Turkeygiving

Today marks my two year anniversary at my library, and I started thinking this morning about how excited I was two years ago when I found out I got the job. I was working at Target at the time, and I was so happy to be out of there before Thanksgiving! The past two years have really flown by - in some ways, I feel like I've been working here forever, but I also feel like I just started. Does that make sense? In any case, I love my job and the people I work with, and I hope that when I move up in the ranks (fingers crossed) I will enjoy my job just as much or perhaps even more.

What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Going home, visiting family, eating lots of turkey? Jared and I aren't having a very big Thanksgiving celebration, but we are cooking at the new house and I think it's going to be really nice.

PS - WTF Kindle? You were supposed to be so awesome, but you're full of DRM and hidden costs? I thought I knew you.

Lady in waiting

Here's another video about the writer's strike, this time from the writers of the Colbert Report:



I'm very interested to see how long this goes on.

In other news, I had an interview for a job I really, really want today, and I think it went pretty well. Now I just have to wait and see if they thought it went well. Patience is a virtue!

Teachers are people too

Apparently, teachers in Ohio are being encouraged not to join social networking sites or participate in other online communities or dating websites.

Does this make you as angry as it makes me? If it doesn't, maybe it should.

Okay, I get it. We don't want our teachers having inappropriate relationships with students. That shouldn't have to be said. But come on - MySpace and Facebook aren't causing that. Teachers have lives outside of their profession, and they shouldn't have to worry that their online presence will cause them to be accused of being "immoral" or "unprofessional." Instead, teachers should be encouraged to join social networks. Why? Because it's what their students are doing! Teachers need to understand what these services are and why their students are interested in them. In the library world, we are doing everything we can to join these sites and see what makes them so popular. We understand that to make the library more relevant, we need to go where our communities are going - and right now, that's online. And for teachers and librarians who grew up with the Internet, we shouldn't be expected to stop our online activities for our jobs. Furthermore, it's appalling to me that teachers would be discouraged from joining dating websites. Trying to find love on a dating website doesn't equate to doing inappropriate things with students. It just doesn't.

My point is this - we're all people, and we shouldn't have to change who we are or what we do in our free time because of our jobs. Now, if what we're doing is wildly inappropriate, then we should be reprimanded for our actions. But being a teacher doesn't automatically make you a better person than anyone else, and it's certainly not fair to those people who have dedicated their lives to educating our children to be told what they can and can't do outside of work.

It's too bad I'm not getting paid for this

Most of you have already seen this, but in case you haven't, here's a video about the writer's strike from one of the writers of the Daily Show:



What do you think about this? Personally, I think if you write content for a show, you should get paid for that content. If you write content for a website, you should also get paid for that content. However, I'm don't know whether or not they are striking about not getting paid for content they created specifically to be used online or content they created for TV being put online. Does that distinction even matter?

Chipotle philosophy

So I've lapsed a bit in my blogging, but that's okay. I think I knew I wouldn't really post everyday for a whole month - but look at how much I have posted! My goal was to get in the habit of updating this blog more regularly, and I think I'm accomplishing that. Go me.

Highlights of my weekend:

I. Got. To. Meet. John. Glenn. Yes, you read that correctly. John Glenn and his wife were in attendance at the Celebration of Learning (aka, the big library event that I volunteered at Friday evening) and I got to show him to his seat, shake his hand, and introduce myself. I was beside myself with happiness, and I remember saying something about him being an inspiration to me, and that I got my degree in physics, at which point he shook my hand a second time and told me it was a pleasure to meet me. A pleasure! To meet me! Later I saw him again, and he recognized me and the girl I was standing with (we both got to shake his hand and say hello). He also cracked a joke about his wife - they were walking up the stairs, and when we mentioned that they could take the elevator if they wanted, he said, "Oh, she needs the exercise." It was so cute!

Even if I hadn't met John Glenn (but I did! I did! Yay!), the Celebration of Learning would still have been a blast. I got to hear Walter Isaacson speak about his new book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, and I got to hang out with important library people and eat some delicious foods from area restaurants. Although I always feel a bit out of place at fancy events like this, I still managed to have a great time and meet some new people. Like John Glenn. (And yes, I promise that's the last time I'll mention it.)

