Yesterday I attended my first last editors’ meeting — at least my last one as an editor. Natalie is going to do the paperwork Monday to make my move to IT official.

So after a year of basically knowing what I was doing and how to do it, I’m more or less in the dark. I have to admit that Tuesday, before I left work, I was more than a little anxious about my lack of technical background. I was working on getting links to public Outlook folders and I was, for a moment, terribly afraid that I had to know XML to get the job done. I was looking at the Outlook Today page’s code and thinking, “I might as well be trying to translate German.” But yesterday Kevin showed me where in the Programming Outlook and Exchange book I could find how to do it. It’s simple — and somewhat impressive. All I have to do is this: <A HREF = Outlook:\Inbox>. Or something like that. I can’t remember the details about the slashes and such. (I never remember whether it’s / or \ until I do it a thousand times.) Anyway, I’m feeling much better about it now.

I’m finding, though, that as a supervisor Kevin will not be quite as laid back as Natalie would be. I’ve already received two emails (addressed to all IT folks) about issues such as hours.¹ I’m not worried about it — but still, it was a little disconcerting to read an email that began, “I thought I made myself clear in last week’s meeting, but just to reiterate . . .”

I finally responded to Jasiu’s email of last week. I wrote a terse note in crappy Polish saying that I was terribly busy at the moment and didn’t have time to write a proper letter but that I would send him the pertinent information by the end of the month. I dread writing such a letter in Polish — trying to leave myself as much wiggle room as possible in a language I haven’t used much in eighteen months. Won’t that be fun.

Even more entertaining will be trying to decide whether or not I actually want to return. I’m surprised, though, that I’ve managed to keep my mouth shut with people at work. No one has the slightest clue (at least as far as I know) that I might not be working at DLI this time next year. I’ve managed successfully to keep it to myself.

1 We’re expected to be in the office by 8:30 and stay until at least 5:30.