AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

O-kay, people!

< rant >

What part of the "Microsoft Office and Research only" and "no games allowed in the Lab" signs don't you understand??? You're using a computer, so I know you can read. Or did you blank out, selectively, on that skill?

Oh, and how about that cell phone? How many times have I and my staff told you, personally, that we don't allow cell phones in the lab? Did you think the rules changed today? Just for you?

WELL, YOU'RE WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!

Use this equipment for what it's meant for, or get the **** out. The library is not your personal video arcade. You do not have a constitutional right to view the Yahoo! personals or visit an AOL chat room. And while you are sitting there, taking up one of the few computers in our building that actually have more than general internet access, people who might actually be wanting to use the library for the purpose it was designed for are wandering around, futilely trying to find a machine to access the library catalogue from.

And you know, I hate being the Dragon Lady, or That Bitch Librarian Who Kicks Us Off The Computers, or whatever it is the charter high school kids are calling me now behind my back. I really don't want to develop such an adversarial relationship with these students, and/or convince them that the library is not a good place to be. But, you know, sometimes I want to call the parents of these "little darlings," the men and women that are so proud of their children, who studiously spend 3 hours at the library after school each day, and tell them what the little pissants are actually up to.

Hint: it's not schoolwork.

< /rant >

Hey, it's my birthday today!

Finally into a new week after an incredibly busy stretch. I worked all last weekend, then got on the road after work Monday to attend a conference Tuesday and Wednesday, back to work Thursday and Friday, plus performing at the Sawadee Friday and Saturday and trying to get into the studio earlier in the week. Whew! Of course, my one day off was spent housecleaning...but at least my apartment is now dirt-free!

Had an interesting time at the restaurant this Friday--there was a table made up of 2 young teenage boys (about 14) along with the mother of one of them, who had come specifically to see me. All righty. Let's just say the guys, um, really enjoyed my performance. It was pretty funny actually, what with all the comments and the shifting of chairs as I went by and the other antics. I was tempted to go up to them afterwards, and tell them I was old enough to be their mother and a librarian to boot, but I thought, nah, why bring cold hard reality crashing down on them? And they were nice enough to leave a tip, so...

Well, I finally finished Broward County's Positive Start Supervisory Development Series training. Let's see. In the past three months, I have learned:

• the four step communication process
• the six major communication components
• the eight steps of feedback planning
• the seven stages of staffing procedure
• the four steps of interview preparation
• the three-step change process
• the ten steps of delegating
• the three steps of performance planning
• the five-step ADA accomodation process
• the seven steps to creative problem solving
• the five step process for managing conflict constructively
• the five steps to progressive discipline
• the nine steps for avoiding litigation landmines
• the four-step civil service grievance process
• the three step motivation process
• the five steps of coaching
• the four stages of team development, and....
• the four strategies for building a work team

Gee, I wonder how I managed to live life all this time without knowing all these steps, stages, strategies, processes, and components. I feel so ... enlightened ...

Really, I can hardly stand it.

Scary news from a fellow TN-carrying coworker today--she heard a story about someone (out-of-county) who got denied a TN reapplication because an INS agent told him "he could not be on TN status with the same company for more than four years." Needless to say this is the first time I've heard of this so-called rule that I cannot find mention of in the NAFTA agreement or the U.S. government's web site. But, seeing as I am at the 3.5 year point with Broward County, with no immediate prospects lined up, I'm not to happy to hear about this situation/misinterpretation/whatever it may be. Of course, I expected many things to go differently when I came down, and I didn't really anticipate staying with this employer on this status for so long. But since my faith in my Division and the County to deal with this properly, or get the correct information, is extremely low to nonexistant, I'm not reassured.

Rob, Bill and I finished our second track, and are partway through our third. Which means Rob will be taking our stuff around to the label soon, seeing if they are interested. ack! Trying to let go of expectations, here, and accept that even if we do get signed immigration/work permit legalities may get in the way of me being associated with the final product. See above. Anyway, I'm pretty psyched about how good the music is sounding, and I'm really enjoying the recording process, so I'm doing my best to just stay in the moment and get everything from it that I can.

