nothing feels quite so nice as true progress after many months of holiday

[kareina]

Today was a particularly good day. I managed to finish getting the new office computer more or less set up and functioning yesterday, so today I was able to sit down and work. When I started this job, last week Tuesday, they told me to expect it to take at least 10 days to get my office computer delivered. My reaction to that news was "oh, good, I can finally sit down and finish those papers that should have been published by now while I wait for it". However, the first week of work turned out to be too busy to do that. It took most of my first day on the job just to set up the office the way I wanted it and the rest of the week was spent meeting people, filling out paperwork and running all of the little errands that come up on the first week of a new job.

No worries, thought I, I still have most of this week available to catch up on those papers, and I can install Leapfrog on my personal computer and practice just using the program, too. But then Monday I did that New Employee Interview. So Tuesday morning I set Leapfrog to install and I left for my mammogram apt. right after morning fika. As an aside--this was my first ever mammogram, and it was no were near as dreadful as I had feared. Yes, they do squish your breasts to take the "photos", but not painfully so (at least not painfully if, like me, you were once noticeably heavier than you are now and the breast skin stayed large(ish) but the contents are small(er)). When I returned from my appointment there was a shiny new computer on my desk that had not been there when I left.

There was no sign of the IT guy who had dropped it off and set it up, but he left a hand-written note (in English) reminding me that I had already been emailed my administrative password for the computer, but that I would need to unplug my personal computer from the wall and plug the new computer in before it would work. It took me the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday to finish getting that computer set up with the programs I need and the configuration I want and to move over the files I need from the personal computer, which is why today, fully nine days after starting the job, was the first time I actually got to do work that is actually related to science (IT work doesn't count in this case).

It felt good. Really good. In just over seven hours of work (not counting breaks for food and fika) I managed to read a paper related to 3D modeling, figure out what I should have been doing with the discussion and conclusion section of the paper all along, and to do it, and to create a list of figures I still need to create (ok, adapt from the thesis) once I put CorelDraw on the office computer (how could I forget that program?), fix EndNote so that it actually looks for the styles in the correct folder (and make certain that those folders are located in the correct place along with the rest of my data so that they are synced with the H drive (which is backed up regularly), reply to a bunch of emails (I am enjoying the fact that my work in-box is being emptied several times a day), and order the smart phone I will be getting for work (the uni is moving away from land lines for employees, our only work number will be a mobile they provide)

We didn't make it to the usual Thursday evening gaming session tonight. lord_kjar worked too late, and we were both tired from staying up too late and getting up too early all week. However, we did make it to a grocery store (happiness is a full pantry!) and still got home early enough that I could check in here and let my friends and family know that I am still alive and well.

We may not have made it to gaming tonight, but we got in a fair bit of it at the gaming con on the weekend. Some of my friends have posted photos from the con, and my very favourite of them is this one: