28 November 2007

BWAHAHHHHHHAAAAHHHHAHHHA!!



I think this new career path has warped my mind...

13 November 2007

Stitch N' Bitch Y'all!

I'm so psyched! I started a Stitch N' Bitch at school and tonight was our first night. There were seven of us (myself included) and it was SO much fun. It was just fun to get together with a bunch of women that have so much in common e.g: knitting and the same grad program. I have to go write a paper that's due tomorrow morning and I'll come back and add more about the group later.

12 November 2007

It's that time again...

So, it seems as though this is a cyclical pattern I go through every semester. I start the semester balls to the wall, gun-ho about everything and anything, stay ahead of the game on my readings and assignments and now... now I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a month or two. More accurately I'm scanning Monster.com for jobs ads and wanting a "real" life instead of what I'm doing; anything but what I'm doing. Why is this? I'm just making it harder on myself in the long run. I say I have adult onset ADD and the semester is just too long to keep my interest, I'm bored with it. Another part says when it gets hard I just feel like quitting and taking the easy way out. And then there's the part of me that's like "whoa! sister! you've come way to far and been through way too much to not finish now". Duh. This is how I'll know if my parents read my blog. The minute they read the first few sentences they'll freak out and call me, "You're not going to quit school are you?" No. I'm not going to quit school. I'm actually way to close to being finished to be that stupid. And this is costing WAY too much money to be thrown away like that. Damn private New England women's college. Now I need to get back to writing that fricken paper that's due tomorrow...

11 November 2007

Today was a bad, bad day.

Really. And it shouldn't have been. It was all my fault.

I decided that I was going to go to Ikea. I'd never been there, we need to put some curtains up and they have the best prices for curtains. So I Google Mapped the directions, got in the car and went. It was a little overwhelming to say the least. After I figured out how the store worked though it was a little better. Lets just say I will definitely be going back. There is much much more to explore. I managed to get the sheer curtains I need, new shower curtain and bath mat, wine rack as well as some other little things that I don't know how I ever lived without.

Anyway, on my way out I noticed that I was about to leave the vicinity without stopping at the Christmas Tree Shoppe. Shame on me. Well, turns out I should've kept on driving. I ended up locking my keys in my car. Shit. This is now the only car we own. It's not like I can call Scott and he can just drive over and let me in. Plus he was working this weekend. Luckily he only had another hour to go of work and his co-worker Coetea was sweet enough (we filled her tank as a thank you) to drive him out there with the spare key.

The kicker to all of this is that I shoved a few bags of things I bought at the Christmas Tree Shoppe under the car instead of lugging them all over with me as I waited to be rescued. By the time I got back to the car with Scott the bags were gone. Someone crawled under my fricken car and stole them. WTF?!?! All I can think of is that someone must've seen me do it because otherwise how the hell would they have known it was under there? It's just really shitty. The most unbelievable thing is that we went back in to just re-buy the curtains I had gotten when Scott decided to ask at the desk if anyone had turned anything in. They said no one had but if I had my receipt I could go re-get what I had and they would let me have it without repaying!!! Can you believe it?!! It was totally my stupidity and they didn't seem to care. It ended up that I had gotten the last 2 of the curtains the first time so they credited back my card for that and let me walk away with all the things a second time. I couldn't believe it. I'll definitely go back there because they didn't have to be so nice.

I felt so shitty though, I mean, it was Jessica being a total dumb ass that got me into that mess in the first place. Scott felt so bad for me that he bought me take-out Chinese for dinner :) I was like, well shit, if I had known that's what it would take to get Chinese then.... No, just kidding.

10 November 2007

Ab-so-smurfly Nothing

That's what I did today. Nuttin'. It felt really good too. I even stayed in my pj's all day long. Long live flannel. I think I putzed on the internet all day long. And slept. Scott had to work and I was home alone. I suppose I could've got more done than I did but, oh well. So be it.