Michael and I are off to Daytona tonight for the Florida Library Association Annual conference. I had not planned on going, but it was decided that the committee I'm chairing should meet even though I don't get the leadership training that will give me the info I need to answer anyone's questions till April. Not that I am stressed about this ... oh no .... not that everyone on the committee has more experience and knowledge than me ... nope ...

Strange days....

There was an attack in Cameron Library at the U of A last week. I used to work in this building, and it's weird to think of something like a stabbing going on in a place I used to be in every day.

In addition, one of my coworkers here was assaulted, seemingly at random, and beaten so badly he needed stitches in his inner and outer lip. I think his face is still so swollen that they still don't know whether his nose was broken, and both his eyes are black. A more unlikely person for this to happen to you couldn't imagine--this guy is a thoughtful, gentle, considerate person who always is looking out for others. Yet someone felt the need to literally punch his face in.

Kind of depressing. Especially on top of the fact that all my friends seem to be going through emotionally difficult times, as well. Maybe it's something in the water?

Did my solo at our student performance party a little over a week ago. People I knew actually came this time, which was a change! I did a three part routine, starting with veil, then moving to a faster section, then a Saiidi section with a cane. My guests said that they thought it was really good, but I couldn't help but be disappointed. I still feel like I am flailing around throwing a bunch of random moves on top of the music, rather than using the dance to express the music. But I suppose that will come with time. I'm doing more gigs at the restaurant this month, and I said I would perform at the studio's biannual recital, too, so I have to try to come up with something for that. Somehow this seems to be taking over a large part of my life...but somehow I don't mind :)

You should look at this site. And this one. And this one too. They are all hilarious! (thanks to bhuz and randy)

Edited 22 March 2004 to update dead canada.com link...

Well, once again it's been a long time since I last posted. I'm still busy, obviously, at home and at work. My supervisor has been out sick for three weeks, so in the interim I am pretty much the acting department head. Which wouldn't be so hard, except that my supervisor has been pretty resistant to the idea of actually training me, his assistant supervisor, in any of the things he actually does. So, I've spent the time shepherding the lab through an equipment upgrade, writing evaluations, and frantically trying to figure out exactly how the Reference Department statistics that get reported to the State Library are calculated. Whew! I hear that once the guy actually gets back he's decided to let go of the need to do everything himself and start training and delegating. If he stays away much longer he won't need to because I'll have figured it out by trial and (much) error first!

In bellydance news, I found myself very glad that I had come across the costume I mentioned below last weekend, because I was offered an opportunity to do a gig at a restaurant on Saturday night! My teacher knows a local restaurant owner who used to take classes with her. The woman decided that she would like to give other students the chance to get some performing experience by inviting them to do shows at her restaurant. Needless to say I did not really feel like I was ready for this, but Myriam assured me that she was not expecting professional-quality dancing from us and that everything would be fine, so I went. I was pretty nervous the day before, but when we got there the place had slowed down for the evening and there were only 2 or 3 tables full besides Michael so I could kind of relax and try to enjoy myself. I did three sets of ten minutes each--which doesn't really sound so long until you get up there and try to do it and feel like you've run out of moves halfway!--with 2 costume changes. It probably wasn't the best dancing ever seen, but I had fun, the owner was happy, Michael said it was good, and apparently the customers said they enjoyed it too. I even ended up with a $5 tip in my gift basket. Neat!

Hopefully this will make the performance party solo tomorrow easier...though I'm still having visions of slipping up with the cane and accidentally throwing it at someone's head!

I have a rough cut of the instrumentals for the next song that my group is working on, but nothing finished as of yet.

So things are pretty good here. Which is good, because I'm happier, but not so good, because I'm busy enough to be distracted from the job hunting. It seems hard to find and maintain that equilibrium where you are at once actively seeking out things to make your life better where you are but still not losing focus on the eventual goal of leaving. And of course it seems like every time possibilities start popping up on the boards, opportunities/extra work/other distractions pop up here, too. I'm almost starting to wonder if there is not a message there, but I don't know for sure. And of course if I stayed here long enough the question would be moot, anyway, since sooner or later BCIS will decide my "temporary" status is not and kick me out.

Wow.

