Life, Sort Of, In a Nut Shell
Feb. 3rd, 2007 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthSo I was looking at my posting habits for January, and realized I hadn't really said anything substantive in a month. So here's a general life update. I have to be some where in an hour, so it's not like I can start anything worthwhile anyway.
School this semester is off to a pretty straightforward start. Both of my classes - Cataloguing and Reference Sources for Rare Books - seem to follow a mold of "a lot of small, easy assignments." I've already handed in two assignments, and I'm also two ahead in Cataloguing (as in, I'm pretty much done with the next two, which are due on Monday and next Monday) because when I get home from work on Tues and Weds, I'm too tired to do grant work for mom, but I feel bad cause I should be doing SOMETHING, so I do my homework...end result is that I'm way ahead. Not a bad thing, really.
Cataloguing with Kamoji is, as it turns out, pretty easy, at least so far. I rather like it - which doesn't surprise me, I'm detail-oriented and, well, a little anal, which is perfect for cataloguing. :) I've heard it's a nightmare with other teachers, though, so LS folks beware! Reference Sources is about how I thought it'd be; I had Joel for Rare Books last semester and he's as cool as usual. It's an interesting class, really, cause there are basically NO readings (actually, there aren't really any readings for Kamoji either, though not for a good reason - I ordered one of the text books from Amazon and it got lost in the mail and I haven't had the time to deal with it yet, sigh, I need to remember to do that) and everything is based on lists of reference sources that we discuss in class. It's funny, though, cause Joel doesn't really understand what L524 (the regular Reference) class is about and keeps being SHOCKED that we didn't cover X important reference source. And the class never knows quite what to see, so as a unit we just act vaguely apologetic and look a little sad, cause Joel is nice and no one wants to disappoint him by being like, "actually we've never heard of X."
All in all, I'd say class is the least stressful part of my life right now. :)
Preservation job has been going really well. It blows my mind, in a way - I've been working there (and getting paid) since August, since May if you count the time when I wasn't getting paid, and I still kinda look forward to going into work. I can't believe it - I have a job I like, despite the stress and the fricken $6.35 per hour. I've been tackling our massive backlogs all month. I'd like to pin down one of my superiors and learn some more advanced treatments, but we're so behind on some of the easy stuff (sewing pamphlets, making envelopes, Kyle boxes, tip in's) that instead I just pick a shelf each week and make it my goal to empty it as much as possible. I've managed to empty an entire book shelf, plus I've pretty much emptied another entire shelf which had about 200 items on it (all pamphlets needing various stuff). I'm rather proud of myself, really, cause I'm almost the only person who has been working on these parts, so I have a good sense of how much I, personally, have done. (one other girl did one shelf off of the empty book case - but considering that the book case has 5 shelves, most of which were double stacked when I started, I still feel pretty accomplished. :) ) In short, I've been getting a lot done. My higher-up still awaits word on whether she's going to get a different job, so I'm still trapped in limbo, however. Ah well. Also, I started poking around on the internet looking for preservation jobs in Boston, but it's looking a little grim, all either student positions or stuff which I'm not even vaguely qualified for (such as this job at Harvard, which would totally rock but I'm utterly unqualified for...)...the problem seems to be that all of the positions require previous management experience. Where the heck does one get management experience if all of the damned positions require management experience? It's like the retail conundrum (if all the jobs require register experience, where does one go to learn to use a register?)...sigh. Ah well, I won't look too seriously until I know if I'm going there, and if I'm going to need a job.
(to reiterate my "if" clauses of life right now: if I...
...get into the North Bennet Street School, I will move to Boston. I will not need another job, because school is full time (literally, SCHOOL IS 40 HOURS A WEEK) and I won't be able to do more than that + the work for mom).
...get a full time job in Bloomington, and don't get into the school in Boston, I will stay in Bloomington. This is what's in limbo.
...don't get a full time job in Bloomington, and don't get into the school in Boston, I will move to Boston and find a job there - ideally one in which I can do preservation, but failing that I'll try to find something in a library just to build my resume - and take some workshops at NBSS and reapply next spring.)
