Dribbling in the Library

Today I was able to fit it one of my favorite phrasings used in Brother Fripp's diary: dribbling gently. I would have stayed home if it weren't for painstaking scheduled meetings with one of our library vendor reps, to do some very intensive group work. Instead, I played pathetic host to the proceedings, maintaining the dribblings here and there without attracting too much attention to myself. A nice chicken soup at the local ethnic noodle shop did the trick.

Frippery at above linked site (paraphased since it changed to something else before I could grab it word for word): Suffering is the distance between who you are and who you want to become. I would second that. This self-actualization business is not pain-free. Yet I wouldn't not want to go through it.....

Publishers, etc.

On the librarian front, one thing I have a hard time getting a handle on is publishers. There are so many, doing so many things, plus so many mergers, etc. As an Acquisitions Librarian, I'm expected to have some knowledge of the lay of the land, but other than a few major guys (the big UPs, Routledge, etc.), I feel like my knowledge is really sub-par. Reference/Subject librarians have an edge up here, in that they get to spend more time with material. At some point, is the Acq Librarian just a workflow manager? And, there are so many things going on, that it's really hard to find time to just hang out with the books, although that is what I need to do to learn more. This is something that's hard to cram too--you can't read an article to get this stuff.

Trying to arrange some vacation time that will allow me to dig in the dirt on a prolonged basis. Maybe the rest of President's Day week.... Weather's icky but really can spring be that far off?

Sign of Things to Come

This weekend was a massive kick-start for a brand new year of digging in the dirt. Went to a pruning workshop, talked seeds and stuff with Mom, learned about caring for citrus (the darned lemon tree), then on Sunday went on a yard-cleaning tear once I heard the whizzing of our neighbor's power yard tools (kind of like a Pavlovian effect, I guess). Cleared lots and lots of white clover, so we can see what we're dealing with. De-coupled the princess flower and the unidentified flowering vine that took it over (it was not a pretty sight). Almost started in on neatening the lemon tree--it's seriously leaning into the back fence. Straightened the Hawaiian fern that started to list after all the rain. Starting to envision plans for the backyard that balance containers/in the ground, edible/non-edible, cheap/indulgent, and keeping it all pretty and relatively easy to take care of for this still newbie gardener.

This makes me feel really really old. Did someone pull a Yuschenko on Anthony Michael Hall, or is that just bad lighting?

Meetings and Monographic Material

Just got out of a monthly meeting to discuss collection development topics. Basically, this is the intersection of selectors and fund coordinators with technical services people (vs. our technical services groups, which includes tech svcs, systems and some collection development presence). Mostly the same cast of characters save a couple of folks, just focused in a slightly different direction topic-wise. There were 7 agenda items, two of which had my name attached. The first item was a Serials item (ejournal packages and binding decisions). That meant that discussion took a good hour+ out of a 2 hr meeting. When it was finally my turn, I covered my agenda items in about 15-20 minutes. I always wonder if that means I'm communicating more efficiently (and I hope effectively to go along with that), if I'm skimpily covering things that I should be covering in more detail, or if I just shouldn't take it personally at all and just chalk it up to the fact that folks have a really hard time getting their minds around the management of electronic journals. Should I be going in with the intention to take up more air-time, for political reasons of reminding people of the importance of monographic material, rather than our being the neglected relative of serials? It seems that I would then be contributing to the problem.

I should also mention that I get really antsy in bloated meetings, especially when my agenda items are further down on the list. When I lead a meeting, it's always dive in-get out--ideally in about an hour or less.

A short week given Monday's, the office is a total mess, which is not how I like to leave it on Fridays, impossible to fit in all the tasks of this week. Yet this week was massively draining (the jet lag from Boston?), and I'm really craving the weekend, and some chocolate. Looking forward to planting some seeds and doing more gardening prep. Really pruned all of the roses before I left for ALA (vs. the dead-heading/trimming that I talked about earlier last year. Thanks, J, I think I did it right--luckily roses are very hardy. Look for more gardening updates as we move into spring.

And now, post-trip digging...

