I'm going to Disneyland...err...ALA

I'm off to the ALA Annual Conference tomorrow. It's in Anaheim, CA this year. I can see us all now, sitting in our sessions and meetings sporting Mickey Mouse ears with our names on them instead of our conference badges. Strangely, none of my friends or colleagues want me to bring them mouse ears back...hm.

Per usual, I have a packed schedule with tons of conflicts. Typical ALA chaos. This year I have an additional (new to me) meeting on Tuesday morning. What was once a 3 day conference is now 5 days of meetings. Lord help me and give me coffee.

BUT, the Scholarship Bash is a ticket to a Disneyland park on Saturday night. So in a role reversal, I'm going to tag along with my NASIG mentee EL and her friends and go to Disneyland! Woo hoo!

I so need to get a picture of me and Mickey.

Workplace humor in the midst of change

A recent conversation with a colleague, loosely paraphrased:

Colleague: You seem to be handling all these changes to your job calmly and with a zen-like attitude. I'm impressed. Are you on medication or something?

Me: No. Should I look into it?

Colleague: That depends. If I say yes, are you going to snap and throw something at me?

Me: No. But I reserve the right to throw something at you in the future for other reasons.

On change

My life is in flux right now. Lots of changes in pretty much every aspect of my life. And all change requires adjustment. There are lots of little ones, but there are three major ones that eclipse the little things.

Change #1: I'm trying to move. This should ultimately be a good change. But I'll have to weather moving (a pain even under the best of circumstances and planning), finding new routes for my commute, errands, etc., a new neighborhood, new area for dog walking, etc. So any move, even within the same city, results in a multitude of changes to routines. And I am a creature of habit who likes to be in control of her immediate world (routine = good), so changes to routines are not my favorite thing. Nor are they my dog's favorite thing. Dogs do best if there is structure and routine in their life, so any move also unsettles Aussie and causes some acting out on her part, which I really don't need more of these days (the recent chocolate incident was enough, thankyouverymuch).

Change #2: I have new staff. I'm in the middle of hiring an intern. And I had another staff person added to my unit. They started this past Monday. So that means new workflows, processes, and lots of time training. Don't get me wrong, I NEED these staff and am happy to have them, but it's still a big change to go from managing one person to three in a matter of a couple of weeks, especially when two of them need training.

Change #3: A reorganization at work. This is really major. Like huge. Sometime in the next 3 months I'm going to have a new boss. And while it's known I'm getting a new boss and that multiple departments/units are being combined into a new department, that's about the extent of what we know. The new organizational structure is yet to be determined. The new workflows are yet to be determined. Pretty much everything, including the name of the new department(s), is yet to be determined. And there will be more changes in the fall after this phase is complete. For now I'm trying my best to reserve judgment about the end result. I'm trying my best to just go with the flow.

I have now reached my threshold for accepting, processing, dealing with, and managing change effectively, gracefully and with any degree of maturity. I can't add any more change, and frankly, there's not much in my life left to undergo a change. And the really big changes were not initiated by me, and are not necessarily things that I want or don't want. But they're happening anyway. No one asked me, I've only been informed once the decision to make the change has been made. When it's change you're initiating, it's one thing. But when change is happening to you, as opposed to with you, it's another thing entirely. I end up feeling I'm just along for the ride whether I like it or not so hang on and say a prayer it all ends well.

I've also reached the conclusion that the universe is in the middle of using all this change to teach me another life lesson. This one could be titled "going with the flow, advanced studies." Because going with the flow is not something I do willingly or often very well/gracefully. And it's teaching it in the most drawn out, painful and intense way possible. Because there's not much else I can do with all this change at the moment besides play the "wait and see" game. I don't know how it's all going to turn out. I can't predict the ending. So I'm having to just go with the flow. This is so not my idea of a good time. Not. At. All.

It's going to be an interesting summer.