Houck Educational Consultants, meanwhile, is in the busy time of year. A lot of grants come out this time of year. Right now, the big one is the "Teaching American History" initiative (TAH). Submissions are due on March 9th; HEC agreed to write 4 of them. One of those clients withdrew, though, so we're actually only (ONLY! hahahahahaha) writing 3. Me and mom (er...Mom and I) are splitting the work; I've spent the last two weeks gathering needs data, doing research on how poor ELL (English Language Learner) education is, and finding proof that Professional Development helps teachers not suck. My big accomplishment in this regard is despite the apparent level of fucking around that went into all of my LJ commenting yesterday, I also managed to gather two pages of notes on research to support our arguments AND I wrote almost 7 pages of the main one of the three that I'm responsible for. That means I've written 8 pages out of 25, though I don't think I'm responsible for the last 4 pages. Still, there are a lot of holes, so I need to start bugging people for more hard data. Sigh. That's Monday's task. I'll be writing a chunk more today, I hope to get to about 15 pages, though it'd be awesome if I could finish all of it (at least as a draft!) except for the last part. :) That's sort of my "I don't actually think I can accomplish this" goal.
Other than that, business is pretty good. We're getting nervous waiting for the next big grant to come out - the 21st Century Community Learning Center grant, which we'll be writing at least 2 of. And we may be doing the grant we did last year again, the Early Childhood one (what a weird statement - we actually wrote a TAH grant last year, which I edited and which we won) which we lost, because we won't have to do much to update what we wrote last year - we wouldn't be writing from scratch, which would be pretty darned spiffy.
Also know as "the fun part," I'm only in a couple (er, actually 3 I guess) of games these days but I'm having a pretty good time in all of them.
Changeling has alternatively eaten my brain all month, when I let it. The Anchor of Reality stuff is way to metaphysical for me; I'm starting to lose my ability to keep track of all of the crazy shit that is going into this project! I'm nervous too - pretty soon I'm going to have to write it all up into something coherent that other people will need to see the logic of. This might be a problem. For those who are interested in the anchor, though, my current plan is to get a small group of interested folks together and hold a bit of a meeting, and we'll rip the idea apart and then put it back together again, and I'll take notes, and hopefully when all is said and done we'll have covered most of the important stuff. Aside from the Anchor stuff, I've really been enjoying the Widescreen Chronicle for the most part. I've gotten in so much awesome RP - thanks so much to so many of you, people have been spiffy throughout!! By the by, thanks much for the compliments on my e-mail, I never replied to those comments, but I really appreciated it, I was a little worried that my smackdown of Dr. Carter would not be effective enough, seeing as how Kathryn's fundamentally nice personality sometimes makes it a bit difficult to really rip others to pieces...maybe the nocker lessons have been paying off... :)
Abergurps has rather picked up for me lately, too. Last weeks session was a very small group (relatively speaking) and I got a bunch of stuff done, most of it not for the better. I think it's safe to say that I rather broke my characters brain last week, and I'm very much looking forward to dealing with consequences of this tomorrow. The best part is that, because so few of the PC's were actually there last week, almost no one knows other than the vague statements I've just said. Heehee. I'm not yet sure if it was worth it (when asked IC if it was worth it, the answer was a flat no, probably my favorite moment of last session, I'm so glad![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
buzzermccain asked me that...) but things are not done yet...
Buffy has been fun, too. The problem with time delayed plots is waiting for them, but the three months of waiting paid off when little Sandy finally grew up and became a Slayer...I'm still trying to figure out how this is affecting her personality...I think it's cracked her the rest of the way, though, which I started to try to show last session - she went from being in happy denial land with the rest of her faction to being like, wait, now I can fight back, now I can kick the sorry asses of all of those sons of bitches who killed my family and pretty much everyone else I cared about...
Sorry if it's too much game info, I just haven't really written anything about games in months! Other than e-mails for the games...those I've written far to many of. :)
Well, there isn't that much other stuff I don't think. I've had fun hanging out with folks, going out to see Letters from Iwo Jima, which was spiffy. Dance class has been going well, though I had to cut out last week cause I was up most of Sunday night with an upset stomach, which was very irritating. The wallet thing seems to have largely settled down, too, now I just have to wait for all of my new cards and such to arrive, which I imagine they'll do by the end of next week. The e-bay manga experience continues to go very well, as well; I haven't tallied and at this point it'd be too much trouble to do so, but I haven't paid more than $5 for a single volume, and I've had some big wins in terms of good deals, the best being 19 volumes of ex-library manga which I picked up for a bout a buck each. Sure, they're ex-library, but at that price it really doesn't matter.
