I think I'll just leave it at that.

Workin' for the Man

Well, my ambitious desire to blog about my overly exciting life (yeah, right) has fallen by the wayside, as soon as I became employed full-time. Figures. Sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a day and the last thing I want to do is come home and sit in front of it some more. Even though I've had many an epiphany and brilliant idea to write about, just not the desire to sit down and physically do it.



Anyway. I start my first semester of grad school next week. My anxiety, of course, has gone up threefold. I've started my typical preparations because I have this need to get all the paper work shit out of the way so that I can concentrate on my classes. Some would call me a bit neurotic. I'd probably have to agree with them. But it's the way I operate so they'll just have to deal.



So many people have asked what classes I'm taking and to be honest I really haven't been able to answer them. Truthfully I'm not quite sure what the hell I've gotten myself into. Well, except for the Management class. I think that's pretty self explanatory. So, for all those that wanted to know what I was taking, here ya go:

First, the Management class.

Principles of Management
LIS-404-04N
Designed to acquaint students with the basic management functions of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. The course is intended to help provide understanding of human interactions in the workplace and develop the practical problem-solving skills needed to handle managerial problems professionally. Approaches to managing, from authoritarian to participative to laissez-faire, are examined. Readings, case studies, critical incidents, simulations, and discussions. Required course for students entering Fall 2005 and thereafter.


Pretty self explanatory right? No surprises here I don't think. Next.

Information Organization
LIS-415-04N
The phenomena, activities, and issues surrounding the organization of information in service of users and user communities. Topics include resource types and formats, information service institutions, markup, descriptive metadata, content standards, subject analysis and classification, and the information life cycle. Readings, discussions, examinations, and oral and written exercises.

Honestly, no clue. Cataloging? Maybe? How information is organized so that we can find it, that's my guess right now. Then the last one.

Technology for Information Professionals
LIS-488-03N
This is a course that provides the conceptual foundation and context of computing, Internet, and digital publishing technologies as used in information-intensive professions. The course serves as a gateway to all other technology courses offered at GSLIS beginning with the Fall 2005 semester. The course provides an overview of how computers, telecommunications, networking, and digital publishing function. Particular emphasis is upon terminology that appears in the professional literature. Students are strongly encouraged to take this course early in their course program.

This one doesn't sound too bad the more I read it. I'm pretty sure I know what it's going to be about, just not how well I'm going to do in it. I thought I was pretty tech savvy but I'm beginning to have my doubts. I'm not sure I stayed on the bandwagon long enough. I'm sure getting back in school will help (read: force) me back into that though.

So here's the "right before school starts" update. I know I still have to post pics of the apartment like I promised and it's finally clean enough to do so, except for the craft room, so I'll try to get that done this weekend. Monday is a holiday, Tuesday I have my mandatory orientation day and then Wednesday classes start. Hopefully I'll have the energy next weekend to right about it.

Au revoir.

Cat vs. Squirrel

I won't tell you who won. I'll let you decide.

A Day in the Life

You have to run errands and driving is a pain in the butt and uber expensive, what do you do? You take the T!!! Public transportation is cool, I'm really digging it, but I must say it can be a little daunting to the uninitiated when there are multiple locations involved. Take today for example:

Walk down to the corner of Southbourne and Hyde Park Ave to catch the bus.
Take the #32 bus to Forest Hills Station.
Take the Orange line to the Ruggles Station.
Take the #47 bus the Beth Israel for doctors appointment.
Take the CT3 bus back to Ruggles.
Take Orange line to NE Medical Center Station.
- drop off paper work and get work schedule for next week
Get back on Orange line (outbound now) and go back to Forest Hills.
Take the #39 bus to Centre St. and go to the bank.
Take #39 bus back to Forest Hills.
Take #32 bus back to Southbourne.
Walk back home.

Ta Da! That was my day today. And I didn't even elaborate on all the waiting for the bus/train time that comes in between if you're unfortunate enough not to catch it as it's pulling away. Maybe someday if I'm bored enough I'll actually time those steps. Of course that would mean I'd have to buy a watch....

Fourth of July Ex-tra-va-gan-za!!

So, after much debating over whether or not it was going to rain, if Jessica could handle the 500,000 people, and if we could even get close enough to make it worth the effort in the first place we decided to hoof it down to the Esplanade to *try* to see the Boston Pops annual free 4th of July concert and fireworks show. This is as close as we got:


Not very close. I used to watch this concert every year when I was a kid growing up so it was still pretty cool to actually be there in person. Even if I did get a little tired and fed up with the people and the rain and leave early to go home and watch the rest on TV.

The reason for the tired-ness had a bit to do with our pre-concert activities. Namely the mini bar hop we did on the way down the the waterfront. We got off the T at the Chinatown stop and walked down Boylston St. Our first stop was here:

The Rattlesnake Bar & Grill

It's not nearly as badass as it sounds. In fact it was quite tame. We had some mediocre bbq chicken fingers which I had read on 'Yelp' were supposed to be really good. Don't always believe what you read, or we needed to drink more first.

Being the incredible non-drinkers and lightweights that we are we had a nice little buzz going on and took off down Boylston for our next venue, whatever that may be since we were totally winging it.

Recognizing our next stop from my internet researchings wasn't hard. We decided at once that no bar crawl, mini or not, was complete without stopping at an Irish Pub.

Solas is actually part of the swanky Lenox Hotel on Boylston but not so upscale that it wasn't still worthy of being called a bar.

And it was here that we had a couple more beers, and the most delicious concoction on the face of the earth. Melted smoked gouda cheese with little bits of bacon floating in it with crispy toasted pieces of bread to soak it all up and eat it with. I don't know if that's necessarily an Irish thing or not and I don't really care because it was absolutely the most yummy thing I've had in a long time. And I know it wasn't the beer talking either. It was so damn good I took a picture of it for christ sake.


We were getting further down Boylston and further away from the Esplanade when we decided to cut across Comm Ave. and head toward the water. In doing so we came across Newbury St. which I hadn't been on in eons so we decided to walk down that a ways and see what there was to see. We still hadn't had a proper dinner yet and neither of us had lunch so the plan was to eventually stop for a burger or something a little more substantial than chicken fingers and melted cheese.

On our way down Newbury we spotted a Joe's American Bar & Grill, hey, it was July 4th right? There were people hanging out all over waiting to be seated but I went in to see how long it would take. 15-20 minutes if we wanted to be inside or immediately if we wanted to sit outside, but if it started to rain they couldn't take us in. Well shit ya! That's right up our alley. So off we went to the courtyard to play roulette with the New England weather and our dinner. I know, you can never win with the weather here but it sure was fun to try. We made it almost all the way through before it started to rain and even then it wasn't really a very heavy rain, nothing that was going to make my roast beef soggy or anything. We had fun, and so did everyone else who decided to brave it.

Notice all the umbrellas?

We had them too.


I can't believe I'm posting this.

And here ends the backwards tale of our 4th of July Boston adventure. I'm going to bed now.

I love me some Johnny Quest...

Why would you not love YouTube?

holy fucking shit.

O.A.R. I absolutely love this band. I can't stand it. Mark Roberge is HOT (even more so when he wears his glasses). There are T-minus 15 days and counting until I get to see them again live in concert. As incredibly corny and cliche as it sounds; I can't even find the words to describe how much I love their music.