better!

So hey, I went to the doctor. I like living someplace where I can call the doc when I wake up and have an appointment scheduled for after lunch. The doc said my lungs sounded weird so he gave me some antibiotics which seemed to work. I spent some days resting and a weekend boyfriending and then I went to Toronto for the OLA Superconference on Wednesday and got back last night. I had incredible travel karma considering that I flew out of Burlingotn on a day when most flights were cancelled and Vermont got 18 inches of snow. I gave a talk about the digital divide and it went well. I saw a lot of librarians that I know and like from around and did some quality conferencing and couch surfing and meetupping. I also ate enough food to keep me nutrified for another few weeks, so it’s back into the pool tomorrow. I had the chili poutine in this photo, David had the bacon poutine, John had the pulled pork poutine. I like poutine, squeaky cheese and all.

As of now my roof at home appears watertight so I’ve moved out of the living room bed and back into my room. I have developed an attachment to sleeping in the living room — when I lived in the Odd Fellows Hall in Seattle it was my favorite place to sleep — so if you come to visit perhaps I can put you in the silver bed and I’ll sleep out here.

My current projects involve getting a mix CD out the door, trying to learn to use a drain snake, helping my sister move (happy story that, bug her for it if you don’t know it) and getting ready for a quick trip to San Francisco for a steering committee meeting later this month. I have a small flurry of tax forms to dig through real soon now (“a success snowstorm” as Richard Brautigan would say) I think 2008 may have been my most lucrative year ever which is a good news/bad news situation if I’ve ever heard one.

the hazy blur of the brand new day

Usually this space at about this time is the Mystery Hunt wrap up where I talk about all the stuff we did and how we still didn’t come in first place anyhow. This time is no different except I was less helpful than usual. For some reason — planetary alignment, bad juju, overconfidence — instead of being a rock-solid team member for the Codex gang, I was struck down early with “I don’t feel so good.” I headed back to my sister’s house on Saturday evening via a subway ride I barely remember. I helped her move some stuff around at her place (inhaling nasty attic gasses) and then headed speedily and feverishly back to Vermont Sunday evening in order to teach a few in-service classes at the high school on Monday. The puzzle hunt didn’t end until late late Sunday night/Monday morning. We came in second, again. It was not my best planned weekend. As 2009 goes, it’s certainly been the worst.

I taught two classes on Monday which went pretty well and then came home and crashed and have been sleeping pretty much on and off since then, watching my fever eke down from 100.9 to 99.2. It’s now Wednesday lunchtime. I’m mostly awake. At about 9:30 pm last night water started to come through the roof of my bedroom and puddle on the floor. I don’t quite understand the mechanics of ice dams except that they can be relied upon to inflict distress at the least convenient times. I called my landlady, moved my bedding into the living room, and went quickly from the “woe is me” outlook to the “this is so over the top it’s approaching comedy” perspective. As someone said as I was mentioning this in my facebook status “If a raccoon gets in your house, then you’ve got all three acts covered.” Indeed.

I slept through the Inaguration and all of the attendant hubub, though I managed to read Obama’s speech and a lot of running Twitter commentary. I know he’s the president, the rest is details. I know many people are having a worse January than I am. I can feel the dull thuds of the guy knocking the ice off the roof and I’m thinking now might be the time to go down to the post office and see what else has been happening in the world outside of my rainy treehouse.

what 2009 means to me

A day late and a few words short. I was snowshoeing. New Years wrap-ups will be late this year. I do have a few resolutions which can be summed up easily.

1. The internet neither smells nor tastes like anything. Make up for this by making the rest of the world smell and taste awesome [this is a nice way of saying cook at home more and get in the shower more and make sure the kitchen doesn’t smell like compost and the bedroom doesn’t smell like socks]
2. Have people over more often, otherwise there’s no point in a nice apartment because I’d be just as happy in a box under a bridge most days.
3. Save receipts, don’t become an IRS statistic. Otherwise travel more, charge more, be more awesome
4. You like that boyfriend, make an effort to keep him around, Rainman.

