Semester One Done

I've made it back to Seattle for the break and was hoping to share a few end-of-the-semester photos but my borrowed memory card reader is agonizingly slow, so until I return to Austin, here is an abridged version of the end of the semester/beginning of winter break:

Got a GRA position with Library Instruction Services (woot!)

Got elected to be a Co-Director of the UT chapter of ALA (double woot!)

Two A's, one B (now the pressure to get straight A's is off, yessss)

The first half of my twenties ends soon

Hockey is my new favorite sport

Happy Holidays!

Austin Style Thanksgiving!

Katie escaped Snowpacalypse Seattle 2010 to visit for the weekend in Austin.

Thanksgiving in Austin is not different from Thanksgiving most other places, save for a few things:

Eating on the porch. Outside.
I'm trying to think if I've ever spent a Thanksgiving away from the family, and I'm pretty sure I haven't. Anyway, I put together a small potluck for the few people that stuck around. I made korean tacos and The Thanksgiving, which is simply cranberry simple syrup and sparkling white wine (if you've seen Wayne's World recently, you'll know what I didn't say champagne). We also had mac and cheese, apple pie, squash soup, corn pudding and some potato wedges that cause a small fire in the oven (it's all good).

Football! Ok, that's normal Thanksgiving stuff, but...

A cow on the field is NOT.

I was right about the bad signs at the hexing rally, UT failed! No bowl for the Longhorns. Still, it was a fun game. I was high-fived by The World's Hardest High Fiver after the first touchdown, so minus the minor injury, the fans were jovial rather than scary. Katie and I learned all the chants and sign language that go with the game and got into it as well as we could considering it was 40 degrees out.

Tacos! This has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but Katie loves her Torchy's.

This is the last week of classes and I'm hanging on by a thread! So, back to work!

I Put A Spell On You

Hex Rally 2010

Every so often I have one of those moments where I think "Am I really here?" One of those moments was today at Hex Rally 2010.

You heard me right.

Every year, before the UT-A&M football game (which my lovely sister is taking me to on Thursday), there is a rally in West Campus that aims to curse the A&M team by lighting red candles and singing the UT anthem 3 times.

THESE ARE PEOPLE HEXING

And then this banner fell off the building. Bad sign.

Muahahahaha!


And then the World's Largest Texas Flag got caught in a balcony on its way down.
Did we curse the wrong team?

Here is football player Foswhitt Whittaker and some people I don't know. Pseudo-celebrity moment!

As cynical as I can be, I am actually very excited about the game! It is so crazy to think about where I was a year ago and where I am now. Being in a place with so many out-of-place occurrences, I often stop myself to reflect on this point in my life and where I'm going.

On another topic, look! My cabinet is full of FOOD!

Thanks, Mom and Dad! It feels good not going to bed hungry.

Sunday Reading

This article on hipsters made me laugh out loud:

"When we announced a public debate on hipsterism, I received e-mail messages both furious and plaintive. Normally inquisitive people protested that there could be no answer and no definition. Maybe hipsters didn’t exist! The responses were more impassioned than those we’d had in our discussions on health care, young conservatives and feminism. And perfectly blameless individuals began flagellating themselves: “Am I a hipster?”

So Many Things

Seeing how I've neglected this blog for over a month, let me give a brief update of my life during that month.

School

I have more projects due than weeks left. 8 hours of sleep is no longer an option.

I am running for Co-Director of the student chapter of the American Library Association. There are 8 nominees for 4 positions and the election is next week. I need to start on my smear campaigns once the nominees are announced.

Holiday breaks

Katie is coming in 11 days! Eep!

I will be back home on the 14th.

Halloween

There was Jack-O-Lantern carving

Rocky Horror
Lounging at the Spider House
Austin Film Festival
Feels like I just went to SIFF, but now it's Austin's turn. I made it obvious which ones I recommend so you don't have to indulge me in my film critic fantasies and read my amateur reviews:

Lunafest- short films "by, about and for women", which means they're hit or miss. Sadly, when some filmmakers "celebrate" women, they can't resist putting a vomit-inducing level of sentimentality in there. Shorts worth doing a YouTube search for: Getting A Grip about the first female cable car operator in San Francisco; Irene, about the director's grandmother's struggle with keeping her independence while suffering from Alzheimer's; Miracle Lady, a stop-animation about a widow and her immortal neighbor.

