i got nothing (well, okay, very little)

maura @ 10:10 pm

Observations About Some Things:

– I was on the reference desk for 2 hrs today which was really fun. Desk hrs are one thing I never feel like I have enough of — it’s such an immediate, tangible way to help the students. Today’s random highlight was a student in line behind the student I was helping find articles in scholarly journals who insistently suggested that student #1 use the internet because the library resources are too complicated. I tried to explain that you can’t usually find scholarly articles for free online, but she wasn’t having it. Luckily what she really wanted to know is where to find the books in the BF call number range, so she headed upstairs and student #1 and I found a few articles together.

– I’ve had terrible bloggers block for the past week for the academic library blog that I write for, but then I picked up a great article yesterday and now I think the block is gone, yay!

– Gus is No Longer Sick, and in fact is so well that he didn’t even complain about homework tonight, even the extra stuff he’d missed yesterday and Monday! At bedtime he asked me if I loved him “more than life itself,” not sure where that came from.

– I felt all better and stuff today so after work I came home and cleaned the house and did the laundry and did the dishes (Jonathan cooked all day for tomorrow) and took out the trash. Now I am tired, and it’s time to catch up on TV.

and your a to zed

maura @ 8:16 pm

Today I’m better enough to rejoin the living and leave the house for the first time since last Friday. Yippee! Still kind of sniffly, but definitely on the upside of the dreadful cold. Gus was home again today but is full of energy + seems fine and he better bet he’s going to school tomorrow, boy howdy! Just in time for handprint turkeys, I’m sure.

The past week’s twitters:

i’m always a bit melancholy after my last class of the semester. it was a great one, though, w/loads of student + faculty engagement.
about 6 hours ago from web

thanks for the tweet-out, @cunycommons and @mikhailg!
6:04 PM Nov 23rd from web

I am already tired of today.
1:46 PM Nov 23rd from web

@airwalker999 yeah, PM was the last miyazaki we’ve shown him. worked out okay, but glad we waited (he’s almost 8). he <3s castle in the sky!
10:55 AM Nov 23rd from web in reply to airwalker999

sick day. me = still need tea + hankies. gus = seems fine but can’t go to school until fever-free for 24 hrs. sorta seems unfair.
10:53 AM Nov 23rd from web

watching princess mononoke w/fever boy. hope it’s not 2 intense, been a while since i’ve seen. also, Y won’t children ever blow their noses?
7:25 PM Nov 22nd from web

@aegisnyc ooh, thanks for the tip! go see fantastic mr. fox, it was rad.
6:49 PM Nov 21st from web in reply to aegisnyc

i work at a college + have a 7 yr old = i probably say awesome much more than i should for a person of my advanced age. but how to stop?
6:49 PM Nov 21st from web

one upside of this yucky cold: spending some quality time on the sofa catching up on feeds + email.
11:40 AM Nov 21st from web

@alevtina sounds like a research opportunity for you!
10:04 PM Nov 20th from Echofon in reply to alevtina

Gus just told me that he likes warmish coldish days because they have a good sunrise.
7:26 AM Nov 20th from Echofon

@alevtina I never wore a suit for any interview. I did get a jacket to wear when I was tired of my 1 fancy cardigan, but skirt = good.
7:17 AM Nov 20th from Echofon in reply to alevtina

Poster sessioning http://twitpic.com/q4eap
1:01 PM Nov 19th from Echofon

this week is keeping up FAIL: work inbox 34, feedreader 87, home inbox 20-ish. bah.
10:20 AM Nov 19th from web

All praise the deity of Ricola! That one magical cough drop let me do two 75 min English 1 sessions in a row, w00t!
11:44 AM Nov 18th from Echofon

the perils of illness

maura @ 5:36 pm

One of the problems with being sick is that you end up with lots of time to think. Yes, you get to read all of your RSS feeds and answer lots of email and write in your journal, and all of that is good. But also (if you’re me, at least), you end up feeling a bit powerless and start to resent the ailing body chaining you to the sofa, just a bit.

Sometimes all that time to think + powerlessness can be a little dangerous.

Exhibit A:
Lying on the sofa these past few days has given me a new appreciation of how shabby it’s getting. I mean, it’s not surprising: the sofa is 11 yrs old and has endured almost 8 yrs of Gus and nearly 2 yrs of cats. I love it, really I do, with it’s comfy cushions and beautiful dark red cloth with subtle little swirlies (I believe Ikea called it Morby Red). But that sofa is definitely showing its age.