I don't know if I ever mentioned it on here, but I have a friend with a music studio in his spare room who's been working on some original compositions lately and wanted me to sing on some of his tracks. We've fooled around with it a bit, but nothing serious... Well, lately, this friend has hooked up with another musician/sound engineer friend of his, and they've been significantly revamping his stuff. I was over at their studio last night to rerecord vocals for the track I was originally involved in, and...wow. They took what was originally a fairly simple acoustic guitar-with-electronic-underchording arrangement and turned it into something reminiscent of Delerium, and it sounds amazing. Absolutely incredible. And my vocals are on it now, which I still have trouble believing! Anyway, this second guy apparently has a few label connections, and after we put together some more songs they are planning on shopping it around, hoping to get us signed somewhere.

Needless to say this is very weird for someone who had pretty much given up on the idea of getting anywhere past the occasional amateur side project to prevent her from going insane. Not that I'm walking around figuring that I'm a few hour's work away from a big-time contract that's going to make me rich and famous, but along with the fact that my bellydance teacher thinks I could have the potential to go professional in that area, too, it's almost making me rethink this whole giving up on the artistic career/selling out idea. Or at least giving consideration to reorganizing my priorities a bit. Doing this kind of thing in the U.S. would be difficult until/unless I got a green card, of course...but if nothing else it's nice to know that doors I thought were slammed shut may instead have cracked themselves back open and waited for me to notice.

In other news...amazingly, there are actually some jobs out there for me to apply for this week! Now I just have to find the time to put the applications together. I'm still suffering from the scattered focus I talked about last week, and it's getting really, really frustrating. Day after day I look back and find that nothing I wanted to do--whether personal or work-related--seems to have gotten done, even though I feel hectic and busy all the time. This is especially annoying because I was pretty successful last month in getting on track with planning and achieving some small steps towards some of my various goals. Now February seems in some ways to be one huge setback and time is slipping through my fingers before I can get hold of it. Maybe some sleep will help bring some clarity.

Finally, I am pleased to announce that I bought my first professional dance costume this week! My teacher knows a dancer who is moving to Tampa and selling many of her costumes, accessories, and music before she leaves, so she referred all of us students to her. I've been thinking of purchasing a bedlah (the embellished bra-and-belt set that makes up the foundation of many dance costumes), but I've been having trouble finding one that I like that is not too expensive. Needless to say, when I found that this woman had one lovely silver set left that fit me as if it was made for me, and was selling it complete with accessories for a ridiculously low price, I jumped at the chance to pick it up. Insert yet another promise to get photos up on the web as soon as I can get around to it >here<.

Whew. Life is strange. Add one or two new things to your schedule, and it seems to shake up your whole life. And you seem to have no time to do anything until the dust settles. February hasn't really been all that busy a month, objectively speaking, yet I am struggling--and sometimes failing--to squeeze in all the things I want to do or should be doing. Who knew that starting a yoga class and attending a meeting or two would make such a difference?

Well, I guess it doesn't help when the meeting is a weekend meeting, in a city that's over 4 hours away, and you have to drive up after working all day Friday. That was my first weekend this month. After a couple months of asking for information, not getting any, and starting to despair that I will ever figure out how to be the Chair of the FLA Continuing Education Committee, things finally started happening. One of which was that I was suddenly told I am also automatically a member of the 2005 Conference Planning Committee, and they have their first meeting in Tampa on the weekend, and gee, I know it's short notice, but couldn't you please come? Going was a good experience, but wow, that's a lot of driving. Added to the fact that since all the deadlines had passed for travel leave applications, and since I sure as heck wasn't using my vacation time, I had to manipulate my schedule to be able to go on personal time. So it went something like this: Friday: work 9-5. Hop in car. Drive 4.5 hours. Check into hotel. Fall asleep. Saturday: Wake up. Attend 5 hour meeting. Hop in car. Drive 4.5 hours home. Meet Michael at his place. Drive to downtown Hollywood to attend a drum/dance party for his drumming class. Sunday: Wake up with pounding headache (too many drums in too small a space for too long). Take Advil and relax a couple of hours. Shower and get made up and costumed for Harmonic Motion's monthly performance party. Drive to NE Ft. Lauderdale, attend event. Drive home. Shower and fall into bed. Monday: back at work. Not that it wasn't a good weekend, of course--it was. But I really could have done without all that driving....

