Monday disguised as Tuesday

Confirmation that today is actually another Monday disguised as Tuesday:

*I was 1 1/2 blocks away from the bus stop only to see the bus turn the corner and then pull away (meaning a 10 minute wait in the cold for the next bus after walking the extra distance to my "route detour" bus stop - see yesterday's post for details)
*the pen explosion in my "cup o' pens" this morning (black ink all over me and the other pens and pencils; what's worse, it was one of my favorite pens!)
*my inability to keep track of what exactly I'm working on (I actually created a to do list for the first time to help me out)
*my colleague can't remember her locker combo
*a book truck of very heavy and large volumes, which are dirty and crumbling, and too heavy to push without help (doesn't that violate some OSHA law?), must be transported from the 6th floor to the 1st floor and be dealt with "promptly"; naturally they aren't as simple to deal with as initially indicated and may take weeks to figure out
*cubicle workstations being completely dismantled (side effect: work disruption due to noise of power tools and workers apparently swearing at each other - can you call a fellow worker a "dickhead" in an office that isn't yours?) only to have the workers leave and they probably won't be back until tomorrow; meanwhile my colleague continues to wait to find out when exactly she'll be able to move into her cubicle
*my friend's cat insists that wake up time is 4am...for the fourth day in a row. Result: my friend overslept

Please feel free to add additional proof via comments on this post.

I think I saw some Girl Scout cookies sitting out. Good for my mood...bad for the diet.

Adventures with public transit

I woke up this morning to snow on the ground. Not a dusting, but based on my vehicle, a good 1 1/2 to 2 inches worth. This is too much for me to consider riding my bike because you can't see pavement. If it's a dusting and pavement is still visible, I'll ride. But when the pavement disappears beneath white stuff...forget it. I'm not taking chances as to what's underneath that white stuff.

[Side note: Aussie loves the snow. Loves it. Attacks it, bites it, snuffles through it, and generally looks happier than happy playing in the snow. This is great, except at 6:50AM when I'm trying to get her to do her business so I can get to work.]

So I figured my best course of action would be to take the bus. Now I've taken public transit all over the world. And SEPTA has this great online trip planner so all I have to do is plug in addresses and it gives me my options. So this is what I did. Early this morning. And the online planner told me that there was a stop 1 1/2 blocks from my house for my bus. I print out the schedule the website gives me and the planned route it gives me. Great. Easy. I can do this despite the fact that I haven't had coffee yet. So I leave the house with time to spare and walk to the stop. Only to be confronted with a nice little yellow sign that says:

"THIS STOP HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY DISCONTINUED. PLEASE PROCEED TO THE STOP AT X AND Y"

This is just fabulous. So I walk to the stop it tells me. Only to be confronted with a nice little yellow sign that says:

"THIS STOP HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY DISCONTINUED. PLEASE PROCEED TO THE STOP AT X AND Y"

You have GOT to be kidding me. Having already walked a good 3 blocks in the opposite direction of work, I make the executive decision to start walking in the direction of work as opposed to following the lovely yellow signs. I eventually find a stop for the bus the lovely SEPTA website told me I should take, and lucky me, a bus is coming along at that point. So I get on. The rest of the trip in is uneventful. But I'm still seething that nowhere in all of my planning was there any indication that ALL of the stops within 6 blocks of the one closest to me (remember, the one SEPTA told me to take) are "TEMPORARILY DISCONTINUED". Nowhere. You'd think they'd post detour information like that in the trip planner. But no. I checked when I got to work. What's worse they don't even include a disclaimer to check the specific route information and schedules for potential changes and detour information. It implies that all you need is the damn trip planner.

FYI, they do list detours on a separate page, but only if you go look up the route schedules and instead of clicking on the schedule for the route, click on the little orange circle with an "i" (for information). That's it. And it doesn't even give you specifics about where the new closest stops are, just that there's a temporary detour. And you can't even get to those pages from the trip planner. There's no link from the planner to the individual route schedules. Really. No joke.

God only knows what's going to happen when I try to take the bus home. Maybe I'll just walk the 2 miles...

Conference crud

Every conference there is a percentage of individuals who catch the "conference crud." This can be described as the cold from hell. These people still have to attend every meeting and session anyway because they're there for a reason. So there's always a few people coughing and blowing their noses. Half of my committee had this version of the crud by our second meeting this Midwinter. Some people get a crud that's even worse: they puke their guts out (food poisoning? possibly...or just the crud). These people fortunately stay in their hotel rooms and just consider the conference a wash.

