Looking back on this week, it's been a long week. I have several projects I'm working on at work, and they seem to be never ending. They will get done though, I just need motivation to finish them. These projects are not the most exciting things that I work on, but they have to be done, and I will get them finished eventually. Thank goodness it's Friday, and I have the weekend to look forward to.

I don't know what happened overnight, but cooler heads prevailed yesterday. The office seemed to go back to normal. It was so much better than on Wednesday. People were actually talking to one another and were in a cheerful mood. It may have been that the audit went well, or just that cooler heads did prevail. I think it was a little bit of both. My boss is off today, so things should be fairly quiet in the office today. I have a few special projects to do, so my head will be down and I will be busy most of the day.

There is so much tension at work. My boss and our secretary are at odds with each other and it has all of the rest of us on pins and needles. My office sits between their offices, so I am smack in the middle of it, exactly where I don't want to be. I'm just keeping my head down and doing my work. I hope tomorrow is a better day, though I doubt it. We have some kind of insurance audit tomorrow which I am not part of, thank goodness. So we will see what happens. I'm just praying that there is less tension in the office tomorrow.

The picture above has nothing to do with the post, but I think it's cute. The cat looks like Isabella, so I call it Darth Bella.

Now that I’m back in Vermont, I have to return to work today. At least it is Friday. I only have to work one day this week. It should be a day of catching up on things I missed while I was out the last week. It shouldn’t be a lot of stuff. I’ll get my coffee in the morning and then get to working on whatever needs to be done.

I had a major interview set for this week. It was with a world celebrity who happened to get a graduate degree from my school. I can’t say who she is, but know that this was going to be a big interview. To be honest, I was a bit nervous. Disappointingly, she’s had to cancel our interview due to some unforeseen issues. She didn’t cancel it completely, but it just won’t be in person or this week. We will have to do the interview by phone in a few weeks. The phone isn’t the best option because the sound quality is not as good, but it’s better than nothing.

Yesterday, I sent in a proposal to present at a rural women’s conference. You might wonder why. Well back in graduate school, I conducted oral histories with a special group of rural women. The conference isn’t until next year, but I’m hoping that my paper gets accepted. It’s a unique story that should be told. If I am chosen to present, I will likely be the only male presenter. However, women’s history was my minor field, so I hope they overlook my gender and allow me to present.

In a comment yesterday, an anonymous commenter asked how last week went when I was alone at the office. In one brief word…boring. I did get a lot of work done on the book that I am writing as part of my job, but there wasn’t a lot else to do. The book by the way is a book of oral histories. Anyway, my boss came in long enough for us to do a tour of the museum for a group, but other than that it was just me and a student we have doing research in the museum, so technically, I wasn’t all alone. He’s quiet though and is a hard worker, so it was like being alone. Sometimes it’s nice to be in the office by myself. Yes, it gets boring, but I can get work done undisturbed. So there you have it. While I accomplished some of the work that I needed to get done, it was mostly just very boring.
PS Can anyone tell me what the model in the picture is holding in his hands?