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]

Goodness me. Lucy Kennedy here, though it would be entirely understandable if you had no memory of me whatsoever. :)

[taimatsu]

Congratulations on all counts :)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Hello! As soon as I saw your username come up in my inbox I thought "Argh, I never replied to that email, did I..." -- so a VERY belated thank you for getting in touch, and it was good to hear from you again, and I'm sorry I didn't reply, and it'd be good to catch up when you're back in Oxford!

(Phew. :-)

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Course I do. 'Twasn't that long ago that we were undergraduates, was it?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Practically no time at all! (Please. Otherwise I shall feel even more prehistoric than I already do.)

[taimatsu]

No, it wasn't. Although I have just become one again - in fact, I'm a fresher, surrounded by eighteen-year-old Topshop clones in stripy jumpers, skinny jeans and sparkly flats. It's all a bit nervewracking. (I'm doing English at Reading, fwiw.)

Good to hear from you, anyway :)

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Haven't you already got an English degree? Oh no, it was classics?

Have a nice freshers week then. Pulled any 18-year-olds yet? (Or are you attached these days?)

[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.

[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]

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... ]

[juliet]

Blimey. Hello!

Janet - congratulations! On both new job & ongoing shininess of relationship :-)

[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.

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Hello!

[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. ]

[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?

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Dundee University Library. I spent months down in their basement.

[taimatsu]

It was Theology, and I didn't finish it, hence the second attempt :) No, I'm not attached, and no, I haven't pulled a fresher as yet. When I work up the courage to go to an LGBT event I'll assess my options :)

[(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.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

He was my first boss, as it happens; a gentleman among librarians.

[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