The stinky hippie in me wants to just get a slipcover for it — the guts of it seem okay, it’s just the upholstery that’s worn. But of course Ikea doesn’t make that sofa anymore (nor slipcovers for it), and a custom cover would almost cost more than a new sofa. So I started browsing on the interwebs (you evil temptress, interwebs!) and before you know it I’d convinced myself that the best thing to do is to just buy a new sofa. A new sofa! What a thought! It’s even available in red! And we could buy a slipcover AT THE SAME TIME, so as to avoid situations like this in the future! If we weren’t all sick we’d be at Ikea right now, I tell ya.

Exhibit B:
So a fellow Food Coop-member is writing an article for the Coop’s newspaper about the evils of plastic, and I’ve found myself newly-energized to try find substitutes for plastic containers and utensils that we use for food preparation and storage. We’ve been saving glass peanut butter jars to store things like oatmeal and beans, and have plans to get additional jars to store bigger things and for freezer/fridge storage.

But lunches, I haven’t really tackled the lunches yet. I mean, we use steel water bottles, but I’ve still been packing food in plastic for me and Gus. Gus usually takes a sandwich so we recently switched to wax paper bags, but then the sandwiches get squished. What to do?

Enter stainless steel lunch containers! Of course there’s a dizzying variety. For me I decided on a 2 tier nested set, and I picked up a new lunchbag too, since it was on sale. The containers I wanted to get for Gus were out of stock, sadly, but I’ll be back for them later. On my way out I couldn’t resist getting some stainless steel straws, because lately the only fruit Gus will eat is in smoothie form and we’re going through a lot of plastic.

Phew. I am going to work tomorrow, whether I’m better or not. Staying home is dangerous!

nothing to see here

maura @ 9:23 pm

Decided to write something about open access for my other blog today. Really it was finishing something I started a few weeks ago when Gus was at karate on a Saturday morning. I usually bring the netbook and can often get a bunch written, which seems impossible sitting near 30 kids yelling “yes sensei!” every few minutes. But it’s a surprisingly productive time for me. For a bunch of different reasons Gus hasn’t gone to karate on Saturday morning in a while, and I kind of miss it. I think he misses it, too. Despite being sick he’s still pretty high energy. Begone, evil fever!

i haven’t even finished my halloween candy

maura @ 9:28 pm

Sick sick sick today, me + Gus both. So phoning it in tonight in many ways. For dinner we ordered avgolemono for me and cheese sticks for Gus and a gyro for Jonathan. Then we watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Gus loved this song when he was a little(r) kid. So awesome.

i am tired

maura @ 9:13 pm

Short entry tonight because it was a long week. Lots of teaching and the faculty poster session and hanging up posters all over the place for our new course (which has two [2!] people registered for it already, hooray!). And then helping to run a bake sale at the talent show at Gus’s school tonight. And also I’m still sick. Because it’s good to have a sick person selling baked goods to children at dinnertime. Achoo! Have some brownies.

Now Gus is sick too, which kind of scuttles our plans to get him a flu shot this weekend. But it does support the new plan of me lying on the sofa all weekend getting better. So it’s a draw.

into a parallel world somewhere

maura @ 9:52 pm

The other night Gus had a nightmare that woke him up. He usually goes back to sleep pretty easily after nightmares, and (thankfully) he did that night. The next morning at breakfast we asked him whether he remembered the nightmare. He rarely does, but this time he spun this crazy yarn about a video game in which you’re on a boat being chased by zombies riding bicycles, and to try and escape you have to climb the mast of the boat but pigeons keep flying into you trying to knock you off. One of those things that sounds pretty silly in the light of day, though I could see that it might be scary in the middle of the night.

Anyway, I suggested to him that he write that video game. And then when he makes his millions and all the cool game bloggers want to interview him and ask him where he got the inspiration, he can say to them: “it came to me in a dream.”

ha! bet you thought i’d forgotten

maura @ 10:46 pm

But no, I was just working on my poster for tomorrow’s faculty poster session. Which is almost done, just needs the final constructing before work tomorrow.

