To good planning

Dear Diary,

Today I successfully gave a book back by figuring that the person who owned it would probably be on the same bus into work as me. They were. :-)

In other news, my birthday was really nice, this week I signed a new contract to go work for Kiwirail Network/Ontrack, the weather is bad, and a Larp I wrote for Chimera last year is having a private rerun because someone thought it would be a nice way to celebrate her birthday. How cool is that!

Have also started to write my Larp for next Chimera in August. Is it a good sign that I'm sniggering as I type?

Updates

So, first of all, I've rejoined the ranks of the employed, courtesy of a four month (ish) contract with Ontrack, the organisation that owns and maintains the railway tracks. They needed someone in a hurry, and I got a call at Thursday close of business from a recruitment agent I've been dealing with, saying that I had an interview at midday on Friday, and if they like me it starts on Monday. I turned up, guy doing the hiring asked if I'd eaten and we went off to the nearby cafe for an interview. He seems a good guy, seemed to like me, and I do start on Monday. :-)

Secondly, it's the something or other anniversary of when Repton and I started dating and he took me out for a suprise dinner. I knew about the dinner, but he didn't say what we were doing after - as we were going for a walk in between times we looked at the big board advertising the Arts Festival gigs. "Ooh," I said, "Shaolin Kung Fu monks. I went to see them once in Auckland" and burbled a lot about the cool things that Shaolin monks can do involving spears, acrobatics and sharp edges. Then we went to the theatre - yep, Shaolin Kung Fu monks. Except this was a very nontraditional performance, basically an arty minimalist ballet done in kung fu, and awesomely well done. (Although there's a wicked part of me that kept remembering a roleplaying game I was in once where we were putting on a retro minimalist production of Iolanthe, and Nisha Talitha's character kept insisting that "You can have three shades of grey. The fairies are the lightest shade of grey!" These guys also had black and some plywood boxes they had a lot of fun with. Written down, it sounds weird, but it was a seriously cool production.

Thirdly, I got a provisional grade for my St Margaret of Antioch essay, by dint of emailing the alternate marker and asking him. A+ for me, plus lots of nice comments about what I'd done (although he also pointed out a bona fide mistake I'd missed in revision and pointed out some areas I could have done more on.) Which makes the whole thing done and complete - huzzah!

And today, to celebrate, I'm doing a heap of housework like vacuuming out my room that I've been meaning to do for ages. Death to hayfever!

Checking In

I haven't updated here lately. On the other hand, Things have been Happening.

I have secured a new job with the Wellington City Council as an adviser in the Research, Performance and Planning team. The two people I talked with in the interview were very easy to talk to (interviews going over time is a good sign, I reckon) and my spy inside the council says that my new team is a good lot, so fingers crossed that things go well and all. I start tomorrow morning. I suspect that I'm going to need to upgrade my work wardrobe, mind. [The scruffy part of my soul makes a despairing wail...]

My Gran had her 90th birthday party yesterday, and it was notable by the enormous gathering of the Hay, West and Pegg clans. I met a number of relatives that I see in various orders of frequency: every couple of months, once a year-ish, intermittently every 3-5 years, have never met but know by repute, and never heard of but was hanging about the Vic English and Classics departments at the same time I was and has some of the same friends. That last was a bit of an interesting coincidence.

Gran was looking very chirpy and happy about it all, which is fantastic because she's been quite ill recently. Cat and I stayed over night in Waikanae to hang out with her and give my aunt Helen a bit of a break, which I really enjoyed.

In other news, my ex-defacto-step-father has just gotten married and his new wife (a lady called Cherry who lives in the Philipines) is expecting a baby. I'm feeling all clucky and hoping to be considered an honorary aunt.

Hanging with the Queens of New Zealand

So my job hunt is ... progressing and I'm getting bored hanging out at home. The obvious solution is to volunteer for something and so I signed up with the Cat Protection League. It's staffed by the kind of people my sister likes to call Queens of New Zealand: sensibly dressed women of indeterminate middle age quietly holding the world together. This morning was no exception - in between washing cat dishes, changing litter boxes, cuddling the residents and all the other things you need to do to keep 50 odd cats living together amicably, I was plied with much tea, fed biscuits and updated on gossip. Quite a lot of fun, actually.

EDIT: If anyone is looking for a large and active cat, they could try visiting the CPL and asking for Crookshanks. They say he's been there for two years and is driving himself crazy pacing around the run. Wanna go ooouuuuu-ouuuuuuut etc.

Looking for work again...

My employer has just announced some major rearrangements in their staffing, and I think that the end result will be me being shuffled out of the picture. Any leads greatly appreciated.

I think their timing could have been a lot better, but oh well.

Work Update

Well, I survived my first week. I'm basically still in the training phase, but I've been working through the example exercises at a reasonable rate and will hopefully be let loose on real work next week. This afternoon involved shadowing members of my real actual honest-to-god team, rather than friendly members of other teams, which is a good sign for progressing through the system.

