Bowling and Information Literacy

Bowling is good, especially when you're with a whole bunch of other librarians and the entire place (pool tables, 10 lanes, and food) are provided for you and only you. We each got one free drink, too, but quite a few people weren't drinking, so a several people got LOTS of free drinks. That was kind of amusing.

Of course, bowling would have been a lot less hilarious if it had been actual bowling and not candlepins (which I haven't played since I was 11). Those tiny little bowling balls and the skinny little pins sure do make the game a challenge, especially for those who were benefiting from the generosity of the non-drinkers in the bunch.

10:00 came sooner than we thought it would, though, and we all had to troop back to campus in our big ol' touring busses. Now the next challenge is to get myself into a sleepy state so I can get all rested, fresh, and ready for another morning of classes.

[Update: Jason is the only one I know who took his camera along, and he's posted his photos here.)

Inwardly Dying

I made a fool of myself today. I guess that's what happens when your brain goes into hiding to avoid the abuse to which you're subjecting it after several LONG days, several longer nights (sleeping on plastic mattresses wrapped in polyester sheets really isn't doing it for me), and all meals consisting of a choice of pizza, pasta with red sauce, or meat and potatoes, plus a salad bar. (Seriously, they serve these same three choices lunch and dinner EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!!). But even so, I'm mortified.

I made a comment today that came out entirely wrong, almost the opposite of what I meant to say, and it sounded incoherent, stupid, judgmental. I'm trying to convince myself that people won't remember this as their primary impression of me, but it's just not working. It's hard to forget stupid, judgmental people, especially when everyone's tired enough to be moody and easily annoyed.

I'm Not Blogging

I promised myself that I wouldn't blog tonight. I need more sleep than I've been getting. So this is just to say that I'm not blogging tonight. I'm really not.

While I'm not blogging, here are some random bits of nothingness that are running around in my head:

• Don't keep telling me there's no one right answer. I'm tired of it, and usually that's obvious anyway. It's sort of like "um" while waiting for students to respond.
• At IDEO they say "fail frequently so you can succeed more often." I likey...
• I'm apparently not a "feeling" learner (according to the learning styles assessment we did today). I'm a converger/assimilator. Don't make me role-play or expect me to learn too much from the emotion-centric experiences of others. (But somehow I've got to figure out how to integrate this type of thing into my instruction or I'll alienate all the Divergers out there who don't care a wit for my thinking/doing/thinking method of learning.)
• Randy Rocks! Can we get him to come to Carleton and talk to us? Please? Pretty please? Though it'd be a pretty penny to fly him in from Hawaii, I imagine... (I'm so excited that I get to be in two sessions led by him tomorrow.... I get all school-girlish-happy to be in his classes and be allowed to have fun while learning.)

Tomorrow morning we present our 5-minute chunks of a class and get critiqued by the group. Wish me luck!

Okay, no more blogging. Must do homework and then SLEEP.

Tired, but Doing Fine

It's been a good day. We all met for the opening plenary session (8:30 till noon!), and plunked ourselves down at tables kind of willy-nilly. I ended up at the "kid's" table in the back of the room... not quite sure how that happened, but we had a blast and (kind of by accident) ended up doing quite well on all the exercises together. We were in danger of being split up by the Jigsaw activity (where each of us "teaches" one of five articles to the rest of us), but it turned out that four of the five of us had read different articles, so we pretty much all stayed at our table.

In the afternoon we had part one of two or three sessions on assessment. I've really got to get a handle on how I can use this in my instruction. I've been experimenting with giving the students more control of the class period, but then I'm always worried that they aren't learning. So these concepts should be good for me. As in the first session, the ideas weren't really anything I hadn't heard elsewhere, but it's good for me to have concentrated time to reflect on my year's teaching, evaluate what I've done, and figure out how to move forward from here.

The third session was AWESOME. Randy Hensley is an amazing teacher. I admit, I was skeptical. He'd been writing all sorts of crazy uber-teacherish emails to us. Like, for example, the response he wrote to my posted introduction asking me "If you could do your first year of librarianship over, what would you do differently?" Uh, I don't know. I had a pretty unbeatable first year, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, I was all set to be annoyed and turned off by gimmicky exercises, but it wasn't that way at all. Hey, I even drew a picture for the guy. That's how amazing he was. I don't draw concepts. I just don't. Especially not with crayons.

