Non-social post-birthday girl

And now begins my self-declared non-social week. I have schoolwork to catch up on, house stuff that needs accomplishing, errands to run, and other things to do, all of which have been procrastinated for long enough. Richard happens to be out of town, so the timing is perfect. I'm not going anywhere except to run errands and to meet with a fellow ASIS&T officer for some officer-business lunchiness.

My birthday was really, really good. Definitely in my top 5 birthdays ever. Richard threw a Virgo birthday party for me and a few other Virgos which went well. Not too over the top and still very fun. Steph was in town up from St Louis and one friend group (mostly all library people) met another friend group (mostly all GSLIS people). My social networks definitely follow a theme. Good food, good friends...good times.

I got served breakfast in bed the next day, accompanied by schoolwork in bed (yes, us grad students really know how to par-tay down). On my actual birthday I got roses, a gift card for a massage, and taken out to a nice dinner. I also got nice presents from friends and family, of course. And a ton of Facebook birthday wishes, which was surprisingly fun and made me smile all day long.

And now that I've been pampered and spoiled and treated so nicely, I'm going to hole up and work on getting all stressed out by all the things I need to get done. But I keep reminding myself that major stress now means much less stress in the very near future.

If I feel like I've accomplished enough by the end of the weekend, I think I'll go use that massage gift card.


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As always, on the day after my birthday, I like to remember all the good times with my best friend C, who died of lymphoma in 2004 on Sept 19. I miss you.

whoa, again

Aaand...the University is going to be closed tomorrow. Wow. I don't think that's ever happened before. And yes, it is really nasty out. Even this Nebraskan is impressed. I'll take some pics tomorrow. Oh, and my front door, which faces North, unfortunately, leaks badly and gives a really high whistle when the wind blows right. I am seriously considering nailing a rug to hang down over it to keep out the draft.

I have plenty of OJ, oatmeal, and coffee, and a full pantry of dry goods, plus I made bread and boiled some eggs today, so tomorrow's lunch will be yummy egg salad sandwiches and soup. I think that tonight's dinner is just going to be popcorn, though. I already cooked enough today.

I think the catch-up-on-homework gods are smiling upon me. As long as the wireless Internet gods keep a big grin on their faces, I might actually get on top of things. Speaking of procrastination, you may enjoy the following video.

Ze Frank: Pro-Cra

As someone who didn't complete her Museum Informatics class partly because of the lure of learning new technology rather than using what was already in her brain, I can really relate. Back to watching Nova (it's about our cousin-apes, bonobos, which is hilariously appropriate for just before Valentine's day) and pushing papers around on my desk.

Baked

I'm in a cooking mood this weekend, so I decided it was time to make my favorite cookie bar in the world: seven-layer bars. Well, mine are actually six-layer bars because I don't like butterscotch chips. I got everything ready and opened a can of sweetened condensed milk. It was tan. Okay, it's been a while since I made these, but to my recollection, sweetened condensed milk is more of an off white color. I looked for an expiration date on the can, smelled it, tentatively tasted it, and decided in the end that I didn't trust it. So I opened another can. Same. Thing.

So, now I've got two opened cans of goo. What to do? Well, two cans of sweetened goodness must make the bars twice as good, right?

...

At this moment, I am eating my cookie "bars" with a fork. I may need to switch to a spoon. They are still pretty tasty, but I'm going to stick them in the fridge and see if that will help them transform into a more solid state.

...

Whoops! I had to run and rescue my lunch from the oven; I totally forgot about it. Luckily, the onion rings and veggie burger are fine. I think that the universe is telling me that I need to go work on my paper instead of fiddling with food. Here's hoping that the Char Siu pork I have marinating in the fridge doesn't crawl away or mutate into something inedible.

End of semester, pre-final wrap up thingy

Almost done with my first semester as a full-time grad student. Feeling tired and annoyed at my (lack of) study habits, and vowing to do better next semester.

I'm taking an incomplete in my Collection Development class, with the agreement that I finish up before the first day of Spring classes, which is entirely reasonable. I'm not very happy with myself for having yet another incomplete under my belt (I had one last semester), but according to my fellow students, this is not an unusual occurrence. I just don't want to make it a habit.

I'm getting together with my Intro to Networking team this week to finish up our group project and prepare for our Thursday presentation, and I have no worries that everything will go fine (knock on virtual wood). And I have to remember to make something for the class potluck that follows the final presentations. Something vegetarian, I think.

The annoying (required) and unorganized (ironic) Information Organization and Access class is almost over. I am finishing up my part of the group presentation and have completed the web site. I hate group projects. Or, rather, I hate that I volunteer to do too much on group projects and then get behind in everything else. And that my teammates get to put up with me being a neurotic procrastinator-perfectionist. Bad combination. But the website looks pretty.

And to boot? I've been smelling cigarette smoke all day and it's giving me a headache. Where is it coming from? My neighbors. The insulation/duct work/whatever is so poor in my duplex that the smoke from next door is coming through the heating ducts or cracks in the walls or the ether or something. Not. Helping. With. The. Writing!

Back to the Info Org and Access writing. Sigh.

Someday I'll get the hang of this...

Good reason why you shouldn't wait until the last minute to turn in an assignment? Because that way, when your internet connection goes down 15 minutes before your paper is due to be emailed in, you don't give yourself a panic attack in the ensuing rush to figure out what just is wrong with your home network this time.

The paper was successfully turned in just 2 minutes ago, but 'm going to go bang my head against the wall for a bit, just to remind myself NOT TO DO THIS EVER AGAIN. Yeah, that'll work.

Enforced procrastination

You know, my (required, and therefore hated) LIS 501 class is making it very hard to focus on our database assignment. We are "reverse engineering" LibraryThing, creating entity-relation diagrams and a paper explaining it all. And this requires me to poke around LibraryThing in order to figure out how it works.

Do you know *just* how many books I've either ordered or put on my "to read" list or gone to Wikipedia to read more about, just today? Gah! I really want to sit down and catalog my personal library (I already keep track of what I've read using LT, but haven't gotten around to adding in books that I actually own), but it has to wait until the semester's end so that I can get this project (and others) done!

And to boot, I actually like creating and playing with databases and was looking forward to this assignment. Hell, I get paid to do that at work. But I really don't think that LibraryThing was a great example for the poor people in my class who have had little or no previous experience with databases. I mean, I consider myself an intermediate database creator and *I'm* having problems with the assignment.

This class really is a bonding/hazing experience for all of us proto-librarians.