The worst thing is that you cannot avoid people with the crud. They're everywhere...shuttle buses, meetings, the exhibit floor, everywhere (unless they're puking in their hotel room). Each conference I try to NOT catch the crud. Some years I'm successful, and don't get sick.

This year I'm not so lucky. I have the crud. Fortunately, I have the cold from hell version. My head aches, my body aches, my head is stuffed up so I can't breathe through my nose (fortunately the dog doesn't care if I snore or drool while I sleep with my mouth open) and to top it off, the air is so dry from the heat that I keep getting minor nose bleeds whenever I blow my nose. Ick.

I'm going back to bed now...

Back from the whirlwind

So I'm back from the whirlwind trip known as the ALA Midwinter Meeting. I saw colleagues, friends, former colleagues, met new people and attended a hell of a lot of meetings. The Midwinter Meeting is the business meeting for the organization. In other words, it's lots of committee work, no "program" type sessions, and an intense couple of days with lots of work done. And don't forget the social activities after a full day of meetings. But I survived. As did my feet and my clothing (despite my agonizing packing decisions). I now need a detox from all the coffee I drank to stay awake and keep myself up and running around.

My roommate this time was my bestest friend from college (I swore her to secrecy before we arrived, so no damaging stories could be told). She's a library student right now, and still figuring out what she kind of librarian she wants to be (librarianship is a diverse profession with lots of options). Now, my committee got a lot done this meeting. Much more than last year (of course, the exec committee gave us more this year, too). But our success pales in comparison to my friend's success at this conference. She contributed to (not just attended and observed) committee meetings, met someone that she will most likely and hopefully be an intern for in the near future (which is invaluable experience for a student, FYI), made loads of professional connections, and will most likely be contributing to a student blogging project for a major publication in our field. And all in two days. Wow. I remember sitting in on a few committee meetings when I was just getting started in my field. Once they asked me my opinion and I was practically paralyzed with fear that I'd say the wrong thing or just end up sounding stupid. My friend actually presented to the big group what her little group talked about. And did it with grace. More power to her!

My meetings, both committee and informative, all dealt with change. There's lots going on in the library world of cataloging right now. I could get into the minutiae of changes to serials/continuing resources cataloging rules, and the way our current general cataloging rules are evolving and undergoing a major revision, but I'm not sure I could effectively explain it. I don't understand it all myself (few of us do). Suffice to say, sessions on those changes took up most of my time. I know it's hard to imagine, but librarians do get very passionate about things, just attend a few committee meetings to watch the drama unfold. But the best thing is we can debate for hours over a detail, yet still go out for dinner later and enjoy each other's company.

Anyway, I didn't get much sleep, but that's ok, I never do, because I'm happy to sacrifice sleep to spend some time with my friends after all the meetings. We had our share of personal drama (when you don't get together much because you live in separate cities, months worth of interactions happen in a few short hours when you are together), but I wouldn't trade it for the world since for me, talking face to face beats text messages, chat, e-mail and even the phone any day of the week. It was so good to see everyone and re-establish connections. I even had the opportunity to have lunch with the man who is the reason I'm a librarian and someone I consider my mentor. He goes a long way to show what it means to be a librarian outside the stereotypes and still be very passionate about your field and libraries in general. It was 3 hours very well spent and I'm very grateful we had the chance to get together and talk.

Now I just have to remember what exactly I was working on before I left. After I clean out the over 200 listserv messages sitting in my inbox. But first, I think I'll get a cup of coffee, as I'm exhausted both mentally and physically from the ALA Midwinter Meeting and everything that comes with it. My coffee detox can wait for the weekend.

How to pack for conferences

I leave for my first library conference of 2007 early tomorrow morning. Right now I'm doing 10,000 things at once. The dog was dropped off this afternoon for boarding (so the house feels empty right now and I feel guilty and miss her terribly). My bike has gone in for some much needed service (street riding is hard on bikes and I need new shifters). I'm trying to do some cleaning because no one likes to come home to dirty dishes. And I'm packing.

I HATE packing for conferences. Really. Trying to pack for any eventuality when attending a conference is, I'm convinced, impossible.

Let's start with shoes. You walk everywhere, so your shoes have to be comfortable, yet they still have to match "business casual" attire. This means no sneakers because that went out with the 80s and, lets face it, dress pants with sneakers is a really unattractive look (Stacy and Clinton would have a coronary). So choosing my shoes is not easy, because orthopedic footwear is just so, well, so not my thing. I like shoes, cute shoes. One might say I love shoes. But not shoes that involve velcro, or make me look like I'm 90 years old from the ankle down. So it's a very difficult balance between shoes you can walk a city in and shoes that are still attractive. And even if they are your most comfortable shoes ever, you will probably still get blisters. So pack those band-aids.

