Dates

18th December - leave US
19th December - arrive UK
20th December - Robin Ince and friends in London
22nd+23rd December - Wales
28th December - The Cooks'
30th December - The Wallers'
6th January - return to US

I can't keep going on like this. What can I do?

First up, let's list my responsibilities and estimate how much of my time is spent on each. Then perhaps I want to say how much I should spend on each and try to find someone to make up the difference. I need to keep some time in reserve for the unexpected events that I need to deal with.


User Processing (includes training) - 2 hours/wk
Work planning and control and supervision - 6 hours/wk
Experiment safety review - 4 hours/wk
User Area infrastructure (maintenance) - 8 hours/wk
User Area infrastructure (projects/experiments) - 8 hours/wk
Scheduling beam time (includes procedures) - 4 hours/wk
User Support (tunnel and MCC) - 8 hours/wk

(Statistics/reporting)
(User Meeting)
(User Office task force)

Christine Clarke has become an essential employee at SLAC National Laboratory. In her four years' employment to date, she has demonstrated talents and abilities that would make her desirable in many positions at the lab and we look forward to continuing her career development as a valued SLAC employee.

Christine's role for the past four years has been as User Manager at FACET and Test Beam facilities where she has cemented her importance as the single point of contact for all experiments at FACET, a Department of Energy User Facility for research and development principally in the field of advanced accelerator research.

She is responsible for the safety of the >200 users of FACET and Test Beam facilities each year and leads in the creation of policies and procedures to improve their experience and the efficiency of the facilities.

Christine has demonstrated strengths in communication and her scientific knowledge underlines her ability to support the users of the facilities and make their experiments a reality and a success.

Christine was hired in 2011 and fulfilled the rare criteria of having a PhD in accelerator physics and hands on experimental experience at multiple laboratories. Her academic credentials gave us confidence that she could handle the technical challenges of coordinating experiments on the cutting edge of accelerator research. In the past four years, Christine has exceeded expectations in this regard and the facility owes a lot of its success to her.

FACET and Test Beam Facilities requires Christine's continued contribution as she has gained considerable expertise in the experiments and is key to the smooth operation of the facilities.

Bored now.

Empty spaces

When I was 8, we had to have swimming lessons. My class had them on Fridays. We would walk, two by two, to the local sports centre. But for whatever reason, I had a dislike of the teacher that gave us the lessons. And for whatever reason, my parents acted and got me out of his class. Instead, I joined another class on Mondays and was taught by a different teacher who met with my satisfaction. Anyway, I am always reminded of swimming when I am at work after everyone else has gone (which is essentially every day...). Because the outcome of swapping to the Monday class was that on Fridays, I was left behind by my classmates and I was alone. I would attend the lessons of the other class and then at the end of the day, return to my form room to collect my things. And put my chair on the table (why was that a thing we did? To help the person that would hoover I guess). I would put everyone else's chair on the tables too. Pick up litter. Tidy the class room. I really enjoyed being alone there, in a room usually quite hectic with 30 or so eight year old kids obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I lingered as long as I could, relishing the different sense of this familiar space.

When I left work today, I passed the janitor who was sitting on one of the armchairs outside a meeting room. As usual, I envied him for his job. He works in empty spaces professionally. Lucky bastard.