Ideas, Tidbits & Trivia

Yes, I know I need to dust. That's going to be today's project. Dusting is kind of an ordeal with all these tiny breakables about.

In any case, I took yesterday to let myself move a little slowly and just think. There's a lot of thinking going on as I begin with this job.

I have spent the past couple of days just making notes on what I need to do. I'm going to fill up my pretty new notebook quickly, I can already tell. I get ideas, and I've been jotting them down while I watch the desk and greet new people coming in. The plan is to spend about a week just acclimating myself to the basics of the job, and getting used to the shop. I'm slowly mapping out where everything currently is.

Then I'm going to sit down, make a map of how I want it to look, and we're going to move roughly 78% of it somewhere else.

This is going to be a serious investment of my time, and I cannot tell you how excited that makes me.

Jason has been very excited about the job, too - I think he's just excited to see me be excited by the concept of what I'm doing. I've come home throughout our marriage excited about getting a job, or my coworkers, or occasionally just worked up and energetic on how much I disliked what I was doing... it's probably a little bit novel to have me come home, a smile on my face, and show him a book on Museum Shop Management I found in my desk that I am so going to memorize because this I plan to be doing this for a while.

My coworkers are lovely - for the sake of their privacy, I won't go into anything about them overmuch on this blog without their express permission to share any of the specific stories. I hope that's okay with you readers.

In any case, I will say that I've told one of my coworkers that I'm thinking it will take me six months to get into the groove - six months before I can get to a point of maintenance instead of tear down, rebuild.

The schedule is interesting, too. It's a Tuesday - Saturday job. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday are 8:30 AM to 5 PM. Thursday is 12 PM - 7:30 PM. Saturday is 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM. Then I have Sunday and Monday off. I like this because I can still see people on Saturday night, and I still get my two-day weekend. These are things I like very much.

Today, the museum's local Youth Art show is coming to an end, so the teachers will be in and out taking down the projects they've been showing. I took a walk around the rooms so I could get a look before they came down - there are some kids in the elementary, middle, and high school shows that I think are either going to go to art school later in life, or will always have a hobby at least that they are really good at. Some of these kids really showed promise. It made me wish, vaguely, for about half a second, that I'd gone into art education.

Then, of course, I remembered that I probably wouldn't be a very good teacher since I have the attention span of the goldfish, and the feeling went away.

Then, people will be coming in to start submitting pieces for the Juried Art Show the museum does this time of year. I am even more excited about that. It will be a good time to get an idea of what local artists are up to, and see what I can do once I start looking to rebuild with new things in the museum shop.

Today, I'll be fielding lots of people coming in and going out, making more notes, dusting, and beginning the process of planning out where I'm going to actually begin with what I'm trying to do. I think I'm going to have to carve out some storage space somewhere. Somehow.

Also!

Bit of interesting trivia, which those of you from SC probably already know, but I think my Illinois people might be interested to discover;

The museum used to be a jail. It was a jail starting just before the 20th century right up until 1975. Originally, the sheriff lived on the top floor, and the jail cells were down below. The sheriff would take care of the inmates, and he and his family would live above them.

There are bars on the windows of the old building. Which amuses me to no end.

It's also rumored to be haunted, but I think that's mostly the result of superstition (people did die there, after all) and the fact that old buildings just make really weird noises. I grew up in an older house and some of the noises people call 'weird' are pretty familiar 'the building is settling' noises to me.

Well, so. That went on quite a bit longer than I planned.

I think my next update's just going to be a single photo. Keep it brief, so I don't drown everyone in words every couple of days.