I love my iPod. I listen to it at work, and I've slowly but surely been listening through the music on it that I'd never heard before and rating everything. I've found about 10 songs that I'd never really listened to before that I've completely fallen in love with, and that's just in the last month - I usually don't find more than one new song a month when I listen to things normally, I'm pretty picky when it comes to songs that I REALLY love. I've also been using it to help me with my Changeling ST, but I'm still way behind on that. And it's forced me to acknowledge a shameful thing: I genuinely like Dashboard Confessional. I know, mock the horrible emo. :)
Jonie dog is doing well. Her 1st birthday is barely more than 2 weeks away! I can't believe it! I'm getting tired of walking her in the teen temperatures at 11 PM, but it can't be helped I guess, I just bundle up and hope that she'll go to the bathroom quickly.
I've been keeping way busy, but I'm trying to keep my sanity intact, too. So far I think that I'm doing a fairly good job of it. The biggest problems I've been having are related to sleep; I get too little during the week and too much over the weekend, which is surprisingly irritating. What's annoying about it is that I go to bed early enough every night to ensure 8+ hours, but then I just don't fall asleep, or I wake up in the middle of the night, or I wake up 30+ minutes before my alarm. It's getting rather annoying, all things considered. I've found and fixed a piece of it, though - I'm getting too warm! So I've been keeping my window open at night, and that's helped a lot, though it means my room is a little chilly when I get up in the morning. The down side of the sleep problems is that my moods swing round like crazy, so some days I feel fine and other days I'm down, and it's also rather irritating. Sigh.
My diet has been going pretty well. I've lost 4 pounds this month, and still managed to eat somethings I actually like (I had a calzone, and Indian food, and some burgers, and last night I had a Cadbury Cream Egg, which was divine...)...my quest to finish up all of the food in my house also continues apace, I haven't bought groceries other than perishables (ie bread) for like 3 weeks, and there is still a lot left, it's a little crazy, I don't know how I managed to accumulate so much food!! :)
The Opera last night was surprisingly enjoyable. The first mini show, Arlecchino, was weird and not very good; I was considering leaving, but I'm glad I didn't - much to my shocked and bemused amazement, "Too Many Sopranos" was actually really cute, quite funny, and well done over all. The cast did a great job, and my only real issue with it was that I'm not sure it was an Opera - it seemed more like a musical to me, though the lines do blur a lot.
So in conclusion, life is pretty good. I'm sure that I'm forgetting stuff - I always do when I write up posts like this - but it can't be helped I suppose, cause I need to go in about 5 minutes. :) And, well, I'm not sure when next I'll have the time to do a post like this - if current trends continue, it'll be the end of next month, but that's okay I guess. :)
Hope everyone is doin' fairly well!
School this semester is off to a pretty straightforward start. Both of my classes - Cataloguing and Reference Sources for Rare Books - seem to follow a mold of "a lot of small, easy assignments." I've already handed in two assignments, and I'm also two ahead in Cataloguing (as in, I'm pretty much done with the next two, which are due on Monday and next Monday) because when I get home from work on Tues and Weds, I'm too tired to do grant work for mom, but I feel bad cause I should be doing SOMETHING, so I do my homework...end result is that I'm way ahead. Not a bad thing, really.
Cataloguing with Kamoji is, as it turns out, pretty easy, at least so far. I rather like it - which doesn't surprise me, I'm detail-oriented and, well, a little anal, which is perfect for cataloguing. :) I've heard it's a nightmare with other teachers, though, so LS folks beware! Reference Sources is about how I thought it'd be; I had Joel for Rare Books last semester and he's as cool as usual. It's an interesting class, really, cause there are basically NO readings (actually, there aren't really any readings for Kamoji either, though not for a good reason - I ordered one of the text books from Amazon and it got lost in the mail and I haven't had the time to deal with it yet, sigh, I need to remember to do that) and everything is based on lists of reference sources that we discuss in class. It's funny, though, cause Joel doesn't really understand what L524 (the regular Reference) class is about and keeps being SHOCKED that we didn't cover X important reference source. And the class never knows quite what to see, so as a unit we just act vaguely apologetic and look a little sad, cause Joel is nice and no one wants to disappoint him by being like, "actually we've never heard of X."
