etc.

It was a busy, busy week, an excellent conference, I’m exhausted but fortified with all sorts of great ideas. Love it when that happens at a conference. For any interested library-types, I blogged the conference over on my other blog. I’ll be back soon with lots of good & interesting things to say. Promise.

It’s been a busy week, brimming full not with activity but with hours upon hours in front on my computer, at work, on the couch, in bed, you name it. I’m at a conference next week (a conference I’ve always, always wanted to attend! And, as if that isn’t exciting enough, I also get to meet and hopefully hang out with someone you might know!) and I’m doing two presentations and a panel at this conference, hence the all-consuming, nose-in-laptop work. I haven’t even had a good, long look at the conference program yet, I arrive right after it begins and don’t even know which sessions I’m going to. It will all fall into place, I’m sure, but for the next 72 hours it’s just going to be me, my computer, and the endless rotation of what I’ve come to think of as my Conference Prep Soundtrack:

• Rabbit Fur Coat, Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
• Say I Am You, The Weepies
• Push Barman to Open Old Wounds, Belle & Sebastian
• Let it Die, Feist
• Careful What You Wish For, Texas

Also, I have some news.

patron: (points to my moleskine datebook) Is that the Bible?
me: Well, sort of. It’s my bible. It’s my datebook.
patron: (looks at me like I am the spawn of Satan then asks reference question)
me: (answers reference question)
patron: and, by the way, are you familiar with the Bible?
me: yes.
patron: Good. So you know that Jesus loves you?
me: (long pause, quizzical look on face) Ummm…yes?
patron: Good.

While I was busy conferencing last week, Wiarton Willy didn’t see his shadow and Punxsatawney Phil did. Early Spring for some of us and 6 more weeks of Spring-like weather for the others. It’s been an odd Winter.

Sorry about the whining and kvetching last week. The last couple of weeks of intense writing and revising made me realise two things: writing makes me immensely happy and writing deadlines make me fidgety and anxious. So everytime I have a looming article/chapter deadline, I become a mess of nervous excitement. It’s hard to explain. I figure that the only way to get over the fidgety part is to do more regular writing, so I’m now on the hunt for a regular writing gig. In my world, this means writing for a library journal or library association magazine. Updates as progress warrants.

I gave a presentation at the Super Conference a couple of days ago and blogged about it very briefly here. For any library types who might be interested, I also blogged most of the conference sessions I attended, which you can read about here.

Oh, did I forget to tell you about the blog holiday? Well, yea, that’s sort of because it was an unplanned blog holiday, more in the vein of Life Trumps Blogging actually. Or, Blogging Trumps Blogging (how meta!) really, since I just did another one of my blog-evangelization talks yesterday and I spent most of the past week working on it. And draft 1 of a book chapter that’s due next week. Fun stuff (and I really do mean that).

Happy Thanksgiving, neighbours. And, Buy Nothing Day to-morrow, plan accordingly.

The next day: you know, I spent a lot of time to-day thinking about the possibility that Buy Nothing Day might be more successful if it was Buy Used Or Homegrown Day. I did not buy nothing today, but the things I did buy (a homemade samosa and a homemade cupcake, each respectively sold in support of World Peace and The Biology Club, both on campus; and a used CD) were off the grid and went to support either a charity, a local club, or someone who probably really needed that $10 I paid for the CD. So, instead of spending the day feeling alternatively ornery and debilitated by insane consumerism, I spent the day being mindful about who was getting my $12. I liked it a lot better.

Feast of Leo the Great, 5th Century Pope, of whom Attila the Hun had visions.

True story: last night I woke the mister up as a result of incessant talking. He leaned in and listened to me deliver a cogent explanation of RSS. While I slept. True Story.

The talk I gave yesterday is here, in case you’re interested. Although I can’t guarantee it will be as clear online as it was in my sleep.

And the reason why it’s a DC sock is because I finished knitting it & photographed it in our hotel room in DC. It’s a lovely sock, if I do say so, very comfortable and a pleasurable knit indeed (yarn: Lorna’s Laces in seaside).

I’ve been in DC for the past 4 days for Blog University, more info on which, including the talks I gave, is here, in case you’re interested. And if you’re not, here are some pictures to look at. More from home, to-morrow. Cheerio!

later: can’t sleep. redesigned blog. going for simplicity. more tweaking to come!

Has it been five days? When I turned on my computer this morning and realized that the last time I posted was Tuesday, it occured to me that if I didn’t post again soon, we would be faced with back-to-back self-portrait-tuesday posts. Can’t let that happen.

I have nothing crafty to put on display here for you, for, you see, I am currently channeling my creativity into librarianish things. I have a bunch of talks, courses, and writing projects in the pipeline, whose deadlines range from three weeks from now to February 2006, so there is not likely to be as much knitting, sewing, crafting, beading, &c. going on here as we’ve been used to. Here’s where the energies will be focused over the next few months:

• preparing for BlogU, three weeks from now. I get to talk about blog design, content, and marketing, and hang out with some excellent libraryblogfolk.
• getting ready for Northern Exposure. Six days in the Rocky Mountains talking about library things. Fun!
• updating course materials for an online course, which begins in October. A reprise of this course that I taught last year.
• pulling together a hands-on workshop for the Health Science Information Consortium of Toronto, for November.
• writing a chapter for a “Day in the Life” type book about library jobs, edited by Priscilla Shontz, due December.
• working on a paper to be delivered at the OLA Super Conference in February on my library’s instant messaging reference service.

…And a couple other projects that have not yet been finalized for early next year. Whew, busy.

Of course, this is not to say that there will be no crafting going on around here. I owe six bags to a friend of mine who wants them for her shop, and I need to get working on a little commisson of cats for another friend. And I anticipate the inevitable need for other bits of sanity-crafting along the way, O yes. Stay tuned!

In lieu of the real-time conference blogging I expected to provide (but did not), here’s a collection of people I met at WILU. I drew these during sessions and found that they very much helped me keep names & ideas straight. This is pretty crucial for me, since I usually come home from conferences with my mind abuzz and faces and names are the first to dissolve into a jumble. Names have been suppressed to protect the innocent from their ill-drawn fate.

Hello, Internet! Sorry about the radio-silence, when I mentioned the library-junket last week, what I really meant to say was that I may or may not post for a bit. But that’s all done now and if you’re curious at all about what I got up to while I was away, here’s a link to the talk I gave to a wonderful bunch of librarians on Tuesday, and here’s some thoughtful blogging about the conference I was at the rest of the week (read the “WILU” posts). I thought about blogging WILU myself, even took the iBook with me, but alas, no WiFi and a pay-for-use connection in the campus-residence I was at meant that wasn’t going to happen. Lots of free Internet in the library, mind you, I was just too busy conferencing, eating great food, and chatting with interesting librarians.

My aggregator is caving beneath the weight of all that fresh content waiting to be read! Plus I have stories and pictures to share, O yes I do. Right now, to bed. More to-morrow!