Blogs: Pandammonia 
The world that revolves around Caity Ross.
Archive for the ‘organisation’ tag
Filing cabinet
I have wanted a filing cabinet for some time now. I believe it will help me be more organised. I also want some normal drawers to put stuff in. I described this problem a while ago. My ideal filing cabinet arrived today. A big lorry pulled up outside the house. I could hear it. Then the man knocked on the door, and gave me an important document to sign. I signed it and wrote my name on it as requested by the man. He went to the lorry and fetched a big box. I told him to put it in the living room. It looked heavy.
“Is it heavy?” I asked.
“Yes,” he puffed.
He left it in the living room as requested and got his piece of paper back, tore the carbon copy of it off for me, got his pen and went back to his lorry. Then the lorry drove away. I looked at the box. It was big. The man was also not wrong when he said it was heavy: it was heavy; he was right. I decided to leave it where it was until Colin got back from work.
When Colin got back from work, we assembled the filing cabinet. It took ages. Finally, it was constructed, and we took it up the stairs, where I fitted the drawers. They’re ever so slightly wonky. They open and close though, with only a little effort required, so I don’t think that’s a bad result from a flat-pack. I now have a fully-functional filing cabinet with two normal drawers and two filing drawers.
I got lots of filing cabinet fily things on Saturday from Ryman’s to put in it, so now all I need to do is put stuff in them. I have just filled one ordinary drawer with paper and envelopes and record cards (they’re mainly Colin’s, I think) and those plastic things you put in ring binders for handouts and printouts when you haven’t got a hole punch. In another drawer is going to go all the stuff (or at least some of the stuff) that’s in the under-shelf shelf under the monitor, which is on a shelf thing on the desk. Then I can either a) find somewhere else to put the under-shelf shelf or put other stuff in the under-shelf shelf. I haven’t decided which, yet. It depends on whether I can find anywhere else for the under-shelf shelf to go or not. I shall put papers and things in the filing drawers. They are all currently in in-trays and magazine racks on the shelf. I had to put books and other things in them because they started bending. Now, they will hang and gravity will keep them straight. Or at least they will when I’ve moved them.
Reorganisation
I’m having trouble concentrating on work (I have conference proceedings to write a draft for, as well as the usual PhD stuff, whatever that’s meant to be at the moment), so I thought I’d reorganise my study. I’ve been unhappy with the lack of storage space for some time now, and I looked at a cabinet on the Internet that had two filing drawers and two normal drawers in it a while ago, but didn’t buy it. I dithered. Then I decided the other day that I would buy it, but of course it was out of stock then. I said I’d like an email when they get more in stock.
In the meanwhile, I looked elsewhere, but couldn’t find one with the same combination of drawers. I got frustrated. I looked back at the original website, only to find the cabinet in stock again. I wondered where my email was, because it certainly wasn’t in my inbox! Still, I proceeded to order it anyway, while it was still there. It will take them up to 14 days to deliver it, and they have to phone me up in order to arrange it, because it’s a large item and will take two men to deliver it. What a palaver.
In the meantime, I have a half-reorganised study, which looks fine if you don’t look over there.
Organised? Who, me?
I nearly got up on time this morning. I got up an hour later, instead, after dreaming of PopCap games, which I was playing last night. I made a cuppa, but had no breakfast because there wasn’t enough milk for cereal (someone didn’t buy any more when he went to the shop yesterday) and there wasn’t any bread (because someone keeps eating it), although there was a bun left (because I wasn’t quite so gluttonous as someone else), so I made that into a pate, cucumber and home-made cranberry sauce butty and made a bit of salad to have as my dinner (lunch) at Uni, seeing as I had to go there for a meeting to discuss a paper.
After that, I went back to bed, and dreamt that I lived in a house that was overrun with wildlife, including dead and rotted mice (Dusty was rubbish at mousing) and there was mouse poo everywhere, and there were hedgehogs (which say, in a creaky voice, “iiiiiih!”) and there was a grey squirrel, which I picked up whilst wearing gardening gloves and put firmly outside.
Then I got up and showered and got ready, and printed out the paper I was to discuss, that I hadn’t read yet. Looked at the clock, and discovered that if I left any later, I’d be late for the meeting! Shocking. So I left for the meeting, getting petrol on the way. I got a fright at one point, along the A14, because I looked in my rear-view mirror, and there was this police car right behind me, its lights flashing away. I jumped a mile, sped up a bit to get past the lorry and the van I was overtaking and pulled back in. It shot off ahead, not after me at all, because I hadn’t been speeding!
