Danielle Blog

my office at school!

Hi again,

Here are a couple of photos that I had promised from when Texas Seestor, Trainwreck and my two nieces visited my apartment last Saturday. This was the trip to deliver my new TV and for Trainwreck to assemble my TV stand, as well.

Here he is hard at work

And here is my baby niece playing on the stack of blankets we put down on the hardwood floor:

The others are on Flickr – since they show our faces – they are set to private for family and friends.

Back to the update on my move-in:

Yesterday, my original plans for the day unexpectedly changed – in a good way!

I emailed my department chair to let him know that I’m in town now and could come in to choose my office. I had assumed it might take a couple of days to find a time when he would be free. Instead, he was available right away! So, I ate lunch and headed to school for the first time since I interviewed.

My office space is really exciting, I think. When you enter, the wall across from you is 9 ft across and 7.5 feet of that is a floor to ceiling window with a view of the courtyard and a lily pond that is almost right there next to my window! (I’m on the ground floor)
It is really beautiful. I’m already figuring out the best way to keep the view very open and not block the sight lines.

Another positive development is that one of my colleagues suggested that we round up “a couple of cowboys” (his words) to help move my office furniture from my apartment to school. He was referring to the male students who own pick-up trucks.
He headed off to talk to the students who are around for the summer and sure enough, he found someone with a pick-up who has various links to the school and is trustworthy.

Perhaps I hadn’t mentioned this, but I had decided a year or so ago that wherever I got a tenure-track position, I would move my home office furniture to my school office. Basically, even when I was writing my thesis, I never used my home office except for storage. But I really love the furniture and it is a shame for it to just sit there unused when I could be enjoying it everyday at work. So, off to school it goes!

The other nice thing about this arrangement is that I really can turn my second bedroom in my apartment to a guest bedroom; I may have mentioned this already.

My hope is that once I get my furniture in place, I can start taking boxes out of my garage and sorting the books, files, and various office supplies in order to make space for a storage arrangement that allows me to get my car into the garage!

In other news, we talked to the administrative assistant and she had already started the balls rolling on many fronts for things like email, phone, phone number, copy code, parking pass, ID, HR stuff, business cards (my first ones ever!), as well as other things that I’m probably forgetting. She is extremely proactive, efficient, and definitely organized, which is just terrific! I know that I will be in good hands with her.

By the end of the afternoon, I actually had done some of the initial employee paperwork with HR, received my school ID card, and acquired my faculty parking pass! I also found out that I have free access to the fitness center and pool, which has a couple lanes dedicated to laps that I will not use, but another portion that is just for fun. Yay for the pools of TX!

In non-school-related news, I tried out a Zumba exercise class last night. It was free so that I could see if it was something that interests me. I had heard that it was more dance-like than your typical aerobics. My main concern with taking classes is that I tend to lose track of my heart-rate and end up with a migraine when my heart-rate goes too high for too long. 150-155 bpm is about as high as I like to go. I caught it going up to 162 and 167 a couple of times, but I slowed down and got it back to the high 140′s. Today, I don’t have a migraine, which bodes well.

As for the class, it was a lot of fun. There is a lot of cha-cha, salsa, and/or other Latin dance steps in it. We did do the requisite grapevine at one point, which was sort of good for slowing down my heart-rate too. There is a lot of shaking of one’s booty with which I’m not quite comfortable since I was in the 2nd row and there were about 4 rows behind me. Lest you think the class was huge, I should clarify that there was about 3 people per row. The class was mostly women in their 40′s and 50′s, I’d say. But there were two women – one in her 20′s (or maybe even a high school student?) and one in her 30′s – which was enough for me to not feel awkward.
I’ve decided that I will buy a monthly pass and try to go to as many classes as possible. They are on M, T, Th, which is pretty reasonable.

And now, I don’t have much other news other than we had really severe thunderstorms through the night and into this morning that made the power flash off multiple times and then go out this morning for about 30-45 minutes. Yay for flashlights. But it reminds me that even though candles are officially not allowed at my complex that I should go ahead and buy a lighter and/or matches so that when the power goes out, I can light candles. I will likely buy extra batteries too.