(In case you can't tell, that's me using a zipper to open myself up and let out a bunch of smiley faces and balloons, which at the time seemed like a perfectly rational picture of using tools to reveal my personality... It'd been a long day. Stop laughing. STOP IT. And don't go telling me my picture-woman has no head. I know that. I deliberately avoided drawing a head.)

Anyway, at one point I ended up on a stack of crates (which almost fell over, but didn't, so I'm not dead). Don't know quite what that had to do with anything. But he invited me up, so I went.

Which brings me to the other really weird thing about Immersion. I've learned to become an extrovert. Seriously. People here think I'm always like this! HAH!!! And who knows, maybe I am like this now. Computers in Libraries brought it out of me a little, but now I OWN this new person I am. And I like it. I love it that I no longer avoid introducing myself to people, or shake while doing it.

There's lots more to write (I've been keeping a list... yeah, I'm a librarian), but it's 11:30 here, and morning comes EARLY in Boston. I'd best call it a night. But there are a few more photos (still without titles or descriptions, sorry) up on my flicker site.

Just two things before I turn my brain off for the night: A pox on convention centers without wireless, and boo to long personal stories that should have been short and on topic responses to the presenter's question. Nuf said.

Here come the pictures!

I've finally started puting things up on flickr. You can see the beginnings of my Immersion photo set here. I haven't explained anything yet, so many of the pictures won't make any sense... but that'll come.

My favorite is one I snapped while at Midway. It just seemed to fit me so well.

Planes, Trains, but no Automobiles

Today was pretty much an exercise in torture. By the end, it was so bad that I ended up in tears on the phone with my mom. Not the best way to start Immersion, but what can you do.

You remember that flight that was delayed? The one from Chicago to Boston? Well, first it was going to be 40 minutes late, leaving at 3:45 instead of 3:05. Then all of a sudden they were boarding by 3:15, and we were all on the plane and accounted for by 3:25. Not bad, thought I. There's still a chance that I'll make it in time to meet the people I said I'd meet. Then we sat on the tarmac for 25 minutes. No kidding.

When we finally did take off, the captain said we'd probably still get in to Boston by 6:40, only 20 minutes late. Great, I thought, other people from our group will still be arriving by then. I still have a chance.

Then something weird happened. About the time I figured we should be landing, we were still very, very high up in the air. What was even more weird was that we were heading north. The sun was setting directly to my left (I had a window seat). Hmmm, I thought. We must have hit the coast a little south of Boston. Then the captain came on and explained that Logan was busy and we'd been killing time up in Maine.

So after a little detour to Maine, and then another one out over the Atlantic (there are some HUGE boats way out there in the middle of no where), we finally found our way back to Logan and landed. It was "only" 7:05. Well, the last time I'd had access to my phone, I'd called the two people whose numbers I knew and told them I'd be in by 7:00, so there was still a chance they'd be waiting for me.

But we didn't taxi to the gate. We sat there. Just sat there. And sat. And sat. 15 minutes into this waiting game, the captain came on and mumbled something which sounded like an announcement about another plane being at our gate. The only thing clear about his announcement was that it would be another 5 or 10 minutes before we could deplane. Meanwhile, I watched a whole fleet of American Airlines planes land, taxi to their gates, disgorge themselves of passengers and cargo, get cleaned out and refueled, get all packed up with passengers and cargo, and then take off. It was utterly surreal. (The three-year-old across the isle from me didn't find ANYTHING amusing about all this. Not a thing.) 45 minutes after landing, we moved forward. The passengers cheered... but we weren't actually going to the gate. We just got a little closer. Then we waited some more, and then moved forward a little.

Now we could SEE our gate, beautiful and empty, the promise of freedom (and a bathroom) causing the whole cabin full of passengers to hold their breaths. But no. We were just going to look at it for a while. It was like a giant game of "Mother May I." Mother may I take one ginormous leap forward? Please? Pretty Please?

Almost exactly an hour after landing, we finally got off the plane. Then began the adventure of the trains.

