Graduation

Published on April 20, 2012 in family and grad school. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .
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So, almost a year ago I said I’d start doing more blog posts and … nothing. I didn’t do it. Sorry. One of the biggest events in my life the past year was my graduation on June 9, 2011, from the University of Washington’s Master of Library and Information Science program (or, using acronyms, I received an MLIS degree from UW). So I’m a real, live librarian. Sort of. I have the piece of paper, but it hasn’t magically transformed into a job yet. Anyone out there want to hire a smart, hardworking librarian?

The unemployment deal has been pretty discouraging, but back to graduation: My mom and dad came to celebrate with me and spend a few days in Seattle. It was lovely.

Clarification

Published on September 6, 2011 in shenanigans and travel. 1 Comment Tags: .

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Meg wanted me to make it clear that we’re not spending all our vacation at the Rodeway mentioned in the previous post. So here’s the view from the Oceanside, Ore., condo she rented for a couple of nights — a huge improvement, right? The beach is fabulous, and we are planning a Tillamook cheese curd run this afternoon. It’s not the worst vacation ever, just to be clear.

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What you pay for

Published on September 5, 2011 in shenanigans. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Meg took a couple of days off immediately following Labor Day, so we decided to head for the Oregon coast for some r&r (not that an unemployed library school grad needs much more than a good book for that). Anyway, we decided to head out after church and stay in Portland for one night to cut down on travel time Monday. Since Meg brought her doggies along, we needed a pet-friendly hotel — preferably a cheap one. Meg found one online and reserved it, so we were all set. I don’t think the picture does the place justice, as you can’t tell that our room window is 10 feet from a strip club. Across the street there were two day cares, a booze shop and an off-track betting joint. Oh, and a really creepy guy met us at the entrance and tried to get extra friendly with Meg. I guess that’s what we get.

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Catching up

Published on June 27, 2011 in uncategorized. 3 Comments Tags: .

I’ve neglected my blog for quite a while, so I have some catching up to do. Now that I’m done with grad school and cousins camp, I’ll start doing some back-dated posts.

Run-in with a raccoon

Published on December 18, 2010 in shenanigans and travel. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Usually I fly home to visit my family during the holidays, but because I’m going to be spending a few months with my parents, I decided to drive down so I could take more stuff and have my own car while I’m there. I left Seattle at about 1 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, and things went well for the first nine hours or so. There was a little bit of ice on the road outside La Grande, Oregon, but nothing too scary. I got to Boise around 10 p.m. and was feeling pretty alert, so I decided to drive a little farther.

Just outside of Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho, I saw a huge raccoon in the road. I swerved to go behind it, but the critter turned around and ran right in front of my car. THUNK! THUNKETY THUNK THUNK! Continue reading ‘Run-in with a raccoon’

Storytelling

Published on December 7, 2010 in family and grad school. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

One of the assignments for my storytelling class was to record two times that I told stories to a group. A few of my recordings didn’t turn out very well because of audio issues, so I got the chance to tell even more stories to members of my family. It was fun! Here are two videos that actually worked out.

Rainy Day

Woodcutter

STOMP the library

Published on October 28, 2010 in libraries and observations. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Isn’t Seattle Public Library awesome?

Biking way more than necessary

Published on September 11, 2010 in biking, shenanigans and travel. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

This weekend was entirely free — no lectures, no transferring to different hotels, no suggested day trips, etc. — so I spent a couple of days exploring the area surrounding Rotterdam. Since I traveled mostly by train yesterday, today was a day for biking. The late summer weather was lovely, so it was a perfect day for it.

Poppy bought a bike in Hoenderloo (near Hoge Veluwe) and rode it back to Rotterdam last weekend, so she had the wheels to join Molly, Jonathan and me on an easy ride to Den Haag by way of Delft. Continue reading ‘Biking way more than necessary’

Utrecht

Published on September 10, 2010 in shenanigans and travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Trent left this weekend free for self-directed exploration, so a lot of people from the group here decided to go to Brugge, Belgium. A few of us stayed in Rotterdam to explore the surrounding area, though, and I am one of them. Today was kind of rainy, so I ditched my bike in favor of the train and went to Utrecht with Poppy and Jonathan. Trent has told us it is one of his favorite cities, and we could see why. The city isn’t too big, but there are a lot of interesting things to see and do. We actually ran out of time, so I’ll have to go back someday.

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is to climb towers, so I was delighted to discover that the tallest tower in the Netherlands is the Domtoren in Utrecht. Continue reading ‘Utrecht’

National Library of the Netherlands

Published on September 6, 2010 in libraries and travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

After lecture today we took the Metro to The Hague to tour the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands. It has more than 3.5 million items in its collection and adds more every day because it is required to keep a copy of every print item published in the Netherlands. It was very cool seeing the seemingly endless rows of books in the archive (there are more than 50 kilometers of books). Anyone can browse the library’s catalog, but it costs €15 annually for a library card that allows you to check out items.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about that €15 fee for a library card. Yes, libraries — especially archival libraries such as the National Library — are expensive to operate and maintain. And €15 a year is really cheap. However, the idea of limiting access with even so modest a fee kind of sticks. I’d really like for the National Library to be free. At least it’s free to look at the super-cool old books in the exhibition hall of the library.