No, I didn't blog from ALA, as my more hip blogging colleagues did. No laptop with wireless capability to locate all of the hotels with wifi hotspots. Only 2 or 3 visits to the conference's Internet Cafe, always a long line and people sitting there for much longer than they need to (dude, there are potentially thousands of people who would like to check email!). All of which means that, now that I have returned to my own time zone, with all of my usual (desktop-only) connections to my virtual life, I am now digging out of many messages from listservs, staff, Yahoo mail in all of its variety. The good news is that the work email isn't all that bad--many folks were at ALA themselves with no reason to fill my inbox.

Not too many fires awaiting me at the workplace. The sick season is upon us, so some staff are out. So hopefully I can gradually, peacefully, dig out.

A wonderful reunion on the home front, and a nice half-day away from the office to hang out with the boy. A late nap meant good reconnecting time with the spouse, and a deeper discussion that we have usually had lately about what we want our lives to be. All in all, not a bad start to 2005.

Pre-Travel Spinning

Now that I'm about to get on a plane for bloody cold weather (Boston in January!?!), it's starting to get sunny where I live, after several days of rain and general nastiness. Isn't that always the way?

The last few minutes of the work day before being out of the office for 3, firing off several emails and other last-minute things to ensure (or create a reasonable atmosphere for) everyone's behaving themselves. [sorry, no good way to set up that parallel grammatical structure in the short time I have--you know what I mean]

Looking forward to reunions w/ friends I haven't seen for a while, former professors, friends I don't even know I'm going to run into, and friends I don't even know I have yet. Oh yea, and there's the work side too: meeting w/ several vendors reps and larnin' lots o' stuff. My last one of these I was freshly preggers and not imbibing, so at least I get to have a beer....

Goddy Talk

A couple of articles today on the presence/nature of God and responses to the tsunami disaster. One in Slate from Heather MacDonald, which I saw last, and hope that she's not being for real here. Especially the last line, that there is nothing to lose for taking this tack of turning one's back on God. Indeed there is everything to lose and He wants a relationship with us in spite of (and because of) all of the awful events of the fallen world.

The second one (and the first one I read today) is by William Safire: his Op-Ed piece in the NYT (registration required). Safire's response is a gentler one, and analyzes similar events that catalyzed crises of faith. He also looks at the Book of Job, pretty in-depth for a short op-ed piece. I would bet that I would find more comfort in Safire's conclusions than in MacDonald's even if I did not already lean toward Him.

Hiya

Two links with weights at the opposite ends of the spectrum:

UW Faculty Member, Dr. Mark Oberle, shares his experience and photos of the tsumani as it affected Phuket, Thailand. This is from a UW Alumni online newsletter that I receive. Still digesting the immensity of this catastrophe.

On a lighter note, one of my somewhat-regular online stops, Apartment Therapy, makes mention of a cute and hip little online boutique for dogwear and accessories: Wagwear.com. Doesn't it just make you want to get a dog?

Mondays are always hard. This morning on the drive in, my son says "we did this already!" So young and already he feels like the weekends are too short. I hear you, brother. Luckily, it's a short week in the office, as Wednesday has me leaving for Boston for ALA Midwinter. There are better places to be than Boston in January, but at least it's a change of pace.

Reflection/Projection

Happy 2005. There are no firm resolutions--no setting myself up for failure, just to keep working on health, spiritual awareness, etc. I would like to give more: among my known circle and beyond, both locally and beyond. This is about both hospitality (sharing the bread we have) and planned/unplanned giving of both time and money.

This month finds me already sweating out the heating bill, juggling money among funds as I face another conference in a couple of weeks (always money-suckers initially, despite whatever reimbursement I get from the Uni).

Still, we are so blessed. The Indian Ocean disaster has all of us looking outward as we look inward, and hopefully not being as bitchy with our loved ones as we sometimes can be (I wish this part lasted longer than it usually does but we so frequently find something else to gripe about). One group recommended by this past weekend's pastor is World Vision, which also has me thinking about sponsoring a child. Surely I can carve a bit out of my budget for that.