I’m generally pleasantly amused at my dorky nerdishness, or my nerdy geekishness, or perhaps just my all around avuncular spazzitude. However, sometimes I’d just like to have normal-people concerns. I saved packing for this most recent trip to Kansas until pretty much the last minute. I had a talk to give and was bringing my own laptop. I have the old laptop and the new one. They have different video dongles for plugging them in to projectors. I have the dongle for the old laptop and needed to buy one for the new laptop. My day off last week was unfortunately also Blizzard Day and you can see on Flickr just what the dongle-buying place looked like. So, no dongle.

So, I decided I’d bring my old laptop. For various reasons I had been sleeping sort of poorly again. So, it came down to the day before I left and I had all the work I’d been doing on the new laptop. I like the new laptop. It has a bigger screen. The battery lasts a while. It has all my stuff on it. The old laptop has a version of my digital stuff that looks like my stuff, but is not my stuff. I’ve resorted to using it on occasion — like when I left my power cord at Kate’s in January — and always wind up adding things, like friends to my address book, where they disappear as if I never had them once I revert to the new laptop. In any case, I was tired and forgetful, and didn’t trust myself to transfer every file I needed for this trip so I said “Screw it, I’m only gone for 72 hours, I’ll bring BOTH laptops instead of an extra pair of jeans!”

This turned out to be an okay idea, all things considered. It was, that is, except for one part of the trip: the airport part. I already have a shoulder bag and a clothing bag. I have to take off my belt and my jacket and my shoes. Then there’s the little plastic bag of liquid/oil grooming crap. Now add to that not one but two laptops. That’s me in my orange socks herding six grey plastic tubs into the x-ray machine and the x-ray guy saying “are BOTH of these yours?” I just smiled and said yes, dorkily.

The talk went really well, you can read it here: Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0, and why it’s no big deal, seriously.

jessamyn, abada abada

I went to put on my ultra-snow boots today (one level up from my regular snow boots and two levels up from my boots, three levels up from my normal walking around shoes) because I went out to fill the bird feeders. Since my yard is pretty much full up with snow, I dug a narrow trench from the porch to the tree. Since it was morning and I was only sort of dressed, I slipped my feet into my boots barefoot. I discovered a tiny pile of seeds jammed up one of the toes, along with a ladybug husk and some nur. My friend the mouse had clearly found a new place to go when he vacated my bed. I have no idea how long he’s been out of my boot.

I fly to Manhattan, Kansas tomorrow for a one day workshop and back on Tuesday. Then it’s just one more week til Australia, the land of Dr Seuss trees, funny little and not so little animals, librarians and friends. I’m looking forward to returning and possibly even more to getting to show my sister around the place.

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How about that, we got something like three feet of snow. I am in the odd habit of saying “we” about things here. I used to think it was a holdover from living with other people, but now when I say it, it just feels like I’m the spokesperson for Vermont, or my town, or something. It’s a strange tic, I don’t know where it comes from exactly. We got a lot of snow. I had nothing planned yesterday. I decided to make soup and was pleasantly surprised that with no advanced planning, I had all the ingredients. I was briefly hassling myself “You knew there was a blizzard coming and you didn’t stock up on staples?!” but it was fine. We didn’t even lose power, rather I didn’t lose power, or the house didn’t.

I shovelled the steps three times yesterday and by the last time, right before I went to bed, I was shovelling snow UP off the steps onto the drifts, not down off them onto the ground. By the time I got up this morning, the plow guy had come by and all I had to do was toss a few shovelsful of snow away from in front of the garage. I felt like some sort of a yuppie “look at me with my fancy garage!” definitely luckier than some folks.

I sent Ola some links to the pictures. I spent a lot of time on the phone today. When I spoke to Ola today we determined that we’ll actually be in LAX at almost the same time, but I’ll be en route to Australia and she’ll be en route to Kiribati. We did not plan a meetup. I’m looking forward to getting postcards with fancy stamps.

