KJ

And it went well. At least I think it did. Maybe not a slam dunk, but I felt good about it.

And now, the waiting begins.

I've brought my laptop into work the last few days. The theory is that I will use it to do job-hunt related stuff, the practice… well, let's just say I foresee another day of bursts of getting things done interspersed with total apathy. Yay, senioritis. I really need to sit down with folks soon and make a plan, prioritizing the things I need to get ready to hand off.

I have my “it’s true, I was laid off, I was ready for it and I’ll be okay, I promise they aren’t closing down the library (an actual rumor that’s been making the rounds through the student body), I’ll be here through the end of the quarter” speech down pat; part of me is tempted to put in on a card and hand it to people instead of having to run through it several times a day, but I recognize that wouldn’t be very friendly. ;) People want to talk about things and make sure I’m okay, and I appreciate the sentiment very much.

Four weeks to go.

1. As of this week, I'm back on a Monday-Friday schedule at work (I've been mostly working Tuesday-Saturday since mid-April). I'm happy to get my traditional weekends back, sad to lose my nice laid-back Mondays, and overall just really confused about what day it is now. I'll get back in the swing of it soon, but it's going take some time to adjust back.

2. I seem to be whole-heartedly embracing Cinders as a fandom. At the moment, I'm in the midst of something I've never done before: writing a scene or two of a story every day or so and posting as I go. Originally I didn't care for Tumblr as a fic-posting venue, but for this mode it actually works pretty well. It will definitely need polishing before I put the whole thing together -- the seams between scenes, especially -- but I'm happy with how it's coming together so far. And it's a nice way to keep myself pushing forward on it rather than letting it drift into WIP limbo. If you want to follow the WIP, here's a link to the tag.

3. Also on Tumblr, I completed a 30 Days meme for Alistair, which was particularly interesting because a lot of other folks were doing it too, and it was fun to see other people's takes on the questions and on his character. I got some great new headcanon thoughts, and came up with some ideas of my own. Eventually I will probably post the character development interview I was writing up for Sereda Aeducan at about the same time, especially as my work on each informed my answers for the other.

4. I spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks vegging out in front of the Olympics, which was fun, but good god was the NBC coverage wretched. I should probably have given up and gone to the livestreams, but I much prefer to watch sporting events on my nice large television than on a computer screen. As a result, I found myself watching less and less, and skipped the closing ceremonies entirely. I had heard rumors that NBC was going to lose it stranglehold on coverage, due largely to the time delay shenanigans, but no such luck -- they've got the contract through 2020 at least. Sigh.

5. I gave in to temptation and bought the eARC of "Captain Vorpatril's Alliance", the new Vorkosigan saga novel, which isn't out in print until November. I haven't had a ton of reading time lately, so I've been working my way through slowly, but I've been enjoying an Ivan-centric novel every bit as much as I thought I would. This is one of the first novels I've read on my iPad, and it's... interesting. Not sure how I feel about the experience, overall. More thoughts on both the story and its ebook format to come, I'm sure.

Let's catch up on the last couple of weeks, shall we?

1. Work: Things have changed pretty drastically recently and I'm scrambling to keep up. The upshot of it is that I have fewer people to get more things done -- isn't that always the way? -- so I expect my life to be a bit more constrained for awhile. For one thing, I'm moving to a Tuesday - Saturday schedule for awhile, starting this week, probably at least through August. I'll probably also have longer hours in general, and my time while at work will be more constrained. Everything is balanced on a knife-edge, no slack whatsoever, and although I understand a desire to make things more efficient, if you pull too hard on a rope with no slack, it breaks.

So I guess we'll see.

2. Fandom: As planned, I've started a DA:O replay. I went for a Brosca game; her name is Kasia, and I love her to death. Right now we're back in Orzammar, and so far it's everything I could have hoped for. Very different from Aeducan's homecoming, and honestly I think better developed. But more on that when I've played it further. I've been blogging the game over on Tumblr, under the tags KJ Replays DAO and Kasia Brosca, if anyone is interested.

Also, don't forget Doink! signups close tomorrow!! Have a link. I have signed up and am really looking forward to it.

3. In other news: Chorus has started, we're doing Schumann's Mass in C Minor, which is a new piece for me. Very nice so far, although tough in some places. As of yesterday, I am going back to Rome in June, for a week with A and M, which should be extremely awesome, and there's also talk of spending Memorial Day weekend in Las Vegas. Whatever can get me through this ridiculous quarter, I'll take it.

I don't have anything exciting to post about, really; it's only that I realized it's been a week since I've done so. So, what have I been up to? Not a lot, really. Let's break it down:

Work: Stuff going down that I don't want to say too much about; personnel changes, mostly, for good, for ill, for big scary unknowns. It's been a really busy quarter, the kind where I feel like I'm just keeping my head above water. The Tuesday-Saturday schedule would be fine if I could settle into it, but it seems like there some exception every other week that keeps it from becoming routine, and now it's almost over -- possibly at the beginning of September, definitely by the end of the month.

