So We Came to February

I closed out January with five stitches in my thumb (first time getting stitches– first visit to the emergency room). Surely, I can do better in February.

Reading

Sharp object encounters aside, January was a pretty good month. I managed to read quite a bit more¹. Listening to the audiobook versions of S&S and MP during commute and workout time helped me take in a little Austen on the days I didn’t have sit-down-and-read time. I’m determined to finish all of Jane Austen’s major novels by the end of this month (I will likely put off reading Northanger Abbey and Lady Susan until a later date). I will keep reading the Pern series (I’m about a quarter of the way into Dragonquest now). I currently have Fables checked out from the library and will start that once I’ve finished Emma. I’ve been poking around for some staple sci-fi titles and have compiled two or three recommendations, which I will probably start in March. Right now I’m reading The Woman in White (via DailyLit RSS, which I just reactivated after a week hiatus), Emma, and Dragonquest. I have good reading variety this month, each title enjoyable in different ways.

And Writing

I hardly blogged in January and I don’t have any creative or academic writing to show for my time off. I was at first excited to see that Laurie Halse Anderson is urging everyone to have a Blog-Free February but then figured that it’s less daunting for me to pop on and ramble a bit here instead of sitting down and composing something formally. So I’m going to take a pass on BFF this year (although BFF would be an awesome pairing with BEDA, if Blog Every Day in April becomes an annual phenomenon). Better to keep all writing channels open. I’m intrigued by the call from LISNews for essays relating to libraries or librarianship. I’ve been recording ideas, links and news items regarding a number of library topics for months but haven’t had the kick in the butt to make something material of it. I don’t have to submit something but writing up a few pieces on different topics might be a good exercise.

And Life

Reassessing finances prompted me taking more part-time work. I rearranged my IU schedule to accommodate additional hours at Avers. Last week was an adjustment period. I was far more worn out after my workout sessions last week but I felt more like myself after yesterday’s session. And, as it was much easier getting up at 5:30 this morning than it was last week, I think my body is finally realizing that I’m not shorting it on sleep (I started going to bed earlier but, for whatever reason, I still felt exhausted when the alarm went off). This week (and possibly next) will be the test: getting up a 5:30, working at the library, working an additional 20 some hours at Avers, and maintaining my current workout and diet routine. We’ll see how it goes.

Once I’m sure that I’m in possession of the proper quantities of sleep, calories, and sanity, I will start focusing on weight loss again. I plateaued in January, in spite of continued diet and exercise. I’m honestly not discouraged that I haven’t kept losing. If nothing else, this proves that I can maintain a goal weight if I stick to the habits I’ve relearned.

Right. Now that I’ve gotten that housekeeping post of out my system, on to more interesting thngs.

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• Those Left Behind (Serenity ; v. 1) by Joss Whedon

And So It May Be

In my 2009 prospectus, I decried resolutions as “stupid.” SCIENCE agrees: link. Instead, I like to think that I have ongoing, long-term goals.

Of last year’s goals, I think I’ve improved the most at being more healthy. Seeing results is nice but I know my body a bit better now too. In 2010, I’ll keep doing cardio 3-4 times a week but I’d like to begin varying workouts with strength training. Now that I know how many calories per day/week I’m consuming, I will also focus on eating meals that are better balanced.

As to being more organized: this could still use work. I’m using more tools to help but sometimes I wonder if I have cotton candy for brains. My memory is horrible. I depend on my iPod Touch to remind me of upcoming vents, compose to-do lists, plan meals and exercise, track my finances, etc. Where I feel like I fail on being organized is minimizing clutter. This 2009 goal I completely failed on. In my defense, this is not entirely within the realm of my control. Russell had no such resolve to make our home less cluttered after all. And if I thought a theatre production created a lot of costume/prop clutter, boy does shooting a film create a mess (and most of the Banshee property isn’t even being stored at our place–thanks Chris and Meagan!). However, there are things of my own I can probably get rid of to free up space. This will definitely be on the Things to Do in 2010.

Looking forward, I’m not sure that I need to add another Big Goal to the heap. Now that I think about it, there are a few long-term goals not mentioned here like paying down debt as quickly as possible, which is hardly a goal, as I don’t have much choice in the matter. I will work on being more thoughtful in 2010. I tend to be frightfully self-absorbed and I don’t always realize when I’m neglecting someone else’s feelings by simply being too caught up in whatever I’m doing. I hate being flaky.

So nothing too crazy in 2010. Sorry about the general boringness of this post. I almost posted this privately but figured that posting publicly would hold me more accountable.

