Yes, I’ve been neglecting my blog.  Yes, it is “again”.  And yes, I do sound like a broken record.  All I can say is Evergreen Evergreen Evergreen.Now, I’m going to do yet another non library related post, but it’s important to me, so listen up!

My little foster dog, Roland, isn’t feeling so well.  Check out his info here and please consider helping him out!

After being asked to do so.. yet again.. I finally did it

You know.. SNL…not a big fan.  What I call “stupid humor”,  rarely makes me laugh.. but here’s an exception

Today was the best day ever in a puppy foster mom’s life. I was at the Pet Parade, the Animal Placement Bureau adoption event, toting my two foster dogs, Cubby and Fineas along, hoping they made an impression on someone. I was on my way back from taking Finn to go to the bathroom, and I saw this dog…. he looked at me.. and his eyes… were familiar.. Now, I’ve seen a ton of dogs since i’ve volunteered with animal rescue.. but something about this one… just.. struck me.

All of the sudden, it hit me, I looked over at my friend Christine, and exclaimed. “Wow! That dog looks like Bandit!” She was like.. “no, it can’t be Bandit.” but I didn’t believe her. There was a little black poodle standing next to him. It HAD to be Bandit!!!

Bandit was my foster dog over two years ago…. Here’s what his description said on our website. I have to admit, I sobbed the entire time I wrote this.. and found several people doing the same when reading it..

Hello. My name is Bandit. I have a mom already. I don’t need a new one. I have a brother too. I don’t know why I’m here.

Was I naughty? Is that why these things are happening to me? Not long ago, my mom went away. They told me she got really sick and had “passed away”. I’m not sure what that means, but I have to make sure she knows where to find me when she gets back. I stuck by my mom and followed her everywhere. I’m a very loyal boy. I look for her all the time. I know she must be really worried about me.

My brother Blackie and I spent weeks at our house waiting for her. Our mom’s son gave us food and water, but we were pretty much on our own until a few days ago when he took us far away and left us with a lady we didn’t know. She was really nice though. She gave me to another lady and drove away with my brother.

I’m staying at a house with other dogs and a cat. I even played a little with them the other day. At my house, my brother and I have a doggy door, and were trusted to explore our property without a fence or a tie out. I’m ten years old but still act like a young dog. I’m not a “senior” dog in any way. I still like to run and jump and play, but I haven’t been feeling much like playing lately.

Right now, I’m really quiet and stick by my foster mom like glue. I love it when she pets me. I haven’t been petted in a long time. I’m a little afraid that she might go away too, so I don’t like her to be out of my sight.

It was very nice to meet you, and if you see my mom, will you tell her where I’m at?

Bandit was so terrified that he didn’t want to come out of his crate. He screamed when I wasn’t in his sight. A few weeks later, he and his “brother”, Blackie were reunited at Pet Parade. Blackie, the little black poodle, saw Bandit from about 20 feet away and starting to let out this howl that you would never ever expect from a poodle.

They were old. They were totally different breeds. No one would EVER adopt them together. It just about killed me. Then, the email came. A woman read his description online, and was inches away from adopting another dog from our rescue. Her email was short and to the point. “Where’s his brother?”

I told her that we had him too, in another foster home. A week later, the three of us, myself, Blackie’s foster mom, and this wonderful woman met in a parking lot in Mason. When Bandit and Blackie saw each other, their delight was unmistakable. I remember that when I loaded them into her car, Bandit gave me a short, panicked look, but then looked at his brother, and I KNEW this was perfect.

So, back to the present. I was holding Fineas, and went up to the woman, who looked vaguely familiar. I tried to ask if it was Bandit.. but all I could do was sputter. No words came out of my mouth. It LOOKED like my Bandit, but he seemed.. bigger, almost.. He was standing taller, his ears were up, and his tail was wagging…not the depressed little Bandit I remembered. Finally, the woman said, “Eve???” I started jumping up and down and said..”I have a dog.. give me a sec.” I flew through the crowd of people, putting Finn in his kennel, and went running back, yelling “Outta the way, Bandit is here!!!” I must admit i pushed a few…

My Bandit was there! When he saw me, I knew he recognized me because…umm… he hid behind is new mom’s legs, and gave me a look that clearly said, “Please don’t take me. I’m happy here.” It’s the best look a foster mom could ever receive! After he became confident that I wasn’t going to take him away, he came out and said hello. I still can’t stop smiling.