09 November 2007

It's finally Friday

I'm so effing tired. I think most of the time I'm more mentally exhausted than physically. Oh well. Only 1.5 more years to go and then I can join the real world. I'm considering getting a "real" part-time job and maybe cutting down to 2 classes a semester but the consequence of having a real routine (which I need) would be that I'm in school longer (which I don't need). So I think I'm just going to suck it up and keep on doing what I'm doing. Although I've discovered that I do need to get some sort of library experience while I'm here at grad school because that seems to be what keeps a lot of new grads from getting a job after they graduate ( or a decent job anyway). I miss my job at the library that I had as an undergrad. I love libraries, hence the whole wanting to be a librarian thing...

08 November 2007

Libraries 2.0

I'm investigating social software/web 2.0 and it's applications in academic libraries for a paper. Well, really the paper is on social bookmarking and tagging in academic libraries but it has totally mushroomed into this obsession with me and all these things that are out there that I never knew about. I'm still trying to figure out what rock I was living under... (If I'm feeling particularly feisty one night I may just do a little review of each of these, but don't hold your breath)


Already have a membership/subscribe or otherwise frequent:
* wists
* pandora
* flickr
* librarything
* myspace
* my blog

Just subscribed/joined in the past three days:
* del.icio.us
* ning
* shelfari
* 43things
* stumbleupon
* facebook

Still need to investigate/join:
* youtube(not like i've never been there but i still haven't bothered to make myself an account to save things in yet)
* linkedin
* pageflakes
* lastfm
* musicovery
* clusty cloud
* refworks
* digg
* meebo

07 November 2007

Mind blowing experience

Tonight I had the opportunity to hear the Director-General of the Iraqi National Library and Archive, Dr. Saad Eskander, speak. It's absolutely incredible what this man has faced and gone through just to try to bring the truth to the people. To try to do what all librarians and archivists do, to keep information open and free to those who seek it. The building has been burned 2 or 3 times, looted 4 or 5 times by several different groups of people (Americans and British included), targeted for bombing, and employees threatened and killed. I didn't realize that Simmons is part of a program that helps train Iraqi librarians and archivists in the United Arab Emirates. I'm quite proud to be part of such an institution.

06 November 2007

It's the little things...

that sometimes aren't so little.

I realized that since starting grad school I've been spending a shit ton of time sitting on my ass in front of this computer. Who knew. The result however is that I began to notice that our $30 office chair from the evil empire was just not sufficient support for those long days staring at a monitor.



Yes, it rolls nicely with the slant of the floor and I think I might be doing some sort of inadvertent core/ab muscle exercises to keep from rolling into the closet while I type but by the end of the day my legs and back really hurt. So...

I got a new chair!



I will admit there was a bit of sticker shock involved. Who knew that in order to get a decent, ergonomically correct chair one would have to shell out a buck fifty?!? My new chair has a great mesh back and at least three more inches of padding in the seat than the other one. The curve of the back hits me perfect for lumber support and it doesn't tilt back and make me wish my arms were longer in order to type. Although I still find myself squinting at the monitor a lot more, I think that might have something to do with either eye strain or getting older, don't know yet.

Anyway, I was amused that I was so chuffed with my new chair and actually took pictures and wrote about it. It's a really cool chair.

04 November 2007

More catch-up book reviews

Okay, I'm going to do 2 books in one post this time. The idea behind these two was that I was finally going to read the books that a couple of my favorite childhood movies were based on; "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle and "The Never Ending Story" by Michael Ende

I read "The Last Unicorn" first. I don't own this one on DVD yet but it's on my Amazon wish list My Amazon.com Wish List, so if you're looking for something to get me for X-mas or my birthday...

It was a very good book and I was surprised at how true to the book the movie stayed. There really wasn't a whole lot of difference as far as my memory serves. I think the movie left out the whole curse against the town where the King lived and his "son" being part of the curse that would be his downfall thing... They also left out the very moving plight of Schmendrick and his battle to do "true magic" and his destiny as a very powerful wizard. It was pretty deep and I really appreciated the connections one could make with Schmendrick and trying to succeed at something in your own life. There are a few reviews out there that don't understand why this is considered a "classic" and I'm inclined to side with them. While it is a very good book and one worthy of reading I'm not sure I would classify it as being part of the children's or fantasy literature's cannon. But then again, we debated this to death in my undergrad, what really is the good of a cannon in the first place? Who's to say what's good or not or really worthy of reading? I say this book is worth reading, it won't take you much time and it is enjoyable. I think it would be a good book to read out loud with your kids as well.

