Michael and I are back from Toronto. We had a pretty good conference all told, though the placement center was disappointingly small and I did not find a job. Or even a good job to apply for, for that matter. I did get my resume critiqued, though, as well as some ideas from the session about alternative careers for MLIS holders. I have seen more postings coming up on the CLA and FIS sites, so hopefully it will not be too long before something comes up.

Overall the conference was hectic but good. I got to see quite a few people from library school days, and some of the speakers were really good. There were some big names for the opening/closing/president's program sessions, including Gloria Steinem, Rex Murphy, Ralph Nader, and Naomi Klein. The last two in particular were especially interesting; I'm reading Naomi Klein's book, No Logo, right now. I hoped to see one of my favorite authors, Charles de Lint, too, but I missed him! He was only there for part of one day, and I visited Tor/Forge's booth the day after. Oh well...

On the whole, we seemed to hit the ground running on Friday night and hardly pause for breath until we got back on the plane to go home. Besides the big talks, I attended sessions on publishing, intellectual freedom, reference service, and library history. We had a day and a half after the conference ended for sightseeing, which we spent exploring downtown Toronto. We visited the St Laurence Market, and had a facinating tour of the CBC buildings--we saw the reference library as well as the radio and television studios, including the set of The National. Michael visited the Hockey Hall of Fame and picked up a couple of souvenirs. We were thinking of taking a day tour to Niagara Falls, too, but we had to leave that for next visit.

It was great to be able to get around on foot again--I haven't walked so much in a long time! It was also refreshing to be back in a city that takes recycling and public transport seriously. Hard for us both to face coming back to Ft Lauderdale, really.

Just a quick note to say that after a very uneventful flight, Michael and I are in TO safe and sound. We got in too late to register for the conference today, so we've pretty much just been wandering around downtown Toronto, orienting ourselves with directions to the hostel, the conference sites, etc. Plus we went to a really good Greek restaurant for dinner.

Already we are finding that the climate change makes us both feel more energetic and much more at home. No sweltering heat...no disgusting humidity levels...ahhh...

Anyway, hopefully I'll find the time to post a couple more times while we're here. Send some good jobfair vibes if you can, please! :)

Well, after writing my first, very amateur, review for my movie page, I can see that it's not all that easy to do well. I hope you'll all bear with me as I figure out how to create a good one!

An interesting story on msnbc today about the changes the war has made in the life of an Iraqi bellydancer. Having read about the proclivities of Uday Hussein, I have to say I don't envy her her gigs at his parties, no matter how many times she says he's a nice guy...

Noted on lisnews.com: The Guardian reports on a monastic book theif.

Two more days to Toronto! I'm getting excited about the trip, and nervous about the job fair. I don't like to pin all my hopes on one event, but at the same time I really hope that I find at least a lead or two while I'm there. Don't know if I will be able to find the time or the hardware to update the blog while I'm at the conference, so there may not be much added here until after I get back.

In other news, I plan to add some more content to this site. As you can see from the top navigation bar, you will soon be able to read reviews of books I've read and movies I've watched. I've noticed this is a common feature of other blogs, so I thought I'd join the crowd, so to speak.

Addendum for today: Take that!, Tim LaHaye!

A depressing theme to my news this morning. I heard an interview with the author of Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan on NPR's Morning Edition on the way to work. Norma Khouri used to live in Jordan, and she had a close friend who fell in love with a Christian man. The friend dated the man in secret, and when her father found out, he killed her for shaming their family. Apparently, Khouri herself had to run away from Jordan, as she was in danger of being murdered by her own family for helping the couple meet in private. Then, while looking at the daily news on the desk, I ran across this story on CNN about an Egyptian woman who, fearing her husband would make good on his threat to kill her if she had another baby girl, drowned herself after giving birth to a daughter. The sad thing is, while I don't know all that much about Islam, even I know enough to know that many of these supposedly religiously-based actions and attitudes are actually neither proscribed nor endorsed by the Koran. So before one even gets to addressing the possibilities for equal treatment of women within Islam, one has to disentangle what is actually Islamic from a whole host of violently misogynistic tribal beliefs and practices that the leaders of these cultures simply do not want to give up. All in the name of "resisting Western influence."