Michael and I had a pretty good Valentine's Day. He had to work during the day, but we made a dinner date at a favorite restaurant in the evening so we had some quality time together at least. Sunday, we attended the Florida Renaissance Festival, where we walked through a maze, drank some mead, watched a demonstration about training and flying birds of prey, saw bits and pieces of some smaller shows and and did lots of shopping at the various vendor booths. Well...I did most of the shopping. But then, my goal this year was to spend lots of money, so I guess I achieved it! :)

And now I'm back at work. Sigh. Someday I'm going to get this getting-paid-for-not-working thing figured out. But until then....

This story has got to be the best thing coming out of the whole Janet Jackson/SuperBowl disaster....

Argh argh argh...still grumpy and getting tired of the bad mood. Don't ask me why--if I knew that, I could deal with it and be done. Instead, I seem caught in Blue Funk Limbo, irritable all the time with no good reason. Sigh...

Job boards are still empty of postings that can apply to my education and experience in any conceivable way. When is that projected job boom that I've been hearing about for five years now ever going to happen??? Am I really going to have to move back into my parents' basement and work retail to get back to Canada??

Maybe I should just stop this post right now, before I get sucked into a completely boring self-pitying rant...

Okay...long time no blog. Guess I've been a little distracted since coming back to SoFla. Sorry about that, all my legions of devoted readers breathlessly waiting for an update on my oh-so-fascinating life ... :)

You'll notice my comments have changed a bit ... found out the hard way that BlogSpeak is now defunct. At least as a free blog commenting service. It's been taken over by a different site, HaloScan. The good news is that they took over BlogSpeak's accounts and preserved the comments on our sites. The bad news is that the free service is a bit more limited style-wise, so I get the basic black-and-white rather than a customized display. At least, that's what it looks like at first glance ... still need to exolore the HaloScan site a bit and see what it's really like.

So, what's been going on here ...

I've had a hard time getting back into the swing of things at work since we got back. I'm experiencing a total lack of motivation to do anything useful, and though you'd think that would jumpstart my job search, I'm also dragging my heels on that. Not quite sure what's up with this--feeling renewed culture shock/alienation from my trip home or something?--but hoping to get out of the rut soon. Having to go through Broward County's mandatory three-month supervisory training program--Positive Start--is maybe, just maybe contributing to the cynicism. I'll spare you the details. I only wish I could extend myself the same courtesy.

I volunteered to do another solo for my dance class' monthly performance party in March. Of course, I did this before the instructor told us that future solos would have to be longer, incorporating three sections instead of two. Argh ... my dance friend Jamie and I are thinking of trying to put together a duet on our own, but we haven't had an opportunity to get together outside of class yet. Everytime we make plans we run into unforseen circumstances that force us to cancel.

In accordance with one of my New Year's resolutions, I started Iyengar classes at the Yoga Institute of Broward. So far it's going really well--I like the teacher a lot, and the poses are posing a fair challenge to my poor desk-job body. The first class I went to was packed full, but we have already seen a big drop in attendance, so hopefully it will continue to be smaller. I brought Michael yesterday, and he liked it, so he's going to rearrange his schedule so he can come regularly too.

You've probably already seen it, but this article is causing quite the stir within the library world. Just another example of routine idiocy. This commentary really says it all ...

Well, Saturday morning I drove to the Edmonton International Airport in minus 41 temperatures. Saturday night I drove back to Michael's place in plus 25 celsuis. Not too much of a discrepancy there....no, not at all...

Interesting time getting back actually. Our flight was cancelled, so we were rushed into an earlier plane that had been delayed 2 hours. Nothing like running through an airline terminal at 7 am with a ticket agent urging you to go go go!!!! now!!!! every step of the way to start your day. Then our second flight was also delayed. Amazingly, despite all this, we got into Miami on time.

Thank goodness we missed Operation U.S. Visit. My coworker has been caught in Customs for about a full day now as she tries to get back home from Colombia.