Clever puppy

Well, not that clever. Because she made herself sick. But the process of making herself sick involved a great degree of cleverness.

I've talked about how smart my dog is before. Well, if you didn't believe me, you will now. Last night I ran an errand. Aussie didn't like this. I came home, and then left again. So, she decided to be a bad dog. I had a box of chocolates (a variety pack) sitting in the middle of my dining room table. I use the term "dining room table" loosely since all it is at the moment is a folding table and chairs, but it is what it is. And the chocolates were in the middle of the table, where I thought they were out of dog reach. They've been there for weeks and she's ignored them. I figured she might not even know they were there.

I was wrong. She was just biding her time.

I came home from my errand to find little bits of foil wrappers on the living room floor. And the torn up box under the coffee table. Aussie had pulled the chair out from the table, and used it to get to the box of chocolates sitting in the middle of the table.

The torn up box

She didn't eat very many chocolates, but she did eat at least 5 of them. Just enough to make her sick. We were up all night with her upset stomach/gastrointestinal system.

And I'll be dammed if there weren't little bits of foil wrappers (guess she didn't manage to get them fully unwrapped like she normally does) in her poo this morning. Hopefully that means we're past the worst of the upset tummy.

Question of the day

Someone honestly asked me this today.

Q: Is that your real hair?

Me (heavy on the sarcasm): Um, no. I intentionally chose a wig/weave/whatever with tons of gray hair in it. Yeah.

Adventures with apartment ads

I'm still looking. I have yet to find a place that meets my needs. Fortunately, there's no time crunch, and I'm not going to move just to move. I'm going to find a place I want to move to that meets my simple yet specific needs.

Along the way, I've encountered some interesting apartment ads. There's the ones that are tagged that they allow pets, but in the ad clearly state "NO PETS" (usually in all caps). There's the ones that say "large" but um, no, not really. People stretch the truth in apartment ads. And if something sounds too good to be true, it quite possibly is.

Take, for example, a recent inquiry I made to an ad I found on Craigslist. It sounded too good to be true. I figured it probably was, but there was no harm in sending an email inquiring. They said they wanted a renter ASAP, but the rent seemed low for the location advertised, and the pictures of the place also seemed a bit too nice, as if they were staged. But again, no harm in asking, right? So I sent off my usual inquiry, telling them when I'm looking to move in, and asking about fees, security deposit, pet policies, utility rates, etc. plus a few specific questions clarifying things in the ad.

What I got back was a variation on a theme. A scam theme. Specifically: the Nigeria scam.

You know what scam I'm referring to. Those letters you get from some poor soul who is set to inherit money but needs your help so can you please send all your banking info to them asap so they can give you lots of money for your help? Yeah. That scam.

I did get a reply to my inquiry. The couple that owns the place is currently in, you guessed it, Nigeria! On a Christian mission. They were unable to find someone to rent their home prior to their departure, and also unable to find an agent to manage the house and rent it out. They have the only set of keys with them in Africa. No sh*t. They want to send me an application, so I can send them a deposit, and then they'll send me the keys. Um, thanks but no thanks. I had a variation on this about a month ago, where the guy said he had been transferred back to Europe and needed to sub-let the place for 5 years. I don't think so.

So for now, I'm still on the look out. For a new apartment AND for scams.

Why travel by plane is evil, part gazillion

I have atrociously bad luck when it comes to flying. Seriously atrocious. The number of issues I've had in the past 10 years are unbelievable. And the worst part? Pretty much every problem I've ever had could have been prevented by the airlines. I understand weather woes. We can't control it, and being delayed or rerouted due to weather is not an issue. The issue is how the airlines deal with those delays and rerouting. Or booking my flight in the first place (OMG why is booking international travel so difficult?). Or mechanical issues. Or paperwork issues. Canceled flights. Gate changes. Being bumped off my flight and instead of being put on the next flight, being put on standby for the next 3 flights (I'm not kidding). I've dealt with them all and then some. I've spent an insane amount of time on the phone with customer service over the years trying to get re-booked on a different flight, find an alternate route, or file a complaint.

