Something Funny at the Librarian Conference

During one of the ump-teen sessions I had to attend during my Savannah conference I read something funny. Some teachers are attempting to revitalize the research paper assignment by requiring their students to post their as a blog. Each entry is a new paragraph or section. One teacher displayed this definition before getting into the meat of her presentation.

Everyone in the room slowly started to giggle more and more as they finished reading the definition. If you've ever heard of/visited urbandictionary then this colorful definition of 'blog' is no surprise. If you haven't visited the site then I must warn you that several entries are rather crude and vulgar. Though I've never blogged about sleeping until noon (because I've never done that in my life) I think I may have blogged about homework.

Sandi's Favorite Thing

Sandi loves to play frisbee. Actually her frisbee is called a flippy-flopper. Walmart used to sell them but now you can only find them on eBay. She tears them up after a few months. This is not just from catching them in the air, it's from thrashing them about in her teeth. I think she's been through about 4 so far. Her specialty is jumping high to catch the frisbee mid-air. I've tried to get shots of this x-treme-dog-jumping action but it's hard to time it just right. Here are some pictures of my attempts from yesterday.

This is how it starts. She looks pretty innocent but then she gets her chompers into the fabric and the thrashing begins.

Then...the fury is released!

I know some of the pictures are blurry but she's fast and my camera is not the best quality.

She gets pretty tired after about 15 minutes and usually plops down where she stops in the grass, goes and rests on top of the AC vent in the house, or on the couch (like this picture).

Birthday Cake

My birthday was a couple weeks ago but I just celebrated it with my family this past weekend. I did buy myself a mini-cake from Piggly Wiggly on my actual birthday so don't worry about me missing out on all those empty (yet totally delicious) calories.

I'm a huge fan of the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. This summer I read the latest in the series Finger Lickin' Fifteen. If you've ever read any of them you know that Stephanie loves her mother's cooking and especially her pineapple upside down cake. I've never had it before so I requested that as my birthday cake. My mom made it from scratch in her cast iron skillet. It was yummy and came out picture perfect.

I'll lay off the baked goods postings for a little while.

Work in Savannah

Several colleagues and I traveled to Savannah a couple weekends ago to attend an Information Literacy conference. It was sponsored by Georgia Southern and here is a picture of the view from the conference center.

This is the Talmadge Memorial cable-stayed bridge.

As my sister's roommate said, "Oh, it's a librarian conference? That's got to be boring!" He was right. It was nice to get away from the office for a couple days but I didn't really learn anything. Basically, we attended several sessions and they all pretty much said the same thing; 1. The one-shot library visit cannot possibly teach students how to properly conduct research, yet no one could offer a working solution and, 2. Statistics may seem interesting on paper but spouted out during a presentation they have the same affect (effect?) as sleeping gas. The food was bad too. Also, I realized that I do not like your typical librarian. They are very pompous and rude. I didn't get their jokes and they asked questions they already knew the answer to in an effort to make the presenter look stupid. I hope that won't be me in a few years and I really hope that's not me now.

I did get to hang with my sister for a couple days so that was nice. She let me crash at her place and I had my own personal tour guide of the city. She bought some cupcakes from a local bakery called Back in the Day Bakery. I think the owner was on Paula Deen's FoodNetwork show once.



They looked very pretty but the cake part was very bland. My sister, who is an accomplished cook and baker, could have done way better. The icing was fantastic though (except the chocolate--way too intense). In conclusion, I'd rather skip the conference next year and hang out with my sister instead.

Business Card

I now have business cards. This is a first for me. It's like I've finally arrived (career wise anyway). I'm experiencing a moment similar to one in The Jerk. It's the scene where Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin) gets ridiculously excited about the arrival of the new phonebooks because he's in it for the first time. He screams, "The new phonebook's here, the new phonebook's here, I'm somebody now!" That's me folks. I'm somebody now. Watch the clip here. I doubt I'll use all 500 of them but someone did show me that you can make an origami shapes out of business cards. They even have step-by-step websites for such a task.

Lost In Austen

I just finished watching a miniseries called Lost in Austen. I'm not really sure how I missed seeing this (or even hearing about it) but it was released in 2008. I ordered it through Netflix and all parts of the miniseries are on one disc. For those of us obsessed with all things Austen any adaptation can be appreciated in it's own way. Though I've read almost all her books and seen at least one movie version of each I still get excited when another adaptation is in the works. Books with their own spin of the stories or different adventures of one or more of the characters can be fun as well. Lost in Austen creates a different outcome for all the characters in Pride and Prejudice.

It wasn't terrible or wonderful and I won't be visiting amazon.com to see if I can order a cheap copy but it was worth watching and indulging in a different story line for 3 hours of one of my favorite tales. It combines a lot of the things that people love about the book and about the 1995 BBC miniseries version with Colin Firth. I laughed during some of it but mostly I was just wondering where the storyline was headed about every 10 minutes. It can only be enjoyed if you watch it with an open mind. In my Internet searches about this movie I came across this blog: Jane Austen's World. I'm very interested in reading this to learn more about "Jane Austen, her novels, and the Regency Period."

Another One Down

Today is my 29th birthday. I looked in the mirror this morning and said to myself, "Almost 30." Then I said a choice 4-letter word and headed out the door to work. Twenty-nine seems like a really boring number to me, as does 39, 49 and so forth. I'm going to need to do really adventurous things this year to make it momentous. I'd love to try zip lining (or ziplining; depending upon which site you visit) so maybe I'll look into that. They make zip line kits for home but I'd like to try it in the rain forest or something like that where I have to dodge spider monkeys as huge leaves slap me in the face.



These were taken in Costa Rica (from a website search). Yep, that's a three-toed sloth (on the right). Pretty cool.