Whew. I think I'm reaching my holiday feasting limit. I feel like I'm not going to have to eat for about a month after I go home as it is, and I still have a couple of new year's parties to go to! Help! I'm going to need a plain, light diet for some time to recover this year, I think.... :)

Interesting to see my brother's band, Nothing At All, last night. He is a pretty charismatic performer--one of the more interesting people to watch in his band--and he really gets into the music. I don't listen much to the kind of hard-rock/"alternative"/whatever they're calling it now that he plays, so I'm probably not the best judge, but I thought they were really good. They have a female lead singer who reminded Michael and me a little bit of Gwen Stefani, which makes them stand out a bit in the male-dominated world of hard rock bands. They did a good job, and sounded really good despite the fact that I'm not sure the sound guy did them too many favors (guitars drowning out vocals in places, everything very very loud, etc.). They did ask him to change their levels more than once, but...what can you do. Probably the only thing more irritating than being a sound guy who keeps being told what to do by the band is being a performer who also knows how to do sound and not getting what you want for your show.

Anyway...there was a fair crowd of people there, and Patrick's band was really the only one that got them up moshing/"hardcore dancing"/again whatever they call it now/not that I'm feeling out of touch with youth culture, oh no. He seemed pretty happy when it was over. Hopefully this went well enough to compensate for the bad performance at their last gig. Patrick has been doing a lot of songwriting in the past year or two, and I hope that some of them make it onto their new album.

Strange to think that we'll be flying back to hell in a few days. I don't really feel like I've been here almost 10 days already. Not really looking forward to leaving winter and being back in SoFla, though it will be a bit of a relief to get back to my own apartment. I love my family but I'm not used to living with other people anymore! Plus the freedom of a vehicle is always a bonus.

Ahhh....minus 14 celcius, hoarfrost, and a light snow. I feel great!!!

trying to find some bellydancing shows to go to before we leave...unfortunately it looks like weekday shows at restaurants are sparse. I suppose that's really something I should have anticipated...we'll have to plan to go out the night before we leave, I guess.

Well, here I am in Edmonton, posting from my dad's computer. Dial up connections...whew...forgot how slow they can be! I'm trying to check my hotmail, and it's a sllloooowww process. I'll probably be done writing here before my inbox loads!

We've had a pretty good Christmas. The weather has been neither as cold nor as snowy as we'd hoped--it's only been a few degrees below zero--I haven't had to wear my winter coat once! We spent Christmas Eve on our own this year, instead of the usual visiting with cousins, and then had people over Christmas Day, instead of being on our own, which has made the holiday seem a little different and strange. Boxing Day we were out to see Michael's family, and I was out with friends yesterday. Today we're just hanging out at home. Michael is over, finishing the chess game he and my dad have been conducting over email for the past month or so. Nice to have time just to relax...I always anticipate visits here as being restful, but then between jet lag and running around trying to get to see all my friends enough before I go there's not much down time!

The thing I'm really excited about is going to see my brother's band play at the Sidetrack on Tuesday. They have been touring here and there, and they just got a grant to record a CD this year, which is cool. I've actually never really heard him play, past the annoying electric guitar practice when we were teenagers, so I'm really looking forward to seeing them, and i'm impressed they have a gig at what is a pretty major venue for local music here.

Woo hooo! Getting on a plane to go home tomorrow!! Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to get much done at work today.... :)

Michael and I had a pretty full weekend. We hosted our annual pre-Christmas get-together at my place Saturday night. Ergo, I spent all of Saturday catching up on my housecleaning, which has been sorely neglected this past week or two...it turned out to be a bit smaller of a gathering than we had originally anticipated, but we still had enough guests to make it feel like a party, and we also got to see some people that we hadn't got together with in a while, so it was all good. I made my family's traditional christmas apple cider--cinammon sticks, allspice, cloves, brown sugar, and sliced lemons and oranges simmered in apple juice and served with rum--which went over pretty well.

Sunday Michael and I exchanged Christmas gifts (only time we could devote to it before we left), and as usual, though he always complains that he isn't good at shopping for gifts, the things he got me were great! I have a new set of instructional bellydance DVDs to play with, as well as a couple of good CDs to dance around to. I got Michael a drum to learn to play Middle Eastern rhythms on, as well as an instructional CD, so we can do stuff together. He was also really happy with the tickets to the Panthers-Rangers game that I gave him. Hopefully Messier won't retire before March!