The airport provides a complementary shuttle service to the nearest train station, which I took without incident. Then I figured out the pass system at the train station (when I lived here it was all tokens!), boarded my Blue Line train, got off at the station that connects to the Green Line... It was all going so well! And then my train stopped. Just stopped. Right there on the track.

And then it backed up.

At this point I still had enough blood sugar in my system to begin to find this morbidly amusing. Yeah, that was before getting off the train (which was ABSOLUTELY PACKED, I might add) and starting to follow the directions for walking the rest of the way to Simmons. My directions said, "Walk towards the Landmark Center when you get off the T. Follow Park Drive (the road that's the overpass above the T stop) until it intersects with Brookline." Ok, I thought. No biggy. So I exited the train, walked toward the shopping mall that I assume was the Landmark Center, saw the overpass, and walked over it.

After walking a couple of blocks, I began to think that things weren't looking right. But the last thing I wanted to do while walking alone around Boston, trailing my luggage behind me (thank goodness for wheels on suitcases!), was pull out my map and look lost. The key to not getting robbed is to walk fast and look like you know where you're going (and not be obvious about carrying valuables, but that was already shot). Finally, when the sidewalk petered out, I turned around, went back to the 7/11 I'd seen, and asked directions there. I'd been going the wrong way. Apparently, when the directions said to take the road that was the overpass over the T stop, it hadn't meant to go over that overpass. It had just meant the overpass bit as a defining feature of the road. Great. So I walked all the way back to the T stop, still trailing my suitcase behind me and feeling oh so exposed and lost, walked the other way on Park Drive, and continued to follow the directions.

I got to Simmons, but didn't know it, and kept walking. All this was complicated by the fact that the campus map is not oriented with north on top, so I didn't realize that the campus was going to be on my right. I thought it was going to be across the street from me. Well, across the street (and two blocks down, but who's counting) wasn't Simmons. It was the hospital. Fine, I thought, I've got no pride left. So I got myself buzzed into the lobby and asked the guy at the main desk where Simmons was. He pointed me back the way I'd come, and I left again, my suitcase wheels making rhythmic bumping noises across the squares of pavement.

I found my way back to Simmons, and even located the building I was supposed to enter to check in. But the door was locked with only a key card reader and an emergency phone. There was no way I was going to stand there, in the dark, looking through all my papers for a phone number to call for someone to let me in, so I walked along the sidewalk some more, looking for a break in the fence so I could actually get onto campus before looking even more vulnerable and rob-able than I was already. A few buildings down, I saw and entrance and dove for it. Once inside the campus, I found out that the door leading into the magical check-in building was open as long as you were coming at it from the center of campus... Aaaarrrrggggh!

But I'm check in, I've made my bed, and I've even eaten a few granola bars that I'd packed. (There's no way I'm going out questing for food tonight!) The student worker who checked me in informed me that I made it just 10 minutes before she was closing up shop, so something went right today. Barely. All in all, it took me until 10:00 to get here. Oh, and my internet connection that they said I'd have in my room? The one I brought my LAN cord for? Nothing doing. My computer doesn't even recognize that I'm plugged in. I would say "I could just about cry," but I've already done that.

[Update: Yippee for an internet connection! One outlet is a dud, but the other one works.]

Adventures in Airports: Part 2 - Chicago to Boston

I broke down and paid for the wireless connection. My flight got in half an hour early, and my connecting flight is delayed by 45 minutes, so I've got just over 3 hours to kill. What better way than blogging? Don't tell me I should be reading. I am. I've finished a good chunk, and I've just discovered that I need to download another reading, which is another good reason for getting online, right? So I'm not procrastinating at all.

Cool tidbit: the Chicago PD, while patrolling at Midway Airport, get around on segways! I've got pics, but the cable to upload them is packed, and even though it's packed in my carry-on, it's still buried deep, deep under all my other belongings. I'll get them uploaded later.

I also have a picture of the bag of pretzels I got on the first leg of my flight. On front it says, "How to eat Gourmet Pretzels on a low-fare airline: See back for complete details." On the back it says, "Eating Instructions: 1) Think about our wonderful low fares at airtran.com as you open packet. 2) Place a pretzel in mouth. With each crunch, be reminded of our low fares. 3) As you swallow, remember again just how low the fares are. 4) Repeat until pretzel packet is empty. 5) Keep empty packet to remind yourself to book at airtran.com for our lowest fares and no booking fees."

