Archive for the 'Library stuff' Category

It’s that time of year again

Published at January 2, 2011 in Domesticity, Health, Home improvement, Money, Library stuff, Sports, Clotheshorsery, Vanity, Frivolity, Food, work work work and Travel. 5 Comments

Time for resolutions I won’t keep!

I’m going to try something different this year and set some concrete goals that will be easier to reach than something vague like “Eat better.”  Many of these goals are craft-related, since I inherited my mother’s propensity for starting projects and not finishing them.

1. Speaking of Mom and projects she never finished, finish the sweater she started knitting for me, oh, ten years ago (she died just over eight years ago).  Finishing this sweater was the reason I took knitting lessons in the first place, but I kept putting the bag with the unfinished sweater aside, or in a closet.  Part of that was due to it being kind of painful to look at the thing after she died, part of it was that I gained a lot of weight after she died and wasn’t going to fit in the sweater even if I did finish it.  But now I can look at the thing without getting teary, and I’ve lost enough weight over the years that I can wear it.  Plus, it’s motherfucking cold in my apartment and I NEED a big fuzzy sweater.  I’ve now got the skills to do it, too.

2.  Quilting projects: I’m making a quilt for my sister, and I also want to finish a quilt that my great-grandmother pieced and never finished, both because it would be a great way to honor Babushka and also because of the aforementioned state of motherfucking cold.

3. Home decorating: I need to locate my stud finder, so I can hang the pictures I already have, and then I need to go out and get my other pictures framed and hung.  I have a desk to paint, chairs to paint and re-cover, and at some point I should get a few more chairs and a vase or two.  Plus mirrors.  I also need a filing cabinet, badly.  This may not be a year in which I do anything with my bedroom, but I’m okay with that for now since I don’t really have a vision for it like I do with the rest of the place.

4. Sports: I haven’t lifted weights since last July, when I fell on the sidewalk and injured my shoulder, and then re-injured it in September.  I’ve decided to go a slightly different direction, doing a combination of yoga, running, and eventually some scaled-back weightlifting.  Running has gone very well; unlike in years past, I seem to have resolved some of the issues with my knees so that I’m not wearing my patella in some strange place after only a few weeks of the C25K plan.  I’m on Week 7 now (actually for the second time — I’d reached it in September, right before my second fall, which also rolled my ankle) and so far, so good.  My knee’s a little tender, but the exercise is actually doing it good.  I’d like to do a half-marathon and marathon this year, using the Jeff Galloway run/walk program.  Brooklyn Half-Marathon is in May, with the particular day yet to be announced, and I’ve signed up for the lottery for the NYC Marathon.  I’m also planning on doing the Bay to Breakers 12K in San Francisco in May, which will probably be the week before the Brooklyn Half.  If I don’t get into the NYC Marathon, I’m going to try for Chicago or Marine Corps.  All of these will be not only goals in and of themselves, but also opportunities for travel to places where friends and/or family are.

5. Food: I’m back to being mostly vegan, which is pretty easy since it’s a little hard for me to eat out much here if I have to walk everywhere I go; I also work in a place where the lunch options are very very limited.  I’ve got access to a really great food co-op and live around the corner from a grocery store, so I can easily get good, fresh ingredients and do a lot of cooking.  I’ve got a freezer packed full of individually-portioned meals I can just grab and go, and I’m working hard on using my cookbooks for more than just the old standbys.  My big goal this year is to stop eating mindlessly and to pay attention to and enjoy what I eat.  I’ve also made a special effort to clean off the dining room table, now that I have a dining room, and to have dinner AT my table with napkins and placemat and candles.  Bonus: the dining room is the only room that really gets heat.

6. Appearance: I managed to weed a lot of crap out of my wardrobe just before I moved, so I do wear a lot of what I have.  But I’m not wearing all of it, so I need to figure out why not and make any necessary adjustments.  For example, if I’m not wearing something because it doesn’t fit, I can make it fit or get rid of it; if I’m not wearing something because I don’t really like it after all, it has to go.  It *is* pretty nice having a lot of closet space free.  I also want to figure out this year what my style is, so that I can have some kind of consistent look.

7. Financial: I’ve started using Mint to track my money, and my new job has TIAA-CREF, so I’ve gotten started on a retirement plan (matching doesn’t happen until I’ve been employed a year).  I’ve identified several areas where I spend disproportionate amounts of money, so I can work on cutting that back. I’m also saving for a car; I plan on spending less than $2500 for a mid-90s Honda or similar that will run for a while.   Just like with the eating out, living here has curtailed my spending because I’m not passing stores and places to spend money all the time.  I’m also not reading like I used to, so my book habit is not being fed. My book habit really is shameful; I’m a librarian, after all, and I should be borrowing books rather than buying them.  And I should be selling off what I have; I see Amazon keeps asking me if I’d like to sell some of the books I’ve bought through them, so I may just take them up on that.