Of course, the big thing this weekend for me was that I made my solo improvised bellydance debut at the holiday performance party my teacher threw at the Chocolate Moose cafe. It went pretty well, I think, probably in part because I had so much else to do and think about this past few weeks that I didn't have much time to get nervous about it. I started out with a slow veil piece--which is my stronger suit, I think--and then a shorter faster section. I finally had a chance to use one of my newer silk veils! I also ended up kind of improvising a duet with one of my teacher's more advanced students for part of one of the open dances, which was neat--it's fun to have a partner to play off of just to see what happens. Of course, I did so much dancing that my back is a little sore today...but it was worth it! Michael took lots of photos--if I have a chance I'll scan some at my parents' over the holidays, and post some links for you.

t minus 4 days and counting...and boy do I need my coffee this morning. I didn't have time to make my usual thermosful before leaving for work today, and considering the amount of sleep I got last night I'm anticipating a day of grumpiness and caffeine withdrawal headaches. Times like this I really wish I could stomach the Folgers crap that is sitting in the workroom across the way. Unfortunately, the watery, bitter, acidic taste of canned coffee that's been sitting open in a cupboard for months (they buy in bulk) just doesn't sit well somehow.

one of my favorite retailers, despair.com, was featured on NPR this morning. Apparently, more people than just me can actually be motivated by demotivational merchandise. Who knew.

Weather has been "colder" in SoFla lately--going down into the 40s and 50s at night, with highs in the 60s during the day. Of course, at this point, that's not that much different than what's going on back home, which pisses me off to no end. I've been looking forward to winter for a couple months now, only to find that when I finally get back up north they're going to be in the middle of a thaw. grumblegrumblegrumble...

with apologies to T.M. Shine...

Typical day in my life this week:

• 4:00 am: neighbor's alarm goes off, dragging me from a deep sleep.
• 4:05 am: beep beep beep....
• 4:10 am: beep beep beep...
• 4:15 am: I'm outside, wandering through my apartment complex, looking for the alarm that has gone off for an hour every day at this time for a week, to the accompaniment of beep beep beep...
• 4:18 am: found the place. Of course no one is home. beep beep beep...
• 4:20 am: I'm back at the house searching for paper, pen and scotch tape. beep beep beep...
• 4:40 am: affix a note on the apartment door. Go home to the sound of beep beep beep...
• 5:00 am: beep beep be--...quiet. FINALLY.
• 5:30 am: still not asleep. Stomach is in queasy knots from tension and lack of sleep.
• 6:00 am: now the rest of the neigborhood starts getting up. beep beep be--. Car starting up. People talking outside my window. beep beep beep beep be--. There's a radio. There's a shower...
• 7:00 am: Well, there's the sunrise...
• 10:48 am: drag myself out of bed, after managing maybe 2 hours more sleep. I have a vague memory of being partially wakened by the phone, but there's no message so I disregard it.
• 11:30 am: phone rings. Again, I disregard it, figuring it's the usual telemarketer or wrong number.
• 12:05 pm: pick up the message from a half hour before. Surprise, it's the one call in a thousand that was actually for me. And both my calls this morning were from work. Guess who was supposed to come in early today? Oops.
• 1:00 pm - 6:45 pm: drag myself, exhausted, through a normal work day, which at this point essentially means babysitting teens after school until their parents deign to pick them up in the evening.
• 6:45 pm: taking a break on the balcony with my immediate supervisor, with whom I have a friendly work relationship. We're bitching about the ineffectiveness of a committee we have to work on.
• 6:46 pm: said supervisor's wife drives by in the parking lot and beckons him to come down. I return to my desk.
• 6:48 pm: said wife is now in my office space. "I want to tell you something, and you are going to listen. You are not going to speak to my husband again."
• 6:49 pm: Maybe you don't understand. I have to talk to him. He's my boss, and we have to work together.
• 6:49:30 pm: "but you are not going to talk to my husband again."
• 6:50 pm: whatever.
• 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm: learn waaaaay more about my supervisor's home life than I ever really wanted to know.
• 10:00 pm: get home, fall into bed, thinking about all the things I have to do but have no energy for. My house is a mess, my dance solo for Sunday unplanned, my Christmas party on Saturday night unprepared for, my sink is full of dishes...but I'm too tired to move.
• 10:30 pm: call Michael, who is still at work, and speculate about who smashed his car's rear window earlier in the week.
• 12 midnight: desperately tired but still can't sleep.
• 1 :00 am: ditto.
• 2:30 am: finally drift off.
• 4:00 am: beep beep beep...

oh well...

