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

[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. ]

[imc.livejournal.com]

If anyone's wondering what to get me for Christmas, the house next door wouldn't be a bad idea actually. :-)