As for the clothes themselves, you end up wearing the same thing for 12+ hours, with no chance to change, so it better be comfortable, and it better be able to go from day-long-meetings-in-uncomfortable-chairs-wear into networking-at-the-vendor-receptions-evening-wear. And you're hauling a large bag of stuff around (paperwork, papers to read, agendas, notes, computer, the all important snacks, etc.) so you clothes can't wrinkle too easily or you end up looking like you've just rolled out of bed by the time you get to your first meeting, which is always at 8am. Oh, and dark colors are recommended to hide the stain when you spill your coffee trying to balance note taking with holding/drinking the necessary coffee in the aforementioned uncomfortable chairs (there are NO tables, ever). Remember, you then have to wear the now stained and coffee smelling clothes for another 10+ hours.

Have I convinced you that it's impossible to pack for conferences yet? You'd think it would get easier with each passing conference but I don't think it ever does. Sigh...time to evaluate my clothing choices for the umpteenth-thousand time before zipping up the suitcase and heading off to bed.

Reclaiming my identity, there's progress!

I got word today from one of the three creditors the person opened accounts with using my identity that the "account has been closed due to fraudulent activity"!! And that paperwork has been submitted to the three credit bureaus to delete the account from my credit report.

Woo hoo! All the paperwork is finally paying off. One down, two more to go.

Search for a new hobby

A couple of my friends and I have been discussing hobbies and coming to the realization that beyond reading, we don't really have any. Call it the disease of the young professional, but somewhere between grad school and my first professional position, my hobbies disappeared. Oh, and I've been a part time grad student for the past 4 years. That killed any hobbies that managed to survive that first year as a professional librarian.

So we decided we need to do something about this. We've been brainstorming ideas, trying to come up with something creative that isn't so completely out there we'd have to do research to get started. While I love looking at the stars, becoming a weekend amateur astronomer was just way too much work. So we've decided to explore scrapbooking. Before you laugh your ass off, think about it. How many of you have boxes of unorganized photos from trips and conferences and piles of pictures of your pets? Raise your hands. See?! We all have that box (or two, or three...).

We've decided to start with scrapbooks of our pets. We all have pets, so material is readily available. That's as far as we've gotten. Now, which one of you reading this knows something about how to turn a pile of photos into a scrapbook as opposed to just a photo album (I do have those, but I know there's a difference)? Help is needed!

Online dating

I'm trying to get out there and meet people. So, under the recommendation of several people that have had great success, I'm trying the online dating thing again.

Yes, again. Last time I did meet someone, and it was great for awhile, but then it turned into a royal disaster. Which kind of sours you on the whole dating thing in general for some time. Especially when your ex posts a profile on an online dating site less than 3 months after you've moved out, and without telling you about it (I found out through a friend they contacted. What, you thought I wouldn't find out? Please.), AND while swearing they want to try and work things out with you at the same time. Whatever.

But, I'm never (ok, almost never) one to close my mind to things. So I'm giving it another go. It's hard to meet people in a new city. Even if there are groups and activities that you're interested in. Participation does not equal finding someone interested in dating you or that you're interested in dating. I've also been told by many people that dating in Philly is really difficult. In light of this and the recommendations of others, I'm trying the online thing. Again.

I'm not saying which sites I'm trying this time, and I will not be posting a link to whatever profile I set up. This is not a review of my profile nor a commentary/review on the different online options. Just a simple FYI that I'm jumping into the dating fray again. So brace yourself, plug your nose, and dive on in.

Television addiction

TV...I've become such an addict in my adult life. I used to have very specific shows I watched, and the list has grown over the past year and especially since I moved (no social life yet in Philly = too much tv watching).

Growing up I didn't get to watch much tv. My sister and I were only allowed to watch PBS, and only at certain times. This meant most of my childhood was Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, 3-2-1 Contact, Electric Company (I did picture pages with Bill Cosby...did you?), and Captain Kangaroo. I respected Mr. Rogers, but I found him too simplistic, even as a child (apparently he annoyed me immensely as a 2 year old). The only exceptions to this no-tv rule were holiday shows (see earlier post), sports (FYI, I was raised on Detroit teams), shows we watched as a family like the Muppet Show or science fiction shows (see below), and the occasional Saturday morning cartoon fest. Although we did get to watch cartoons when we visited our grandparents during the summer. This lack of tv in my life continued until I was in my early teens. This means I missed out on an entire decade of tv, and there's an entire chunk of society that I just cannot relate to my peers about. And I am so not the partner you want for any of those games about tv and entertainment stuff. Thanks, Mom. Really. For making me a freak according to my peers because I have no knowledge of the cartoons and sitcoms of the 80s. But I love you anyway.