The work looks like it will be very interesting, and well suited to someone with an inveterate web browsing habit and good general knowledge. Only this week, I've been reading about conflict diamonds and efforts to stamp out the trade in same, wafer cleaning and handling issues in the semiconductor industry, a pharmacy company's recruiting efforts and NASA's magazine for publishing technical updates. And more semiconductors. There is an unexpectedly high number of semiconductor magazines out there, which is a shame for us, because the field is very very jargony.

For the first few days I was getting dreadfully tired by the end of the day and pretty much collapsing on getting home. My apologies to my nearest and dearest who bore the brunt of fatigue temper tantrums. :-( Anyway, that seems to be getting better as I adjust to office hours after a sustained period of holiday time - if nothing else, I've actually made it ten to twelve without conking out this evening. Also, I've been biking into town everyday apart from Monday and am finding it a useful burst of fresh air and exercise to counter a sedentary occupation. I've noticed that my cycling fitness has improved remarkably since last year - time was I couldn't cope with cycling in two days in a row because I got so tired, now it's just much needed exercise.

The people I'm working with are nice and talking to me, which is another good sign, although this week I've noticed the unavoidable drop in status you get in switching from being the technically knowledgeable old hand to the untrained newbie, despite everyone's efforts to get to know each other. One thing I really like about the place is it's location in Anvil House just across the road from the Michael Fowler Centre. A friend says there used to be bands operating out of the building when she was in her clubbing phase, and with names like "Sonic Machine" and "Squared One" on the directory I suspect this is still the case. It's also within cooee of the Civic Centre and associated buildings, Cuba St, Courtenay Place and the Waterfront, which is making my lunch hours varied and interesting affairs. I do like the architecture in downtown Wellington. It's not that I love each individual building, but they all work well together and the way they're arranged makes an inclusive space particularly friendly to pedestrians. It's just nice to hang out there, really. The closest my old haunts in Auckland got to that chilled out ambience was Aotea Square and the Town Hall, but even with the skateboarders adding some life to the area, it just can't compete - Auckland has a far more linear arrangement that makes me feel like it worships the motorcar. I like Wellington's more clustered arrangement far better.

EDIT: Actually, the names I misremembered are Sonic Mobile and OneSquared and they turn out to be companies selling mobile phone services.

Changes.

I'm feeling very transitional right now. Macca the cat is still in her settling in phase, I've just accepted a new job ... even the weather is beginning to turn.

Macca. She's the most assertively friendly cat I've ever met. She's toned it down a little from her first couple of days, when I expect she was partly smooching out of nerves and a desire to bond, but she's still very friendly, and the only cat I know who would plead to be allowed in to a room full of noisy visitors. She's had a cold this week and is still sneezing, but the frequency seems to be dropping off, and it hasn't stopped her eating or made her depressed her or anything. She's started going outside for short periods under supervision - she loses a lot of her street-wise cool when she goes out, being particularly wary of cars driving by, but also unsure of the strange spaces and the more random air movements. Her main exception was on Saturday, when she found a way into the reserve out the back that I didn't know about and we did some unplanned bush bashing. Macca thinks that Trees Are Cool, and will likely be going out that way a lot as soon as I trust her not to get lost. (We ended up going through one of the neighbour's gardens and coming back by the road because I'd had to cross some awfully steep ground while I was trying to catch up with her, which I wasn't going to attempt with a cat in my arms.)

The Job. It's at FirstLightERA and the position title is Information Taxonomist. (Because obscure job titles is where it's at. ;-)) As I understood things from the job interview, they provide an editorial related advertising service to specialist web magazines. This means that someone reading an article in, I dunno, Plumber's Weekly, would see ads on that page that are very specifically relevant to that article, much more relevant than an automated keyword matching service would provide. The team I'm being hired for goes through each publication and makes a taxonomy tree of what sorts of information are presented, so that each individual article can be tagged correctly. Theoretically, the readers win, because the ads can be less obtrusive and will be more relevant to them, and the advertisers and web magazines win, because their ads are more effective per pixel. Anyway, I get a call in about twenty minutes to discuss things like when I start. Fingers crossed etc.

What isn't transitional is my relationship with Repton, which is about to reach it's 2nd anniversary. This is very cool, except for the annoying part of my back brain which likes to poke me when it thinks I might be getting comfortable with something. Stupid back brain. (Sorry, Repton, I'm going through a neurotic phase.)

EDIT: Just had the phone call, I start next Monday.

EDIT2: And in news of the other person going through a big transition right now, I've heard from Fraser's new flatmate that he arrived safely in Auckland, unloaded his gear and is on his way back to return the van.

Wot I Did Today.

In fact, today, I went to Waikanae to visit my Gran, along with Mum who'd come from the other direction. It turned out really nice, although I confess to a certain amount of sleep-short grumpiness this morning when the bus was late and I missed the train connection. Hence, I have walked on the beach, eaten a hot cross bun, listened to some truly hair raising childhood anecdotes from my ancestresses and been plied with money and food.

In other news, I have a job interview on Wednesday for the position of Information Taxonomist, which definitely scores style points for unusual job title. Fingers crossed etc.