I also spoke to a friend/colleage from Library Journal and some nice lady from the Times-Argus who is writing an article about Wikipedia. Unlike most media mentions of Wikipedia — including one recent really annoying profile on NPR — the woman I spoke with really seemed to understand how Wikipedia worked. I hope the article is decent. She found me by sending me email via my Wikipedia profile and emailed asking for a good time to call. I emailed back “I’m home today, unless I’m outside shovelling” and she called. For people who ask why I’m quoted in the paper more often than your average Vermonter, my answer is this: I am incredibly easy to find.

blizzard, vt, jessamyn, abada abada

I made this picture last night. I don’t have a lot of weird associations with Valentine’s Day one way or the other. My Dad sends me pears in the mail which arrived early and have already been eaten. It’s a really lovely snowy day outside. Maybe I’ll go out and get a piece of candy at the store, because I sure bet the pool is closed. Happy day everyone.

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I took one of those Myers-Briggs tests with a bunch of friends the other day and I scored an I for the first time ever. For those of you not obsessive about personality tests, I stands for introvert, E for extrovert. I’ve been an ENTJ pretty much forever, though I’m pretty on the fence in the T/F [thinking/feeling] arena. Here’s some more general information on the different personality types. Before Greg started law school, the school gave him a test to take (I thought it was super-invasive, he took it in stride) and if I recall correctly he was an ISTP which was the opposite of every trait of mine. So, I. I assume the skew was mostly because I’d just gotten back from the “people in my every waking and sleeping moment” trip to SFO and I was more heavily in battery recharge mode than usual, but I spent a little bit of time thinking about what I’d do if I were really getting introverted?

I definitely spend more time alone lately, and enjoy it. I spend more one-on-one time with friends than I do in large groups. Swimming is pretty solitary and we all know how much I love swimming. I haven’t given a public talk in three months now though I have probably ten lined up over the next eight months. I’m not too concerned, but it was just a “huh, howabout that?” moment.

The last week or so has been about Facebook. I’m on Facebook, this social networking site that’s mostly for students and recent college grads. A lot of librarians use it. It’s reached some sort of critical mass as far as “old people” using it too. I’ve been using it to swap “how’s it going” email with my first college boyfriend and point him towards other mutual friends from college. Another friend of mine from college found me on Facebook and called to tell me he’s joining the circus in Japan… like tomorrow. On Facebook I also have a 21 year old “boyfriend” named Hugo. I am too old to understand what this means, really. This is just to say, if you’re on Facebook, track me down, especially if you are a fellow old person and extra especially if we are friends and not just “friends,” though “friends” are okay too. Check me out, introvert.

entj, intj, jessamyn, abada abada

So I took the redeye back this morning and I have to say it wasn’t bad. Direct Oakland to Boston, five hours and a little bit, left at 10:30-ish which meant that I got into Boston at around the time I usually go to sleep (sunrise nonwithstanding. I acclimate to timezones quickly) and got on the bus and did just that. For a whirlwind trip, this went well. I had a meeting at the Internet Archive where I was sort of an extra advisory player in a new scheme they’re working on. It’s somewhere between hush-hush and too dull to bore you with, so I’ll talk more about it later when it’s more fully formed. Nothing fancy on my end, no new job or anything, though I might get to drive the Internet Archive Bookmobile around this Summer, just maybe.

Friday was the meeting. Saturday I got to hang out with Judith and her new four-legged pal Lyle and go romping around at the beach. Saturday night was Rick Prelinger’s birthday party which I was happy to be able to go to. It was another one of those small world moments where people I knew from other places just happened to be there and were like “oh what are you doing here?” I stayed with my radref pals James and Shinjoung who I have mostly gotten to see only at library conferences and it was fun to just chill out and watch the weather and noodle with laptops and drink coffee.

On Sunday Pete and I went for a long walk on the Tennessee Valley trail in Marin. The weather was a crazy 65-ish and sunny; the place was packed. We came back with enough time to grab Ana and get burritos at Cancun before I caught my flight home, then the bus home, then the drive home. I expected to walk into a house with a madly blinking answering machine after the favorable press coverage over the weekend, but I just had some annoyed birds and the rumbley furnace.

I got in at 11, checked email, ate, drank coffee and then headed for the pool. Even though I feel like I did nothing but walk this weekend, swimming still felt like a workout. Now the time difference and the sleep deprivation is catching up, so it’s an early bedtime for me. I left my camera cable in San Fran otherwise there would be more pictures.

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