Thinking inside the Ox

[j4]

It's official! So now I can stop being secretive and superstitious with all my worries about jinxing it, for I have an actual all-references-cleared job offer in my hand (well, okay, in my ears, because they phoned me).

So I have handed in my notice here, my last day being November 3rd, and on November 6th I will start work over there instead. UCISA (you can pronounce it to rhyme with incisor if you like; at least, I did, and they gave me the job) doesn't actually employ anybody, so technically I'll be an employee of OUCS.

I'll have been in the new job for all of a day and a half before they fly me up to Scotland with them for one of their biggest conferences: still, there's nothing like being chucked in at the deep end for discovering how well you can swim.

Observant readers will notice that the new job is based in Oxford, which would be an unreasonably long commute from the hub of East Anglia's badger liaisons. Consequently addedentry and I are currently trying to find a place in Oxford that's big enough for eighteen bookcases (the obvious choice not currently taking in lodgers): details to follow as and when the current chaos crystallises into something resembling a plan.

Unfortunately this does mean that addedentry will no longer be able to keep his job here; I do feel dreadful about dragging him away without a definite destination in mind, though I have no doubt that he'll be snapped up soon, but in the meantime if anybody knows of exciting jobs in Oxford for a brilliant librarian then this is the man you're looking for.

*

Once upon a time, Owen and I predicted that we'd kill each other within a week if we went out with each other; on Sunday we quietly celebrated (with chocolate and DVDs) the fact that in the last two years we've completely failed to do so. I'm only flippant about it because otherwise I get all weepy (and any Anti-Soppists on my friends-list would probably send me to Coventry, which is hardly in the right direction for Oxford or Cambridge), but really I'm still wide-eyed with wonder at the thought that he's willing to follow me to the ends of the A14 and beyond despite the fact that I obviously drive him round the bend at times. I don't know where the next few years will take us, but I hope we can carry on travelling together.

Comments

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for new job!

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Congrats! Would be nice to catch up again - though I'm not in Ox myself again till January.

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Btw I'm Elizabeth (known in a past life as Blob), should I not have LJ-introduced myself before.

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Hurrah and yay! Good for you, on both counts.

[taimatsu]

Congratulations on all counts :)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Gosh.

My congratulations on the job offer. I shall have to figure a way of getting to Oxford next time I'm in Britain - which I was planning to anyway, having missed it due to having had less flexibility last time due to having had to go to Glasgow for ISMB; does not look likely that that will be this coming summer, but we shall see.

Also, very very glad to see relationship good stuff being solid and lasting. *hug* What would be a good word for the more congenial ranges of opposition to Anti-Soppist ? Soppisticate ? Not Theosoppist anyway.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Also also, do send me your new physical address soon as you have one, because moving around then is a bit tight for sending your Christmas present, the which I already have sitting on my things to send people pile. [ Along with a couple of birthday presents which should actually have been in Britain with the appropriate people last week. The wind's not been in the south, you see... ]

[imc.livejournal.com]

*icon*

We would be able to fit 18 bookcases in our house if it weren't for all the other general crap. Mind you, we do have well over 50 shelves and most of those have books on.

I don't know if there are any brilliant librarian posts going in Oxford… the last librarian I knew (at Christ Church) disappeared to Dundee in search of a better job.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, as of this past weekend, we do actually have eighteen bookshelves in our apartment. Five in the long room with papersky's fiction A-P, five in the new long room with papersky's fiction S-Z, anthologies and non-fiction, three in the main bedroom with my hardback fiction, my B-format fiction, my A-format ficton Sumner-Zindell, and papersky's and my inpiles, three in my study with my outsize PB fiction, my A-format fiction Adams-Stross and my music, and two in zorinth's room into the contents of which it is better for those of us who like things to9 be in order not to inquire too closely.

That's not counting the half-height one with books to give away, which will ultimately go in the new spare bedroom, and the two built in glass-fronted ones which basically get the pick of everybody's prettiedst hardcovers.

[ As ways of getting more space for bookshelves go, buying both the apartment you have been living in and the mirror-image one across the stairwell is really pretty effective. ]

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on making the decision, and not picking the default, "stay where I am," or the extreme, "further away is better," approach and going to raise llamas in Patagonia or whatever.

I promise I'll try and visit.

[nja.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, even though this means I have less excuses¹ to visit Cambridge, which is a bad thing because Oxford is not as flat and further away from Ely. Those are not good reasons for you, of course.

¹ Fewer excuse? Less excuse? Excuse me please?

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

Fewer excuses.
???Less of an excuse???

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, good. I was going to invite both of you, but can I borrow Owen for the Thursday night (see post in my journal)?

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Gah, that was me.

