So Portland was really something. A very nice trip all around. I got to spend time with three friends I don’t see enough of: Lisa Degrace my pal from Hampshire, and Sara and Steve my friends from the library and PacNW world. The conference center was out in Corbett Oregon at a place called Menucha, a Presbyterian retreat center. It was a quickie 24 hour conference at one of those great rustic places with an incredible view, but I was torn because it was also chock full of smartie tech-savvy librarians who were fun to talk to and even more fun to play speed Scrabble with. If I ever consider a career change, I hope there is room for me in the world of academic librarianship. It seems fun there.

Once I got back to Portland I hung out with my friends (and their friends including one of my fave comic artists Sean Bieri), went to the Stumptown Comics Fest, ate Real Mexican Food, got the aforementioned haircut and went to a MetaFilter meetup. There I caught up with my friend and boss Matt Haughey and retreated to his spacious abode in McMinnville where we had Real Thai Food and hung out with his wife Kay and daughter Fiona. Then it was back to the airport and back home. All in all I guess it was five days but a lot of that was in the air.

I got home to a house without an extra roommate (long story which I may share later, suffice to say that it wasn’t working out for anyone) and so I slept in my own quiet house for the first time in six weeks. I like it here, and I have mixed feelings about Ola leaving which she’ll do soon after I get back from my next trip which starts tomorrow. I’m happy she’s going to hang out with her family and then join the Peace Corps, but it’s fun having someone here with a smart mouth and a quirky sense of humor. On the other hand, no more roommates waking up at 5 am will feel good for at least a little while. I now have at least one guestroom, soon to be two, so if you’ve been putting off a visit to the bucolic wonderland that is Vermont (quick before it freezes solid for three months) drop me a note, and come prepared to haul some firewood.

I’ll be gone for two weeks in this latest round of library talks. If you’re in or near The Dells, WI, Los Angeles, Waikiki, San Francisco or Lansing Michigan feel free to drop a note and maybe we can get a beer or coffee. Otherwise, you’ll always know where to find me.

jessamyn, abada abada, portland, travel

My barrette set of the metal detector at the airport and it was the last straw. I walked in to the barber shop in Portland and said “Do you cut women’s hair?” The man there who was finishing his dinner said “No.” I then asked if he knew anyone else who did, I just wanted a few inches off. He said “Eh, sit down….” I spent the next hour talking about Bulgaria and Romania and Ivan’s many grandchildren as he took a few inches off and gave me some short layered something or other that got rave reviews from the lady at the post office. All I know is that it dries quickly. I’d been dithering about getting a new haircut for a month or so and walking into a barber shop and pointing at a picture on the wall seemed easier than trying to pick the exact super-perfect cut and style for me. More about Portland as I catch up on sleep and email. It was a fun trip.

jessamyn, abada abada, haircut, portland

I was going to wait until my phone had arrived to tell this story, but I swear it’s never going to show up so I’ll just tell you this now. I got a phone. And when someone says “got a phone” you know they don’t mean “I had Verizon come to my house and install a new landline” because even here, people are not doing the landline thing. Anyhow, this was sort of a compromise birthday present where I was asked what I wanted by a certain family member (it’s not elegant, but it does work) and this was not exactly what I wanted, but it was something I could use and wouldn’t pay for. At the time I decided to get a phone (prepaid something or other with a lot of minutes, I don’t think it takes pictures) I was unsure whether my Mom was going to be in and out of the hospital for months while I was doing some heavy travelling, so it seemed like a good way to keep in touch. So, I got a phone.

Actually, I ordered a phone. From Amazon, who I normally don’t do business with, except when birthdays and holidays roll around. And I ordered some minutes, which you order separately. They just send you a card with a code that you enter and it gives you the minutes like magic. All the gifts in my future will be secret codes. Well, my order was delayed. Perhaps my phone is popular. So I got the usual email from Amazon telling me my order is delayed because they’ve been able to automate decent service to some degree. Then my order was delayed some more. Amazon, trying to keep me happy said “Hey you know what, we know you must be frustrated because your shiny new product hasn’t arrived at your doorstep.” I wasn’t really. “We’re going to go ahead and split your order so that you don’t have to wait for everything. Isn’t that decent of us?”

And a few days later a box showed up at my house, a phone sized box. Inside it was a card, for one thousand minutes. My phone, if it ever arrives, probably doesn’t work in Vermont anyhow.

tags: phone, jessamyn, abada abada, amazon

I finally wrote up the list of all the movies I saw at the Vermont International Film Festival. With many of these movies, I go digging around online to try to find information about the movie, the distributor or the filmmaker. Sometimes I can root out some information, especially for the feature-length films, but often I can’t. I attribute this to Vermont’s general net-shadowness. I figure making a little list of the movies with their names and links to what I could manage to find will help everyone be a bit more Googleable in the future. Maybe.

I have a few friends who write these busyblogs where they tell you how busy they are all the time and how little time they have for anything else. I have been scooting around some lately, but I do not want this to become a busyblog, so I’ll tell you about all the busy I am not.

I spent an afternoon walking around with my friend Lauren. Lauren is busy but because she doesn’t also maintain a blog about it, she has some time to go walking. I took some pictures — especially of no trespassing signs for some reason — and put them up here: 12 signs + 10 others = autumn walk in vermont.

I watched thirty movies. Now, many of them were short, but this is still somewhat a test of endurance as well as a great way to see some interesting films. The VT International Film Festival was this past weekend and I had a good time there. However the “what I saw” web page will have to wait some more.

I had meals with friends. Now that I’m finally coming out of my “parents with possibly serious health problems” cocoon, I’ve been trying to be more social. I had dinner with Ola and her son, his fiancee and his fiancee’s daughter. I had lunch with Greg — we’re getting along pretty well, which pleases me. I had dinner with Dave and Linda, good family friends. I had lunch with Lauren. I had dinner with Ken and Travis, friends of friends who recently moved to Vermont and came down to Burlington to see some movies with me.

I sent mail and got mail. Postcards from Finn and Judith and more stuff from Sandy Berman. Maple syrup powder to Dobbs and my old ibook battery to Apple. A book to Linda. A check to the postmaster. Paychecks to my bank.

I cashed out the change jar which was the last nebulous financial entanglement that G. and I had. He had forgotten about it; I had not. Probably best that way, he got a cool $40 that he wasn’t expecting and I got to get it off my plate and feel maybe a little generous. While I was at the bank, I closed my account up. It was a secondary account that I had so that I could pay contractors with local checks instead of online checks that would take a few days to arrive and a few days to clear, from my main bank back in Washington. Ever since the credit union went to video tellers where you watch a woman on a tv screen even though she’s right behind a wall, and more tv screens that show you the news and the stock reports while you wait to use a video teller, I’ve had very little use for them. I was hoping they’d ask me why I was closing my account but they never did.

I got published in Library Journal. Feel free to go read my article MetaFilter: Going Your Way about my online librarian-type job.

And, I also did a little work. You can read about it on librarian.net: two “day in the life” anecdotes. Things I haven’t been doing include smoking, swimming (pool has been closed for a few weeks), sleeping (improving in that area though far from fixed) and roaming. I’ve been in the state for a week solid, feels almost odd.

tags: busy, jessamyn, abada abada

I’m in Burlington for my annual movie watching binge. My usual stint has been cut from four days to three (one of which is over as of a few hours ago), but I’m making up for it in volume. I saw seventeen films, though most were under fifteen minutes. I’ll do a full write-up this week but if anyone else is also at the festival, please say howdy to me. I’m in the jacket that looks like it’s made of orange muppet fur.