The worst issue to deal with? Baggage issues. And this time I had serious baggage issues.

First, the trip there on Thursday. I missed my connection. Why? Because they were given the wrong paperwork so we were delayed leaving the gate. So while I had 45 minutes between flights, when we landed I only had 20 minutes. Then we had to wait because there was a plane at our gate. By the time I got off the plane I had 10 minutes before my next flight was scheduled to leave. Yeah. Nevermind. They close the doors 10 minutes prior to departure, so after running to the other terminal, I spent 20 minutes at the customer service desk. They told me the next flight they could guarantee I'd be on was around 8pm, but I could go standby on the next two and would probably get on the 4pm flight. Eight pm was a little under 12! hours later. I was NOT spending my entire day in an airport, thankyouverymuch.

So thanks to some creativity, they booked me on a flight on another airline. My baggage was supposed to follow. Well, that didn't quite happen. I arrived in Phoenix in one terminal on one airline, and my baggage arrived in a different terminal on my original airline. No joke. So it took me an extra 30 minutes to locate my bag. All because they didn't actually tell me this, I had to speak to two different baggage agents to find this out. But my bag was located, and I finally made it to the resort about an hour before the conference started (cutting it a bit close for comfort). But I did make it. So I said my thanks and just let it go.

The trip home on Monday was even worse. This particular experience takes the cake. There were no flight issues. Everything was on time. But when I arrived to pick up my bag, it never appeared. Everyone else on the flight got their bags. And I was left standing by the baggage carousel wondering where my bag went. I never saw it come up the belt, and I was watching. So off to the baggage office I went, only to be informed that my bag had in fact arrived in Philly. It had been "scanned" on arrival, so it was in the airport. Only they had no idea where. It disappeared somewhere between when it came off the plane and when it was supposed to be put on the belt for delivery. It took everything in me to not demand they just let me go look for it myself, dammit. After an hour and a half of them looking everywhere, I finally left to go pick the dog up from the kennel and head home sans luggage.

They gave me a claim form and gave me the number of the main baggage office for the airline as a whole, as well as the direct line to the office at the Philly airport. So I made a point of checking in a couple of times a day. Monday...no luck in locating my bag. Tuesday...still looking. The Philly airport is NOT THAT BIG, people. Wednesday...nothing. Until 3pm. When I received a phone call at work from another airline. My bag had mysteriously turned up in their baggage office, sans tags. My big bright compression strap was gone. So was the airline luggage tag. I had fortunately put a business card in the little slot on the back of the bag, and that's how they contacted me. They had no idea where the bag came from since the airline tracking tag had been removed, so I gave them my claim number and airline, and they send it back to my original airline for delivery. It arrived at my home Wednesday night a little after 7pm. That's almost 60 hours after I first arrived back in Philly.

Fortunately, everything was intact. Nothing was missing. Even my jewelry was there (granted...all it consisted of was basic silver earrings, not worth much, but still). BUT obviously someone had gone through every corner of my bag. Everything was tossed around, even my toiletries bag had been rooted through. SO SOMEONE TOOK MY BAG FROM THE BAGGAGE AREA, WENT THROUGH IT, AND THEN, REALIZING THERE WAS NOTHING OF VALUE, RETURNED IT TO A DIFFERENT AIRLINE BAGGAGE OFFICE. And the airlines are worried about terrorists getting on their planes. Maybe it's time to look at security within your own operations a bit closer, hm?! But don't get me wrong, I'm very very grateful that I got everything back...even if I feel the need to wash every little thing in my bag whether it needs it or not 'cause some creep touched everything in it (seriously gross).

I've got to figure out who is the god/goddess of the airlines so I can sacrifice a goat and end this string of horrific luck when it comes to flying. And it needs to happen before I leave for ALA in Anaheim, CA in about a week and a half.

