So Far Away

Steven is still in Houston but he will leave within the week for Iraq. He won't be able to come home for 100 days. And he will be there for a total of 333 days. So, by mid April he'll be here to visit-maybe in time to do our taxes.

Meanwhile, life goes on and Emily and Grandmama just celebrated another birthday together. Emily did not think that it was fair that so much attention was focused on Grandmama's birthday. I told her your 90th birthday is a milestone and seventeen is not. Her reply was "Well, there are a lot of songs about being seventeen and none about being ninety." I thought it was a good point.

My classes are over for the semester. Maybe I'll locate my brain between now and January.

Woe is me and Comfort food

So last night my husband tells me that he is shipping out to Houston Texas
for "processing" for a job in Iraq with the KBR Corporation. Super. There's
still a chance that he may fail the physical. He wants to go, though. I'm not
sure he realizes who he is dealing with. The company is so scandal ridden,
Haliburton dropped them as a subsidiary.

On a lighter note, my last paper of the semester is turned in tonight. Yay!
No more homework until January. I can have a chance to cook again, speaking
of which...here's a good recipe:

JIFFY CORN PUDDING

1 can whole kernel corn, drained1 can cream corn1 stick butter1 (8 oz.) pkg. sour cream1 box Jiffy corn bread mix
Melt butter in dish. Put in corn and cream. Mix together well. Sprinkle corn bread mix over corn and stir all together. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

The end is here

So finally today I made a wiki: http://piercefamily.wikispaces.com/ That's all of the 24 things for me. I never made a facebook account but I figure its similar to the myspace page. I've had a myspace page since I found out my daughter was playing with it a couple of years ago and you have to be a member to view the pages. I wanted to see what she was up to. Some call it snooping, others good parenting. It's a judgement call, I guess.

I've tried to add something fun in every post... so on with the entertainment portion: as you may know, I'm in graduate school and its the end of the semester, to that end I present:
Top 10 Signs You're Suffering From Burnout:


10. You're so tired you now answer the phone, "Hell".

9. Your friends call to ask how you've been, and you immediately scream, "Get off my back, bitch!"

8. Your garbage can IS your "in" box.

7. You wake up to discover your bed is on fire, but go back to sleep because you just don't care.

6. You have so much on your mind; you've forgotten how to pee.

5. Visions of the upcoming weekend help you make it through Monday.

4. You sleep more at work than at home.

3. You leave for a party and instinctively bring your briefcase.

2. Your Day-Timer exploded a week ago.

1. You think about how relaxing it would be if you were in jail right now.

The end is near

Well, the end of the 24 things is rapidly approaching. This website was a create your own social network website. I think this could be useful for libraries if properly marketed: http://www.ning.com/ There's a lot on there to join and just peruse.

Last week I used youtube, though admittedly not for the first time. I found this ALA commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhrcCWjtNQw

On a personal note I have just begun to plan my stepson's rehearsal dinner. That will be on November 30th. I think it will turn out okay. Anybody know a cheap caterer?

Silly Stuff for Friday

Tomorrow I'm planning on seeing Dan in Real life. http://movies.aol.com/movie/dan-in-real-life/23761/video/trailer-no-1/1960704 I love Steve Carrell. He's fun.

Today in my exercise I joined delicious. It's a bookmarking site. I could not get it to work. Operator sensitive error to be sure.

Since I shared Evil Strawberry yesterday, something else like that is Muffin Films: http://www.muffinfilms.com/ They're a lot of fun if you're goofing off at work on a Friday afternoon. Not that I would ever do that, but I hear some people do.

First time for everything and Evil Strawberry

So today I am working in week 6. I created a meebo room and instant messaged for the first time ever. I'm going through a lot of firsts lately which is weird since I'm almost 40. It's nice that life can still seem new in so many ways for so long.

A first I am looking forward to is skiing. I hate cold, and I hate wet, yet somehow, I still want to try it. I heard on the news today that they've already started "making snow" in the NC mountains. My daughter was very excited about this.

And now for something completely different... "Evil Strawberry" http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/strawberry

Asheboro zoo

This weekend I neglected my studies and went out. Friday night I met some folks from the library (not originally) at the gallery crawl in the NODA district of Charlotte, NC. It was really a lot more fun than I thought. Lots of good music and the occasional free glass of wine and excellent cheese. Saturday morning I tried to rouse my teenager but to no avail. I headed to Asheboro by myself to meet my friend of many years, Chris B. and his family. We really enjoyed our day at the zoo. If you've never been to the NC zoo in Asheboro, I strongly recommend it. http://www.nczoo.org/

Also, RSS feeds were not whaat I expected. They don't come to your e-mail at all. You have to log in to a website and then you can view all of your feeds from there. It's actually pretty cool. Today I'm going to play with Library Thing: a tool that catalogs your books. http://www.librarything.com

Scottish Games

This weekend I will be telling stories at the Games with my new friend, Tree. Above is a sign I made from sign generator. This is another work thing. I'm on item 10 of a 24 item list. Stories that will be told include: The Brave Little Tailor, The Farmer and the Leprechaun, and Wicked John and the Devil. Nothing particularly Scottish. I'm American, not Scottish, although I have some Scottish ancestry. Watch Richard Chase perform Wicked John and the devil. It's a delight: http://www.archive.org/details/richard_chase-wicked_john_and_the_devil_1977

Fun with RSS feeds and real fun

This is completely meaningless to me but today I am going to attempt to subscribe to an RSS feed. I think I may have already done so. Apparently this is one more thing with which to clutter my inbox. I subscribed to the shifted librarian through bloglines. It looks kind of interesting to those interested in librarianship (that's more than you might think.) http://theshiftedlibrarian.com

The past two weeks I've more or less ignored my coursework and I have been playing instead. Tomorrow night I will have to make up for lost time. It was well worth it, though. October 11-14 I went to Mississippi with my family to attend a Blues Festival. They had some really great stuff. Here are two acts I really enjoyed: Big Joe Shelton: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=111454967 and HomeMade Jamz, these kids are great. They have already won awards. The oldest band member is 17 with the youngest being only 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GaqWgLulHo

Last weekend I attended Prairie Home Companion live from Ovens Auditorium. It was wonderful. What's Prairie Home Companion. Tune in to your local public radio station 6pm Eastern Time on Saturday nights and find out.

Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto

This was a pretty cool little movie on youtube. Along with blogging the library staff here are attempting to keep up with other social networks. This one is titled Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZblrRs3fkSU

A Joke and A recipe: what more do you want?

My favorite Knock Knock joke:

Knock knock
Who's there?
The interrupting cow.
The Interrupting c
Moo.

It loses a lot in print. Teach it to a friend or relative's child and this will bring a mean little smile to your face for years to come. I taught it to my nieces. I found it amusing.

One of my favorite family recipes; great for family reunions and other gatherings any time of year:

Pistachio Salad:

One 8-ounce container of Cool Whip
One 8-Ounce container of sour cream
one box of instant pistachio pudding mix
1 can of pineapple tidbits - drained
1 can of Mandarin oranges- drained
1/2 cup of chopped maraschino (sp?) cherries - drained
1/2 cup chopped pecans (more or less)

I dump the fruit in first, then the Cool Whip and sour cream, then the pudding mix, then the nuts. Don't over-stir it.

10 minutes to class time

Learning to blog was never a dream of mine, most things the library requires of me are not in my dreams, thankfully. Over the next eight weeks I am supposed to come up with something. Just to let you know, I do not really consider myself much of a writer so the term bard here is used loosely.