But is equal treatment for women really only a "western" value? (I'll leave the question of the true state of Western women's equality and safety within their culture for another time.) Would allowing women to be people rather than chattel really be un-Islamic? Did Mohammad want women to be treated like children, or be secluded within the house for their entire lives, seeing so little sunlight and getting so little physical activity that their bones get soft and their health suffers terribly? Are Eastern values really about women getting mutilated by their mothers, beaten by their fathers and brothers, and killed by their husbands?

I don't know. It's just sad to see a culture that has so many beautiful aspects and such an interesting history enshrine and normalize such terrible practices.

You can't see it from your end, but Blogger has a new user interface, LoFi. And honestly, I liked the old one a lot better! They say I'll be able to override the automatic redirection to this application soon...the sooner the better, I say.

I got a call from the director of Sweeney Todd this weekend ... offering me a role in the chorus. I turned it down. I would have had to make major adjustments to my work schedule, and taken focus away from dancing and jobhunting, and it's not worth it just for another chance to be The Tall One Standing In The Back Hitting The High Notes. I had enough of the window-dressing-for-the-divas routine in Edmonton Musical Theatre, thank you very much.

I read the latest about the latest cuts to funding for upgrades to my old High School in the Edmonton Journal today. Vic was supposed to be the "Julliard of the North," but I don't know if it will make it at this rate.

Did you know that Canada has one of the highest UFO sightings rates per capita? Delve into the weirdness with the CBC's Special Report

And, in the Only In Alberta department... Darlene Heatherington and UN investigations of Provincial labour laws.

Here's some more Friday five

1. Learn survival skills and go hole up in a remote area and live off the land for a year or two.
2. I try to be honest but tactful. I won't say I like it if I don't, but I won't be mean if I can help it either.
3. Yes. What happened? We're no longer friends.
4. I would probably live in Charles de Lint's Newford. Or Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar. Because I want the magic, eh.
5. Natural self-discipline and the ability to be un-selfconcious.

No word yet on the Sweeney Todd results. I believe they're making decisions tomorrow...

The SARS situation in Toronto is still iffy. Here's the latest from The Globe and Mail. So far they've managed to avoid another travel advisory, and things may be improving, so I hope there will not be any impediments to my trip to CLA/ALA next week. Though I'm more worried about things like the possibility of the conference being cancelled than catching the thing.

I went to a full moon drumming and dancing circle on Pompano Beach last night. A friend from my dance class helped organize it; they used to go to one in Ft Lauderdale but wanted to create a gathering with a more Middle Eastern/bellydancing theme. It was pretty fun, though I was somehow not prepared for all the tourists/bystanders/gawkers, which made me a little uncomfortable. I'm not that great a dancer yet, especially when improvising, and so I don't like lots of strangers watching me when I'm dancing. Some of them were even taking photos ... without permission I might add. At least as far as I know. I guess after blowing my audition, and then going to dance class the next day and feeling like I blew the make-an-entrance-in-front-of-everyone-while-dancing-and-playing-your-zills exercise, I'm a little more self-conscious at the moment.

There haven't been many links here lately, I know....for now, why not take a look at the photos from the Bellydancer of the Year competition.

Well, I feel like I totally blew my Sweeney Todd audition last night...as usual. As I mentioned before, auditions are never good for me. My voice never sounds right (even if it sounds okay, it never sounds right), and I get nervous so I always end up acting like a total idiot. Unfortunately, they've yet to create an audition process where you can explain that you perform well but always choke on the tryouts, so I guess I'm stuck.

Like the Broward on Broadway auditions, this group has you sing in front of every one else who's there to try out, plus they allow onlookers and people who are auditioning on other nights to attend. So on top of everything else you have an audience for your decent into hell. I sang second. I did...okay, and they asked me to stay back to sing some stuff from the show later. Then when they called me again, I swear the accompianist played the song twice as slow as he did for anyone else. I got off to a bad start, as far as tone quality goes, and didn't recover, and then was stupid enough to interrupt myself partway through because I thought I might have gone off key (I hadn't). When I asked if they wanted me to contine they of course said no. To complete my humiliation, someone literally half my age auditioned for the same role last night, and did an absolutely stunning job, so I got to see her perform perfectly (in the correct tempo) and hear the audition panel murmer things about how perfect she was.

