May 2015

There were 2 posts published in May 2015.

whirlwind

the Greek dance II

Last week! A good busy time.

– Library conference – I don’t often go to the local conference for various reasons but this time I was promoting the Library Passport Project I’ve been working on with a few people (pictures here) and I wanted to see Scott Bonner, the librarian from Ferguson MO, talk about what they’d been through. He gave a great talk. I also gave a short talk about Open Library and the work I do for them. The conference was super fun and super tiring.
– Wedding 1 – a quick wedding for some nice folks who had just moved to town (text and photo on my Vermont JP blog)
– Wedding 2 – friends of mine from MetaFilter were getting married in Vermont even though they lived in St Louis. I wrote the ceremony and then got to attend the rest of the wedding festivities.
– Jim – was up for the weekend as my wedding date (look at him in a suit!) and we took care of neighbor cats and went for walks and got creemees and saw friends and enjoyed the knock-out weather. Even got a photo of Buel’s Gore!

I wound down with the Annual Barden BBQ which is the best driveway BBQ party I could imagine and then welcomed back Karen and Kevin from their trip to the Cape and watched some lady cop show (Scott & Bailey, seen it?) and snuggled some neighbor cats who know me as Auntie Jessamyn. These are the sorts of longish weekends I can only vaguely remember when I’m stuck sniffling in the depths of short chilly winter days. I’m glad they’re back.

where I’ve been

moss

It took a really long time before I felt like myself again after The Sinus Troubles. And then I was out running around hollering “THE KID IS BACK” and not so much writing things down. But now whatever the crud was is slowly sneaking back into my ear (maybe?) and so I’m on a slightly less manic-pitch and I figure it’s time to play some catch up.

I went on a vacation! I visited friends in North Carolina because 1) they’re awesome and 2) I had some airline refund-ticket-money I had to use or lose. So I got to go someplace where it was warm enough to walk in the grass in bare feet. The best. Some photos from that trip (including Kelly/Rachel’s 40th Birthday Bash and Fakesgiving, our family non-holiday turkey dinner) are here. That trip also included a visit to see Matthew and Michelle in Amherst and a stop by the Connecticut Library Association to give a talk that went well, like really well. Titled How to Bridge the Empowerment Divide by Being More Like Vanilla Ice, it was the first talk I’d given this year.

Taking time off was useful for me, now stopping taking time off is where I am headed. I’m giving a talk at the Vermont Library Conference (a pecha kucha if you know what that is) on Tuesday and today I am getting together with some librarians to assemble 1000 Vermont Library Passports which is an extension of my 183 project to include … all Vermonters. It’s going to be great.

I’ve also been JP-ing. I sat in on a deposition this week and got to administer an oath to some witnesses. And next week I have 1.5 weddings to perform (one is a big ceremony with family/friends and one is just a local “OK you are married” occasion). In a month or so I head down to MA for the summer with a few trips up and back. In the fall I am teaching an HTML and CSS class at VTC which is going to be interesting. It’s a lecture class with additional labs scheduled where students can actually work on computers. I’m interested to see how that goes.

As someone who has been maintaining a blog that has required some level of CSS/HTML knowledge for the past 18 years, I think this sort of thing is important but it’s been interesting talking to people who have asked “Who needs to know that?” about this sort of skillset. And I’ve been so buried in dealing with offline populations and getting them basic email and link-clicking skills, I may be out of touch with what “mainstream” tech skills look like.

So cross your fingers for me that the crud is not coming back (and, as always, I really do not want health advice) and I hope your springtime is the way you want it.