Saturday, December 09, 2006

thinking outloud

I was going to sit down and write a post about the details of my new job but then I realized that I would be cutting my nose to spite my face. I can tell you this, though:

True to form, I spent the first two days losing sleep over the best way to do this job. I've changed my game plan at least three times and I keep bugging Steph with stuff like, "Does it make sense if I say this?" and "Does that mean what I think it means?" and generally being a neurotic pain in the toosh. That being said, I have come to a couple of conclusions.

I was originally going to spend a lot of time going to Troyes and talking to contacts in person, and then I realized that in the time it takes to drive to Troyes, I could talk to about ten contacts by telephone. I'll still take my info when we go to Troyes for something else, but making a special trip seems a waste of time. I think I've also finally come up with what I'm going to say to contacts and I've boned up on some vocabulary issues.

So, I've got a couple of craft projects I need to give my attenion to this weekend (Christmas is still only three weeks away whether I'm working or not) so the telephone assault will begin Monday. And I do mean assault - I want to get as much as the phone stuff out of the way as quick as I can, so I can get to the fun stuff - writing!

The funny thing is that I've suddenly got this surge of confidence in speaking French and I haven't even talked to a contact yet. The phone rang late Thursday afternoon and I was going to let it ring but then I thought "hey, if this is going to be my job I'd better get used to it" so I picked it up. Wouldn't you know that it is our bank wanting to make another appointment with Bank Dude? I said, "Again?! We just saw him last week." She was surprised and said she'd pass that along to Bank Dude. I mean, honestly.

Then I had to go back to the post office and found the one nice person in the whole building. I couldn't even believe it. Not only was she nice, she was patient as I explained that I probably had the wrong documents for sending a registered letter because I'd misunderstood the (not exactly nice but not mean either) woman who gave me the documents the day before. She was fantabulous and I hope she's not just a temporary replacement for someone. I want to bring her cookies, she was so nice.

Anyway, that's what's been rolling around my brain the last couple of days. Oh - and the great news is that Steph's colleague took only about an hour to work on the computer and everything seems to be fine. He took a hard drive and a graphic card out of the old computer and put them in mine, so I'm working with a Mighty Powerful Machine now, yes indeed. Only I moved as much of my documents as I could onto one of the new drives (it was partitioned) and left the games on the old hard drive, but I seem to have moved something I shouldn't have, as my desktop noises have disappeared. Something else to goof around with when I have time. So, that's my weekend set - hope you all have a great weekend!

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