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I wasn’t having the best day, then I walked outside. I thought you might like this picture.

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Message in my inbox today, not at all about Ubuntu.

Hi Jessamyn,

As a teacher in China sometimes you get to name children. Well, give them English names. So tonight at a restaurant a young girl was drawn to me at the prodding of her English speaking aunt. I asked if she had an English name. When the answer was negative I then asked if she’d like me to giver her one. When she replied, “yes!” I quickly came to the decision to name her Jessamyn. I told her it was a special name and that it wouldn’t be common. I assured that it was a good name for lovely, smart girls. BTW, she is 5.

I give you, Jessamyn.

I called Kate today to make plans for the long Australia trip. She’s like “Where are we meeting tomorrow?” I said “WTF, you know we leave on Tuesday!” she said “Hey dork are you looking at the itinerary, because I am. We leave TOMORROW.” (all quotations approximate.)

Sure enough, what I had typed into iCal did not match what the email said, and I am leaving 24 hours before I thought I was going to. Fortunately, this is only a minor inconvenience. This also means I’m getting back a day early which is actually sort of helpful.

So I have to finalize three talks, find a way to print some stuff, read up on Perth and find something half decent to READ all before getting into the car tomorrow, to drive to the bus, to get to the plane to LAX, to the other plane to Melbourne, to the other plane to Perth where it will be 2 in the afternoon and I will be going to sleep. I travel pretty well actually. I can stay up for a good long while. I’m short so I fit in seats. I don’t need to eat a meal every three hours. It will be fine.

Travelling with Kate is also exceptionally fun, or has been in the past and I see no reason why it would be different now. I have also been reading up on the wave of flight delays and cancellations over the past week or two and am prepared for the absolute worst. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this turns out as planned, and otherwise I’m loaded with energy bars, benadryl, digital and non-digital hobby projects, books and my wacky sense of humor which should get me through most trials with ease. Fewer updates for a few weeks, but hey with RSS who cares?

australia,travel, jessamyn, abada abada

I’m generally pleasantly amused at my dorky nerdishness, or my nerdy geekishness, or perhaps just my all around avuncular spazzitude. However, sometimes I’d just like to have normal-people concerns. I saved packing for this most recent trip to Kansas until pretty much the last minute. I had a talk to give and was bringing my own laptop. I have the old laptop and the new one. They have different video dongles for plugging them in to projectors. I have the dongle for the old laptop and needed to buy one for the new laptop. My day off last week was unfortunately also Blizzard Day and you can see on Flickr just what the dongle-buying place looked like. So, no dongle.

So, I decided I’d bring my old laptop. For various reasons I had been sleeping sort of poorly again. So, it came down to the day before I left and I had all the work I’d been doing on the new laptop. I like the new laptop. It has a bigger screen. The battery lasts a while. It has all my stuff on it. The old laptop has a version of my digital stuff that looks like my stuff, but is not my stuff. I’ve resorted to using it on occasion — like when I left my power cord at Kate’s in January — and always wind up adding things, like friends to my address book, where they disappear as if I never had them once I revert to the new laptop. In any case, I was tired and forgetful, and didn’t trust myself to transfer every file I needed for this trip so I said “Screw it, I’m only gone for 72 hours, I’ll bring BOTH laptops instead of an extra pair of jeans!”

This turned out to be an okay idea, all things considered. It was, that is, except for one part of the trip: the airport part. I already have a shoulder bag and a clothing bag. I have to take off my belt and my jacket and my shoes. Then there’s the little plastic bag of liquid/oil grooming crap. Now add to that not one but two laptops. That’s me in my orange socks herding six grey plastic tubs into the x-ray machine and the x-ray guy saying “are BOTH of these yours?” I just smiled and said yes, dorkily.

The talk went really well, you can read it here: Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0, and why it’s no big deal, seriously.

jessamyn, abada abada

I went to put on my ultra-snow boots today (one level up from my regular snow boots and two levels up from my boots, three levels up from my normal walking around shoes) because I went out to fill the bird feeders. Since my yard is pretty much full up with snow, I dug a narrow trench from the porch to the tree. Since it was morning and I was only sort of dressed, I slipped my feet into my boots barefoot. I discovered a tiny pile of seeds jammed up one of the toes, along with a ladybug husk and some nur. My friend the mouse had clearly found a new place to go when he vacated my bed. I have no idea how long he’s been out of my boot.

I fly to Manhattan, Kansas tomorrow for a one day workshop and back on Tuesday. Then it’s just one more week til Australia, the land of Dr Seuss trees, funny little and not so little animals, librarians and friends. I’m looking forward to returning and possibly even more to getting to show my sister around the place.

jessamyn, abada abada

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.

blizzard, vt, jessamyn, abada abada