Smatterings

• I had my first job interview upon coming back home yesterday, and my first rejection this morning. It was a case of other applicants having more experience specific to the job than I did. 
• I think I should drop some money for a bookshelf, but I don't know how I'd get it back to the apartment. May have to talk to the roommate about this.

This just isn't cutting it anymore.

• I think that this quarter, academically speaking, is going to be awesome. I'm finally taking archival classes for one, and will have an independent study in which I do nothing but study historic book making processes.
• I had my first encounter with with bookless library here on campus yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised at its efficiency. Sure, there is no browsing, but books requested actually do end up on hold within two hours, and I ended up biking home with a book bag so full my back was rather angry at me.
• There is still a lot I have to write about concerning my time at the Murie Center, but it will likely take a while for me to sit down a process. For now, here area few lingering photographs.

 One of my last projects involved assessing the condition of the film in the studio. We had about 16 reels, all in surprisingly good condition.

 Finally got a decent shot of a ground squirrel, since by the end of my time on the ranch they had become fat and lazy, and didn't mind being a foot away.

A box I found in Mardy's cabin turned out to be a portable film projector. It was a lot of fun to disassemble and to figure out what all of the little knobs and such did.

April!

The frequency of blog posts here is a pretty good indication of my mental state. When I'm tired/bored/overwhelmed and so on the updates drop like a rock. March was quiet because I was trying to get started on the right foot for the new semester and not quite managing it, what with my itchy fingers and a workload that I still struggling to keep in check. I thiiink things will be better this semester but I'm not quite sure.

The classes I have this semester feel like the first jump from LIS 101 to more in depth topics. This is great. It also means a more difficult workload and readings. And, none of them are really focused on the sort of skills I will be needing for my internship, which means I need to do a lot of independent work over the next two months to do as effective a job as possible up in WY.

The skin thing is pretty much resolved, and my rat is now officially adopted and I'm not allergic to her, so that's two problems gone. I've also finally gotten confirmed for my insurance, so here's hoping that that all goes smoothly too.

I saw Sucker Punch yesterday with some LIS buds, and it turned out to be a mash up of Inception and 300 that didn't quite work as either. The shame was that the first scene was -great-, and then the rest of the movie completely failed to live up to the quality the intro promised. Oh well.

I'm moving the "Awesome Archival" stuff that I used to post here to a dedicated tumblr, here. For short, drive by content tumblr is a better platform, but anything substantial will still be posted to this blog.

Yay!

Straight As for the winter semester. I have NO idea how that happened to be honest, because by the end of it I was really struggling. But either I got my shit together or my teachers pitied me or some combination of the two, because my GPA as not nearly as ruined as I expected it to be. Maybe it's true what they say, that failing out of grad school is a feat in and of itself.

This semester is going to be better though. I can feel it in my toes, or that could be the itching from the hives I've managed to develop over the last few weeks. I also managed to pick up a head cold yesterday, and the rat is sniffling too which makes me nervous, but THIS WILL BE A GOOD SEMESTER.

Before I go off and do my homework to ensure that THIS WILL BE A GOOD SEMESTER I need to do a quick recap of my visit to the Murie Center up in Wyoming. I drove up on Tuesday, spend a brilliant Wednesday helping the people up there with a small project and otherwise lounging and napping, which was brilliant, and then drove down on Thursday. Everyone at the center was extremely hospitable and their enthusiasm for the Center's mission was contagious. The center itself was beautiful. The buildings themselves have existed for almost a century, iirc, but they've all been renovated on the inside so that even in winter they're warm, dry, and comfortable.

The archives themselves are very small, and already relatively organized. It looks like most of the work will be with a little policy and then developing reliable finding aids, and maybe cataloging the many books scattered all over the various buildings. I have homework ahead of me, but it shouldn't be too bad.

The bed I was given. There's like 4 comforters on that thing. It was heaven. The cabin itself is pretty big. There was another empty bed out of the frame, and a dresser behind me.

One of the spidery walkways between cabins. The building in the picture is the bath house, which is quite modern and very comfortable inside.

The door to my cabin. You can see the snow piled up past the window.

 Where it fell naturally it only came up to my thigh.

And a random photo of the rat that I will be adopting. 

She's a terror and I love her, but man has she given me grief. She's already tried to steal my homework to make herself a nest. 

