England 2016

thames cruiser boat in front of Greenwich Maritime Institute

I’m very excited to say that I’ve been to the UK and actually left London this time! Kate and I went to England for a wedding and did a bunch of other stuff while we were there. Enough stuff that it may have been a bit too much stuff. But it was fun! And busy. I’ve had to make my peace with not really having a place-by-place recounting of my trips since to do that I’d have to take time off from my trip to write things down or narrate or whathaveyou. So here are some bare bones outlines and feel free to ask me about the rest of it. Trip photoset is here.

We flew into Heathrow and arrived at our weird AirBnB pretty late. Which wasn’t a problem except our host had given us the wrong keycode. Nothing makes you reconsider your AirBnB vs. hotel stance like sitting in the middle of a residential neighborhood in the middle of noplace, ten feet away from the bed you’re supposed to sleep in but with no way to get there. We worked it out (numbers had been transposed) but it was touch and go there for a bit. The place was weird and funky, I liked it a lot. Kate liked it a little less. It was well-situated to go see a lot of London and easy to get to/from places and walkable to some shops and things to look at. We noodled around in London for a few days, checking out museums and libraries and managing to deal with the incredible heat wave that we hadn’t packed for. Vermont is a little like London in that people don’t have a lot of fans or AC since it rarely gets that hot.

We then took a train down to Exeter (and then got a ride to Okehampton) where I was going to perform a wedding. I can’t legally marry people in the UK but I can do a nice ceremony (you can read it). It was so great to be in the countryside. Not only was it cooler but the AirBnB we had butted up against a farm which meant familiar smells of home (which was actually fine, I am not being passive-aggressive) and a GIANT BULL who would come by to say hello and we could chitchat with. There was a lot of driving on single-track roads and we met a ton of people every single one of whom was great to talk with and get to know. The wedding was one of those just-worked affairs where people were all up for it, the weather complied and folks were on their best behavior. After getting home from the wedding I just face-planted and felt like I slept forever. Sleep was a little hard to come by on this trip. Neither Kate nor I are great sleepers. I was just reading in a doctor’s waiting room that the first night in a new place, you’re only really half-sleep anyhow because some lizard brain part of you is half-awake being vigilant against… trouble. Makes sense to me.

On the way out we took three trains, missed two (scheduling nonsense, we were on time!) and it all worked out just fine. I even left my luggage on a train and Kate figured it out before the train left and the vacation was completely ruined. Look at me, sprinting in the train station! There were a lot of those little things: victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. We wanted to spend the last day just chilling and sidling up close to the airport so we stayed in Windsor and had a nice afternoon/evening walking along the Thames and checking out the castle and taking photos of swans. Yet another weird AirBnB (just two bedrooms and a kitchen, no living room but we knew this ahead of time and it’s really all we needed) but one that was just what we were looking for. Up and out the next morning and a decent flight home. Jet lag was pretty intense for a few days but it’s really nice to just be able to be awake when you need to be and sleep when you need to. And then Childnado IV happened (pix in the last entry) and I came back to Vermont a few days later.

So I know some people come back from vacation and talk about the food, or the shopping or the views. I mostly enjoyed getting nerdy about the places we stayed (and the libraries we saw) and otherwise it was just great getting to walk and eat and make jokes with Kate in an all new place. I love getting to stay in people’s houses instead of hotels and enjoy staying in neighborhoods instead of business centers and busy intersections. And it’s great getting to see friends and hang out with locals and the wedding was a great opportunity to do that. It was definitely a lot of vacationing for a not-that-long summer, but on the other hand, it was about time for a lot of vacationing.

Extra “bad” Virgo Month of Leisure

a bunch of people clowning for the camera.

So Run DMC has that catchy song where they say “Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good” and that’s how I feel about forgetting about the Virgo Month of Leisure. I mean it’s sort of a joke already. I have to have a vacation from my life, an entire month, because I am high strung and don’t know how to relax. So forgetting the fake holiday because I was (maybe) busy relaxing? Joke writes itself.

But! This year I’ve been getting better at it. I meditate now (I will only talk about it if you ask) and do yoga when I am in Vermont. I went on nearly three weeks of actual vacation this summer and as a result, forgot about the Virgo Month of Leisure entirely until a few days ago. And then I went back through the old MoL posts to see if I’d been keeping up with them and no I had not. Last year I had a weird shoulder problem and so wasn’t posting much. I’m not even sure what I was doing the year before. In 2013 I did a 15 year wrap-up so I’m pretty plugged in from before that.