Blue Valentine- The first half was better than the second. It sort of just kept going. And going. Anyway, now I sort of understand why it got the NC-17 rating (not that I side with the FCC).

Under the Boardwalk- ADD THIS TO YOUR NETFLIX. This is a documentary about Monopoly. Yes, the game Mom calls Monotony. When the film started with the usual corporate product praise, I thought I had made a mistake. But after following the National and International Monopoly Championships, I got pulled in. I love freaks who own being freaks and the people who compete in Monopoly championships are so entertaining.

S&M Lawn Care- A low-budget film about a local lawn care company (that has nothing to do with S&M) that is faced with some stiff competition when a sexier lawn care company comes to town. I liked it, but I think it caters to a certain sense of humor, so I will not order you to add it to your Netflix.

Hello Lonesome- At first I didn't think I liked this film, but I keep thinking about it. It's about 6 pairs of lonely individuals who pair up in friendship, love and ambiguous-territory. I think what made me cold to it at first was that these people probably shouldn't have "normally" interacted in the ways that they did. That might have been the feeling the filmmakers were looking for.

Bloodworth- ADD THIS TO YOUR NETFLIX. Don't question me. And don't let the fact that Hilary Duff is in the film stop you.

Wasteland- ADD THIS TO YOUR NETFLIX. I missed this at SIFF last year and it got all kinds of praise. An artist visits the world's largest landfill to take portraits of the workers there and eventually collaborates with them on their own self-portraits.

Austin Beer Week
An unintentional complement to AFF was Austin Beer Week, happening during the same time. I sampled the home brews at Lovejoy's and there was unanimous agreement (between me, Emilia and Carin) that the Orange Wheat was the best. There was also a Pinot Gringo, which was a beer made with a wine grape. It wasn't bad. It was just weird.

Haircut

Bye!

Look at this

I hope to post another update sometime soon, but it's not going to happen today.
Watch this instead.

New Rule

Never have I taken seriously love advice from a women's fashion magazine, but my November issue of Glamour had a nugget of sound guidance on men:

"He has to know who Toni Morrison is. If I tell a guy she's my favorite author and he asks, 'Who's he?' he'll never hear from me again."

Thank you for the tip, Andrea from Baltimore.

This week's adventures

Littlefield Home, University of Texas

WTF is that doing on campus? Read about it here.

I'm pretty tired right now, so I probably won't write much, but I wanted to share some pictures.

Elizabet Ney musuem

Got a chance to visit with some fellow ISchoolers and it was as beautiful as it looks. Our guide was a bit of a Chatty Cathy, so in order to actually look at the museum, we had to sneak away in the middle of his talk. But he did have a lot of interesting things to say. One of the most memorable being that Ney's house has a door that goes out onto a flat roof because she liked to sleep outside in a tent every night. You have to go up a skinny little spiral staircase to get to the bedroom and the door looks like a bookcase.

The Vaselines at Emo's

OMG! I got to see The Vaselines again! Here is my flashless photo (which I think looks pretty cool here). They were amazing, no need to say more there.
One of the openers, Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard put on a good show, complete with short films. Although, their sound check was RIDICULOUS. They are obviously perfectionists because the audience was audibly groaning at hearing "can I get some more _____ in this monitor?" for the thirtieth time. There was a bit of residual annoyance when they finally started playing, but they won me over in the end, especially with the song Don't Get Upset, which was awkwardly relatable.

Ingrid Betancourt at the Texas Book Festival

I spent Saturday volunteering for the Book Festival and went on Sunday. I'm really excited to read Betancourt's book once I get my hands on it. She only spoke for 45 minutes and it was difficult to keep a dry eye.

The Austin Film Festival starts on Thursday and I bought a pass (no, I couldn't really afford it, but oh well), so I'll fill you in on that when it's over. Blue Valentine is playing on Friday, so I don't have to wait until December to see if it's worth the NC-17 rating.

October Update

First day of October at the Counter Cafe

I don't mean to rub it in any faces, but I'm finally experiencing my kind of weather!

And since I just finished my 5-week Intro class, Friday was the perfect day to spend some quality time with Heather in a canoe.