I’ve been whining. Everyone had veggies but me. I had tiny green tomatoes and finger sized cucumbers. Last night, I saw a few yellow tomatoes, so today when I got home from a long day of training, I decided to pick them. After all, 3 or 4 tiny tomatoes would be a nice little snack.

Walking across my jungle of a garden, something hit my leg. Ouch. I look down. A cucumber the size of.. well, of a very large pickling cucumber lol. So… I looked more, and more.. and was pleasantly surprised! I guess I’m blind. It would be a lot easier if cucumbers were purple… hmmm….

Here’s what I ended up with.

One of the biggest troubles I have involves sleeping.  I really, honestly, truly don’t enjoy sleeping one bit.  When I was a kid, I was the one who the parents joked about, saying “She thinks when she goes to bed, we all throw a party or something and she doesn’t want to miss it!”  The fact of the matter is that I don’t really care for parties either, but that’s another story.

The truth is, I’m very bad at sleeping.  it just isn’t my forte.  I find myself dreading going to bed each night for several reasons.

1. If I sleep, when I wake up, no matter how hard I try, it will be tomorrow.
2. I work all day, come home, feed the dogs dinner, let them out, eat dinner, let the dogs out again, work on class stuff, let the dogs out again, take a bubble bath, let them out again, and then work on class stuff again.  By the time I’m through, it’s midnight, and I’m bitter and grumpy that I have had no time to myself, and now, it is time for bed.
3. I don’t like to do things that I suck at.  I suck at sleeping.
4. I honestly have a million other things I’d rather do.
5. Sadly, pathetically, it’s not so much fun crawling in to bed when you’re the only biped there.
6. Sleeping is quiet time. Quiet means no noise.  I need noise.  If I don’t have it, then I create my own inside of my head.  This usually does not yield positive results.

So, that being said, I don’t sleep very much… If I get five hours, I consider it a good night, and also an excuse to stay up later the next evening!  A few months ago, I decided that I needed to get more sleep.  I tried to get at least six hours/night.  But the thing was, I felt less sleepy, but was utterly bitchy and grumpy because I had to cut out my fun time in order to achieve my sleeping goal.  For the past few weeks, I’m back to my usual 4.5 hours.  I’m sleepier, but happier.  Sickening as it is, I actually woke up this morning singing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning.”  Don’t ask.  I have no clue.

Over the weekend, I slept seven hours… in ONE NIGHT, and woke up feeling really strangely. I wandered around a bit.. trying to figure out what this sensation was.. was I coming down with something?  Was I manic?  Was I depressed?  Was it some rare type of disease, and suddenly, it popped in my head out of nowhere.. I labeled the feeling, the sensation.  I was “well-rested”.  I will try not to do this again.  It was way too confusing.

So, that was my babble for the evening.  Now, for my question:  Are you any good at sleeping?  If so, how do you do it?

I’m not dead.  Swear.

Whirlwind.

Good! Friends are nice. I like them. I must admit, Meredith blogged about this a while back, I think, and I thought, “hmm… is it really that much of a problem?” The answer is: Yes, it is.

So here’s the deal. Facebook and MySpace… if I know you, and you friend me, and I don’t utterly loathe you, I’ll accept. See, I’m nice. However, if I have NO idea who you are, then I apologize. I don’t accept friendship from complete strangers. Now, your question may be, “I want to be your friend! How can I facilitate this endeavor. The answer is simple: talk to me first… preferably more than once, and I will be happy to be your friend.

If I know you from Second Life, and you friend me, umm…. you need to tell me who you are! I’ve gotten several friendship requests on various social networking sites, and I’m not sure if you’re someone I know from SL or not. Please? I don’t to hurt your feelings if you’re one of my bestest SL friends, who just happened to have never mentioned your RL name to me.

Speaking of SL. If you friend me in SL because you know me in RL, PLEASE send me and IM and tell me who you are. No matter how much I pick at my psychic abilities, I can’t figure out who Chonnie Masala is.

In the words of Ang, I’m nice, but I’m not friendly.

Well, here I am at library camp at AADL. Library camp is fun.