Adventures in Airports: Part 1 - Minneapolis to Chicago

Apparently Air Tran no longer operates out of the main terminal here. I didn't know that, though, so I parked over there and then had to wind my way through the terminal, take a tram ride, take a light-rail ride, cross an entire parking structure, go up to the ticketing floor in the new terminal, and go back down to the terminal level. This took me 40 minutes. At this point I'm thanking my lucky stars that I was born with a personality type that likes to leave extra time for things. If I were either of my brothers or my dad I would have missed my flight by now.

Oh, and just in case you wanted to know, the sever weather shelters here are in the women's bathroom. Now I'm praying for no sever weather.

I'm also wishing that this airport didn't make me pay for wireless access. All my posts will have to be put up later.

Other random wishes: I wish I had an iPod or other MP3 player, I wish I didn't have more reading to do for Immersion so I could sink my teeth into the brainless thriller I brought along (The Bourn Supremacy... Bwa-ha-ha-ha).

Heaven help me

I'm sitting at the gate for my flight to Boston (there's a whole story in how I got here, but more on that later). And I'm terrified to find out who my seat neighbor is going to be.

Here's the thing. There's a girl here who has no mental sensors AT ALL. She's talking to a poor guy she's cornered, and she won't shut up. She's told the room at large her full name (middle name included), her birth date (she's turning 29 next month, just so you know), where she lives, her favorite color, her roommates' names, her parents' names, ... well, you get the idea. She's also never been to Disney Land (that was apropos of nothing, by the way, because that's not where she's going today). Oh, and here's a tidbit you didn't need to know. Her father teases her by telling her she's not his child. "But I know better," she says, "It takes two to make a baby." Oookayyyy...

Now she's wondering if it rains on planes, since they're so high up off the ground. She's already chastised her friend for taking a picture of her, saying, "How much is it going to cost me to develop those pictures!?!"

[Update: She ended up sitting a glorious 21 rows away from me! Believe me, I'm grateful.]

Learning Already

I've already learned one thing from Immersion, and I don't even leave for Boston until tomorrow. I've learned that I need an assistant. I need someone to make my travel plans for me, and then actually travel with me and take care of things like schedules and directions, keep track of phone numbers and other contact information, and generally keep me going in the right direction at all times. Anyone up for the job? There's no salary, but you'd get a lot of appreciation. And what's a salary, anyway, compared to endless gratitude and the satisfaction you get from helping other people? Think about it.

So Culturally Illiterate

Ok, so it's that time of the year again: time to come up with the information we put on the backs of our trading cards. This time of the year is fun, exciting, and MORTIFYING. Suddenly all the years I didn't spend reading comic books rise up to whip me in the face. How should I know what characteristics go on the backs of these things?

So far I've come up with my Arch-Nemesis: Bad Puns. (Or should those be my vulnerability?) But I'd like something else cool and witty on there to make me seem hip and down with these millennials (though I suspect using "hip" and "down" would probably alert any college freshman to my un-hip-ness and my un-down-ness).

My other co-workers have already come up with things like "secret hideouts" and "sidekicks" and "catch phrases." And then there's me. I don't really want a vehicle, and I'm not in need of a weapon (after all I have super powers, remember). Help me out here. What other characteristics do anime/super-hero types have?

Happily Sheltered

There are a couple of blogs to which I subscribe (they're marked "private" so don't even try to cruise through my blogroll and guess which blogs I'm talking about) that are real downers. I'm subscribed for various reasons - they're by people I know in "real" life, or they're written well, or I'm too lazy to unsubscribe. But I'm thinking I might go through the strenuous effort of clicking "unsubscribe" soon.

You see, before I graduated from library school I worked in a public library that almost made me into a drop-out statistic. I'd get to work and listen to my co-workers complain from the beginning to the end of my shift. "So glad I got my MLS so I can count parts to check-out-able games," or "Why do we even try outreach when The Board just complains and cuts funding" were hourly fare there.

