three feet high and snowin

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.

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snowy valentine’s day

Happy Valentine's Day
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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INTJ

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.

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sfo wrap-up

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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hi from the road

Welcome Valley News readers! I saw the article online from my friends’ house in San Francisco. I’ve been here since Thursday morning. I just came out for a quickie meeting with some folks from the Internet Archive and I’ll be home on Monday morning. If anyone’s curious, I really don’t have a “friends only” LiveJournal, so please don’t feel like there is some secret blog you don’t know about. I haven’t seen the pictures yet, if anyone wants to send me copies of them, I’d love to see them. More trip reports once I get back.

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momintown

Hey my Mom is in town! She’s asleep right now and even though I grew up in a hideously cold house, I have turned the thermostat up a few degrees just so it’s maybe not quite so icy here. We had one of the neighbors over, a guy I met through Ola named Chris, and I made some soup/salad/bread meal and he regaled us with stories about leaving the family farm in Massachusetts and running away to New York City in the 40’s where he eventually became a window dresser at Macy’s and went to Parsons and lived in the Village. Chris can sometime be a bit of a monologuist, but if I’m in the right mood — as I was tonight — I find him fascinating and hilarious. He also made a pecan pie and I can listen to anyone talk about anything with enough good pie in front of me.

Mostly I’m just happy to have my Mom back, happy and game for anything in her fun sort of way. The last year was annoying for me, but it was hellish for her with a cancer diagnosis and surgeries and a lot of “hurry up and wait” crap. However, she seems to have come through it with a slightly adjusted attitude, a mildly more positive outlook, some nutty stories about radiation treatment that crack me up (as they are supposed to) and in mostly good health.

I kick off the 2007 travel year possibly as early as next week, but definitely in a few weeks from now where I go to Manhattan, Kansas to talk to some librarians about Library 2.0 stuff and then to AUSTRALIA with my SISTER for TWO WEEKS. Yes I’m excited. At the same time, Ola will be heading to Kiribati which means that we’ll be closer together when I’m in Australia, geographically speaking, then we are now. I hope she sends me a postcard.

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janauary crazy

What a crazy week! The week ending today started last Friday when the 2007 MIT Mystery Hunt began, at noon. From that point until about 2 am Sunday morning, I was puzzling. I posted some details on Vox but the specific are this: we came in second, I helped a little, it was terrificaly fun, I want to be a better puzzler. I haven’t stayed up all night in a long long time, though the fact that I routinely stay up until 3 or 4 am was a big help to the team, I think. So, Friday and Saturday were the same day, for me.

Sunday I drove home late. As soon as I got home I realized I had left my laptop cable at Kate’s house. Fortunately I always have a spare…. laptop. Kate mailed me the cord, but having almost a week of stuff happening on a backup laptop is like some sort of lost time thing. I was out of it all week.

Monday I swam and spoke to a reporter from USA Today about my “breaking up in the age of social software” post. She is writing a story that she was hoping to get into the Valentine’s Day issue (they say there is no such thing as bad publicity) but it may be written some other time. I think she was a little dismayed that my breakup was not a series of minor and major disasters and stalker-like bad behavior, what can I say?

Tuesday I got into a small accident on my way to work. I am fine, the car is fine, no one else was involved, just me and some ice. Stan came over to look at it once I drove it to work and said it looked okay. I had the car checked out today and it will need a new headlight and a new grille (grilles on Hondas are teeny). My mechanic scraped and pried off the broken parts, stitched up the cracked bumper with a series of zip ties, said I was very lucky and told me to come back for the headlight next week. I am currently driving an illegal (i.e. one-headlighted) car. Somehow this makes me feel like more of a Vermonter. Forrest and Kelly took me out to dinner to celebrate my soft landing, they are crazygreat.

Wednesday I got interviewed and photographed by two nice guys from the Valley News. Channing, the photographer, has a blog and a website. Alex Hanson, the reporter, doesn’t (or it’s a secret). I talked about blogging and the digital divide and Vermont and Romania and had a really fun time. I still feel weird being all “blah blah me and my interesting stories” even when it’s the express purpose of the conversation, but the last eight months or so has been all about being around people who haven’t heard them all before. I find everyone else fascinating too, interviews are a hard time to explain that.

Thursday was a normal work day which meant helping people with their computers and PowerPoint slides and scanners and typing tutors and whathaveyou. I got a lot of bills paid and spent some time on the phone with Kate buying a lot of plane tickets. Our trip to Australia starts in five weeks and will include Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and a road trip! So great. Last time I asked people if they wanted postcards. This time I will not because postcards seemed to take forever to select and write and were somewhat spendy to mail. So this time, remind me, and I’ll send you a “Howdy from Australia __your name here__” photo which will probably be more fun anyhow, for both of us. This is the most money I have ever spent on travel, ever. My travel is mostly going to be reimbursed since this is a work trip for me. Mom and Dad and Cindy pitched in for Kate’s travel which was very nice of them.

Today I got the good news from the mechanic, saw Rick and Sarah at the Equal Grounds cafe in South Royalton did some more swimming with Kelly (up to 3.7 miles for the week, 10.5 for the year, oh my god I am becoming that “let me tell you about my gym” person. I apologize in advance). Then Kelly and I did errands which is one of those dopey things I like to do. I came home and made some killer risotto, completely trashed the kitchen, and am trying to figure out whether tonight is a better night for cleaning the place up, or…. not. My guess is I’ll go with “not.”

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