Off to Phoenix

I leave Thursday at the butt crack of dawn (seriously, it's a 6am flight!) for the annual NASIG Conference. This year it's in Phoenix, AZ, at a nice resort. This is the first time we've been at a resort, so it will be different. Yet the conference in Milwaukee, WI (2004) was the first time it was ever held entirely in a hotel. So NASIG is trying something new again.

I'll blog the conference, but whether or not I have internet access remains to be seen. It may be a flurry of posts reporting on each day once I get back next week. And of course, in addition to the fun conference reporting, there will be stories about all the festivities around the actual sessions. Like a birthday celebration for my mentee from last year. Yay for EL!!

And since it's in Phoenix, in June(!), at a resort with multiple pools and even a water slide, I'm so packing my bathing suit. I can guarantee I'll be doing whatever I can to work in some pool time between sessions.

Panic arrived with the mail

I received one piece of mail on Monday. Just one. A plain envelope, nothing unusual about it. I figured it was another credit card offer. Especially since my last name spelled incorrectly.

I was wrong. What was contained in that envelope was a panic attack on one 8 x 11 sheet of paper.

A letter from a collection agency. For a debt I've never heard of. Submitted for collection by an insurance agency I've never heard of or ever had contact with. I have no record of any of these companies anywhere.

I had a panic attack. I couldn't breathe. I started crying hysterically. I couldn't even speak for a good 10 minutes. The room was spinning and I had to sit down in the middle of the living room so I didn't fall over.

Once I pulled myself together again and the hysterics stopped, I realized what this actually was: yet another remnant of my identity theft. I thought it was over with the sentencing of the two women by the Federal courts back in February.

But someone, somewhere, didn't do what they were supposed to do and neglected to remove my name from one of the accounts when they set about recouping their losses for the property the women bought with the fraudulently acquired loans. I was deemed not financially responsible for ANY PIECE of it over a year ago now (see this post). My credit report was expunged of all traces. All per Federal law. I have an extended fraud alert on my credit file, meaning no new lines of credit can be opened without contacting me via phone first. Last time I checked, everything on my credit report belonged to me.

Which is why this letter is so out of left field. This is the first contact I've received about this claim. Not a single phone call. I've received no letters until this one from any of the companies involved in the claim. And I do actually open every piece of mail addressed to me (including misspellings of my name). I'm obsessive about opening it, and shredding anything and everything with my name and/or address on it.

So now I'm back to making phone calls. I called the collection agency to let them know it's related to the identity theft and if they don't remove my information and all claims against me from the file and cease pursuing me for the money they'll be in violation of Federal law. I was assured by the woman that the account would be closed immediately, and I would be receiving a letter confirming that immediately. She apologized profusely, and told me they have no record of identity theft in their account files. So I traced it backwards to the initial credit union that filed the insurance claim to recoup their losses. Their records clearly indicate that it was fraud and they forwarded all the appropriate paperwork (such as a copy of the ID Theft Affidavit I filled out) with their claim to the insurance agency. I then spoke with the insurance agency that initiated the collection, and they say it's indicated in their files that it was fraud and it never should have been sent to the collection agency (who is also apparently part of the same insurance company). Basically someone didn't read the entire file and it was pursued in error. But there's still the question as to WHY my information was still present in the file in the first place, since it should have been removed. They collection agency should never have had access to it.

I also called and added an addendum to my report filed with the FTC. And I'm in the process of requesting more credit reports to be on the safe side (all additional reports related to the theft are free, above and beyond the 3 free a year everyone gets). I've already done everything else I was supposed to do. Everything else I can do. There isn't a piece of paperwork to fill out or a phone call to make or a report to file that I haven't already done. There was literally nothing left for me to do but call and give the collection agency the FTC report and Federal court case numbers. Numbers they should have received from the initiator for the claim as proof that this was fraud.

