate that we move our pantry cabinet. We're debating exactly where and how to Tetris everything in a logical manner that also allows for easy access. Eventually, we are going to gut the kitchen, but we want to like the look and operation of things until we hit that point.
• We had a large amount of bananas in our freezer. I made two loaves of banana bread. We still have more frozen bananas. Might need to make some muffins too.
• I got behind on my email newsletter and blog reading. I'm trying to put as much of a dent in those thing as I can without going overboard and neglecting other stuff. Might need to use this time to do a digital purge...
• We took our Christmas decorations down. The tree is leaving soon. I am going to be finding pine needles for months.

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