What’s your New Year bringing you?

how to make an introvert

This is a picture of me and my good friend Sharyn at my Mom’s house over holidaytimes. I just got back from a week away which is pretty much the longest I’ve been anywhere in the past few years except Australia. I’m not really an introvert as people who know me pretty much know. I get energized by hanging out with people, I like to talk, I have a lot of friends and acquaintances. That said, I also live alone and have a lot of routines and subroutines that involve long periods of silence, stillness or solitude. Everyone’s routines get disrupted when they travel, see family and/or get outside their little home oasis and mine are not an exception.

I was happy to see my sister and her (about to be sold, omg) house. I liked getting to spend sort of lazy hang-out and walk around time with my Mom and the house I grew up in. I enjoyed spending some holidaytime with my boyfriend and his family and their full house of people who have known each other forever. I got to bring my friend Sharyn into the wilds of Boxboro and introduce her to my family and friends and spend more than a day with her for the first time in our decade+ long friendship. I had a cat or dog on hand at all times. I nearly poisoned myself with amazing food and lack of exercise. I stayed up late and slept in like I was a teenager.

Yesterday I drove home after driving in to Boston to drop Sharyn off at the train. I got lost and wound up meandering all over hellandgone to figure out how to get no 93 (yes I KNOW it’s right there, no I couldn’t find it). At some point I figured it out and started pointing the car approximately northwards, but the whole bumbadabumbada no-particular-place-to-go meandering around was something that is part of my daily life up here and was no part of my if-this-is-Sunday-this-must-be-brunch last week of time.

I haven’t spoken to another person since I said “thanks” to the lady who sold me a cookie on my way home last night. The phone hasn’t rung, as it usually doesn’t. I’ve got dinner plans but a wide open calendar today with one To Do item “get stuff out of car.” I think I’m up to it.

cocooning and entropy

Wikipedia has an entry on cocooning. While I’m pretty “whatever” on Faith Popcorn and her pronouncements about society, I think this staying home and doing a little more navelgazing than usual is part of the December day-shortening and air-coldening. I’m pleased to report that my apartment stays decent temperatures and relatively draft-free in Wintertime which makes it the first place I’ve lived in Vermont that does that. I finally bought a shovel which means I’ve accepted that there will be several more months of snow. Even though I’m indoors more, I’ve been trying to make it count by doing that pesty crap that is really only possible when you’ve got several hours of indoor time and only low to medium cognitive functioning (I’ve had a bit of a cold).

So, this weekend after some nice dinners and movies and blah blah time with friends, I hunkered down to

make hard drive backups
read some books – my booklist is at an eight year low this year which concerns me
send out holiday cards to my card exchange list
do nearly 500MB of system updates
learn to use bittorent so I could watch Canadian television
finally move all my MP3s from my standalone ancient iMac.

I had done this MP3 project once before but then never moved the files from my laptop which later dropped dead. The iMac isn’t on the network so there was a good deal of sneakernet activity in all of this, but it’s now done.

I had the strange sort of upbringing that causes me to feel actually virtuous when I decrease the disorder of a system. This is reflected in my professional choices, certainly, but it also makes Winter much less of a slog because there’s always something around here that could be better organized, and adding the digital realm to the To Do list makes this an absolute certainty. I’ve got a lot of social time coming up — a Solstice bonfire, a New Year’s Eve party, family time, boyfriend time — so watching the birds and squirrels from the treehouse for a few days doesn’t seem anti-social at all.

tis. the season. yadda yadda.

I have to thank Ola for teaching me to enjoy the wacky dress-up and drink aspects of Christmastime without feeling pressured to go shopping or (necessarily) love my neighbors. Actually, since I’ve moved I like my neighbors a lot more. Anyhow, here’s an old link to sixteen of the santas she had up in her house in 2003 and, for good measure, some photos from the Santa Rampage in Seattle in 2002.

