etc.

Starting a week to-morrow, I’m off for 12 days. I have three vacation days left to take before the end of the year, and those, coupled with nine days of Reference downtime (i.e.: the library is open but Reference is closed), add up to just short of a fortnight of time off. And I can say, with some certainty, that I have never been more ready for time off. Plans are afoot to spend lots of time with family, bake cookies, play board games & cards, eat copiously, and read indulgently. My reading list includes Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism, The Golden Compass, The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy, A Complicated Kindness, and A Million Little Pieces. I’m practically teetering over from heady anticipation!

What’s on your holiday reading list?

I’ve moved post metadata up under the title, mostly because I got tired of having to scroll through an entire post before seeing what categories it belonged to or if there were any new comments. I’m still playing with the css, so appearances might change, but the info will, most likely, remain at the top of the post.

And, over in the right column you should see a new feature called “real & imagined”. It’s not a feature at all, really, just a list of links that I’ve recently found and would like to draw your attention to. And it’s not a remaindered feature at all (like the old linklog used to be) since I won’t be updating the links very often.

The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians used umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. The device was used in Europe for shelter against the rain until the Middle Ages, when it seemed to disappear from the daily arsenal of Very Handy Devices, only to reappear in England (where else?) in the 16th Century (I know, I looked it up). Which might have you asking, as it had me asking, why is it that no one has yet come up with a design for a collapsable umbrella (that is affordable and lightweight) that does not blow inside out & render itself useless with one gust of wind? There is rain and wind here to-day, in sizeable doses, and I have had three separate Mary Poppins incidents, which would be just fine if that meant I could fly, but it doesn’t, and so I’ve been quite damp all day and therefore somewhat testy.

And, you know, I really ought to have learned by now that it’s never a good idea to make blogging promises that I may or may not be able to keep. Because, surely, once I’ve told you that pictures are on the way, pictures better well be on the goddamn way, and I just shouldn’t show my face around here until I can deliver, silly umbrella story notwithstanding. So, yea, we’ll see about those pictures (and I don’t necessarily mean “we’ll see” the way my parents used to use the phrase when I was young and asked to go somewhere and “we’ll see” was grown-up speak for “no, not ever”).

So, while I’m here, not showing you any pictures, I thought I’d point the way to that presentation on edublogging that I mentioned the last time I was here, promising pictures. It went well, I’m mostly just happy that it’s over. The best, most gratifying bit was when, on day 2 of the symposium (my talk was on day 1), three faculty members told me that they had started their own research blogs the night before, which, by far exceeded my standard if-you-only-reach-one-person expectation.

The good news is, I’ve taken all sorts of pleasing knit-pics lately. The bad news is, I haven’t had the chance to upload them yet.

The good news is, I’m working on a mini-presentation on blogs in the classroom for a learning technology symposium that’s happening on campus this week. The bad news is, you don’t really care about blogs in the classroom, do you?

The good news is, the next time you hear from me I’ll have smartly annotated pictures to show you. The bad news is, I’ll also be prattling on about that presentation some more.

The bad news is, first big snowfall to-day. The good news is, I’m humming a jaunty tune.

Rain and sun to-day. Both. At the same time.

Because things have been all quiet and boring around here lately, here are a few links to help bide the time until I can come back and tell you about all the knitting I’ve been doing. There’s been bunches and bunches of it!

• mini knitting!
• When Knitting Attacks: a promising effort of a local Toronto SnB group. Looks to me like good catharsis.
• Fast Capitalism: brand new online journal “devoted to analyzing the impact of information and communication technologies on self, society and culture in the 21st century.” Ooh la. Some titilating goodness for the librarians amongst you.
• Building with Books

(bonus: a rocking chair made out of old directories! Two of my most favourite things).

• Lit Idol. Heaven help us.
• Much hype in the blog-world about “blog” being Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. But did you know that the year I was born, the word “detox” was the word of the year according to Oxford? The horror.