This past weekend was both Childnado IV (pictured) AND my birthday on consecutive days. I haven’t even gotten my photos from London uploaded yet but I can just word-picture it for you and tell you it was a good time. And London was a good time. And I miss being home in Vermont but I feel like I really summered it up this time, in every good way. This week is about putting things away and loading up my car and eating all the leftovers and getting ready to teach people how to use computers and becoming reacquainted with smaller towns and emptier roads and woodsier yards and colder weather. Totally ready for it.

For people who are interested in my librarianing, I’ve got a librarian newsletter which I send out more or less weekly, just 500-800 words about library topics. Feel free to click over to see the archives or subscribe if it’s the sort of thing you think you’d like.

WestOn20 continues

(This is part two of a two-parter. Here is part one. I should probably mention before I go on that Jim is fine, got a good diagnosis and is back in shape)

Screen Shot 2016-08-05 at 16.14.19

Day Six – Gary IN to Chicago

We were headed to a meetup in Chicago that wasn’t until 4 pm so Kate and I headed to Miller Beach which was walking distance from our place while Jim slept some more. It was so nice, and just a few minutes from our door. Lots of people and dogs, it reminded me of being in Massachusetts only it was a giant lake and not the ocean. We grabbed Jim and headed out just as the neighborhood was starting to FILL UP with people. Apparently there was an air show happening that afternoon and we scooted out just in time. On our way out we hit the Farmer’s Market which was small and great and we got some exceptional tacos and street corn and other knicknacks including the saltiest string cheese in the world (sorry beardo cheesemonger, you were nice but your cheese was awful)

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WestOn20

route 20 signs in Illinois library

So hey I went on a ten day vacation where I did NO WORK. I’m fairly certain I haven’t done this since I started working at MetaFilter, so that’s over a decade. I had someone filling in for me at the Archive and I’d wrapped up everything else. I didn’t do anything crazy like ignore my email, but I basically just vacationed and didn’t work. I’m not even sure I know what to do with this level of nothing-to-do but it went well! Here’s a wrap-up which stands in for any liveblogging sort of thing. I put some photos up in this Flickr photoset and you can see a few at-the-moment notes from me and Kate on Twitter with the #WestOn20 hashtag.

The loose outline of the trip was this: Kate and I picked up Jim on the 5th of July and headed West on Route 20. We dropped him off in Chicago to fly home and then kept going for another day and a bit and turned around and drove home using quicker routes. Here are the specifics. Anyone who still uses Swarm/Foursquare can maybe see my history there (or not, unclear how that works). Here’s some notes from memory. Part of doing the vacation right was, to me, not viewing it as a blog-for-later.

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hey hey summer

beach scene

I have a sunburn. And my class is wrapping up on Friday (grades due on Tuesday, how unfair is that?) and it’s gone pretty well. I have enough of an impostor syndrome thing with teaching that I am half expecting my student evaluations to say “Um, this wasn’t actually a class at all.” even though I think it’s been a good experience and I think they did great work. There’s just something a little … non-class feeling to me about asynchronous teaching. I’ll probably get over it. Or maybe not!

This was a quiet week or so for me for a few reasons. The class. The (sudden) onset of summer. And I got in a small car accident last week and have been buried in paperwork and car repair. I am fine, everyone is fine. It was one of those slow motion fender benders in stop and go traffic. My fault. My car was crumpled-looking but driveable. The other car was scratched. And I’m fairly bummed with myself because it blows a thirty-year “no crashes involving other cars” record. I’m usually a good and careful driver. I was turning my phone off when it happened, so now I’m one of those people I bitch about all the time, messing with phones. I thought “Oh shit it’s getting trafficky, should turn off this podcast…” and then the car in front of me stopped short.

I’m firmly in the “It’s a crash, not an accident” camp but I think telling people you’ve been in a crash makes them worried for you and I am fine. On the bright side, I met a guy in Westport (where I am for most of the summer) who does body work and he is amazing. A great repair guy but also just a good local guy to know. I still worry I’m going to take my car in somewhere where they chide me for not taking care of it (which pushes all sorts of buttons for me) or overcharge me because they think I don’t know what things cost. The only thing Dwayne said was that for a car that nice–I am driving my Dad’s old CRV, my Forrester stays in Westport and is a beach car–I should probably get collision insurance. And he’s probably right. He took photos of the repair, which he did over the weekend, on his dumb phone. So what I thought was going to be my week without a car turned out to only be about 24 hours since Kate and Jim were down for the weekend.

