Moved Back With My Own Kind

Being on campus was not as weird as I expected. It felt almost like coming back after a long weekend or a holiday, but everything looked pretty much the same as I remembered. There were new signs posted on the exterior doors with the mask requirement, and I had to call Campus Safety to get in to the building where my temporary office is. It was almost empty of people, but that's not unusual in the summer. I saw some of the Physical Plant staff, and the Mailroom person, and one faculty colleague who said he was also on campus to move offices.

On Wednesday, I was there for about three hours in the afternoon. I packed all my books and most of the files from my file cabinet. I had kept all the boxes from last year's move so I was able to reuse them. I filled 21 boxes that day.

On Thursday afternoon I was back to finish. Our Logistics person had already moved the first boxes out of there so I had room to work. The last eight boxes were not packed with much organization. I had to take down all the plaques and things on the walls, all the papers from my door and bulletin board, and I basically dumped all the contents of my desk drawers into boxes, willy-nilly. I know that's going to be hell to organize later, but I just wanted to be done once I had started. I was surprised that it only took about an hour. This is "Winter Camp" empty:

I am taking the five-drawer file cabinet in the back right and the short bookshelf in the front right to the new building. I do not get to keep that Steelcase desk that I've had for 17 years, and I will miss it a lot even though it's beat up and old. I hope the next occupant of this office appreciates it! I will also miss my faculty and staff neighbors from Winter Camp. It was a nice experience to interact with them on a daily basis this past year. It gave me a different perspective than when I was only in the science building every day.

Next I went over to the science building to check things out over there. I carried my small carpet and a tote bag of loose items with me. I saw our building secretary and my lab manager for the first time in three months and had nice chats (masked and at a safe distance, hopefully) with both of them. I wandered through all our labs just looking at "my" stuff. It felt good to be "home" again.

The Logistics team showed up with the rest of my boxes, so I helped them arrange those in my new office and then I started unpacking. This next photo is the new office, with most of the stuff in a pile just inside the door. Half a dozen or so additional boxes are out in the hallway.

I used LibraryThing both times I packed to keep track of my books. (I have all my books in the database and already tagged to designate the ones in my office versus at home.) Last year, I tagged each book with a letter corresponding to what box it was packed in, and I repacked in those same boxes this year. LibraryThing made it easy to generate a list of what should be in each box, and so far I'm only missing one book (I think I brought it home last summer and forgot to update the database). As I unpacked, I deleted the box tag from the database. I know, this is somewhat excessive, but it makes me feel much better to be organized. It's like I have control over a small part of my life. I emptied four of the nine book boxes before I had to quit for the day. Logistics should have brought my file cabinet over today so that next week I can start reloading it. I will also take my new desk organizer to campus next week; it has been in my spare bedroom since March.

Working on this helped me to put out of mind tor a short while that we're still in the midst of a pandemic, that all is not right in the world, that I don't really have a clue how fall semester is going to go, and my other worries. It felt good just to do something, make something happen.