Well, this week has not been fun. But today was better, I think. Basically I've been having a horrible time due to the move. I don't really like change and this is change on a massive, inconvenient scale. I have a lot of stuff (we call it 'the backlog') that we were apparently not allowed to take with us when we move (we're moving to a different building at county hall). We thought we could send it into off site storage. (They are encouraging this since they say it is cheaper than having it at county hall.)

I tried to fill in the form to send the stuff off site, and I packed the stuff into boxes. The woman wasn't happy that it was 'boxes' of material as opposed to neat files that could be individually barcoded within the box, but I tried to fill in the form to explain what it all was. Unsurprisingly, I hadn't filled in the form to their satisfaction, so I had to do it again. The woman agreed we could send the stuff off site as long as we had the boxes sent back within 2 years and indexed them properly. So, we thought, we'd just be postponing the problem. But that would make it a little more manageable.

I re-packed the boxes to make sure they weighed under 10kg. Then I was told that it wasn't indexed well enough so they wouldn't take it. (I can't index it more thoroughly, it's the backlog! It's a bunch of stuff that we haven't had time to deal with! I can't send a load of neat document wallets with reference numbers! It's a BACKLOG!) So I was quite upset about it. (I got the feeling the woman and I were talking at cross purposes, but she seemed very patronising and generally made me want to cry.) The woman was avoiding me today. But apparently she talked to my boss and 'was glad we could work together to sort out the problem'. Yeah, like she sorted anything. She just kept changing the rules until we gave up in exasperation. Ok, so I unpacked all the boxes again (she wanted her boxes back) and re-packed the stuff into different boxes - we'll have to take them upstairs with us. We'll just have a wall of boxes around us since there's nowhere for the stuff to go. For crying out loud!

So that's the sort of thing that's being going on with me this week. On the plus side, I did get out of the office chaos for a bit today to visit the Time Team. Remarkably, they'd found a wall we knew was there because it was excavated in the 1960s and a 'moat' that we knew was there because it had been mapped. Wow! Perhaps they will find out some new information as well. ;) We're hoping to go back tomorrow...

Oh, and my brother John came to visit at the weekend, we went to the 50s American Diner for Rachel's birthday. Ate loads as usual... think I will be getting quite round if I'm not careful. We went out for lunch Sunday too, to the Manor Farm Shop with Rob's parents (it was his mum's birthday on Monday). So definitely getting rounder... Oh well. :)