All in all, I'd say class is the least stressful part of my life right now. :)
Preservation job has been going really well. It blows my mind, in a way - I've been working there (and getting paid) since August, since May if you count the time when I wasn't getting paid, and I still kinda look forward to going into work. I can't believe it - I have a job I like, despite the stress and the fricken $6.35 per hour. I've been tackling our massive backlogs all month. I'd like to pin down one of my superiors and learn some more advanced treatments, but we're so behind on some of the easy stuff (sewing pamphlets, making envelopes, Kyle boxes, tip in's) that instead I just pick a shelf each week and make it my goal to empty it as much as possible. I've managed to empty an entire book shelf, plus I've pretty much emptied another entire shelf which had about 200 items on it (all pamphlets needing various stuff). I'm rather proud of myself, really, cause I'm almost the only person who has been working on these parts, so I have a good sense of how much I, personally, have done. (one other girl did one shelf off of the empty book case - but considering that the book case has 5 shelves, most of which were double stacked when I started, I still feel pretty accomplished. :) ) In short, I've been getting a lot done. My higher-up still awaits word on whether she's going to get a different job, so I'm still trapped in limbo, however. Ah well. Also, I started poking around on the internet looking for preservation jobs in Boston, but it's looking a little grim, all either student positions or stuff which I'm not even vaguely qualified for (such as this job at Harvard, which would totally rock but I'm utterly unqualified for...)...the problem seems to be that all of the positions require previous management experience. Where the heck does one get management experience if all of the damned positions require management experience? It's like the retail conundrum (if all the jobs require register experience, where does one go to learn to use a register?)...sigh. Ah well, I won't look too seriously until I know if I'm going there, and if I'm going to need a job.
(to reiterate my "if" clauses of life right now: if I...
...get into the North Bennet Street School, I will move to Boston. I will not need another job, because school is full time (literally, SCHOOL IS 40 HOURS A WEEK) and I won't be able to do more than that + the work for mom).
...get a full time job in Bloomington, and don't get into the school in Boston, I will stay in Bloomington. This is what's in limbo.
...don't get a full time job in Bloomington, and don't get into the school in Boston, I will move to Boston and find a job there - ideally one in which I can do preservation, but failing that I'll try to find something in a library just to build my resume - and take some workshops at NBSS and reapply next spring.)
Houck Educational Consultants, meanwhile, is in the busy time of year. A lot of grants come out this time of year. Right now, the big one is the "Teaching American History" initiative (TAH). Submissions are due on March 9th; HEC agreed to write 4 of them. One of those clients withdrew, though, so we're actually only (ONLY! hahahahahaha) writing 3. Me and mom (er...Mom and I) are splitting the work; I've spent the last two weeks gathering needs data, doing research on how poor ELL (English Language Learner) education is, and finding proof that Professional Development helps teachers not suck. My big accomplishment in this regard is despite the apparent level of fucking around that went into all of my LJ commenting yesterday, I also managed to gather two pages of notes on research to support our arguments AND I wrote almost 7 pages of the main one of the three that I'm responsible for. That means I've written 8 pages out of 25, though I don't think I'm responsible for the last 4 pages. Still, there are a lot of holes, so I need to start bugging people for more hard data. Sigh. That's Monday's task. I'll be writing a chunk more today, I hope to get to about 15 pages, though it'd be awesome if I could finish all of it (at least as a draft!) except for the last part. :) That's sort of my "I don't actually think I can accomplish this" goal.
Other than that, business is pretty good. We're getting nervous waiting for the next big grant to come out - the 21st Century Community Learning Center grant, which we'll be writing at least 2 of. And we may be doing the grant we did last year again, the Early Childhood one (what a weird statement - we actually wrote a TAH grant last year, which I edited and which we won) which we lost, because we won't have to do much to update what we wrote last year - we wouldn't be writing from scratch, which would be pretty darned spiffy.
Also know as "the fun part," I'm only in a couple (er, actually 3 I guess) of games these days but I'm having a pretty good time in all of them.
Changeling has alternatively eaten my brain all month, when I let it. The Anchor of Reality stuff is way to metaphysical for me; I'm starting to lose my ability to keep track of all of the crazy shit that is going into this project! I'm nervous too - pretty soon I'm going to have to write it all up into something coherent that other people will need to see the logic of. This might be a problem. For those who are interested in the anchor, though, my current plan is to get a small group of interested folks together and hold a bit of a meeting, and we'll rip the idea apart and then put it back together again, and I'll take notes, and hopefully when all is said and done we'll have covered most of the important stuff. Aside from the Anchor stuff, I've really been enjoying the Widescreen Chronicle for the most part. I've gotten in so much awesome RP - thanks so much to so many of you, people have been spiffy throughout!! By the by, thanks much for the compliments on my e-mail, I never replied to those comments, but I really appreciated it, I was a little worried that my smackdown of Dr. Carter would not be effective enough, seeing as how Kathryn's fundamentally nice personality sometimes makes it a bit difficult to really rip others to pieces...maybe the nocker lessons have been paying off... :)
Abergurps has rather picked up for me lately, too. Last weeks session was a very small group (relatively speaking) and I got a bunch of stuff done, most of it not for the better. I think it's safe to say that I rather broke my characters brain last week, and I'm very much looking forward to dealing with consequences of this tomorrow. The best part is that, because so few of the PC's were actually there last week, almost no one knows other than the vague statements I've just said. Heehee. I'm not yet sure if it was worth it (when asked IC if it was worth it, the answer was a flat no, probably my favorite moment of last session, I'm so glad
buzzermccain asked me that...) but things are not done yet...Buffy has been fun, too. The problem with time delayed plots is waiting for them, but the three months of waiting paid off when little Sandy finally grew up and became a Slayer...I'm still trying to figure out how this is affecting her personality...I think it's cracked her the rest of the way, though, which I started to try to show last session - she went from being in happy denial land with the rest of her faction to being like, wait, now I can fight back, now I can kick the sorry asses of all of those sons of bitches who killed my family and pretty much everyone else I cared about...