I got to Uni just before 1 o’clock, and went to use the pay and display machine, but it wouldn’t read my card. Downright refused to, it did. Cheeky thing. A woman came up behind me, and I told her what was happening. She tried hers, just in case, and she said it sometimes happens that they don’t work, and we went to try another one. I said I was late enough already, and she said that it only ever happens when you’re late. It’s going to happen to me a lot, then!
I couldn’t remember what room number my meeting was in, so I had to go to a computer room to access either my email or my Google calendar to see. The nearest one (might be Lab A) had a few computers free, but none of them worked. I had to find another one, so I went to Lab G, I think it is. There were free, working machines in there, so I eventually found out where my room was, although I wasn’t certain how to get to it from there, what with it being on floor 5A. You have to be careful which staircase you use to get to floors 5A and 5B. I was on floor 4, so I went up a flight of stairs in the nearest staircase, which took me to 5. I went a bit further up just to see which floor was above, but it was 6, so I exited the stairwell on 5. I came into the space where you get stairs up to 5A and down to 5B – success at finding the floor! Next thing to do was find the room itself, or at least a sign with suitable numbers written on it and a handy arrow. I did find one, so I followed it, and the next and the next – very handy, although then I decided to find an empty seminar room to quickly scan at least the introduction and the conclusion of the paper – I never said I’d had time to read it yet, did I?!
I went in a room along a different corridor, scanned set parts of paper, thought sod it, I’ll really have to go; looked at the time; it was about 10 past. Shit! I thought, I’m awfully late! Turned out it wasn’t a problem that I was late and that I hadn’t read it anyway. I doubt I’d have understood it if I had read it, so that was ok, and after all that room-hunting, we went down to Louisa’s office anyway. We went through the paper together, with Louisa explaining bits and pieces of LFG to me – what do I know about LFG? I really should read the book I have about it. Next meeting (which will be next term), we’re going to discuss the PFM paper that she did in parallel to this one. They’re two parts of the same work, really. I have a much better chance of understanding that one.
After that, I had a mocha with chocolate sprinkles and a Wensleydale and cranberry sarnie (not bad, but not what I was supposed to be eating!) with Kakia, one of Louisa’s students, who I knew from our MAs, who satisfied her chocolate craving with a chocolate eclair and a cup of hot chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. Then, I went back to the first computer room I went to today and emailed Giorgos, telling him in my own way where I was. Then I texted him to make sure he knew I’d emailed him. He called me sarcastic and bossy. We’re off to the SU bar.
Hmm
I wonder what this would be like to use once you get used to it. I think I quite like the idea; given that I’m a person who is horizontally organised, I think it might just work for me.
[via reddit]
New job
Well, I’ve had my new job for a week now (well, four days because of the Bank Holiday), and I like it. So much better than my last job. So far, I’m playing around with web pages to make some data look pretty and to see where there are gaps. The pages are not online yet, but you wouldn’t be able to see them anyway, because they’re password protected. At least they should still be by the time I’ve finished with them! To do all this, I have to be methodical and systematic; things I’m not good at because I’m dreadfully disorganised. And I still have Wendy’s pen, but that’s not my fault, because she shut the office. It came in handy for enrolment on Wednesday, anyway.
So much to do…
…so little time.
At the weekend, I went all Domestic Goddess again, and sorted out the airing cupboard. C remarked that he’d never seen a tidier, more organised airing cupboard than ours when I’d finished with it.
There was an ulterior motive behind this airing-cupboard clearance. I wanted space to put some proving bread, which C worked out by the space in the airing cupboard and the banging of baking trays and cake tins and stuff. So, the cupboard was sorted out on Saturday (whilst waiting for Sims2 to do its chugging thing) and the bread was made on Sunday. It was made with a mixture of wholemeal wheat flour ground somewhere localish to Cambridge and oats stone-ground just up the A14 a bit. It turned out to be quite a dense bread, and much tastier than the ones I’ve made before. It’s nice with jam on it. Quince is good.
They never go on about wholemeal oat flour, do they? Only wholemeal wheat flour. I wonder why.
Housey housey
Last night, I decided to organise the clothes in the wardrobe and the drawers. This was interspersed with playing The Sims 2. This meant I eventually finished some time after midnight. C was not best pleased, as he had to go to sleep with a) the light on and b) “that infernal racket”, aka my music, being played in the study; neither of these causes him any genuine sleeping problems. He just likes to whinge. Anyway, apart from my underwear, our clothing is most organised and tidy.