It went well, I’m in a good safe sane place.  The people are all super nice.  Now that doesn’t mean that as researching faculty they don’t have their moments of crankypants, but they are fundamentally nice.  I can take occasional grumpous crap but not just plain nasty personalities.  I’m in a good place.  The work is going to be a breeze for me.

The one interesting thing I didn’t consider is that while I still work at the university I also work for the medical center attached and they are kind of a their own little world within the university’s own little world.  For the first time in 20 years I’m dealing with a dress code, no blue jeans of any kind and no open shoes.  Peep toes are okay but no sandals and the like even if they are fancy and black and professional.  You can wear the most jackassed hot pink with green daisy jeans but under no circumstances can they be blue.  Evidently a new CEO came in and he’s from the East Coast so no more western slacker shit there.

Thank god for thrift stores.  I found a pair of nice fancy type denim trousers (they are not jeans and it is the dark spandex denim that never fades) and some black pants and a pair of quite awesome leather clogs for wearing in the summer that I can leave there. And hey while I was there I got a total steal on a silk velvet jacket with red silk lining and these floopy red silk sleeves that extend past the velvet cuff .  The jacket is down to my ankles. It is GORGEOUS. Okay fine.  It’s a silk dressing gown.  But with a couple of easy alterations it is a coat, seriously easy stuff.  And the tie makes a very nice scarf.  Can’t wait to wear it out.  I also found a black silk velvet shawl with long fringe that I almost put back because you know, where am I going to wear a formal shawl, and then this voice in my head says, “Hey! that would look mighty fine on my altar there Missy.”  Hekate? She gets what she wants.  It’s nice to have a paycheck I can count on again.  All for under $50.  That’s my kind of store.

The other thing is all the tests.  Two TB antibody tests in my first two weeks and then once a year.  If I can’t prove immunization for a bunch of stuff, blood tests to determine if I got them when I was young.  Luckily as soon as my insurance kicks in I can prove a lot of it as I’ll have online access to my records.  But that Hepatitis B I got through being a bad girl in LA, well thank goodness I know I’m not a carrier.  But no immunization on that one (they pay for it all), too late for me.  I might qualify for the shingles vaccine. I think that the hospital gets a lot of employees from other countries where certain immunizations just were not standard.  But it makes one pause to realize, that yeah, you’re now working in a hospital (my department is even responsible for the autopsies) and there are communicable diseases here.  There is hand sanitizer everywhere and I do mean Everywhere.

Miss Mitty greeted me at the door, she’s going to miss me while I’m gone, she’s had me by her side for a long time.  It’s nice to be missed and nice to be home.

Gonna wash my new thrift store finds and crash like a big dog.