I also went to a fantastically planned wedding Saturday night (and coming from a wedding critic like me, that means a lot), and my mother came down to visit for a day, so it's been a pretty exciting and busy few days. In the morning, mom and I are going to sell some books at Half Price Books, maybe hit up Panera Bread (yum!), and then probably relax at the house before she has to drive back home.

Random thought - have you even just stepped back, looked at your life and thought, "Wow - how did I get here? I could have never predicted that this is where I would be right now." I did this today in the line at Chipotle. There were some high school kids talking behind me in line, and it hit me that it's been 7 1/2 years since I graduated high school. That's a really long time! After getting over feeling incredibly old, I started thinking about where I thought I would be at this age back then. I think that sometimes you really can predict what you'll be doing in any number of years - but then again, things can change so much in such a short amount of time. When I graduated high school, I knew I was going to Miami, but I didn't have any idea of what major I would be in, let alone the fact that I was going to be there 5 years instead of 4, and that I would go to grad school afterwards for 2 more years. Even when I graduated from Miami, I didn't know the future of my relationship with Jared, and that I would be living with him in just a few short months. And now, here we are, living in a beautiful house in a nice neighborhood in Columbus, and we have no idea where the next few years will take us. It makes me wonder who I'll be in 7 1/2 more years, and what I'll be thinking when I look back at this time in my life.

November mania

Today my mind is preoccupied with everything that's happening in my life right now - I'm waiting to hear about a job, I'm volunteering for a big library event tonight, and tomorrow I'm going to a wedding. It's not that much to worry about, but for some reason I can't clear my head of those things. Plus I feel like I'm losing my weekend, since I'll be at this event until late tonight, busy with the wedding tomorrow, and I have to work on Sunday. I do have Monday off for Veteran's Day though, which will help me to relax a little bit.

I know a lot of people think I'm crazy for this, but I'm really excited to go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how it's going to work this year though - usually, I drive up north for Thanksgiving, then I go shopping with mom and Natalie (my cousin). Last year, Nat's daughter Brooke came too, and it was a blast. Daphne even met up with us for part of the day! But this year, mom and grandpa are coming down to my house for Thanksgiving, and I'm not sure that Natalie is going to come. We've also never tried day after Thanksgiving shopping in Columbus, and I'm worried that the craziness of that day might reach levels we've never experienced before. Can mom and I handle it alone? I think we're at least up for the challenge. Does anyone want to join us? ;)

I hate how all the stores are ready for Christmas already - and yet here I am, blogging about how excited I am to start Christmas shopping! Does that make any sense? Perhaps I should just try to get through Thanksgiving first.

Fandom

Did anyone else see that Kevin Smith joined facebook? I read his blog, so I found out about it and added him as a friend pretty quickly. Within a matter of days, he maxed out his account at 5,000 friends - so he created a "celebrity/public figure" account, which is way lamer. In any case, he's keeping his original page up, which means I still get to be one of his facebook friends! It's totally stalkerish, but if 4,999 other people are doing it, I don't feel so bad.

Low-gravity fun for everyone!

Damnit! I missed posting today by 24 minutes. I could cheat and backdate this post, but I won't. Instead, I'll just post twice today. It's not like I'm going to win a prize for posting this much anyway - it's all for funsies. Yes, I said funsies. Deal with it.

I get emails from various library-related listservs everyday, and most of them are pretty boring. I mean, I enjoy keeping up-to-date with trends and such, but I skim through them all very quickly each day. However, the other day I was reading an email from a science librarian at some university asking if anyone had a copy of an article about Mars (or something like that, I can't remember the details). Now, I almost never look at the Google ads on the right side of the screen (yeah, Gmail!), but this time I did - and here's what I saw:

Luxury Cruise to Mars
Visit the Red Planet in Style Low-gravity fun for everyone
www.example.com

I want to go on that cruise! Sign me up, example.com!

Revelations of the day

Revelation #1: This morning during my commute to work, I thought about the fact that I haven't had much time to unpack and get the house organized the way I want. Sure, I have my evenings after work, but who wants to spend the whole night cleaning and unpacking when there's shows to watch on the DVR? Certainly not me. So I thought about this, and realized that I probably have enough PTO built up to take a whole week off work, and that the beginning of December would be the perfect time to do that. Not only will I be able to get some stuff done around the house, but I'll be able to do some Christmas shopping, get cards sent out, and visit family. Just knowing that I can take that time off is making me less stressed out overall, which is a very good thing.

