Today, in preparation for my drive back to Utah, I packed all of my worldly possessions into my car. Approximately half of the total space is taken up by books. So. Many. Books. I saw this picture today and it made me wonder if you can have too much happiness…
Let’s just fast forward through the guilty explanation of why I suck at blogging and talk about how crazy it is that I’m about to graduate with my MASTER’S DEGREE. Holy freaking moly, right? I have exactly two weeks left of classes and I’m trying to keep myself from counting down the hours. Let’s just say that homework and I haven’t been besties this last term. I’m pretty much done being a student. That mentality, however, doesn’t mean I actually get to be done being a student. So I press on.
In more exciting news, the end of school means the beginning of lots of new adventures. As soon as classes finish I’m taking a road trip to Calgary with my roommate and a friend from school. And then I move home to…wait for it…start my new job. Once again: Holy. Freaking. Moly. I have just accepted a position that I’m super stoked about. It’s a step away from libraries and more towards the Communication stuff I did in undergrad, but I think it will be awesome. More details on that to come. The best part though is that I get to move back to my beloved SLC. Oh Utah, how I’ve missed you.
In May I’m taking a trip with some of my besties to Panama. It’s my graduation gift to myself. Sort of a “congrats you made it through without killing yourself or someone else” trip. Basically I’ll use any excuse to travel, but this one’s been in the works for a while. I’ve been saving my frequent flyer miles for ages in anticipation. Shockingly however, I’ve been so busy I haven’t put in my usual million hours of planning and research, so the details are still up in the air. I’m pretty certain it’s going to be amazing though. Give me a new city and guidebook, and I’m happy as a clam.
Well guys, it’s been nice to check in on the blog. Let’s do this again sometime, ok.
Canadians are so confused when it comes to Thanksgiving. Instead of being a wonderful gateway to the Christmas season, Thanksgiving here is celebrated on the first Monday in October. More than 6 weeks early! (Another example of Canadian holiday mismanagement: they light fireworks on Halloween in Vancouver. Insanity.)
Last year the roommates and I did Thanksgiving up right, and I made my first turkey. This year though, we decided to nix the big dinner because Jaime was going out of town. To cushion the blow of stuffing withdrawal, I hopped across the border to hang out with my cousin Kylie and her family in Seattle.
We spent lots of time hanging out, eating treats and rewinding the season finale of Sherlock to pick up clues about how that clever fellow managed to fake his own death. Also, because we’re the coolest kids on the block, we went to Seattle’s premier Lego convention BrickCon. The obsessive attendees reminded of how minimal my own relative nerdiness is, despite me being a librarian. However, later that day I visited the library as a tourist destination and realized I’m still a huge nerd in my own right.
The Big Bang Theory
My own Lego creation
Me, Walt and Landon at BrickCon
I nearly got stuck inside this thing at the playground
Dinner with the family
The red hall at the Seattle Public Library
Did you guys know that they don’t have pumpkin desserts in Australia? It sort of makes me want to cry for the whole continent. I had the opportunity last weekend to introduce an Aussie from my book club to mini pumpkin cheesecakes. She said “Thank you” and I said, “You’re welcome for changing your life”.
Besides my adventures in pumpkin, lots has happened since I last posted. I’m back in Vancouver, working through my last year of library school. The end is looming closer and closer, slowly but surely increasing my panic about entering the library workforce. But my anxiety can wait for another post.
Since I returned I have been enjoying my time in this beautiful city. Really, Vancouver is pretty spectacular. The weather in September and early October was gorgeous! My roommates and I went to the pool in September. Craziness. We’ve also been trying to hit all the neighborhood fairs and markets. Those of you who know me know I love being a tourist in my own town. We went to the RIchmond Night Market, and I was reminded of the many markets I visited in Asia.
Me, Mackenzie and the Biebs at the Dunbar Harvest Festival
I started a new job this year with a program in the UBC library called the Small Business Accelerator. It’s a free online business research resource for small businesses and people looking to start their own business in BC. I’ve been doing lots of design for the website and their promotional materials, which has been really fun. I’ve been putting all my Communication student skills to good use. We went to a conference yesterday, and I got to chat with lots of small business owners and other organizations about what we do. It was super fun and got me excited about our program all over again. My boss is great and I like the other grad student a lot, so I’m really enjoying this experience.