Sorry if it's too much game info, I just haven't really written anything about games in months! Other than e-mails for the games...those I've written far to many of. :)
Well, there isn't that much other stuff I don't think. I've had fun hanging out with folks, going out to see Letters from Iwo Jima, which was spiffy. Dance class has been going well, though I had to cut out last week cause I was up most of Sunday night with an upset stomach, which was very irritating. The wallet thing seems to have largely settled down, too, now I just have to wait for all of my new cards and such to arrive, which I imagine they'll do by the end of next week. The e-bay manga experience continues to go very well, as well; I haven't tallied and at this point it'd be too much trouble to do so, but I haven't paid more than $5 for a single volume, and I've had some big wins in terms of good deals, the best being 19 volumes of ex-library manga which I picked up for a bout a buck each. Sure, they're ex-library, but at that price it really doesn't matter.
I love my iPod. I listen to it at work, and I've slowly but surely been listening through the music on it that I'd never heard before and rating everything. I've found about 10 songs that I'd never really listened to before that I've completely fallen in love with, and that's just in the last month - I usually don't find more than one new song a month when I listen to things normally, I'm pretty picky when it comes to songs that I REALLY love. I've also been using it to help me with my Changeling ST, but I'm still way behind on that. And it's forced me to acknowledge a shameful thing: I genuinely like Dashboard Confessional. I know, mock the horrible emo. :)
Jonie dog is doing well. Her 1st birthday is barely more than 2 weeks away! I can't believe it! I'm getting tired of walking her in the teen temperatures at 11 PM, but it can't be helped I guess, I just bundle up and hope that she'll go to the bathroom quickly.
I've been keeping way busy, but I'm trying to keep my sanity intact, too. So far I think that I'm doing a fairly good job of it. The biggest problems I've been having are related to sleep; I get too little during the week and too much over the weekend, which is surprisingly irritating. What's annoying about it is that I go to bed early enough every night to ensure 8+ hours, but then I just don't fall asleep, or I wake up in the middle of the night, or I wake up 30+ minutes before my alarm. It's getting rather annoying, all things considered. I've found and fixed a piece of it, though - I'm getting too warm! So I've been keeping my window open at night, and that's helped a lot, though it means my room is a little chilly when I get up in the morning. The down side of the sleep problems is that my moods swing round like crazy, so some days I feel fine and other days I'm down, and it's also rather irritating. Sigh.
My diet has been going pretty well. I've lost 4 pounds this month, and still managed to eat somethings I actually like (I had a calzone, and Indian food, and some burgers, and last night I had a Cadbury Cream Egg, which was divine...)...my quest to finish up all of the food in my house also continues apace, I haven't bought groceries other than perishables (ie bread) for like 3 weeks, and there is still a lot left, it's a little crazy, I don't know how I managed to accumulate so much food!! :)
The Opera last night was surprisingly enjoyable. The first mini show, Arlecchino, was weird and not very good; I was considering leaving, but I'm glad I didn't - much to my shocked and bemused amazement, "Too Many Sopranos" was actually really cute, quite funny, and well done over all. The cast did a great job, and my only real issue with it was that I'm not sure it was an Opera - it seemed more like a musical to me, though the lines do blur a lot.
So in conclusion, life is pretty good. I'm sure that I'm forgetting stuff - I always do when I write up posts like this - but it can't be helped I suppose, cause I need to go in about 5 minutes. :) And, well, I'm not sure when next I'll have the time to do a post like this - if current trends continue, it'll be the end of next month, but that's okay I guess. :)
Hope everyone is doin' fairly well!