Turtles! I was surprised at all the fauna of the Colorado River.

But, life hasn't been all play. My lab class put up an exhibit on preserving collections.

And I learned how to dry-clean paper. Not as exciting as it sounds, but look at these results!

The lab instructor has a friend who does these drawings and then she dirties them up for us. When I walked into class last week, she was sitting at a table with her dirt and her paper. Apparently for one she had to go outside and rub it on a rusty pipe.

I think I can say I feel adjusted. Now that papers are coming back graded and I'm not completely failing everything, the grad school jitters have gone away. But I definitely prefer the boring days to the newsworthy ones.

I was also able to finish a couple of projects this week.

More deets on the craft blog, of course.
I guess that's it. Later!

Work and Play

This is the effervescent Savannah. Her name tag may say Elizabeth, but we'll get to that in a moment.

The New York Times ran this (undecided on my adjective) piece today, Anger As A Private Company Takes Over Libraries. Now I (and all of the people I've met in my program) decided to enter the Information field not only because we find information fascinating, but because we think it is a great equalizer, the cornerstone of democracy, because we want to make sure each individual gets the information they need to enrich their lives. Apparently, L.S.S.I. thinks information professionals get their Masters so that they can slack off for 35 years and retire.
Quotable quotes from Chief Exec Frank Pezzanite:
“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries, somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization."
I think that's the cornerstone of democracy thing. I'm sure Ben Franklin would think the public library a sacred organization.
“A lot of libraries are atrocious, their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”
I'm curious if Mr. Pezzanite has spoken to a single librarian in his life. Perhaps he should try that before alienating himself and his company with such an insulting statement.

So now I get to start my week off with that.

Here's some of the "nothing" going on in my life:
Heather and I went to a volunteer session at the Inside Books Project, a local organization that provides reading material to prisoners in Texas. It was extremely rewarding, volunteers get to open the letters and choose the materials from the donated library. If you have any books, magazines, pamphlets, anything, it's a great place to donate them.

My semester seems to be a bit bimodal in terms of assignments due and I've hit the dip (you should know what bimodal means if you have taken statistics in recent memory), but indolent I will not be. I'm starting my volunteer work at the Austin Public Library on Saturday and I will be a reader for a student at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired this semester. Also, I'm not part of the event coordination team for ASIS&T. Me and technology? Who knew? The Texas Book Festival is in October, too and I'm signed up to help out with that.

Considering the trillion-hour work weeks I've been putting in, a girl can't work too much without some play. Some unofficial extracurricular activities my ISchool crew has been up to:
Alamo Drafthouse for a 90's alternative singalong
Crashing a ten-year high school reunion at The Belmont (see photo above). Full bar, catered, and Savannah walked away with a cute guy's number
Cutting in line and not paying cover at Molotov Lounge. Like Savannah says "all you have to do is act like your shit don't stink and people will believe it"

Some of you may have heard the UT lost the game against UCLA on Saturday. Helen and I were driving down The Drag post game, and it was a sea of depressed, burnt orange people.
Apparently a losing game is not a game worth going to.

Here is a video of some unicycle football going on at the end of my street last week. I'm still learning to love Austin and its weirdness.

I Should Really Be Studying

Inks Lake, Burnet, TX

I probably shouldn't be writing this. I have 5 readings, a literature review, an essay to start and some statistics problems to do. Bring a graduate student is a bit like being a Postulant Nun, trying to avoid things that aren't studying, feeling guilty when I allow myself free time and going to bed thinking of all the ways I could have worked harder and done better.

Like anticipated, it's gotten pretty crazy.

But I won't bore you with that. Here are a couple of sins of graduate school I've succumbed to:

A day trip. Over Labor Day, a few of us drove about an hour outside of Austin to visit Inks Lake. We visited two beaches there, swam, studied and jumped off of rocks (ok, we only did one jump, that was plenty).
Also we were amused by this sign. Did someone bring alcoholic beverages simply for display?

All that swimming made us hungry and we stopped by Phil's Icehouse for dinner, where you get mixed regular and sweet potato fries with your burger. I ask for that all the time at restaurants and no one will do it! Phil, I love you.