School is pretty good. Totally insane these last couple of week. I think I have self-induced amnesia every semester about how difficult the second month is because every October and February I find myself totally shocked by the amount of work I have to do. This term I’m in 4 classes: Children’s Services, New Media for Youth, Information Assets Management (aka Records Management) and Planning and Design of Libraries. Some day I will write another post about all my classes, in case any future librarians who are curious about what we study happen to run across my blog.
Well, I have lots more to write about, but I’ll save it all for future posts. It was nice getting back in touch with you all. Although I only have a readership of like 6 people, I always enjoy posting and feeling like I’m engaging with people in my life through this blog. So yeah. Thanks for reading.
Wow, I’ve been home for nearly 4 months and I’ve yet to document my summer. I’ve been loving my time here in Utah, and I’ve managed to do tons of fun stuff. Here’s a few photo snippets of what I’ve been up to.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I thought The Magicians was a realistic, if somewhat bleak, take on what magic might actually look like the in the real world. Without a noble cause or evil villain to ground them, these already self-important young genius magicians run riot through the world. They truly live a hedonistic lifestyle with nothing and no one to check them besides their own shaky moral compasses. These kids learn the hard way that the cost of being one of the magical few is pretty damn high. Definitely not a feel good book, but one that made me re-imagining the fantasies I grew up loving.
This book is about 60% Harry Potter, 40% Chronicles of Narnia. But in a bad-ass, grown up kind of way: with Hogwarts awash with alcohol and Narnia being taken over by the freaky hybrid human-animal monsters. I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book more than the end, where it got increasingly fantastical, action-packed and depressing.
A few annoyances.
1. Normally I feel like I have a better than average vocabulary. However, I felt like I had to read this book with a dictionary. At least a dozen times I ran across a word that not only did I not know the meaning of, but had no idea even existed.
2. Grossman uses the word “viscous” as an adjective no less than 4 times in the first 100 pages. Not sure why, but it annoyed me to no end.
This Saturday Christian, JoLynne, Rachel and I all ran in the Dirty Dash: an obstacle course through the mud. We had to take the shortcut version of the course (3.5 miles instead of 5.5) in order to be back in time to take the kids through the Piglet Plunge. My back was more than a bit worse for the wear the next day, but it was well worth the beating to get to slip and slide through the mud.
I was recently invited to spend Memorial weekend in Driggs, ID with my oldest friend Rachel. Rachel now lives with my old roommates, who were also going on the trip, along with a bunch of their friends. The weather was cold and wet and sometimes blizzard-y, but we managed to have a great time anyway. We spent one day visiting Jackson Hole, WY and another in Yellowstone. (I can’t believe Ashlee had never been before!) We played games and ate junk food and tried on a variety of cowboy paraphernalia. More importantly, I got to eat my favorite huckleberry ice cream. On the drive home with Becca, we even managed to hit 4 states in one day. A worthwhile adventure for sure. Unfortunately for us, Harrison Ford was out of town shooting a movie. One of these times I’ll spot him…
So I was watching Food Network’s Chopped tonight and was struck again by an annoyance that has always plagued me while watching the show. Have you ever noticed that as each freshly chopped chef exits the kitchen, he/she walks down a hallway as an automatic sliding glass door closes in front of them. Very dramatic. However, the door seems to have no purpose. The chefs don’t walk through the door. Just past it.
It begs the question, why is the door open in the first place, only to close before someone has the chance to go through it? Is it one final humiliation for the defeated chefs? Sorry buddy, you lost and we’re going to make you go out through the losers’ exit. One that’s not glass and automatic and emblazoned with the fancy Chopped logo. Another thing, if it’s an automatic door, why don’t we see it opening as the chefs approach? I can’t wrap my head around the mechanics of this mysterious door. How does it operate? Where does it lead? These sort of questions that eat away at me every time I watch television. Or read a book. Or walk into a supermarket. Or basically do anything in life.
If you’ve never noticed this enigma, here’s a clip from the show. You’ll see that strange door around the 45 second mark.
Today I heard someone use the word bailiwick. Awesome right? Of course I had no idea what it meant. No matter though. I immediately fell in love with both the word and the person who used it — because really, how could you not love a person who uses the word bailiwick?
bail·i·wick [bey-luh-wik]
noun
1. the district within which a bailie or bailiff has jurisdiction.2. a person’s area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work: to confine suggestions to one’s own bailiwick.
The Best of Me 