…throw me a life raft someone, oh, no, somebody already has!
So, Wednesday night. One working day in, and already, what a roller coaster of a week this is turning out to be. There was the Bank Holiday on Monday (well not quite – Scotland have a funny system where you can choose any two out of four Monday’s off in May – so the Edinburgh office was open, as were all the typesetters out in India and China), and then yesterday I was out the office on top secret Project Nelly…
…I was expecting a busy week to confront me this morning. I arrived a bit earlier to get stuck in. Except I couldn’t, my computer wouldn’t allow me to log in. By the time I did gain access to the dread machine, I discovered that IT had been busy the night before upgrading our computers remotely to Office 2003 with all the “improvements to make life easier” built in. The thing is they are not improvements. They do not make our lives easier. Indeed the popup mail preview in Outlook is a security risk for confidentiality! So there we went, busily removing all of these ‘improvements’ to get our computers working properly and effectively again … and all the times the journals kept on coming in.
Added to this the Issue Compiliation for the next issue of Ecological Entomology which was scheduled for, err … yesterday… *laughs* Thank the lord for future actual dates in our tracking system…
Tomorrow is going to be just as busy. Every year, each journal has it’s own ‘Spring Meeting’ where everyone who works on the journal for Blackwell’s meets up with the society/editorial office for whom we publish it and we talk about what’s been happening and where it’s going. Or at least that’s what am led to believe happens – I’ve never been to one before. The Linn Soc spring meeting has already happened so I’m spared being thrown completely head first into shark infested waters (that comes next year). However it has been arranged for me to sit in on another one which is happening tomorrow, to give me an idea of what to expect. I’ve had to iron smart clothes for about the only event in the last five years requiring ironed clothes that’s not an interview.
This of course will take 3 hours out of the day, during which time more work will pile up, and so I sink deeper and deeper and…
However, the end is in site. Monday 13 June I board the new ship bound for different waters. Before then, apparently they have found someone to fiill my current position, and they are starting on 16 May. This will mean I will be able to shift some journals that way for their training period. In other words. Only one more week, during which time I aim to continue to come back to the surface, and then salvation is on hand…