Not that getting a part in this show is the be-all and end-all of my life right now. I went into it knowing that there was a good chance I would not get cast, and considering the stories I've heard about the politics of the group it was completely possible that either I would not get a part no matter how well I did, or that even if I did the experience would not be as positive as the one I had with Forum. I just wish that I'd done well so that I could have been proud of my performance and that, one way or the other, they were evaluating me on what I really could do. As it is I feel like I came across as hopelessly amateur.

Oh well. Boring self-castigation over.

Here's along, but interesting article on the image of librarians.

Feels like I haven't updated this blog for a while...three day weekends will do that to you I suppose! Plus there hasn't been a heck of a lot of interest going on here. So what can you do.

A little late, as I was off on Friday, but here's my answers to the Friday Five:

1. Truly? Only once.
2. He's himself, most of all, and he's still here despite the numerous obstacles life threw in our way.
3. The ability to change and grow along with you. The ability to love you for who you are instead of who they want you to be. The ability to face the fear and do it anyway.
4. Unfortunately, I probably have.
5. That it's a never-ending process of learning and discovery. Like the rest of life, I guess.

A report on NPR's This American Life led me to the web site for Found Magazine, a publication based on found photos, notes, etc. that run the gamut from sad to hilarious.

Other news down here: I registered for a Middle Eastern Dance master class by Anahid Sofian next month. It's going to cover Chifitelli/2/4 rhythms and Classical Veilwork. I'm glad that one of these events is finally going to be happening at a time when I can actually attend, and I'm really looking forward to it. I also went dance shopping this weekend and bought some new, better-sounding zills, and found that another studio near my house has classes on Thursday mornings, so I may try those once my time with Mariem is up next week.

Finally, I have an audition with the Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts tomorrow for their fall production of Sweeney Todd. Finally chose a song to sing for it, but I haven't had much time to practice, so I'm pretty nervous. Who am I kidding here--I hate auditions and I would feel nervous regardless of how prepared I was! Well, we'll see how it goes...stay tuned and I'll keep you posted!

I'm a little sleepy this morning, after attending the Forum DVD release party last night. We got together in a warehouse/playroom in Ft. Lauderdale, which gave us the opportunity to watch the everything on a huge wide-screen projector. The editors did a great job with the opening and closing credits, and the recording of the show itself turned out really well. It's strange--there was so much stuff going on onstage that I'd never seen before that at times it was like watching an entirely new show! That's what happens when you spend so much time in Senex' house waiting for "martial law," I suppose... Anyway, we all had a good time and I have a copy for posterity now.

Not much else happening here lately except for more rain. I heard a report on NPR last night that suggested there was a very good chance of a hurricane hitting land this season, either in Florida or the Gulf. Needless to say this does not make me happy, though I am glad that I don't live closer to the beach!

It looks like the second wave of SARS in Toronto may be on the wane, finally, at least according to canada.com and the Toronto Sun. Not that that's stopped my employers from banning official travel there anyway. But, I'm going to attend CLA regardless. I want a Canadian job too much to consider not going if at all possible!

Just realized I forgot to answer the Friday Five last week. And, the questions are actually quite a bit harder this time. But, I'll take a stab at it...

1. I most want to be remembered for: making the right choices even if they're not conventional or popular. Fulfilling my potential in at least one arena. Being a person of integrity and honor.
2. Quotation that sums up my outlook on life: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
3. Achievement most proud of in the past year: managing to face up to a difficult personal mistake.
4. Achievement most proud of in the past 10 years: graduating with my MLIS and getting published, surviving the various situations being in South Florida has thrown at me.
5. Advice: Be brave enough to be true to yourself no matter what other people may think.

Happy Anniversary, Queen Elizabeth.

Want some fun? Go visit Library Girl!

Or, if you're in the mood to be depressed, here's a NY Times article on the ongoing plunder of Iraq's archaeological artifacts. Despite everything, a global market still exists. Which begs the question: who's worse--the one who sells, or the one who buys?