And when they weren't complaining about their jobs, they were complaining about stupid patrons with their stupid senses of entitlement or their stupid questions. There was much proclamation of "When I was a kid I had to respect..." and "Don't they realize..." and "Can you believe...." What's worse, not all of this happened behind closed doors.

My supervisor kept me up to date on her never-ending job search. Our board fired director after director for spending money on things like books and salaries. And a well-established game of pass-the-buck ran rampant between the different departments. As if this weren't enough, there was a palpable sense of militant apathy about the place. After all, what was the point of trying anything when The Board would just deny funding?

Even worse than this, I found myself sucked down into the quagmire. Such evangelical dissatisfaction is more contagious than the flu. I was part disgruntled employee, part disillusioned student on the verge of dropping out of library school (no kidding), and part shamefaced public servant who blushed (not always inwardly) to think what some patrons might have heard.

Well, these blogs that I was talking about say precisely the same sorts of things that my former co-workers said. They write eloquently, and they're often quite funny, so I am lulled into a false sense of joviality. I find myself laughing... and then I realize that I'm beginning to think with annoyance about entitled patrons, students that have to ask for the same instructions over and over again, and students who can't understand why I won't be around to meet with them Sunday night at 9:45.

Maybe I'm living a sheltered life. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I haven't worked long enough to have the rose tint fade from my contact lenses. But as it turns out, I like it like that. I'd prefer not to get bitter. I'd prefer not to reach a state when everybody's never-ending, half-hearted job search becomes perfectly acceptable workplace conversation.

Sure, there are days when nothing goes right, when you bend over backwards for someone and receive nothing but complaints, or when you've exceeded the legal limit of meeting hours per 15-hour work day. But this profession is WAY too exciting, challenging, rewarding, and generally cool for those days to warrant a place in our primary focus. What's more, the disgruntled attitude is far too contagious to be handled safely, even in small doses. So I'm going to stop reading those blogs. I'm having way too much fun living in my happy-librarian bubble, and I want that bubble to last for at least the next half century or so.

Being a Patron

Note: If the title sounds an awful lot like titles of much more thoughtful and useful articles you've read in the last couple of days, it is purely ... um ... thievery. But the title fits.

I went to my local public library this week, as I do quite often. It's a small library, but they have a decent collection of books and quite a good collection of videos, dvds, and audio books (good for those long drives to other towns, through corn fields, which still mess with this city girl's head). I had just gotten back from the wedding and family reunion week, and I knew I had a book on tape checked out (Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, part 2 of 3), but I thought it was due the next week. It wasn't. It was already three days overdue.

"Did you bring back "Atlas Shrugged" today?" asked the circulation lady.

"No," I replied, still wondering why she'd want me to bring back a book that was due next week.

"Oh, because its a little overdue, but let me just renew it for you," the circulation lady say, without any hesitation at all.

Just like that, she renewed my overdue book. It made my day. Kudos to the Northfield Public Library for putting customer service over ILS messages. (And btw, she did the same thing for the three overdue videos of the family in front of me.)

Games in the Library

One of the first things I noticed when I came to MPOW to interview last spring was a table, four chairs, and shelves full of puzzles and games. It was all just sitting there, near the entrance to the library, inviting students to come and have a few minutes of fun in the midst of their work days.
Throughout the school year, it's so much fun to walk past this spot and see students working on puzzles or playing Monopoly together.

This nook made a lasting impression on me when I interviewed, and I've seen it make similar impressions on prospective students. Now if I could just figure out how to make lists of databases this inviting... I can see it all now: students huddled over a computer monitor, fiddling with search parameters...

Yeah, the heat's getting to me.

It Was Only a Small Project...

The other librarians and I are going to experiment with online calendars next year. We're moving away (possibly) from paper sign-up sheets for individual appointments with students, and instead we're each going to use a Google calendar to display our availability to everyone on campus. We've decided that it's probably best to embed the calendar in an HTML page, to keep our personal email addresses less visible, and to provide some instructions on how to request an appointment. So today I thought I'd through up an HTML page and see how this embedded calendar thing looked...

Now, to most people, this would be a project that might fill that down-time between your last big project and lunch. You know them, those few minutes after everything else is ready for you to go to lunch, but before it's actually time to go. Yeah, that's how long it should have taken. But then it looked so blah.