It is, late, though, and I’m still nursing this head cold (which has stayed at the low-level annoyance phase, thankfully). So here are a few pictures that struck me as funny. Because part of this research project is asking students to take photos of various objects/locations. And one of the photos is “the night before a big assignment is due.” And that’s where I’m at, tonight. So here’re my photos:

I should probably take a picture of the whole poster tomorrow, too, huh?

day 17, and i’ve got nothing clever to say

maura @ 9:32 pm

feeding a cold with pasta + granola bars. glad it’s not a fever!
about 8 hours ago from web

RT @CityTechLibrary Students, want to learn to research more efficiently? Take the library’s new course next semester! http://bit.ly/37mFlO
about 10 hours ago from web

good: RT today = I can work from the sofa to try + kick this sore throat. bad: building repointing = noisy saws just outside the window.
9:23 AM Nov 16th from web

listening to j+g play d+d
4:51 PM Nov 15th from web

@mikhailg Twas awesome, for parents & kids. Definitely recommended. Not scary at all. Gus says the book’s a bit different, fwiw.
5:47 PM Nov 14th from Echofon in reply to mikhailg

Waiting to see Fantastic Mr Fox with J & G & some jr mints, rock on.
3:48 PM Nov 14th from Echofon

RT @mikhailg: .@lwaltzer: “Our students are fascinating . . . many of them don’t know that they’re fascinating” #wcnyc Amen 2 that. Go CUNY!
10:13 AM Nov 14th from Echofon

@listentomyvoice Ha! His exclamations always used to crack me up when I adjuncted at BC.
10:09 AM Nov 14th from Echofon in reply to listentomyvoice

@mikhailg @mkgold @boonebgorges @lwaltzer keep them wordcamp tweets a’comin! wish i could be there.
9:26 AM Nov 14th from Echofon in reply to mikhailg

@eszter if in academic community, maybe postit notes or flash drives? a nice alternative to pens or tote bags.
9:50 PM Nov 13th from web in reply to eszter

wow, how is it possible that i have 12 hrs of twitter to catch up on? today didn’t seem that busy.
9:43 PM Nov 13th from web

@boonebgorges @mkgold @mikhailg Looks like #cunypie was fun — sorry I had to miss it.
9:41 PM Nov 13th from web in reply to boonebgorges

RT @jpeg2000 Practicing Wave Zero is much easier than Inbox Zero
10:23 PM Nov 12th from web

@ALA_ACRL Yes, I’d like a projected backchannel, I think it would be really interesting.
1:22 PM Nov 12th from Echofon in reply to ALA_ACRL

@notjonathan @Annefesto Says the man who now has the comfy desk chair! I’d say get a comfy desk chair, myself. One for each desk.
9:23 PM Nov 11th from web in reply to notjonathan

Alright, busy day, let’s get this party started. And big ups to the annoying cats for waking me up at 5am! Solid.
7:32 AM Nov 11th from Echofon

@lwaltzer good point. maybe a sympathetic passerby could pop the cookies into the time machine for me.
11:30 PM Nov 10th from Echofon in reply to lwaltzer

grab your skeleton key

maura @ 9:34 pm

Today I had RT* and worked on a poster for my research project that I’m giving at the faculty poster session later this week. I’ve done posters before, but not since I’ve gotten all ethnographic with this qualitative study I’m working on right now, and it’s been a bit weird to make this poster. I mean, my old archaeology self was really comfortable with posters. Charts + graphs? Check. Photos of the site or the faunal remains? Check. Brief bullets w/salient data points and conclusions? Check.

* Reassigned Time, boon to the jr faculty member, in which I do all much** of the research + publication that will (I hope) eventually earn me tenure + promotion someday.

** Because I have my Morning Writing Time, too.

But this poster is different. First off, these are only preliminary results — no final conclusions yet (though they’re interesting enough to make the poster feasible). Stranger to me is that I don’t have any charts and graphs. No charts and graphs! I feel a bit naked.

It’s been harder than I thought it would be to recreate a narrative on the poster (this is the project, here’s why we’re doing it, here’s what we’ve done so far, and this is what the interviewees said). I’ve pulled out a few interesting quotes and highlighted them in blue. I’m using Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flicker to illustrate the salient points, e.g. a big twisty clock for the “students have many demands on their time” point. And, I sheepishly admit to using a bit of clipart, too (hey Flickr, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you had more photos of people of color).

Is there going to be enough info there without my friends the Charts and their neighbors the Graphs? Tomorrow I have to pick up the posterboard, so we’ll see how it turns out.