Next, "The Neverending Story". I've always liked this movie, something about skipping school and hiding out in the attic to read really appeals to me. (go figure) I always cry when Atrau's horse dies and I wanted a headdress like the princess with the gem on my forehead. :) What I didn't know was that the book was originally written in German and translated to English. I thought that was very cool and a little noticeable while I was reading as some of the sentences I thought could've been constructed a little better, now I know why. I have never seen the second (or third, is there a third?) movie. I'm not big on sequels. Most of the time (but not all) I think they ruin it by trying to capitalize on the popularity of the first one. What I've learned now though is that the first movie is only the first part of the book! Now I want to see the sequel to see if they do the rest of the book. It was very interesting to read the part of the story that I hadn't known about. A little Gulliver's Travels-esque in the second part, which I liked.

I know these reviews are pretty shitty but I read these books while I was still in NC so we're talking before June 1st. They'll get better as I get to the books that are more recent. At least I hope they do anyway...

03 November 2007

I Finished Something!

It's been a while since I've finished any sort of project that I've started. My track record hasn't been that great. Either I've run into some sort of road block and given up, lost interest or just run out of steam. But all hail the small project!
Baby Booties!!
Scott's sister Wendy had a little boy on October 13th, Alexander, and I actually managed to knit 2 pair for him.



Then (well, it might have been a little before, I don't remember the exact date) Leilani had a little girl, Lakiya, and I knit her a pair as well.



It's a fantastic pattern, Saarjte's Bootees that I had originally found on Craftster.org. It's hard for me to remember to post my crafts here as I normally just post to Craftster.

Anyway, I also made cards to put in the packages before I mailed them out but only managed to take a picture of the one going to Chicago Land.

02 November 2007

First time for everything I suppose...

I could be wrong, but this is the first time in I can't remember when that I have had to put down a book and just stop reading it because I didn't like it. It wasn't disgusting, offensive, scary, or anything like that. I just didn't like it. It just didn't do anything for me. I felt bored reading it. Not bored in a US History text book kind of way but more like an episode of Iron Chef America that I've already seen. And it wasn't like the plot of the story was familiar or anything, it totally wasn't. I haven't seen the movie, but that's why I was trying to read it. I like to at least try and read the book before I see the movie. They're usally better anyway. So, I haven't figured out yet what it was I didn't like, but I know I didn't like it whatever it was. I've moved on. In fact I've got a lot of bitchin' and praisin' to do. My whole excuse for starting this blog was to write about the books I'd read. Figured it might keep me in practice now that I don't have Dr. Gastle and Dr. Debo to make me do it. Speaking of which, I need to write one of them and ask why my life is suddenly hell and I'm having to learn APA instead of the MLA that I've finally come to know and love? Why does the rest of the world hate it so? Humpf.



"Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer

01 November 2007

Back Log

So, the reason I started writing this blog in the first place was to bitch about a book. Now I have a shit ton of books to bitch about and I've fallen behind. Damn.

I went back and looked and after I read the Terry Goodkind books (last one in that series coming out this month yo!) I read "The Fairy Godmother" by Mercedes Lackey. Why, you may ask did I go and do that? Well, I joined a swap at Craftster (which by the way is the bestest site on the planet and everyone should visit and revere) where we sent our partner one of our favorite books and a craft to go along with that book. I sent my partner Patricia McKillip's "Riddle Master" trilogy. I loved that trilogy. Highly recommend it. The Lackey book... not so much. It was cute, but it really didn't challenge me. I also found myself not liking the voices she gave to her characters. It seemed like the way they talked and what they said didn't match who they were or when/where. Anyway, I'm sure there was much more I was going to say about the book but I've gone and forgotten. See, that's why I have to hurry up and catch up on all my books, I'll forget if I wait too long.