End of Fall Semester

PHEW. Fall semester is over. My last class was last night and I just have a few finishing touches to put on a project before the whole thing is behind me. But somehow, even though I have a two month break ahead of me, I feel like I'm busier than ever. It might be because:

• I've still got that internship and now I'm volunteering weekly
• I got a job (FINALLY) at an awesome place but it's 45 minutes away
• There's a NaNo novel looming over my head
• And a fantasy world project I committed to that must be finished by December
• I'm starting to take Chinese lessons
• It's time to go trolling for scholarships and internships
• And I have some work to do for the LIS publishing group that I have been putting off with the excuse of "I'll do it when the semester ends."
• Oh yeah, and two book reviews are over due. =x

So now that the essential schoolwork is out of the way all of the little stuff is bubbling to the surface. 

The last few weeks have been a little hairy. I continue to ignore my limits and attempt to take on much more than is humanly possible to fit into a 24 hour day, and the result was a few papers typed out franticly that barely made it to the deadline. Luckily, I also have a habit of researching deeply and throughout the semester, so I already had all of the information I needed, but had to scramble to organize it properly.

When I submitted my paper I was very disappointed with it. I realized early on that my intended paper would have to be 30 pages or so to fill it with the information I gathered, but the assignment called for 10. I cheated and made it 14, simply because I didn't have the time to streamline it any more than that, and submitted it with a wince. 

I just got the results back and apparently my professor was impressed, because I got 35 out of 30 possible points and was told to seek publication. My face as I read that e-mail probably looked something like this:

 

Definitely a happy surprise.

Hnnnng

Nothing warms you up like trying to pedal a bike with a flat tire. I filled the tire with air (75c for air! What is the world coming to!) and it went flat again immediately, so it looks like I'm going to have to replace a tire.

I was doing a little RSS reading after coming home from class and came across a list of resources for job searches in the library field. The first link was for North Suburban Libray System. Their front page reads " On May 31, 2010, all NSLS full-time employees (except delivery staff) were laid off. The only member service NSLS will provide in the immediate future is van delivery. This scaled down version of the NSLS website will remain up until further notice."

FUUUUUUUUU

Well, here's hoping that in two years there will be employment prospects again. I should really get started on cultivating expertise somewhere to make myself more employable, but I find it difficult to find the time in between the classes I am taking, which are are as introductory as you can get (with the possible exception of Organization of Information, but that one drives me a bit nuts.)

I am still holding out judgement on this whole ten weeks a semester thing. Way too short in my opinion, but then again, I am looking forward to taking classes that are more relevant to my focus.

I am currently in the interview process for two different jobs. Both are full time and rather decent. What I -really- want is a call back from the libraries in Rangeview, but I'm not sure if that would happen. I turned in three separate applications to them on Monday, and because the computer was having a terrible time interpreting the file I had to go over every little check box individually and double check that it wasn't changed from the last time I loaded the file. I realized after I had printed that I was not thorough enough and one check had gotten through, and then, when I could not find any white out, decided to fix the issue when I got to the library I was submitting everything to. Of course by the time I got to the library I had forgotten about this, and so two applications say that I was previously an employee of Rangeview and one says correctly that I have not. I literally did not have a moment to do anything today, so I guess tomorrow I'll have to call them and set things right. Bleh.

So far I've gotten a whole sentence translated of the Japanese book I'm trying to go through. I don't think I'll get very far, but some Far East Language skills would really help, and I need to brush up VERY badly.

This week has been a bit of a roller coaster. I think I am going through the phases of grief in terms of my job search. I was firmly in the Anger zone on Friday, and am anticipating a long stay in Depression land, but am doing my damnedest to ward off the mental and physical stagnation that this usually brings on. Having so much that simply needs to get done helps, but my meals have been taking a bit of a hit.

This last week I:

• Spoke to a Chinese teacher and realized I was -really- overreaching, so I'm sticking with Japanese for a bit
• Attended an amazing concert of Brahm's German Requiem in a beautiful cathedral
• Ate at a "fast food" Japanese restaurant that almost killed udon for me
• Restarted an old project (because that's what I do when I'm stressed, start projects) that has nothing to do with anything else I'm doing currently but will be moderately time consuming
• Submitted more reviews for Tangent Online, which, by the way, has now published everything
• Started doing research on grants and linguistics, of all things
• Got furniture for my room, including a dresser, which remains empty as I choose to leave everything strewn across the floor
• Finished up my first group project of the semester just in time to dive into the second
• Bought something to transfer my photos onto the computer and realized immediately after that my computer has a SD cardslot compatible with my camera.
So, pictures:

The living room, with Rufus giving the tour in the corner.

The little dining room right behind it. The roommate I replaced took that table, so now it's just open space.

The kitchen. You can't see them but some of the things on the fridge are hilarious.

Lord of the domain, Rufus. 

Rufus lording over me as I try to do work.

