Working in an office

Most of the time, I don't really feel as if I work in an office. I work in a little room in a big church, I can work from home whenever I want, and part of my job is to show up at weekly rehearsals (although not sing in them.) But sometimes something goes wrong, and I share the same problems that make office workers all over the nation clunk their heads against their monitors in frustration.

Being the Operations Manager of The Boston Cecilia is my main job. It's technically a half-time position, but our Executive Director was wooed away from us by a full-time job with the BCA (very sad, as he was both fun to work with and very good at his job) and so I've been accruing extra hours lately since I am now the only person on staff. I've gotten to take over interacting with the press, which is a great learning experience, if occasionally a little stressful, and since our first concert is next week, there's been quite a lot of press releases and e-mails to send out.

I'm also currently working on the program, which requires a lot of back-and-forth with the designer; filling ticket orders that come in online or by phone; sending e-mails about hiring a new Executive Director; sending e-mails to the chorus and to our mailing list of patrons; trying to get the Boston Globe to call me back about buying some ads; updating our newly designed and still unfinished website; and always fielding lots and lots of e-mails about everything possible Cecilia-related, from whether I'd like to do a program-ad trade with another chorus to whether someone can sit in on rehearsal to invoices.

Except that today, our e-mail is down. Since I am the only staff member, I should say my e-mail is down. As is the website. As is the listserver.

So, I can't e-mail the chorus to correct the typo in the e-mail I sent them last night, and asked them to forward to their friends. I can build new webpages, but I can't make them live. I can't check my e-mail to see if ticket orders have come in. I can't, in fact, e-mail anybody about anything, and since my addressbook is in my e-mail, I can't even e-mail people from my personal e-mail. I do have the designer's address memorized, so discussions about the program are luckily still moving forward, but otherwise it has been a very frustrating morning!

And our website and e-mail provider is in CA. Let's see, what time is it in CA?

*headmonitor*

[EDIT: We're back up! So now everybody gets to e-mail me and tell me that it's "un soir" and "la France", in an e-mail I already sent out to 1,000 people. It is not the greatest day, so far.]

The one thing I can do for our concert is to tell you about it! Which deserves a whole new post. So...