In terms of network tv I've been watching: CSI (the original Las Vegas one, long time fan), Law & Order SVU (again, I'm a long time fan, Mariska Hargitay is so hot), House (Hugh Laurie ROCKS, although it's weird to hear him with an American accent), and Gilmore Girls (I'm a season behind).

I watch several reality/competition shows on Bravo: Top Chef is on right now (go Sam!), next is Top Designer. This past fall it was Project Runway.

I have my SciFi channel goodness: Battlestar Galactica, Stargate (the original SG-1, and now Atlantis) and (new this past fall) Eureka. Just call me a SciFi geek and do not try to call me during these shows. I will not answer the phone. Period. I can blame a lot of this one on my dad. We used to watch the original Battlestar Galactica together, and sometimes even Buck Rogers. And as a family we were Star Trek fans and watched the entire Next Generation series. I just thought it was beyond cool that the guy I watched on Reading Rainbow was Geordi LaForge. Go Levar Burton!

And I like Showtime's Dexter (beautifully creepy and disturbing, which is right up my alley) and The L Word.

I tend to watch FoodNetwork when there's nothing else on and I have nothing recorded. I like Alton Brown's Good Eats, 30 Minute Meals with Rachel Ray and Iron Chef America. Alton Brown is the Iron Chef America commentator...he's such a food and science geek and I'm so in love with him.

The Learning Channel (TLC) has What Not To Wear (you can pick up good clothing tips from that one) and I used to watch Trading Spaces (but not so much anymore). I also like the Dog Whisperer on National Geographic Channel.

I have all these movie channels, but I don't watch them much besides the series on Showtime. Go figure...I'm apparently not much of a movie person.

Seriously though...I tend to just record the stuff I really want to see and then watch that as opposed to flipping channels and watching something random. I have a DVR with my DirecTV (no reception with just rabbit ears, cable was ridiculous and satellite was easier and it was all so I could watch CNN in the mornings) so I program it to record all episodes of a show and then just watch them when I want. I works really well and I'm less inclined to watch true crap that I'm not actually interested in. I do have a few movies recorded, but I still haven't watched them (see comment about not being a movie person). I have a marathon of Law & Order and several hours of CSI to watch. So if you'll excuse me...my tv is calling.

Yet more paperwork

I thought I was done with the paperwork. I submitted the federal ID Theft Affidavit to all three creditors, and I"ll be mailing copies (shortly) to each of the credit agencies to support the disputes I filed with each of them. One of the creditors also required an additional form. Then I learned that the state Attorney General has a separate identity theft office and investigator that requires even MORE paperwork. They need their own copy of the federal ID Theft Affidavit (notarized, of course) and they have their own form for me to fill out, AND they want copies of my credit report and any and all communications from the creditors. It's all the same information, over and over again, just organized differently. In my case (I confirmed this with the investigator's assistant when we spoke), it is the state's jurisdiction/responsibility since all the activity has been limited to the same metro area in their state, even though I don't live there anymore.

The discovery of the ID Theft component of the Attorney General's office also presented a frustration. They have a hotline. This hotline is the ONLY number listed on the website to call if you're a victim ID theft. It's a 1-800 number. But there's a catch. The number only works if you're calling from inside the state. No joke. So if you're the victim of ID theft that happens to fall under their jurisdiction and not calling from inside the state itself, you have to figure out how to contact them. I ended up calling the number listed for setting up an education program and got routed to an operator, who gave me (at my request) a non-1-800 number I can call in the future before she transferred me to the proper office. Why this non-1-800 number isn't listed anywhere on the webpage I don't know.

Why can't they make things easier for those of us that are victims? Why does everything to do with defending myself and proving my identity have to be so damn complicated and difficult? It gets discouraging to do the same damn thing over and over again and not see any results. It will still be a month before I can expect any resolution from the creditors regarding the accounts or the credit agencies regarding my credit report. And yet I'm still filing paperwork.

The joys of city living

There are lots of things I like about living in the city. The proximity of the things I like to do. The ease of getting around. The diversity of the residents.

There are, however, things I could do without. Most notably: CAR ALARMS. Specifically between the hours of 1AM and 6AM.