The catlord is pleased with my obedience. 
===

So that's that. A few book/archive related links for today:

  http://stackedup.tv/#read Quick interviews with writers and other bookish creators.

  http://eap.bl.uk/index.a4d The endangered archives program. Some of these projects sound ridiculously awesome. Going through them keeps me focused on gathering up the skills/qualifications to participate in something like this.

===

And now I'm finishing up a conference for group project two and have to set up and go to a paper writing group. If I could get a publishable paper out of this semester that would be great, but I really have no idea how to go about it. Hopefully this group will help.

Oh man. I don't think I can recall any other week in my life where I have been this busy. On top of preparing for and attending my first classes, trying reel in all the lines I put out for work, familiarizing myself with the area and its grocery stores, trying to cook and failing, and otherwise putting all the disparate pieces involved with moving to a new city and starting a new life into place, I have had maybe one hour total with which to rest or fool around on the computer. My mind is so revved up that it's taking me three or more hours to fall asleep after I lay my head on the pillow, which is something I -really- hope changes once things get more settled.

I've had a two day grocery ordeal involving a Japanese food store near downtown and two meals that I managed to only buy half the ingredients for each. Today I resolved to pick up the missing stuff from a local store, and set about making spring rolls. I've had a real hankering for spring rolls since I mentioned them before, something like a week ago, and have not managed to scratch that particular itch since I was denied them. When I was in Japan I had made them with my host mother, so I though, hey, how hard could they be? You don't even have to cook anything but the shrimp.

Well... It turns out I didn't quite remember what went into them, so I forgot some of the flavoring, bought cabbage instead of lettuce (I guess I'm making a cabbage dish soon) had absolutely no idea how to prepare avocados and didn't know I didn't know until I had mangled one, and ended up buying shrimp that was too curled and too small to be laid out the traditional way. Youtube gave me a crash course on avocado slicing, and after some experimenting the shrimp worked anyway. What was irredeemable was the sauce. It was terrible and I ended up just throwing it out. Without the sauce spring rolls are really bland, and without the greens they're even blander. Good thing I don't mind tasteless food. Plus, by the time I was done making a dozen of them I was too hungry to care.

I've taken a picture of the results of my exploits, along with a few shots of the interior of the apartment, but my usb cord is (hopefully) still sitting in my trunk along with a few other excess effects that I have not bothered to move in yet, so all that will have to wait. I also noticed that the lens of my camera has managed to pick up even more black spots, even in the protection of its case. Somewhat annoying, that.

I've now taken two of the three classes, and predict a heavier workload than I expected initially. Since the school runs on quarters, each class is only 10 sessions long, which sounds a little crazy, and probably is. Within those 10 sessions we're expected to do a large paper, a group project, and a few other assignments. I'm thinking I will not be able to pull of the procrastination game this time around.

There's probably a lot more that I'm missing, but that will have to wait for another day, as I'm tired, and want to spend at least a minute of this day doing nothing (probably will work on my budget spreadsheet instead). So here's a quick list.

Stuff I like about Denver so far:

• The road I take to school has a bike path, so when I get a bike the commute will be perfect.


• Driving back from part time job 1 I saw an entire family of prairie dogs chilling by the road. I think that's the first time I've ever seen a live prairie dog, and there were more than a dozen. Unfortunately one was flat on the shoulder. =s


• The people in general are all pretty cool, and the drivers are pretty sane, even considerate sometimes.


• All the curbs are slanted, so that I can relearn my parallel parking and it's cool if I go a little too far.


• There's a Japanese food store in the city. It's not really that close, but it's there, and it has a lot of good stuff.

Stuff I don't like about Denver so far:

• It's almost all road related. For one, I can't seem to get onto I25 south without spending 10 minutes criscrossing the damn thing. Ironically, the one time I did get onto I25 S without a hitch I really wanted to go North.


• There is no parking anywhere at all. I hate city parking.


• The building where I have my classes is as far from my apartment as it can be without being off campus. Ok, that's not completely true, but it is on the wrong side.


• I still don't have a room of my own. I'm managing fine, but I am really looking forward to being able to have a real space, and be completely moved in.

Phew, 11PM already. I've got an interview and a class tomorrow, and then I think I will set off on another culinary adventure.

Nothing says "it's official" like a 6 hour orientation. My behind is sore but after weeks of preparation, being at the school and hearing my professors talk about the coming semester woke me up and gave me a nice shot of energy. The bumper to bumper traffic back to Dacono sucked most of it back out of me.

In less than a week I'll be attending classes, and then I can judge if this little gambit really was a smart move.