Once I got over the panic attack, I got angry. Angry that someone's oversight has reopened old wounds. Angry that once again, it's on ME, the VICTIM, to fix it. I thought the nightmare was over.

When will it be over?

How much more do I have to endure?!?

Silly puppy

Last night I was up way way too late watching the NHL Stanley Cup playoff finals between Pittsburgh and Detroit (go Red Wings!!), alternating between elation and screaming like a maniac at the television. It was that kind of game. I do love the playoffs, despite their tendency to elicit mood swings.

Every time I got happy and excited and started cheering, Aussie came over to see what was up and if she could be part of the excitement. Tail awaggin', equally as charged up as I was.

On the flip side, when I cursed and screamed like a banshee in frustration, Aussie went and hid in her kennel. She got all freaked out because I was freaking out and I'm pretty sure her thought process went something like this: omg-did-I-do-something-wrong-I-better-hide-just-in-case.

In the third sudden death overtime (did I mention how late I was up watching this game?!), the Red Wings lost. The Penguins scored on a power play. Dammit dammit dammit!! And unfortunately for the dog, this means she'll have to experience my wild hockey playoffs induced mood swings again during Game 6 on Wednesday night.

Have you read it?

I missed this meme until a friend highlighted it. Shows you how behind I am on my feed reader...(don't ask).

LibraryThing has a meme going about the top 106 books tagged "unread" by users. It looks like people are marking them in their posts different ways. Also, the actual titles and order of the list seems to change from blog to blog, presumably because the actual top 106 changes regularly depending on LibraryThing users tagging (I took my list from my friend's post).

My markings:
bold = books I've read
italics = books I read for course work/school (some used this for those you started but didn't finish...but I honestly don't have any so I re-purposed it)
* = books I own but haven't read yet

Do you get extra credit for reading something once in translation and once in the original language? I've gone marked those in a different font color (red) altogether. These titles could also be filed under "particularly tortuous." Have I mentioned that I can't stand Gabriel Garcia Marquez before? Yes? Oh. Well, it bears repeating. And Dickens...there's a lot of Dickens on this list. Again, it bears repeating that while I've read a lot of Dickens, I do not like his works. I'd rather poke my eyes out than read him again.

Anyway, back to the list:

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
*Anna Karenina (I know I have this...the same copy my mom read while pregnant with me!)
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
*The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
The Odyssey
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma
The Iliad
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Blind Assassin (want to read it, but don't own it...yet)
Pride and Prejudice
The Historian: A Novel
The Canterbury Tales
The Kite Runner
Great Expectations
Life of Pi
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Atlas Shrugged
Foucault’s Pendulum
Dracula
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mrs. Dalloway
Sense and Sensibility
Middlemarch
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Sound and The Fury
Memoirs of a Geisha
Brave New World
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
*Dune
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver’s Travels
The Three Musketeers
The Inferno
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
*The Fountainhead
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
To the Lighthouse
*A Clockwork Orange
Robinson Crusoe
Persuasion
The Scarlet Letter
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (read it a second time because I enjoyed it)
The Once and Future King (read it a second time because I enjoyed it)
Anansi Boys
Atonement
The God of Small Things
*A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners
Oryx and Crake
Angela’s Ashes
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces
Les Misérables (in English, and an abridged version)
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince
Watership Down
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
The Aeneid
A Farewell to Arms
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief
The History of Tom Jones
The Road
Tender is the Night
The War of the Worlds

It's interesting just how many of these more recent ones I haven't heard of. I guess I'm a bit behind. And I'm amazed at how many of the classics I had to read either in high school or college. Even more amazing is the relatively few number of things on this list I own but haven't read. Of course, the ever growing pile of things to be read (my TBR pile) largely is not represented by this list. I wonder what that says about me and my taste in books?

Your turn. How many have you read?

Side note: yes, I have a LibraryThing account. No, I haven't had the time to go through and actually add and tag my books. One of these days...