A Librarian Party in which guests dress up as their favorite librarian stereotypes and watch Parker Posey answer her Librarian Calling in Party Girl.

Meagan couldn't stay, but looked cute enough to be deserving of a portrait.Meg showed off her baking skills once again since we were also celebrating Helen's birthday.

I invented a cocktail for the event called The Librarian. Be sure to give your favorite bartender the recipe.

The Librarian

Put a few ice cubes in a highball, add:

One shot gin

Juice of one lemon

Splash of Strawberry Simple Syrup*

Fill to top with ginger ale and stir (librarians wouldn't do something as obnoxious as shaking)

*Strawberry simple syrup: Mix together 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 4 sliced strawberries in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 10-15 minutes. Cool and strain. Simple syrup recipe from Blue Jean Gourmet. This will leave you with plenty of syrup to make a few Librarians and a few Strawberry Basil Margaritas.

I was also witness to an Act of God. You also may have heard of a little Tropical Storm Hermine.

It went swimmingly (heh heh...couldn't help myself)

Tuesday was the worst and I could have stayed inside all day seeing how I had no classes, but I have my duties decided to brave the torrential downpour to visit the Book Lab and the library for some studying. I'm used to rain, right? Good Lord, not that kind of rain. There were plenty of people on campus still in sandals and without umbrellas, their T-shirts matted to their bodies. Perhaps they didn't get the news? Maybe they don't own umbrellas? I offered my umbrella to a poor girl at my bus stop who had an about-to-disintegrate newspaper over her head. I mentioned that I'm from Seattle and she asked "So it probably rains like this all the time up there, right?" No one understands Seattle.Meagan spotted this rubbery looking demon on our porch the day after the storm and urged me to blog about it. We've already been having a roach problem, so I was worried the storm would make a bunch of bugs seek shelter, but luckily our porch was enough for this guy. I would lose my appetite for days if I saw this thing crawling around.

I must go now as I need to go pray to Nancy Pearl and ask for forgiveness for avoiding the preliminary research I need to do for my Library Anxiety project.

High of 85 today

And I feel fine

What is happening to me?

Meat pile from the new graduate student welcome BBQ

The last week has felt like an eternity and yet every day feels like a fleeting moment.

I've been to all my classes once and feel pretty good about all of them, but still feel weird about only meeting once per week.

But, let's back up.

Ever since orientation I've been meeting a ton of people. Good thing I am freakishly good with names.

Here you see Carin, Meg, Helen and Catherine. Meg is the cake artist.

ISchool students seem to come from every background. I've met history majors, three music majors/opera singers, biology majors, art majors, engineering majors, you name it, Information's got it.

The last week has been mainly focused on scoping out the student groups. I'm an official member of the Student Association of the School of Information (that's not optional, but I'm still happy to be a part of it) and the Society for American Archivists. I didn't intend to go into archives, but the archives stuff here is well, the best in the country, so I should give it a shot. I went to an Artex meeting today, which is the group that meshes the arts with information. Tomorrow I'm going to an ALA thing so who knows? I might be a member of another group. My gut is telling me to choose one or two and be more involved than doing a little bit in all of the groups, but I seem to be a Jack of All Trades by nature.

Not school related: Hot Sauce Festival! Whyyyyy do they have it in August???? And at 11AM? I remember the hot sauce being good, but I was too distracted with the buckets of sweat dripping out of every pore in my body. Every pore.

Much more pleasant: Austin Symphony's free Concerts in the Park. In the evenings. It was the last weekend for this unfortunately. I got a group together and we brought picnic food and some wine and chatted as the sun set.

Things I have made:
Back to school. My official schedule with a thought on each class:

Monday: Organizing Information

I feel like this class is going to be interesting, but I'm disappointed that it's 40+ people.

Wednesday: Intro to Research

Probably going to be my more challenging class.

Thursday: Lab Techniques

Got in! This is more what I'm looking for vs. Intro to Preservation, I think. More hands-on. We get to make the enclosures and learn about how materials affect the books. Intro to Pres seems to be more about managing a Preservation program, which is beyond the scope I'm currently interested in.

Friday: Intro to Information

Five weeks. One credit. No big deal.

Anyway, I have work to do. Expect my future posts to be more sporadic and unorganized. Such as this one.