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

Hoooooraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

That's what I say.

I'll say more at some other point, hopefully, but for now i'm too busy whooping and trying to use the internet discreetly.

(no, no, the whooping isn't helping with the discretion. This I never learn)

But Hoooooooooraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

xxx

[j4.livejournal.com]

It's definitely hooray but mixed with "Aaargh!" and "Help!" ... but I think in a way you have to keep going for things you can't quite do otherwise you never learn to do anything. It's a Just In Time learning model! Yeah!

Oh and we will try to come to your party even though it's the weekend we're moving house! No problem! Oxford is near London and we can leave everything in boxes! :-) Though if we're dressed weirdly it'll be because all our proper clothes are packed, not because we're weird! (Oh, okay, that too.)

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Jolly good! Banbury Road, eh... seems fitting news in the context of my 10-year anniversary today. I imagine I shall see more of you too, good show.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! Oxford has always been the axis of your mundus, and I hope you have a wonderful time there.

And I'm glad that you and Owen have stuck so effectively together.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

Well done on the new job. And the few times I met you and O you did seem to complement each other well.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yay, on all counts. But especially yay for people returning to Oxfordly parts. I know of neither flats nor librarians' posts in the vicinity, but will keep an ear out (though fear I move in circles that mention neither).

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Squee! I was just thinking earlier that I haven't seen either of you in ages.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Owen pointed out that I didn't need to tell you about our move on your journal because you'd seen it on my journal, to which I said "uh?" and he said "she left a comment, dude," and I said "argh! I missed that!" so, er, here I am, sidling up to you and trying to go "squee!" while simultaneously looking a bit shamefaced and apologetic for telling you things that I should have known that you already knew. If it helps with the mental image of me sidling shamefacedly, imagine that I'm also fumbling with an enormous stack of post-it notes and books and trying to take two phonecalls at once, and offering to buy you a drink and spilling change out of my purse like a confused old biddy with a bag full of buttons.

Um. Hi! :-}

[uon.livejournal.com]

Congratulations all round!

:-))

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Well done on the stickiness front. Me too. (I mean, I hope you guys keep being happily sticky together. You Know It's Right.)(Chocolate helps, of course.)

Re job and Poxford, all jobs are wacko, let's face it. Yours at Fenlands seemed particularly so and I must admit that anything acronym'd "MISD" as in "MISSED" as in "one slice short of a loaf" should never have got through any committee stages whatsoever. So yayness rules.

As for places to live, my little house is going to be available at the end of December and you could line the downstairs and second bedroom with bookcases, but that won't be soon enough for you, I imagine... it would be cheap, not terribly central, not trendy East Oxford.

In the meantime, eyes will be out on stalks, looking for likely gaffs.

Gosh, this means we might meet in RL after all. (!)

Re: :-))

[j4.livejournal.com]

Sadly I think by end-of-December we will have signed away a small part of our souls to an Oxford letting agency (forms went in the post today, they are gouging us for frankly outrageous "administrative charges" but given how cheap the rent is and how big the house is and how helpful they've been in other respects I'm prepared to grimace-and-bear-it).

Never thought of the "MISSED" pronunciation before! Though there was a brief phase of spelling it MI5D to reflect the departmental attitude to openness of communications... ;-)

And what is this "real life" in which we could meet? (But yes, we must!)

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

If I could send champagne via email, I would, except I think we only have "sparkling white" in at the mo anyway. For both the job and the 2 years.

[kjaneway.livejournal.com]

Congrats all round!

New jobs and good relationships FTW! (as all the cool kids say.)

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

Congratulations - hope it goes well, and that your librarinth finds a new home.

Hope to see you before you go, though I am pretty hamstrung by rehearsals.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the return of badgers to Other Places, and on two years of being happy together! I do hope you both find somewhere happy in Fnordtown.
Talking of which, will you be in the Turf a week on Saturday?

[j4.livejournal.com]

will you be in the Turf a week on Saturday?

Frayed knot, as that weekend the in-laws are visiting us in Cambridge for the first time ... which will also, ironically, be the last time.

(Also to be honest we'd probably be better spending the time packing than pubbing at this point!)

But I hope there will be other Turf meets when we're only a bike ride away.

[kake]

Ooh, how exciting. (the job) And how SQUEEEEEE! (you and Owen)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Wolvercote is a good place to look for somewhere relatively big for a reasonable price (I lived there for 5 years, so I can confirm that it's also pretty nice).

[camellia-uk.livejournal.com]

Belated congratulations, in case you're not tired of them by now ;-)

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

I have to keep reminding myself that losing good people from here is not as bad a thing as it first seems; you wind up with good people you know all over the place 8-)

I hope it all goes very well indeed for you both ...