8. Personal: I’m still not into the idea of dating, but I want to make some friends here outside of work.  The yoga studio I attend seems to be a good place to meet people, especially since you’re asked to introduce yourself to the people on adjoining mats before class starts.  I’m also a member of the food co-op, and that seems like a good way to meet people as well; working there is optional, so I plan on signing up soon.  There are also extension classes to take and the local running shop organizes group runs every week, which will help with my half/marathon training and get me out a bit.  I’m also planning on taking advantage of the first paid time off I’ve had in about 10 years to do some travel, including a horsepacking trip through backcountry out here as part of the extension classes.

9. Professional: I’ll start teaching legal skills in the fall, which will give me some great experience.  I’ve also committed to writing a couple of articles, I’m involved with some committees and caucuses in my professional association, and I also have opportunities to do some outside work for pay and recognition.  I’m doing all this partly because I’m positioning myself for a return to New York or a move to another big city for my next job, and partly because I really do like my new career.  I made a good choice.

Big, big changes

Published at September 2, 2010 in Library stuff, work work work, New York Fugging City and Life with pets. 13 Comments

I got the job on the West Coast I interviewed for last month.  It’s a nice school, with nice people, a great boss, apparently ZERO tolerance for assholes.  AND it’s a lot cheaper than New York City, with better weather.

So in a little more than three weeks, I’m packing up a U-Haul and driving 3000 miles with Junebug and Zuzu (who will be tranquilized the whole way, at least during driving hours).  And in about eight days, I will be pulling into my new town and setting up house.   And it might actually BE a house — I can get an entire house, with a yard and a gardener, for a few hundred bucks less than I pay for a studio in Brooklyn.  Probably within walking distance of campus, as well.

I’m both excited and anxious.  I’m also sad to leave New York and bracing myself for some severe culture shock.

Too tired to sleep

Published at August 14, 2010 in Library stuff, work work work and Travel. 2 Comments

It’s noon, I just got back from the Left Coast, where I had a job interview at a very nice law school with seductive weather, and even though I’ve been up for 30 hours, I’m not at all sleepy.

Gah.

I’d really love to be able to sleep on planes.  I keep meaning to get a small prescription for Valium or something before I fly, which might help knock me out (or maybe just make me not care that I can’t sleep).   Not a damn wink on the red eye.

This was my first full second-round interview with the Dreaded Presentation.  Which I sort of winged on format, because I haven’t been able to get much of an answer from anyone about what a DP should consist of.  But I was able to fill my time completely, keep the interest of my audience, and answer questions.   I also did well during the panel interview portion, where I was interviewed by separate panels of the librarians and the technical services staff — and I sucked up shamelessly to the latter.  I’ve certainly figured out that it doesn’t help to direct someone to a source if it’s not there because tech services doesn’t have the resources to get it back on the shelf or update it.

It helped, too, that the director of the law library has been pretty open about the fact that he really wants me to succeed.  So I didn’t feel that there was much skepticism to overcome.  I should know soon, but I’m also interviewing with other schools that probably won’t schedule their second-round interviews until early September.

Well, hello there

Published at July 24, 2010 in Iron, Library stuff, Kitties, Health, New York Fugging City, work work work and Vanity. 0 Comments

Been some time since I dropped by this place.  I’m still alive.  I can’t even say I’ve been terribly busy lately, what with having graduated library school and gotten laid off sometime in May.  I *can* say that I’ve been wiped out by the heat and not really all that interested in writing.  I don’t even read many blogs anymore, just a handful, and a lot of them are design blogs.

I’ve spent the summer looking for a permanent library gig, and it’s going well so far.  I had nothing, nothing at all for months, but this month everything’s started happening.  I’ve got some local interviews, and some on the West Coast; any of them would require me to move from my current apartment, if not from New York, so I’ve started packing up. All things being equal, I’d rather not have to change cities and buy a car.  I like my life here.

From what I’ve been hearing from some of my references, the potential employers who’ve been checking up on me don’t seem to really understand what it is I’ve been doing for the past ten years since I jumped off the partnership track — even though I’ve told them in the interview, and on my resume, etc.  It’s like they don’t understand that you can practice law even if you’re not employed by a law firm as a full-time associate on a traditional path.  Well, at least a couple of them have now been educated by my references.  This won’t really be a concern when I go for the next job, because I’ll have a track record as a law librarian, which is something they’ll understand.

Personally?  I’ve been using my time off to focus on fitness.  I looked back over my logbook, which I started in January, and I haven’t really been going to the gym as often as I’d like to think I do.  A lot of that had to do with injury, but a lot of it was just mismanaged time — I’d get a late start to the day, and then didn’t want to start a workout at 8pm when I had to go to work in the morning.  But now I have not a whole lot else to do, since it’s been so hot that a lot of the outdoor stuff I’d like to do seems unappealing.  The gym, however, is air-conditioned (though the weight room’s unit’s been out).  I’ve also just — like, this week — started running again.  It’s going well so far, though I know from experience it’s not until week 5 or so on the Couch to 5K plan that things start really going haywire with my ITB.  My plan is to do each week twice, and hope that’s enough time for my body to adapt, and to foam-roll the living fuck out of my lower body.

