At some point in the New Year I (along with all the other supervisors) am supposed to be organising a little seminar type thing to explain what it is I do at work and why it is that I'm focused on one area of work while the people I supposedly supervise generalise. (It's all to do with in-depth knowledge, a Grade 2 can theoretically tell someone if a journal is available electronically but I know *theoretically* what platform it's on, whether it's free to everyone, whether it's available off campus or if it's solely available through the Uni network.) Oh, and I have administration passwords which let me go into the journals' sites and get usage data which gets downloaded as an Excel file and sits in a folder in the Q drive until every August when the head of the department suddenly realises he has to account for budgets and demands I collate them in new and unusual ways. It's fun. No really.

So here's how I see my seminar going:

• I come in early before the department opens and check there's been no major server crashes or subscription failures overnight.
• I check my own email and the ejournals email to see what inane questions people are asking me today.
• I check the new journal alerts to see if we should be adding them to the catalogue.
• I surf around the web a little.
• I post to my LJ
• Department opens and I listen out for any queries or phone calls I need to deal with.
• I check one of the multitude of overlap analyses I run on a monthly basis (a lot of journal sites are just gateways so there's no point having a link to a gateway and to the source journal).
• I either download some usage stats or maybe tidy up the Q drive a little.
• I read any new fic that's been posted on my flist.
• Go for lunch.
• Decide I'm exceptionally bored and have nothing to do and open up either a blank Word doc or one of the many fics I've got lurking in my H drive (my own space on the network).
• Drink lots and lots of coffee.

Now and then there will be something urgent that needs to be done and I'll spend the day focused on that, but realistically? My job is a part time one and all I'm doing for the rest of the time is answering the phone which rings so rarely it's hardly worth having an ejournals extension...

*g*

It's the work's nght out tonight, really not sure if I'm looking forward to it or not, although going on the outfit that's hanging over Craig's desk right now it'll be fun to see if there's a 'kilt-off' and good grief that sounds dodgy! Monkey is kinda renowned for being kilted at these things and now it seems Craig's getting in on the act as well.

What's the deal with work's do's anyway? You spend 35 hours a week (on average) with these people and yet you choose to go to a mediocre restaurant (even the best places are so busy at this time of year that the food is never at its best) where you spend more money than you can afford and invariably get stuck sitting next to either your boss who speaks in questions or leaves sentences hanging unfinished or the woman who speaks so quietly you can't hear her but that doesn't matter because she's wittering on about nothing in particular and trying to get everyone to wear the flashing musical antlers.

Just call me Ebeneezer...

Oh and I have to transfer money between accounts today to cover bills and direct debits. I stopped at the ATM this morning - my bank, not my branch though - and took money out of one account. Put the card in for the other account and it won't let me deposit!! So now I'm carrying a worrying amount of money with me and I'm not 100% sure when I'm going to get to an actual bank - they tend to cancel lunch hour for the department because we're leaving for the meal at 3pm. Grrr.

ETA Sorry Monkey, it's too early in the morning for me to get geekily excited about Firefox add-ons. Apparently the 'translate' tool is very cool. Personally I get the feeling it would be more annoying than cool, but maybe that's just me...