I may have the messiest office in the entire world. I was sitting at my desk at work yesterday, and was just overwhelmed by the plethora of…welll….shit piled upon it.

This was taken about halfway through my office cleaning. More pics are available on my Flickr page.

And yes, I do sit in the dark more often than not.

Well, after much pouting, the NORAD Santa Tracker is back up! Yay. Santa is now flying over Manitoba. I was getting a little bummed for a while there… Crazy, I know.

I am finally finished wrapping presents. I have four dogs napping on the couch. Here’s a pic of my “pile of jacks”, with Rory off on her own, of course. She’s dreaming of her new Hounds tooth collar and leash and the piles of toys that will be waiting for her and her brother, Padraic, and her foster brothers, Joey and Robin. Here’s a pic I just took of the pille:

I guess it’s about time for me to get to bed. I have to get up early to have our little canine present day in the morning. Then, Rory and I are heading out to my parent’s to have the official Christmas.

I’m just hoping to get out of there in once piece!

Well, it’s Christmas Eve.  Yay.  I’ve decided not to go to my sister’s house tonight, like I’ve done for the past 13 years, because quite honestly, it’s just too exhausting!  I would have had to find sitters for my two foster dogs, and then take my two.  My niece, Regan, screams every time a strange dog comes near her, and both the girls scream whenever their mom isn’t in sight.  Their dog, Bobo, insists on coming into my room at 6 am on Christmas morning, to play with Padraic, who has been marking the house the entire time.  Rory will get upset by the commotion, and pee on the bed, and I will have been up until 2 am, washing the linens as quietly as possible, so as not to piss off my sister.  Around 2 pm, we would have gone to my parents, and dealt with Regan’s screaming, because my parents have two dogs as well.  Rory will try to eat the cat, and Mochi, the Maltese, will be trying to show Rory who’s boss, which is NOT a good idea, especially considering Robin’s healing head.

So, I told my parents I couldn’t find a dog sitter, which is true, especially since I didn’t look.  I can say this all here, without fear of repercussion because  no noe in my family knows that this blog exists…I actually don’t think anyone in my family knows what a blog is.

Strange note, for the third year in a row, I went to NORAD’s Santa tracker website, and spontaneously burst into tears.  It’s  been about…23 years since I’ve believed, but I think that I still wished that Santa came by my house.  *sigh*

I’m now stocking up on bubble mailers and packing tape, in preparation for my flurry of eBay selling, which always takes place the day after Christmas…ahem….not that I’m selling my gifts or anything….err..no.

That being said, happy holidays, all!!

So, these past few weeks have been crazy.  I think things should slow down just a bit for a while.  Last week, omg, I can’t even remember what went on last week.    Whatever it was, it was busy.  Oh yeah, strategic planning stuff.  I also taught an ILL workshop, and wrote the workshop mostly the day before.

This morning, I gave a little talk on Second Life.  I used our new online workshop software, Centra.  I think it went pretty well, especially since I didn’t finish writing it until 9:45 and I gave the talk at 10:00.  I gave the attendees a little “key”, if you will, to allow them to decipher basic gamer, especially sl speak.

sl = second life

rl = real life

tp = teleport

brb = be right back

afk = away from keyboard

lol = laugh out loud

rotf = rolling on the floor (often followed by “lol”)

lmao = laughing my ass off.  I didn’t say “ass”, that would be naughty.  At least I didn’t do lmfao!!!

What else…well, not library related, but Rory bit Robin, and I didn’t see the bite and it got infected and was abscessed, and I had to take him to the vet, and now she’s walking around with a four inch tube sticking out of either side of his head, and I get the joy of squeezing the puss and fluid out.  Lovely.

I’ve decided to go back to school.  Not for a degree or anything.  I think next term I will take my very first class as a community college…as soon as I prove to them that I already have a Master’s degree, and really shouldn’t have to take a math and reading placement test.   I just want to take a few classes in networking and all that…expand my horizons or something.

I’m super busy right now, which usually makes me seek out more work, who knows why.a  I just bought a 40 gig external hard drive.  I’m going to back-up my desktop,  and then get this, I’m going to clean my drive and install Linux.  Wild, huh?  I want to become way super cool smart and geeky!  Since I’ve decided that I will no longer pursue a social life, I might as well become a geek, right???  LOL

Well, that’s all for now!