Last night a car alarm went off and woke me up around 4:35AM. This was not one of those whistle and bell alarms that stops after a couple of cycles. No, this was the kind that is the incessantly honking horn of the car. The kind that keeps going and going until someone actually turns the bloody thing off or the car battery dies.

What's more irritating, this is the second time in less than a month that this particular alarm has gone off between 3 and 5AM. Last time, it took the owner over 30 minutes to turn the damn thing off. Last time I couldn't get back to sleep. This time I finally got back to sleep after 20 minutes with several pillows over my head to muffle the sound of the horn. The problem with this approach: I almost slept through my alarm this morning because I couldn't hear it through the pillows!

This defies logic to me. Isn't the point of a car alarm to notify you if someone tries to break into your car? And if you ignore it in the middle of the night or don't hear the alarm, or worse yet have no intention of responding to it in the first place (which is what I suspect with this particular vehicle's owner), then why torture the rest of us with the noise? Doesn't this fall under "noise pollution" statues in the city? I'm going to have to look into/research this and see if next time I can call the police and have the person/car ticketed for disturbing the peace (and my night's sleep)!

Conference insanity

I'm a cataloger. But the type of cataloging I do is very format specific and usually libraries don't have more than one or two people doing it. At very large institutions you may have a team or unit, but it's unusual. So I need to have people to contact and work with that deal with the same stuff I do. Cataloging is not something that can be done in a vacuum, nor is it something that can be done completely on your own. There's all sorts of situations that require collaboration. Rule interpretation, proofreading of your records, phrasing of notes, and let's not forget the really weird shit that has to be cataloged. Usually two heads (or more) are better than one when figuring out that stuff.

OK, back to the point of this post, I'm currently gearing up and trying to sort out my schedule (which is one big conflict just like always) for the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. This meeting is really the "business" meeting for the ALA that occurs every January. It's lots of meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. Committees, user groups, interest/discussion groups, cataloging groups, they all have meetings and some have presentations in addition to their meetings. And everything conflicts with everything else. Not to mention the social activities sponsored by the various groups, which are an important element to conferences. As any young professional knows, networking is paramount to your professional development, and as I mentioned above, necessary for me so I have people to talk to when I need help. It's also nice to put faces (and voices) with the names you see on listserv messages. My days start with meetings beginning at 8am and usually don't end until late in the evening. There's even meals for some groups, not to mention the various vendor social events in the evenings. In addition to all this professional activity, I have friends I want to see and spend time with. So sleep is not something I get a whole lot of at conferences.

Midwinter is just the first conference/meeting of the year for me. I usually have 3 more after Midwinter each year. ALA has their big Annual Conference the end of June. June is a long way away. We aren't even a week into 2007 yet. But today I got a message telling me that housing for the Annual Conference in June is now open. Oh, and don't forget to pre-pre-register for the conference while you're at it. I'm so not ready to think about June. I'm still trying to gear up and plan for January's meeting! Insanity, it's just conference insanity.

Does this work with "beer snob"?

I'm not one that usually does these quiz things, but I was curious about this one. That and today was the first day back at work after a nice long holiday break and my brain is dead. It took me a good 1 1/2 hours this morning to clean out my e-mail folders (too many listservs!) and then I had to try and remember what I was I was doing on Dec. 22nd. It was not easy. So no intelligent post today, instead, a quiz result and commentary!

You Are A Martini

You are the kind of drinker who appreciates a nice hard drink. And for you, only quality alcohol. You don't waste your time on the cheap stuff. Obviously, you're usually found with a martini in your hand. But sometimes you mix it up with a gin and tonic. And you'd never, ever consider one of those flavored martinis. They're hardly a drink!

What Alcoholic Drink Are You

Sorry, Mom, but you did raise me to appreciate quality in my life. So it's no wonder I appreciate quality in my alcohol, too, including vodka martinis made with good quality vodka, just barely dusty, and some cheese stuffed olives...yum. But rest your worries...I don't get drunk (...often...I can count the number of times on one hand...I swear...and those incidents involved tequila, which is the most evil of all alcohols and quite possibly the devil's drink of choice). I'm a social drinker, and aside from the occasional good beer (yes, I'm a beer snob) while watching tv or on a hot summer afternoon, or maybe a glass of wine with a good meal, I don't drink alone. And I'd definitely rather appreciate a good quality drink out with my friends than get drunk on cheap crap.

My only disagreement with the above result is that I do like to try different drinks for fun. And that includes flavored martinis...pomegranate ones are quite delicious. As are citrusy ones. But I don't do sweet drinks. I'd rather have a beer than some sickly sugary sweet concoction.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

May 2007 be better than your expectations.