Kate and Jim and I are scheming to start our ROUTE 20 OR BUST road trip next week. We’re going to drive the length of the nation’s longest highway. In stages! We have maps and apps and snacks and big plans. I’m just really happy to have things mostly back to normal, and maybe getting to travel with someone who can run the podcast machine.

For people who might be interested, I also have a little librarian newsletter that comes out every week or so. Feel free to sign up here if it’s the sort of thing you think you’d like.

the week that was continues?

photo of me in my kitchen holding a coffee mug

Because I am the relentless self-promoter that I am, I let my local newspaper know that I had won an award (and was on VPR – transcript now available) and they sent a photographer out to take a picture and put a little story on the front page (above the fold) which was immensely gratifying. It’s also been the source of some amusement as everyone in town is all “Oooo the famous librarian!” which is a name I’ve had on the internet for some time but not around here. These photos are great and I got to cut them out of the newspaper and put them in an envelope to send to my mom. My landlady always saves me a copy of articles about me in the paper to send to her.

Teaching has been going well though in my attempt to avoid terrible courseware I seem to have given myself a fairly chunky TODO list every week. I think this may be the secret to teaching: the more you can foist off on other people and systems, the less you have to do. Which is less of an incentive to a full-time professor than an adjunct who teaches a class here and there. It’s a weird decision to have to make, or even think about: the less I do, the higher my hourly wage winds up. I always design things that are easier for the students and possibly tougher for me and then wind up thinking “Why is teaching so hard?” when the answer is basically because I made it that way through sheer overcomplication. While I would have liked more complex classes in graduate school, I’m not sure that’s true for everyone. My students are a really interesting bunch of people and we’re entering the third week. Last week had Memorial Day. This week has Kamehameha Day which I have been learning more about. I try to learn a new thing every week I try to teach a new thing, seems only fair.

the week that was

photo of me in VPR studios taken by Jane Lindholm

So hey last week was nutty! In a mostly good way. The Vermont Library Conference happened and I received an award for Library Advocate of the Year, an award given out irregularly and last given to Bernie Sanders in 2003. This was mostly for the advocacy I did around the Librarian of Congress over the past year. What made it extra special was that my friend and neighbor Virgil (also VLA president) was the one who gave it to me. And that my local librarian Amy gave me a heads up that I’d be receiving it so that I would come to the conference earlier than she knew I would otherwise, so nice of her. The town library gave me a shout-out on facebook. People have been wonderful.

The next day I was interviewed on VPR’s Vermont Edition show about library stuff, the award, moss, the gamut. You can listen to the interview on their site and I should be getting a transcript up in a few days. I was nervous, like I always am, and carried a little card with me that said DON’T SAY UM and DON’T SWEAR and it went well. Jane is an incredibly gracious and friendly host and helped me be my best self. As a token of thanks I made her a Wikipedia page. Vermont being in a tech shadow often means that people who would otherwise deserve pages there aren’t represented. I can help with that. And when the page was reviewed and slated for deletion (“How is this person notable?”) I had the photo of her ready plus my librarian skills to make the case.

The funny thing is, I think the reason that I was on VPR has as much to do with this goofy tweet I made than anything else. A lot of the opportunities I’ve had lately have been “right place, right time, open to anything” sorts of situations. I got to meet Jane because I was willing to drive all the way to Colchester instead of sitting in an empty studio with a headset on in Montpelier. I got to talk to the White House because when someone gave me contact information for someone there, I followed up on it and when they said “Are you free for a phone call tomorrow?” I said “Yes!” even though I wasn’t really free, I just made the time. This is not, at all, to say that there wasn’t a lot of luck (and the privilege of being able to make these sorts of choices in the first place) that helped me out here. But also that there are ways of “forcing luck” if you’re already in a position to take advantage of it. I think calling myself lucky does gloss over some of the work I’ve done to make some of these things happen. But saying “I worked hard for all of this.” isn’t quite true either. I mean sure I work hard, but so do a lot of people.

This next week starts a whole new challenge which is teaching graduate school (for University of Hawaii) online and asynchronously. I am nervous, like I always am, but made a really nice website and (I hope) some good choices of what to talk about and how to talk about it. Site isn’t finished yet but you can look at it here. I’d been putting off working on it because I was so mad at the Course Management Software I couldn’t really think straight. So I just asked myself “Well if you could use whatever tools you wanted, how would this work?” and came up with this. I hope it works. I think it will. I’m lucky like that.