I know! I'll jazz it up with some CSS! Great, only I don't know CSS, like, at all. I understand that the HTML looks at the CSS when deciding how to look and where to put itself, but that's about it. So I spent basically the rest of the day teaching myself CSS. I now have a page that has a header, a footer, a left-hand sidebar, and a right-hand sidebar. The middle even re-sizes itself depending on the width of the browser screen. I'm pretty pumped. Still no calendar in there... but that'll come tomorrow.

Oh, and for any of you wanting to do ANYTHING with HTML or CSS, get yourself the Web Developer Firefox extension. It lets you look at, manipulate, and save HTML and CSS from any page you visit online.

Evaluating Databases

The Librarian In Black points to a great post by Laurie The Librarian, who has developed a helpful PDF on how to evaluate library databases. Thanks Laurie.

It Really Did Rain

Stormy Day
Originally uploaded by Pegasus Librarian.

Prior to today, it has rained very little this summer. So far we've had about a tenth of an inch 10 days ago, a quarter of an inch a month ago, a third of an inch 6 weeks ago, a third of an inch 2 months ago, and just over a third of an inch 10 weeks ago. Today we've had just over half an inch already! Yay!

p.s. This picture was taken at 9:45 in the morning!

Wow! WorldCat Just Got Slick

I'm so excited I could just about dance, but then I'd just end up scaring the teenagers that have come into the library to escape the rain. (Seriously, it's raining here! This is a first in weeks and weeks... I wish I weren't a librarian so I could have an excuse for not looking up exactly how many weeks, but I'm more excited about WorldCat than the rain, so I guess I am a librarian after all. Just a lazy one.)

Anyway, WorldCat is cool. It always has been, but now it just turned up the coolness factor to 11 (anyone seen "Spinal Tap"?). Here's what's been released on the Information Today site.

The new WorldCat.org site will be considered a beta release. Adjustments in design and function will be made as feedback is provided by end users and OCLC member libraries. Nilges detailed a long list of planned enhancements that he said would be introduced on an ongoing basis over the next 6-9 months. The enhancements include the following:

Post search support, such as "Did you mean?"

Results sorting

"“Get it" after a user finds it —this will focus on improving interoperability with circulation systems

Identify public domain content and enable click-throughs

Click through to Open URL resolvers

Add article-level metadata

Expand social networking capabilities

Create custom views

Wow! Article-level metadata? Social networking? Custom views? Sounds like exactly what a bunch of others and I have been dreaming about for quite some time now. I just hope it doesn't take them the whole 6-9 months to get these enhancements off the ground and onto my browser.

Set for Common Reading: Persepolis

Set for Common Reading: Persepolis
Originally uploaded by Pegasus Librarian.

Each year incoming freshmen are assigned a "Common Reading" book, and one afternoon and evening of orientation are devoted to a presentation and many small-group discussions about that book. Each small-group is lead by a faculty or staff facilitator as well as a current student co-facilitator, and this will be my second time participating as a facilitator. Last year was a blast, and I have high hopes for this year.

This year, for the first time, the common reading book is in graphic form. We'll all be reading "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi, and I just got my copies, along with some starter discussion questions. Time to start gearing up for incoming freshmen!

Overheard in a Library

Our college is hosting almost 50 high school students this week, all working on an intensive writing/thinking/debating/research project (the one my whole department taught yesterday afternoon). While shepherding them through exercises to give them practice with print and online resources, one of my coworkers overheard a student saying, "I hate books. They're so dirty."

Really? Wow. More dirty than the keyboards on which you're all typing merrily away? Personally, I'd take a little dust over a bunch of microbes any day, but that's just me.

How to Become a History Librarian in Two Hours or Less

• Get yourself one sick history librarian
• Realize that 48 high school students, here for a week-long intensive course, will be filing through your classroom in two groups of 24 from 1:15 to 4:30
• Get the assignment and powerpoint from the sick reference librarian
• divvy up tasks between all the other librarians
• reassure the sick librarian that it really is okay not to teach when you're that sick
• reassure her again (the first one probably won't take)
• Figure out why the examples that go with the demonstration are perfect
• Decide to have the students figure out why the examples that go with the demonstration are perfect (after all, that's active learning, right?)
  