I’ve been mulling over the whole charitable giving thing this month. As you probably know, my middle name is Charity [thanks Mom!] but this is more about thinking about what to share with people at this time of year or any other. I always do a bunch of volunteer stuff and in most cases I’ll fix your computer for free [hi Dad! Kate!] but I’ve been stingier with my cash, historically. As you may remember, I got a charitable donation made in my name in May via Donors Choose which has gotten a lot of good press in tech geeky circles. I like their website and their general philosophy.

Last month I got a big envelope of stuff, photos from the Vermont classroom with kids dissecting owl pellets as well as letters thanking me personally for the donation. Actually, the letters originally said “Dear donator” but in every case the word donator had been erased and was replaced with the name Jessamyn. It was nice. It also came with a “Project Cost Report” in the name of transparency which told me where all the $171 that was donated went. About $117 went to supplies — actual owl pellets, books about food chains, and tax — $17 went to “camera, photo development and postage for thank you package” which seemed a little odd (10%?) and then the rest was “[optional] Donation to Cover Project Fulfillment Labor” which was an additional 20%. I’d hate to work for a charity because I know that every good works project has jerks like me saying “Did you really need to spend that money on a disposable camera?” but at the same time, I would have rather written a check to the Cavendish school district for $120 and taken a few snapshots myself.

In any case, it wasn’t my money, and I’m happy Donors Choose exists in a general sense. I tend to like to give money or in-kind donations to places like Food Not Bombs or Books to Prisoners where workers volunteer their time, truly destitute people get some help, and you never hear people use words like fulfillment unless they’re talking about food or books. Two more weeks and the days get longer.

breathing room

The birds on the window feeder are officially winter colors now, though the snow hasn’t started in earnest. In fact over the weekend it was a bit of a steambath here which was disquieting. The albino porcupine I read about in the paper is going to blend right in real soon now. I’m done travelling for work for the year (the year of 2008) so it’s time to start looking inward, doing all those house things that I’ve been avoiding — yesterday was all about hanging up pictures and putting receipts away — and starting to finish reading some books.

My problem is that I read big books but they’re bad books for travelling with for one-backpack girl. So I read shorter/smaller books on the plane and then come back and start a new big book without finishing the first one. I have maybe three I’m in the middle of now, but cold evenings mean less time typing and more time in bed with books. Here’s the summary of the last few talks I gave over at librarian.net. Since I last typed I’ve been to Albany and I don’t think I really gave you a summary of my last two trips to Kansas and my one trip to Denver. I’ve been writing a mess of hotel reviews for Trip Advisor and filling in the guestroom photoset.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before but I was interviewed for this Digital Nomads site — sponsored by Dell, interviewed by BigThink — about what exactly I do. Sort of scoots me into the “pundit” arena which seems like a weird place to be, but hey maybe it pays better than librarianship and/or lifeguarding! I’ve also been recording a few more pieces for YouTube — me reading stories by Donald Barthelme and Richard Brautigan — the Brautigan story is one of my favorites of all time, I was happy to give it a little more exposure.

I noticed that the “banking” tag on that video meant that a whole lot of people saw it in the first hour it was online. I am having my own banking/holiday issues. There are two local banks in town, mine and the other one. Mine is okay but not great. The other one is the one my friends use. I picked mine because the online banking feature is better and I get fussy over bad interfaces. Mine screwed up my checks. Mine has a few tellers who are sort of snotty. Mine gives me receipts with Christmas trees on them. I dislike this. I’m not sure if I dislike it enough to go waltz across the street and switch banks. The other bank in town probably has Christmas-themed receipts too and then where would I be? I’m aware that I live in New England where this sort of thing is fairly normal to most everyone. I’m aware that Christmas is a national holiday. I enjoy winter, even moreso since I got snowshoes and snowpants. I’m working on my “Celebrate Diversity!” plan early this year. It gets dark early, lots of time to scheme. The Solstice starts December 21st at roughly noon. Soon.