MORNING SESSIONS
Session One: DRUPAL
The first session, right now is on Drupal. AADL has the mother of Drupal stuff, and that is a quote.

These are some drupal resources.

http://drupaldojo.com

http://lullabot.com

Drupal is very cool and very neat. Talking about Drupal is very boring.

Eli and John Blyberg are here. They are nice boys. Sorry about my nutty posting today… after this week. I think my brain is fried.

Session Two: ILS

Hopefully, this is going to be fun.

One person asked “What are going to do if WorldCat takes over ILSs. Eli says he thinks that OCLC is in as much peril as Innovative or sirsi. “We want to be in control of the interfaces that we show our patrons.”

Library Thing is giving away the ISBN resolver, and OCLC wants you to pay for it.

Steve Bowers explained the difference between an ILS and an OPAC. OCLC isn’t creating an ILS…so he isn’t afraid of OCLC taking over. Some libraries only need the OPAC, however.

Open source tends to be more patron centered, and my force tech services to do a few extra clicks, and they need to deal.

Bad patron interfaces are explained away by librarians who say “they just need training”

“Bad user interfaces make smart people look dumb. Good user interfaces make dumb people look smart.”

ILS talk are very very … intense and almost emotional.

Steve Bowers got happy faces for his cool OPAC stuff, and then they asked what ILS he was using, and when it was discovered that he used Horizon… it was fun to watch the faces change.

Steve was talking about embedding videos, etc. into their pages. See, this is why Steve is a Mover & Shaker.

Session Three:  Library 2.0 in a 1.0 world

What’s the point of Twitter

·         You can disburse messages to a group of people… like new acquisitions, etc.

RSS, Blogs, etc.

Having a public website is like having a public bathroom.  Sooner or later, someone is going to crap on the floor.  You don’t have to have elaborate policies, etc.  When there is a turd on the floor, someone will let you know.  Almost everyone online newspaper has an online forum.  It’s part of being a public entity.

It’s not about selling administration on the technologies, but on the package, on the package of things to interact and make things better for the public.

Library staff don’t necessarily have a vision of what they will be doing, if, for example, patrons are adding flickr, or OCLC eats everyone’s OPAC.  They don’t know what their contribution is then.

The Skokie ten is a really good digestion of the 23 things of library 2.0

The number of comments on a blog is not indicative of its success.

You have to try out these new technologies, and then give them time… there will not be immediate success.

More to come…

As most of you know, I hate birthdays. Well, to be more accurate, I used to. This year, it seems more like a minor inconvenience. I’m not sure why birthdays have seemed so absolutely horrid to me this past.. well… decade, but they have.

I remembered my 15th birthday today. The day before, I had performed my piece, Chanson et Passepied by Jeanine Rueff at the district high school solo & ensemble festival. As a freshman at a school where 9th graders were still in the “junior high”, I was given the option of compete at either the junior high or high school level. I chose high school. I was very proud of this piece. It was a college piece. I was a freshman. I was cool.

I played it, and played it well. I mean, I didn’t sound like Larry Teal or anything, but for a 14 year old, I played it pretty damn well. After I had finished, the adjudicator looked from the music to me, and then back again, and stated, “a freshman shouldn’t play this piece,” and gave me a “II”. These competitions rated the performers on a scale of I-IV, with a I being the highest.

I got a “II”.

I went home and wouldn’t speak to anyone. I hid. I stared at the blank wall. I felt like I was going to die.

The next day was my birthday. We went out to dinner. My parents, sister, aunt (my accompanist), uncle and my grandfather. I wasn’t in the mood. I hated attention anyway, but birthdays were usually horrible. I begged my family not to make a big deal out of it, not to tell the server at the restaurant, and please please please.. don’t sing.

I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came back, I sat down and everyone was smiling. I saw out of the corner of my eye, the entire wait staff of the restaurant coming to our table in a line. I heard them clapping. I heard them singing. I saw the piece of chocolate mousse pie with a candle in it. They set it in front of me, smiling that fake “I get paid $5.00/hr, plus tips of course” smile and looked at me expectantly.

I stared at the pie, at the candle flickering and felt a thick fog fall over me as I looked up at my beaming family and said:

“I just want every one of you to know that I hate you, and will never forgive you for this.”

Umm.. this year is better