And now, for your patience and fortitude in surviving to the end of this post, a diversion! If you had to sit through just ONE MORE Christmas songvid, it should be this one.

And So It Was

I feel somewhat obliged to make a New Year’s Day post to welcome in 2010. To me, New Year’s is a scammy, half-assed sort of holiday, on the order of Groundhog Day. My new year is on May 10th, so  reflection, introspection and hopes for a new year generally fall on the day in which I am a year older. But the world didn’t ask me, they asked the Gregorian calendar, so the Twitter trending topics aren’t #moreofsame or #anotherday, they are #in2010 and #10yearsago. Incidentally, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I was doing in December 31st, 1999. I would have just completed my first semester at Rutgers and I was working two jobs (Domino’s and at Honors College courtesy of the FWSP). I probably spent New Year’s Eve with friends and family but I have no recollection of the details. Much of my life is like that. Stupid memory! Well, if nothing else, in 10 years time, when Twitter and Facebook have merged, and Facetwitbook is acquired by Google, and Googfacetwitbook sends a query directly to my brain asking what I did in 2009, I will have THIS blog post to reference.

I’ve already written a quasi-year in review post in the beginning of November. At the end of November, Tim and I started going to the gym in place of walking three times a week. I’ve managed to work in a fourth day for all but one of the weeks since we started. Exercising regularly combined with tracking and limiting calories has equated to me losing about two pounds a week (this last week being a wash because I wanted to moderately enjoy Christmas goodies and not obsess about what the scale says). I have a lot more energy AND I’ve only had 20 ounces of soda in the last five weeks. I truly wasn’t sure I could do without caffeine completely. Bananas are now my brain food for the morning.

By way of summary, here is what else happened in 2009:

• Loss. Tigger, Russ’s Uncle Dennis, Mrs. Simon; all are missed.
• I read some stuff. I’m not sure that I could even approximate the stats regarding what I’ve read this year but I do know that I made more time for reading than I did in 2008. My three favorites were: Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey.
• I wrote a little. I blogged every day in April (and I just may be crazy enough to do it again in 2010); tried a writing experiment in November.
• I worked. And got a promotion!
• Got around a bit. I traveled farther West than ever before! St. Louis is one cool town. Another cool town I visited for the first time in 2009: Columbus.
• Saw some shows. Theatre, music and in between: Spring Awakening, Wicked, Fantastics, An Ideal Husband, Inherit the Wind, A Night of Lewis Carroll, Cirque du Solei, Duck Soup, Nevermore, Selections from the Spoon River Anthology (Starrynight Productions), Dracula, DCI, Great Big Sea w/Scythian, Joshua Bell w/Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, more that I’m probably forgetting…
• Saw some family. But never enough! Miss them.

I will save predictions and goals for 2010 for another post. I notice that I didn’t do a prospective post until Jan 2nd of 2009. Better keep to tradition.

WrAnyMo WrApUp

I’ve developed this habit of starting drafts and forgetting about them for a week or two, possibly a carryover of blogging privately. Oops. Here’s a slightly dusty post from Dec 2nd.

I refuse to accept that WrAnyMo was a resounding failure. Sure, I only made about 22% of my goal to write 30,000 words in the month of November but I learned something pretty important about my habits: I spend way too much time reading. It’s true. I spend a lot of time reading RSS feeds– in the morning, throughout the day and at night. Am I better for it? Probably not. A handful of items out of a couple hundred a day that are useful, insightful or otherwise provide that daily ounce of “Oh, cool” simply doesn’t offset the amount of time this eats out of my day. The rewards are too small for the time I put in. I look forward to not feeling obligated to read or at least clear out every new post in Google Reader. That’s really what keeps me hitting my feeds every four hours. I see that stupid number in the red bubble on my iPod and it makes me feel like the news needs my attention NOW. No, this needs to stop wasting my time.

Spending less time pouring over largely forgettable interweb droppings will, I hope, leave me more time to read GOOD things– literature and short fiction. It’s been ages since I’ve dissected a poem or applied the ‘critical theory flavor of the day’ to fiction. Reading good literature makes me want to write about it, meaning that finding more time to read often means finding more time to write too.

But feeds only take up so much of my day. What about the rest of my time? During the middle of the month, sloth was a huge problem. Then, during the final week of WrAnyMo, I started exercising. Suddenly I had more energy. What to do? I started reading more and I jumped back on projects that I’ve put off. So working out=energy to do other things. And, since Tim and I replaced walking time (3x a week) with work out time, working out does NOT equal more time out of my schedule.