• Eat Lunch (with visiting sister) and get some of that yummy sorbet to sustain you on your walk back to campus in the scorching heat
• Take Advil (not one, but two... you know you need it)
• Stand up in front of kids and remember your acting classes (...picture yourself knowing exactly what you're doing...hold that image...now GO GO GO!!!)
• Stand up in front of the next group of kids
• Go home and eat leftovers while watching a movie

Now, if I could just get into the Immersion WebCT site to turn in the paper I didn't turn in this afternoon... As it is, I just periodically click "refresh" and hope that one of these times the site'll actually come up. PLEASE!!!!!

To the Best of My Knowledge I'm Still Here

[Updated to correct some stupid spelling. Just blame it on the heat and the brainlessness.]

I'm sitting lumpishly on my couch, listening to Moby, sipping ice water, and trying to convince myself that the sound of my air conditioner running is soothing. It's not irritating at all. That buzz doesn't invade every bone in my scull. The fans I have strategically moving the semi-cool air down my hall to the bedrooms simply harmonize with the hum. They don't bother me either. I think.

For those of you not in Minnesota right now, it's hot here. Really hot. Actually, it wouldn't be so bad if it would cool off at night, but last night at 12:30 (or would that be this morning?) it was still over 80 degrees (Fahrenheit) and humid. I realize that this probably isn't nearly as bad as a lot of places around the world have it, but after three straight days of hot nights and hotter days, all while trying to sleep with twice the number of animals and lots of extra people all generating heat around you, it's getting a bit old.

Most of the extra people have left now, just a few hours ago. It's always a kind of empty feeling when they leave, but this time my sister is staying with me for a while yet, which is a first for me. Right now she's picking out the meals she'll make for me while she's here. I like the way this girl thinks! Every guest should come and cook food for me.

The cat still hasn't appeared. He had the worst week of his entire life, and he's making sure I know it. He was shipped off to a friend's for a week, and then put up with extra people and [gasp] a dog for another three days. He's gone lethargic on me. Picking him up is like picking up a fur rug rather than the squirming, meowing guy he usually is. I hope he comes out soon, but I'm pretty sure that when he does he'll make me wish I could ship him off again.

In other news, my brother is now well and truly married. Now it's time to get caught up on all the things I've got piled in my after-the-wedding pile of papers. I probably won't have many pictures to put up on Flickr, since I don't put up pictures of people up without permission, but we'll see. At the moment I'm too tired and hot to think about Flickr-izing any pictures.

The first load of sheets is done laundering, so it's time for me to un-lump myself, stand up, continue getting things ready for another work week. I need a vacation from all this vacation...

A Particular Post

When I was getting my English degree, I became sensitized to the words "particular" and "certain." Phrases like "The author is making certain arguments" or "She uses words in particular kinds of ways" would creep into most discussions. What's worse, there would be no elaboration about what arguments or kinds of word usage. Too often, these words substituted for the unspoken substance of a person's argument, or had no meaning at all except to imply that if you didn't know what was meant then you really weren't worth your salt as a literary critic.

I'm hearing these words and phrases more and more often in recent months. Heaven help the next person who nods knowingly and says that "certain" people look for "particular kinds of" resources and who doesn't immediately follow those phrases with an explanation of exactly which people and what kinds of resources. I don't know what I'll do, but it will be a particular kind of tantrum partaken of by certain kinds of librarians.

Ah, Life...

Life happens, and lately a lot more of it has been happening than normal, hence the relative silence here. And even more will be happening for the next 10 days or so. My brother's getting married and, since I'm the only family member in hailing distance of the ceremony, masses of family will be cramming themselves into the apartment (only one bathroom, folks, so no beverages allowed...). Then, while the bro and his new wife go enjoy a canoe trip, the rest of us will take the opportunity to hang out family-reunion-style for a few days.

For my own sanity's sake, I hope I get to pop online every once in a while and catch up with my e-friends. (Imagine the poor, creaking aggregator without me obsessively checking it every day... it won't be pretty. Much "Mark[ing] All As Read" may ensue if I just can't face thousands of posts when I get back. So if there's something you think I really must see, email me!)