Dating’s sort of not been happening.  I’ve gone on a couple, but reluctantly since I don’t know if I’ll be here in a month.  Nothing’s come of them, but they were pleasant enough ways to pass the time.

The pets are both bad and good.  They’re all currently in good health, but Sugarplum had cancer surgery in April and just wasn’t healing, and wasn’t healing, and wasn’t healing.  Every time it looked like her wound was closing, I’d go to check on it and there would be A GIANT HOLE IN MY CAT.  The vet even did a second surgery to clean up the edges, but it still wasn’t healing, and he started taking it personally.  Finally, they decided she has really poor circulation and needed to be treated as if she’s diabetic.  So she spent three weeks at the vet’s office in a sterile cage, getting compresses and wound care and mainlining antibiotics and — strangest of all — snuggling up to the staff.   Amazingly, when I picked her up, the giant hole was down to nothing, and she was indeed all cuddly, for about a week.  Then she became the crankypants I know and love.

Herding cats; or, why Zuzu hates group projects

Published at September 13, 2009 in Library stuff, Edumacation and Dipshittery. 2 Comments

Library school is very big on the presentations and the group projects. I understand why; after all, during an interview for a position as a librarian (especially in the academic context), you will be expected to do a presentation for about an hour (including Q&A) to show that a) you can successfully research something and b) you can convey the results of your research, which is something you’ll be expected to do frequently on the job.

The value of group projects I’m less sure about. Sure, you can show that you work well with others, but I’m going to guess that most of the time, when you have a group project on the job, it will involve someone assigning work to various people, who will then have clear goals.

The group project I’m currently working on isn’t quite like that. We have 10 people — the entire class — working on the same project. We will all get the same grade. We’ve had to decide how to split things up ourselves, and nobody’s in charge (though, thankfully, someone has taken the reins by setting up the wiki and doing the kind of administrative stuff that will shape the project).

These things *can* work, if you have clear areas of responsibility so that one person isn’t stuck doing all the work and everyone else free-rides. Or if you don’t have any problem children who don’t work well with others.

We’ve already had a problem child emerge. Continue reading ‘Herding cats; or, why Zuzu hates group projects’

Busy

Published at July 20, 2009 in Gardening, Library stuff, Kitties, work work work and Life with pets. 9 Comments

Life interrupts.  Pardon the lack of posting, but I’ve been working full-time and taking two compressed summer classes, which is like taking four regular classes.  And I’m taking four in the fall, too, trying to graduate early because who the hell knows if I’ll have a job past August.

The pets are more or less fine, though Sugarplum, on top of everything else she’s had to go through this year, has had a mammary tumor removed.  The edges are clean, but the tumor is highly malignant, which means that if it shows up in her lungs, that’s pretty much all she wrote.

The tomato plants, so promising in early June, have suffered terribly from June’s wet, cold weather.  I don’t think they’re showing signs of blight, but they’re mildewed and the leaves are falling off.  I’ve gotten a few large-cherry-sized tomatoes from them, but nothing to write home about.  It’s going to be a lousy year for tomatoes in the Northeast.

Since I’ve made the decision to graduate in December instead of June of 2010, I’ve begun poking around looking for jobs in law librarianship.  While I can’t really begin looking in earnest until October because I won’t be available until January, the market looks pretty decent in that there are, actually, jobs available if one is willing to relocate.  I’ve also got 11+ years of legal research experience, so I’ll definitely have an advantage over anyone who’s coming right out of law school/library school who doesn’t have that.

Another thing I’m finding out is that either jobs are scarce in New York, or people hang on to their jobs forever so there are never any openings, and if there are any openings, they’re not advertised.  But I’m very willing to relocate, at least within reason (like, I don’t want to get stuck somewhere with miserably hot weather, lots of fundamentalists, and no city life as compensation).  I’ve also been told this is a terrible year to be looking because nobody who was ready to retire can afford to now that their 401(k)s have crashed, so they’re staying put, which means nobody else can move up, which means the entry-level jobs don’t open up.

Hope springs eternal, though, and I’m headed to the AALL annual meeting next weekend in the hopes of at least networking if not actually snagging a few interviews.  Got my suit, got my reasonably-priced hotel not far from the convention site, working on getting business cards, and my shoes are in the mail.

Opportunities

Published at March 31, 2009 in Library stuff and Travel. 0 Comments

This library thing could be very, very interesting.

There was a guest lecturer in my class last night who’s in the publishing industry and who started a library in Tanzania with his wife while they were there with Habitat for Humanity.  They need volunteers who can help with the library stuff, since a) they’re not librarians themselves; and b) Tanzania doesn’t really have a library culture.  In particular, they need someone who can talk to the women of the village about health issues, and maybe collect some women’s health materials in Swahili.

I’m seriously considering going for a week or so when they go in August.  I won’t have classes at that point, and I shouldn’t have a problem getting time off work.  And I can spend a few days in Europe on the way back as well.