December then will be another month of adjustments:

• Finding a fourth day a week to exercise (already tried with mixed success)
• Blogging a minimum of once a week (I’m with ya, Jessie!)
• Trimming the amount of the feeds I read.

Another Even Day Post

I beat myself up. A lot. Sometimes, I need to stop and acknowledge that occasionally, I’m not a colossal mess. Read on if you wish to hear resounding pats on the back. Read more

Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Today’s WrAnyMo offering (if you haven’t read my post on WrAnyMo, it is here) is my take on the much talked of– on this blog anyway– Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Some spoilers to follow. I tried to keep them as few and mild as possible; nonetheless, you are warned.

The happy couple.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: the Classic Regency Romance, Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.
Philadelphia: Quirk Books, c2009.
319 p. : ill. ; 21 cm. $12.95
9781594743344
Link to Publisher.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

Read more

What the Heck is WrAnyMo?

Find. Out. Here.

BTW, these link-type posts will not be counted in the #WrAnyMo word count.

Follow all of my WrAnyMo public posts across multiple blogs, GoogleDocs, etc. by searching the #WrAnyMo2009 tag on Twitter.

Free Library of Philadelphia May Close

The Free Library of Philadelphia, a system of libraries which includes over fifty branches, may be closing on October 2nd due to a “state budget crisis and legislation impasse.” Lights off, doors locked. All 54 locations. The library has already cut staff, streamlined work flows, reduced hours, and shuffled remaining staff in order to try keep libraries open, as reported in the Director’s Testimony to City Council on FY2010 Operating Budget. Some speculate that this announcement is a merely a publicity stunt but give the testimony a skim. FLP has been operating as if under near financial meltdown for at least half a year now,  in spite of a dramatic increase in circulation numbers over the last three years (22.5%) and a 50% increase in the number of library card registrations for teens compared to one year ago.

Without the necessary budget, within a year, the broken windows of these libraries will be boarded, the grounds will be overgrown. We’ll look back and think, yeah, the closing of the Parkway Central Library? That was pretty tragic. But the closing of the smallest branches in the most impoverished neighborhoods of Philadelphia? Catastrophic.

Dear reader, go to your library this weekend. Take family, take friends. Explore the collections: books, movies, music, graphic novels, video games. Check out the library programming and events. Drop in on an open meeting of a local community organization. And then STOP and look around. What is this worth?

Think about it. How much is a library card worth? Estimate your card’s value using a variety of value calculators for various regions (Google keyword search “library value calculator”). My card is worth about $230 per month. For every dollar in taxes, I get a return of about $60. But I mislead you. This number is not an accurate measure of the value of my library card.

Libraries aren’t stuffy, static spaces built to contain collections of THINGS. Libraries are the locus of community intersection and interaction. Books and films are cold, dumb objects on the shelf- until someone interacts with them. IDEAS form. And the really great thing? These ideas are borne out of us. Even after that book or film or CD is returned to its rightful place on the shelf, we take those ideas out into our communities. We might share the idea, the idea gets passed around, tested, modified, and maybe this ideas spawns other ideas. And your world gets bigger.

I don’t know how many of you have worked with underprivileged kids in libraries. It’s rough. The politics, the budget cuts, the apathy- I think just about any librarian who has been there can tell you: we go to work to watch that 12 year-old latchkey kid’s world grow BIGGER.

Aren’t we all feeling a bit close these days? Money is tight. Jobs are scarce. Stress is high. And there are a lot of people on TV talking and yelling. And louder still are their whispers: “It’s hopeless, this mess.” And the people in charge press in closer still. “No, no,” they whisper. And we wake up one morning and we find that our worlds are… smaller.

I realize that there are many battles to choose from these days both nationally and locally (Philly’s budget crisis is much larger than library closures- I’m certain Philly police and fire fighters are writing posts similar to this one for the benefit of their stations, which the city desperately needs to support). Maybe to some, library closures doesn’t seem like a big deal in comparison. That may even be true- if the Free Library of Philadelphia wasn’t the 6th largest public library in the U.S. (23rd largest in the nation, when including academic libraries) with 7 million visits a year. If we allow closures to happen on this scale, then which city library system will be next? What kind of cascade effect can we expect on our local libraries?

While I’m doubtful as to the outcome of aforementioned worthy fights nationally-health care, peace, green energy- THIS fight I know we can win both in Philly and in our local communities.

Residents of Philadelphia, save your libraries. Start here.

As for the rest of us, my fellow Americans, we will vote as we always have- with our plastic.

No interest. No annual fee. Your library card.