Also, plans are underway for a week long trip in January to Paris and London with my mom. I'm getting more excited as the days pass. It will be cold but that might not be so bad. We'll be in a mad rush to see as much as possible but I'm up to the challenge. Mom is working on figuring out the flight/tube/train travel and hotel arrangements. I've been focusing on more important things; my outfits. I'll be packing super lite so every garment counts. We took a trip to REI in Atlanta recently and I got the best hiking shoes ever. Actually, I love all my purchases. Anyway, Happy Birthday to me!

Nothing To Report

Well, you'd think after a month I would have loads of things to post about. Wrong. Not a lot of spectacular stuff going on with me. The junior college students will be starting classes next week so things are still not up to the usual pace at work yet. I've got some classes scheduled for this month already so that's a good sign.

I went out on the kayak last weekend and hopefully will get out on the water more often now that it's a little cooler. The weather has been a little inconsistent. It cools off and then gets hot. It looks like it's about to storm and then nothing. Here's a picture of Sandi hiding under the bed just before a thunder storm. She hates thunder.


I've done a good bit of reading and movie watching in the past several weeks. I finally finished the Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. I have now read something by each of the Bronte sisters. Tenant was really very good, the story was intriguing and the vocabulary was far superior to the books I've read lately. I also watched the movie and it was close to the book but it still had some cinematic embellishments. I recommend both but you should read the book first. I finished a very short book called Genesis by Bernard Beckett. This was kind of a sci-fi book and I totally didn't anticipate the ending so I'd recommend that one too (again, it's short so not much commitment needed there). I watched a newer version of Jane Austen's Persuasion that I enjoyed very much.


A colleague notified me about this new board game called Liebrary. It's similar to Balderdash but with a literary spin.





I think the spelling of the game is the best part. This might be fun for the holidays. My family usually enjoys board games like Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit and Scattergories.

The Kayak Kid

Several weeks ago my friend got me a kayak. I've never really been on a kayak before and I was really excited about having my own.

Mine is the red-ish one on the right. The past few weekends I've only been able to get in it a couple times. Yesterday we kayaked for about an hour and then another 30 minutes or so today.

My friend looks really comfortable and almost graceful moving through the water with his paddle. I however keep hitting the sides of my kayak with my paddle, smashing my fingers and large amounts of water slide down into my lap. Also, my feet feel like they are about to fall asleep after about five minutes. My right shoulder is a little tender today but no injuries otherwise. I'm sure I'll get better the more I practice. In the meantime, I'll enjoy being out in the sunshine and sweating away some unwanted calories.

The red kayak is actually the second kayak from my friend. First, I tested this one...

So, if you can picture me looking like a klutz using the red kayak, this one was ten times worse. Apparently, it is a style kayak that is usually used in rapids, whitewater stuff. It is impossible to go in a straight line in this thing (going in dizzying circles in unbelievably easy though). It was exchanged for my nifty red (and easier to manage in the lake) kayak.

Now for an eBay update. I think I'm done for now. I've purchased a lovely collection of handbags and unique pieces of jewelry, not to mention a couple dresses.

I went to see G.I. Joe on Friday. I enjoyed it and I think it's a pretty good family film. The action scenes were great and the supersuits (I think that's what they were) were darn cool. I also watched Run, Fat Boy, Run. Very funny and cute, loved it. I'm traveling this week for work and so far I'm looking forward to the change of pace. I may feel differently by the end of the week.

Hot Vacation

I left for Myrtle Beach , S.C. just before noon last Wednesday. The trip was okay but very rainy. The GPS I borrowed was slightly difficult to adjust to but I was very glad to have it. I arrived after 5pm at the condo. After I dropped off my stuff I went straight to the balcony to see the view. This is what greeted me...

I took several pictures of the rainbow and many more photos of the view from the balcony throughout the week.

Most evenings it rained or looked like rain which lead to extremely humid mornings. The air was so thick it felt like a wool blanket was wrapped around my face. Running in that muck was exhausting. Every morning I took walks with my folks along the beach and looked for rocks. I picked up a few shells too. There seemed to be an abundance of shells this year and no rocks. I think it took a total of six walks to gather my stash.

Miniature golf was played (twice!) and I even tied with my dad, the golf master, on the second game. Each day we plopped ourselves at the beach for a few hours to read and walk and swim. We saw an IMAX movie in 3-D, did some outlet and cheesy souvenir shopping and sightseeing.

I ate far too much and I'm paying for it now. I guess that running and walking didn't help me much. The food was good though so I shouldn't complain. I was glad to be home on Sunday and sleep in my queen-sized bed (yep, you guessed it, I slept in a twin at the condo). Work was busy today with helping students do their research for papers and training a new employee. My eBay addiction has started to ebb and I'm ready to get back into a normal schedule once the fall quarter begins.

Here are some more pictures...

Sunrise from Thursday morning. My dad took this, I was still asleep.

Sunrise from Friday morning. My mom took this one, I was still asleep (it's called a vacation people--look it up!).

Incoming storm. It looked like this everyday at some point. Usually around 7pm.

I took this one morning while walking and looking for rocks.

This is a picture of what I searched through for days to find rocks. My neck started to get a crick in it and I dreamed of finding rocks our last night in Myrtle Beach.

Local methods of advertising. I know this method is not unique to Myrtle Beach but seeing the cheesy gimmicks make me smile. How else can you make your beachwear shop/specialty shop/restaurant stand out? Tourism is huge in Myrtle Beach and most businesses will try anything to set themselves apart from all the others. The resulting effect is they all look the same--outrageous.

This gem is posted on our private entrance to the beach from the condo building. The extra "L" really drives home the seriousness of the message, don't you think?