Revelation #2: The other day, Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) talked about his mancrush on Wil Wheaton (he played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, for those of you not geeky enough to know that already), and it got me thinking - do I have any girlcrushes? (Do girls even talk about their girlcrushes?) There's plenty of men I have crushes on via the internets and tv - Phil Plait (obviously), Kevin Smith, Harrison Ford (my true love), and many more - but what about women I respect and admire? After some careful thought, I've come up with two women that I can claim to have girlcrushes on:

Morgan Webb - She's smart, sexy, and a total geek, which is completely awesome. I love the fact that she is a gamer, and you can totally tell that from the way she reviews games on X-Play, the show she co-hosts on G4. (The other female hosts on G4 don't convince me that they actually know anything about gaming other that what they are reading off a cue card.) She also does a daily video podcast to report important internet and technology news, and I always get the impression that she really knows what she is talking about. That's definitely reason for a girlcrush!

Damaris B. Sarria - She writes about how she is becoming an astronaut, and I'm pretty sure that I learned about her blog from Phil Plait. In any case, she is everything I wanted to be when I was a kid, and I think it's fantastic. She's not famous or anything, but that's what makes her so cool - she's just a girl who is following her dreams, and she's sharing her experiences with the world. So awesome.

Do you have any mancrushes/girlcrushes that you're willing to publicly admit?

Whew...

Just a few minutes to spare!

Random weekend facts:

I got cozy new slippers! Yeah!
My mom and cousin came down to visit, and we had a great time.
The guy taking names at First Watch today was a jerk - but the food is still delicious, so I'll probably go back. Damn you Key West Crepe!

I'll try to make tomorrow's post more interesting.

Making impressions

The other day, a woman came into my library who I'd seen maybe a handful of times before. I was at the desk, and although someone else was helping her, she found her way over to me to say hello. What follows is our exact conversation:

Woman: Hey there friend!
Me: Hello.
Woman: I haven't seen you in a while!
Me: Oh, well, I've been here.
Woman: Oh okay. Hey, would you like my home phone number, so you can call me?
Me: Uhh.. no, I'll just see you when you come in.
Woman: Oh. Well, will you be here tomorrow?
Me: No.
Woman: Oh. 'Cause I'll be in tomorrow.
Me: That's okay, I'll just see you next time.
Woman: Okay.

Apparently, my customers like me. Maybe too much.

PS - I'll work on getting a pic of the pool table on here for you, Ryan. I took some pictures last night but didn't get them uploaded. Maybe that can be tomorrow's post.

So far, not so good

It's day 2 of November - I haven't written a word yet for NaNoWriMo, and I barely remembered that I needed to post before midnight to keep up with NaBloPoMo. I have a feeling I'm not going to do either, but I guess I won't completely give up yet.

Hmm, what to write about? Tonight Mark and Jared put together our (free) pool table. The best part is that by the time we were done, we were all too tired to play pool. It wasn't a wasted evening since we will eventually want to play pool, and now it will be there for us to use. But still.

My new obsession is artichoke and garlic salsa. Mmmm... delicious.

Well, time for bed. Erica needs to go to work tomorrow and put up a display about unicorns. How sickeningly cute.

Impossible tasks

Question to the masses - Should I attempt NaNoWriMo this year?

Reasons to go for it:
1. I'm not in school anymore, so I have more time in the evenings to dedicate to creative things.
2. It would be really awesome to write a whole novel!
3. I have a vague idea already of what I'd write about.

Reasons NOT to go for it:
1. I didn't even come CLOSE to finishing last year.
2. I have too many projects already that I need to work on.
3. I still haven't unpacked my room or put everything away in the new house.

So, what do you think? I would really like to do it, but realistically, I probably won't finish. So maybe I'll do this instead:


This seems more manageable - plus, it would get me in the habit of posting here more often, which is something I've been trying to get myself to do for a while now.

Besides - they have cute logos with lolcats. That's enough to get me on board.

Thoughts?