Well today was supposed to be my last day at work and I was really looking forward to going in and enjoying the final day before the place shuts down for Christmas.

After an hour in the cold though it became apparent to me and other travellers that the buses had been cancelled thanks to the weather. Which is a bit irritating as its really not that bad where I am. No snow, just rain and ice. Family had gone out for the morning so couldn't even get a lift some of the way.

Still, at least I can work from home and with the silence and lack of distractions managed to get my depressing email down from 200 or more to just 30 or so by dint of some hard labor, the compilation of a to do list which I won't look forward to in January, and accepting that at least one email to a student and one email to a member of academic staff I really should have answered just weren't worth responding to so late in the day. Still, it's already relieved some of the pressure that keeps me awake at nights and catching up with this blog this afternoon has contributed to that as well!

Nearly time to give up for the day but there's still a bit more I could do and the quiet in which to do it. So wishing any readers out there season's greetings, this blog is shutting down till the New Year.

Merry Christmas.

Had hoped to get some scanning done and make some inroads into the 200+ emails still sculling around in my inbox today. But much of the morning was wasted dealing with IT issues when my computer refused to boot.

On the upside, I did put through some book orders as a tiny amount of money has been released for us to get started again after a hiatus due to budgeting issues.

Went mad and have come to work the long way via TheOldPlace.

One of the things I was shown last week was their newly refurbished, redecorated staff room. It does look nicer but it's still stuck in a windowless basement and could use something cheerful on the wall. So I've offered them three of my favorites pictures from the summer trip to Prague.

Remains to be seen if they actually want my 'old holiday snaps' as my wife so rudely put it when she heard about it. But carpe diem and all that.

Annual leave today. Running the AV at a carol service for my daughters' former junior school.

On a day long course on promoting dignity and respect in the workplace today. I think it used to be 'Bullying and Harrassment' but the course leader had a theory about focussing on the negative actually creating the negative thing.

Anyway, although I didn't go with much in the way of expectations, it was a good and interesting day.

The disappointment being that it was so informal and intimate that I couldn't sit at the back and also visit Second Life where colleagues from TheOldPlace were doing a demonstration and had suggested I might drop in. We did have a 20 minute tea break and with 12 minutes of it left after grabbing a drink I thought there was just time to say a virtual 'Hi' - but the break was curtailed and just as I got logged on it was time to go again. I nearly pretended to sit and take notes, but my screen could be overlooked and the presenter had already made some remark about emailing during meetings and respect and so on, so I didn't dare.

The encouragement (if that's the right word) was in a bit role play at the end of the day. The group I was in had a couple of goes with one pair doing a fair job of one being a manager and t'other being a member of staff who was being bullied. Then it was my turn to take on a role with someone else as manager. The role I was assigned turned out, as I skimmed through the briefing, to be someone who'd been inappropriately asked out on several occasions by a line manager. And between nerves at playing the part and realizing that this was what someone talking to their appraiser would feel like anyway plus an empty coffee cup to fiddle with, I was soon 'there' or 'in the zone' as they say. When I surfaced at the end of maybe 7 or 8 minutes of this, the rest of the group were visibly astonished. I didn't think it had gone particularly well as without a script I always feel somewhat at a loss - but they unanimously thought I should quit my job and become an actor tomorrow. If I wasn't so exhausted by the whole process I might think it was good idea - but it was fun in any case.

Not sure I've the energy to go home now.

The university's annual learning and teaching bash this morning. Went very well.

I'm disappointed with myself that I didn't manage to submit an offering for them, but they wanted student involvement this year and there was very little time between the call for papers and the deadline for those of us who have very little constant contact with students and no contact at all with students regarding the project I'd have submitted.

Still, another library project did get a paper in and their session went well and was well attended. The junior colleague who'd been a part of it and for whom this was a novelty with associated nerves did an excellent job.

Went on what I think creativity types called a 'creative swiping' visit this afternoon to TheOldPlace. Well, that sounds better than bunking off for an afternoon just to see their new atrium.

In fact, thanks to the kindness and diligence of three former colleagues who laid on both a detailed tour of the building and a detailed tour of some of their electronic developments, I had an amazingly interesting and useful afternoon. The four of us then visited a closing down bookstore and a restaurant to finish the day and make the trip even more worthwhile. Stupidly I failed to buy anything even with many of the books at greatly reduced prices.

(Did find an empty DVD case which my daughter needed - but they let me take it away for free after I asked nicely.)

Thanks to S, Z and K who gave up so much time and were so gracious.

This morning we had a coffee morning on, well, coffee. Including coffee cakes and drinks and all sorts. A great treat even for non-coffee loving folk such as myself. The thrice a year 'foodie' coffee mornings always go down well - in both senses!

My faculty's library committee met this morning. Still had no formal news to tell them about the money situation. The chair had heard rumors that we were getting more money - but I knew nothing. All very difficult and painful but I survived. Not much fun.

On a much more cheerful note we had our library christmas buffet over lunch. Plenty to eat, games to be played, raffles to be drawn.

I'd submitted my photo for a 'name the baby' contest but recalled just about everyone at TheOldPlace guessing that it was me when we did something similar. Here I wasn't so universally recognized. Given that the one characteristic of the photo is cheeriness have I really got so 'down' the last three years that I no longer resemble my high chair self?

A Czech student popped in with parent, aunt, girlfriend and mother's friend who are all visiting just before Christmas.

I took them all to a coffee shop and as at least two of them didn't speak any more English than I spoke Czech, it was great to be able to practice what little I'd learned for my summer expedition. They were most amused at my delight when, on two occasions, I actually understood a whole sentence immediately. OK, so they weren't complex statements, but it was still something to pick out any meaning from all those consonants!

Had the delight of a very near neighbour of TheOldPlace coming as a group this afternoon to talk about ebooks and show round. Went very well and the colleagues I'd inveigled into coming and talking about their knowledge of or part in the process of buying/using/teaching ebooks kindly made the afternoon a great success.

Be interesting to hear how they go from here with regard to ebooks.

OK, here's odd: I tried buying milk yesterday morning and had one coin rejected because it was a Canadian 25 cent piece.

That's not what was odd.

Book group gang departed at the end of the work day and I'm waiting to run our deep web workshop again. But when only one guy turns up I ask if he would mind picking any time to run the 'hour' but not right now. (In fact I had quite a genuine migraine from a 90 minute transatlantic 'webinar' on a new database).

He was very gracious and happy to meet this morning for an hour.

We sat for 20 minutes (he was 10 minutes early) making sure no one else was coming and I was able to do a mini-workshop on things he didn't know as a distance learner to fill in the time. But the oddness was that rather randomly he turned out to be Canadian. So I gave him my 25c.

Oh and book group was great fun as well - I got a mini construction kit to build on Christmas Day if I can manage the engineering!

Deep web workshop today. Again, the Polish lady brought a whole class over so instead of 3 or 4 I had 22. Seemed to go well.

Bit irritated though. The rerun at 5.30 tomorrow I've realized clashes with the book group's Christmas meeting and gift swapping. Aaaaargh! How likely is it that no one will turn up?

Christmas lunch today with the (extended) team. About 12 or 13 of us. Two hours in a local hostelry. Don't expect much this afternoon!