Too good to be true?

As Janice from Friends would say, OHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYY GAAAAAAWD!

I went to our staff Christmas party tonight, which actually involved going to see A Christmas Carol put on by a local theatre group (that not so coincidentally includes staff from the library). Little kids sang, people feigned British accents, and I pondered the distinct lack of subtlety in anything by Dickens, then went to the "drinks and appetizers" part of the evening. I was sitting on a couch, having some questionable food and even more questionable wine and saving a place for my friend when this woman and her husband sat down, some small talk happened (wasn't the play lovely, isn't it cold out) and upon noticing her Aussie accent I asked where she was from - Melbourne (and lived in the same part of town where my cool Aussie friend lives) and has been in this province for three years. While in Melbourne she worked in the Yarra Plenty library system, and at St Kilda (at a cute little branch that I took at peek at when I was in Melbourne 2 years ago), and still has a contact there, who she gave me an email address for. They may not have jobs available there but the lady I email should at least know where to look for others.

The only catch (and it is a BIG BUT, as Little Wolf would say) is that she is currently a slightly bitter teacher-librarian working in a larger-sized Canadian city in the same province as me, and is pissed because her library credentials did not transfer over to Canada and she is making A LOT less than she was in her old job, where she was manager of a library. She wants me to see if anyone at CLA knows about having her credentials be accepted so she can get a real job here. Of course, I don't have a membership to CLA much less know anyone who works there, but I told her I'd look into it. Immediatly my little grey cells started formulating a plan of "hmm ... how can I talk to my boss about getting her hired as the next teen services librarian at our library so she can have the kind of job she wants in a place she likes (god knows why, but she does), and I can get a job in her hometown and everyone will be happy!"

So this is one of those situations where nothing may come of it and I may never hear from her again, but damn, it seems like an awesome twist of fate that could lead to a job opportunity, and I better take advantage of that! If I had never sat on that couch, at that time, I might never have met her and gotten this rather lovely foot in the door (that was wearing my Bond girl boots at the time) for place #1 in The Plan. Before I left I whipped out Arfur - my keychain wombat - and I think she was impressed for my spastic enthusiasm for Australia.

This definitely was the highlight of a day that previously included a lot of annoying Christmas shopping (why,why, why do we have to buy presents for each other in honour of one stupid day?). As of 4pm, after my arm had fallen off from carrying so many cloth bags and I had almost been run over 4 times in store parking lots, the highlight had been looking through the hilarious book The Hypochondriac's Pocket Guide to Horrible Diseases You Probably Already Have and so badly wanting to buy it but realizing that the best people to give it to would also be the ones who would be most offended by it. I looked through it, had a chuckle, and amazingly, refrained from buying it myself.