Itch...? part 2: greetings from Limbo

I bumped into a colleague the other day who asked me "How's life in limbo?" Spookily enough, I had been thinking about my life in just those terms for the last few weeks, and thinking back it's a similar situation to that in which I found myself seven years ago too.
Once I knew I had my job, I had to wait to start it. Two weeks can seem like a lifetime when something as big as a new job, a new start in life, looms on the horizon, and what I mostly remember about that time was the frustration of not being able to just get on with it. Of course once I did start I had what felt like all the information in the world crammed into my head in such a short time that I am sure by the end of the first week I was just wandering the corridors like a zombie...
Limbo seven years later is somewhat different.
Once we get the move (which is what is currently looming ever closer) out of the way work will carry on much as it has before. I anticipate a change of some workflows, hopefully for the better as I think there is more I could do in some cases than I currently do, but the big change this time around is one of location.
It is not lost on me that as the arrangements stand now I will work in the New Bodleian for exactly seven years. The day after my "library birthday" as a fellow student called it happens I will be out, and by the beginning of next month will hopefully be able to find my desk. Until then, the boxes and the dust and the likelihood of putting away something I will need consume me... For the sake of posterity, I therefore present a view of my workspace, replete with theses, as it looked on Tuesday November 16th, before the boxes arrived.

Itch...? Part 1

...Can it really be almost seven years?
I don't remember what day of the week it was, but I do remember that it all began on a day when my hair would not behave. Having had two failed interviews within the previous few days, I was spent. With the hair situation obviously meaning that I would not look my best, I decided that giving up trying to make a good impression and just taking everything as it came was the only way forward.
I arrived on time, just as the previous candidate was being shown out. The gentleman who showed me around introduced himself, went away to show the (utterly terrified-looking) candidate out, and then introduced himself to me again (which I found amusing), before taking me into the bookstack, right up to the top, and then admitting to me that he didn't really know his way around...
Pressing on, he showed me other floors of the stack, and the Reading Room, before taking me round to the office. I know now (having been pressed into service myself) that his purpose was to tell the panel what his impression of me had been; I must have made a favourable one.
The interview panel were pleasant enough. I answered the questions, the most useful thing I was able to bring being my knowledge of people having sold beer across the road for almost a year, and when I got the call later that day to offer me the job I accepted with enthusiasm.
I later concluded that being slightly un-groomed was hardly a hardship given the mess which some people walk around in, and that knowing most of the porters from the pub probably didn't hurt either.
Still seems unreal that this all happened in 2003!