But here's the good news:

1. t minus six days and counting till I'm home in Edmonton.
2. Southwest Regional's Adopt-a-Family holiday project was a success. My co organizer and I collected over $400, and we were able to provide 2 toys from each child's wish list, new clothes for each of them, and gift certificates for the grocery store and Bath and Body Works (a store like the Body Shop) for the mother. We had a lot of fun collecting, shopping, and wrapping; hopefully the family will enjoy their gifts.
3. we're finally getting new security at work, to replace the old guy who was totally ineffectual and spent all his time reading the dictionary and compiling lists of people in the library he hated rather than keeping the kids in line.
4. I finally finished my Christmas shopping!
5. Did I mention I'm going home soon???

whew... life is getting busier over here! I'll update the review pages sometime...honest I will...

Breathing a bit easier this week, for the most part--I can get to sleep all right at least, except when my neighbors play their rap music till 4 am :( Anyway, being able to put the sinus medication away for a while is a relief.

My Christmas shopping is finally getting done...though a couple people are proving difficult and, as usual, I'm finding it easier to find gifts for myself than for them! I should just never go into SteinMart at all, I guess, even when I'm shopping for other people. It's the kind of place where you find something for a ridiculously low sale price, and bring it up to the register only to find there's an additional discount today, and, well, faced with such cool stuff, what else can you do? This week I found a sleek black lamb's leather jacket, regularly $290, and I only paid $100!! woo hoo! I've also been shopping for my library's adopted family, which has been fun. We managed to collect quite a lot of money for the project, so we should be able to do pretty well by them, I think.

Michael and I were at a hockey game last night...we usually go see the Oilers when they play, but this year they didn't come down so we had to settle for the Habs. I enjoy watching hockey live much more than on tv, but I must say that it seems like Canadian hockey teams are getting pretty depressing. Florida is not a good team at all, yet they seem to win just about every game against a Canadian team that we go to see. I mean, honestly, what kind of world is it when FLORIDA and DISNEY WORLD beat Canada at it's national sport???? And a WINTER sport at that??? Argh....

My other big news is that I got my hair cut this week. Those of you who've known me for any length of time will understand exactly how much of a loaded statement that is. I haven't been in a salon chair for over 2 years. It's not much different, just missing some split ends and cut in some long layers, but somehow it's still a big deal :)

Hey, that medicine you're taking? Odds are it doesn't work. And little did we know it, but while we were sleeping, some developing nations tried to convince the U.N. to take over the Internet. Isn't life fun?

Back to work this week after a relaxing Thanksgiving vacation. We spent most of the first two days on the beach at Naples and Marco Island, swimming, reading, and collecting seashells. Saturday was cooler--quite chilly for Florida, in fact--but we had already planned to spend that day shopping so we didn't mind. We managed to get a bit of our Christmas shopping done, and I don't think we thought about work once! What a relief! Now, if only I could have the hotel's hot tub in my backyard...

Been busy with holiday planning this week. I decided to volunteer to organize my library's participation in a County Holiday Project, so we arranged to adopt a family with four kids for Christmas. We get to provide each child with two presents, and we're going to include a Publix gift certificate for the mom as well. Morale has been a little low at work lately--we've been shortstaffed for a while now, as well as dealing with various policy changes and edicts that seem designed to make our work lives harder--so I thought that this project might be one way to raise people's spirits a bit as well as doing something good for the community.

Life has been harder on other fronts lately, as I'm still battling what now seems to be chronic sinus problems rather than allergies. Without decongestants, I can't breathe through my nose at all, and experience a lot of discomfort from sinus pressure/swelling as well. So, in the short term at least, I have a choice between dealing with constant unbearable symptoms, or drugging myself up with OTC products 24 hours a day. Boy is my doctor going to get an earful when I finally get to his office in January!