Media: After getting it recommended by tons of friends over the years, I finally started watching Friday Night Lights last weekend. I've seen the first four episodes, and it's good so far, if a bit predictable. I look forward to seeing where it goes. I've also seen the first four episodes of Game of Thrones, which will definitely get its own post when I'm done. Current book is In Ashes Lie by Marie Brennan, which is good so far, although it's the second in a series and I've forgotten too much of what happened in the first volume. More later, I hope. Also, we went to see Captain America today, and it gets the thumbs up. Steve Rogers is so adorable in his earnestness. I just want to give him a hug and tell him that everything will work out.

Games: We made a little progress on Dragon Age 2, although not as much as I would have liked, and I logged a good chunk of time on my third DA:O playthrough, this one with M!Surana -- I've been wanting to play as a mage, I haven't tried out being an elf yet, and I was definitely curious to see how a male Warden affect things. (And, as long as I'm making true confessions, I'd like to branch out on my romance options, and I just know that if I play as female, I will be unable to resist Alistair's charms. It's hard enough to resist them when I know they can't go anywhere.)

Writing: I didn't get anything else written for the Porn Battle. A few ideas, but nothing that gelled for me, and I ended up spending most of the week's writing time on yet another DA:O conversation, a new one. I think it's almost finished, so look for that soon. And then I really, really need to get cracking on my Mega Flare. Anyone up for some Larsa-related brainstorming sometime soon?

The Rest of Life: It rolls merrily along. One week will be crammed with social events and the next will be quiet, which works okay for me. The whole "offset weekends" thing is fortunately not wreaking as much havoc with my social life as I was afraid it might, although I am having to skip a weekend trip I would have really liked to take. But not much to report, really. Except that I am still in love with my MacBook Air. So, so in love. I bought a new laptop bag for it, a smaller, classier one, and I am ridiculously excited for it even though it's backordered until mid-September.

And now, bedtime. Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, DW, Goodnight, LJ.

Some months ago, I offered to switch schedules with the other librarian, who has been covering Saturdays for many years now. Recently, she decided to take me up on it, and so as of this week, I'll be working Tuesday through Saturday (with a few exceptions) for the next few months.

I would never have offered this if I wasn't willing to do it, and I can see definite upsides to having Mondays off. And Saturdays are a good time to get projects done. And there are advantages to having one workday per week on which no meetings can be scheduled! But I can already tell that it's going to take awhile before I don't see dragging myself out of bed and to the library on a Saturday morning as an imposition. But who knows; once I get used to it, I may not want to go back! We'll see how it goes.

Fortunately, I am not alone. One of the things you accept when you become a librarian is that you may have undesirable work hours from time to time -- early mornings, late nights, Saturdays and Sundays -- and you can follow our adventures on Twitter at #saturdaylibrarian.

Edited to add the other upshot of this, which is that I am likely to be online and looking for distractions most days. If you're around, come say hello!

I am going to exert meme-writer's privilege again and switch around the order of topics, because the question originally slotted for today is one that will take time and research, and my schedule today is more suited to tapping out a post on my iPhone. (There's a post idea: the ways in which owning a smart phone has affected my life, for good and ill. Hmm.) So: justira asked me to talk about the things I love and do not love about being a librarian.

Getting this out of the way first: I love being a librarian. A colleague once told me that librarianship is not a job or even a career; it's a calling. And that stuck with me, because it really is like that, not just for me but for most librarians I know. I cannot, at this point in my life, imagine wanting to do anything else with my life. So take that as a given.

( Top three awesome things about being a librarian )

( Top three non-awesome things about being a librarian )

This question comes at a weird time for me, because that last point has recently manifested itself quite forcefully at my place of work: book budget cuts, centralization of some services, and just this week a reduction in staff. So right at this moment, I'm not feeling too positive about my job. But my confidence that I've found the right line of work (and there is a difference) is unshaken. I'm proud of what I am, and what I am is a librarian.

30 Days of... Project! Complete list of questions / Ask a question on LJ or on DW.

It's the most craziest time of the year at my school, and then my social calendar got busy besides. In four days time, I had: three meetings, one portfolio show, one graduation, one staff lunch (which lasted almost four hours and involved a great deal of wine), two dinners out, two film festivals (one work-related, one not), and a fashion show.

Phew!

It's mostly fun stuff, mind you (except for the meetings), and I've been enjoying the days. But now I need a weekend to recover from my weekend, and instead I get three more days of meetings. Whee. However! These days o' meetings will be followed by two four-day weekends in a row, which should more than make up for it. Yay, flexible schedules over break.

Also this weekend, somehow, among all the social events, we found time to finish World of Goo and then finally start Portal. I've been wanting to play Portal since I found out it existed. We just finished Level 16 (robots arrrrrrgh), and so far it is every bit as awesome as I have heard. World of Goo was great, too; I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys puzzle games. Plus, it might just have the best music of any game I've ever played. And I don't say that lightly. I think the only other non-Final Fantasy game music I've been this taken with was Freedom Fighters, which I used to encourage T to play just so I could hear its awesome Russian choruses. But I digress... Portal: thumbs way up. Rumor has it that a sequel is on the way, which is pretty exciting -- so far, I suspect that my biggest complaint about the game is going to be that there wasn't enough of it.