Master's in Public Administration

Mike is just a week away from completing his (2nd) master's degree, and I'm very proud of him. He's excelled in his classes, even while working full time as an advisor in student success services, and he received an award last week as the Outstanding Graduate in the MPA Program. Way to go, honey!

Graduation!

Yes, I'm a real librarian with a master's degree in Library and Information Science! The commencement ceremony was today and it was a beautiful, sunny day. Very exciting!

Michael has been the most supportive spouse through this whole degree program. He's simply the best!

I started the MS program with these three lovely ladies two years ago and we worked together for those two years at the Central Reference Desk. They're the best coworkers a person could ask for and I will truly miss them.

(Regalia was optional -- I didn't wear a cap and gown, but I really did graduate!)

So, I got the degree. I'll post about the J-O-B after I accept it tomorrow morning!

Just some random pics

I survived the first week of school -- I think it's going to be a good one. I'm taking two classes:

• Instruction and Assistance Systems: How to teach people to do research and use the library
  
• Cataloging and Classification I: How information is organized (Mostly how books are organized in the library -- it's more complicated than you might think. Sort of like learning a new language, or like music theory, or algebra. Lots of rules . . . )
  

And I'm doing a practicum for credit at the Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences library this semester, working at their reference desk 8 hours a week and preparing library guides for students in the various majors that the library serves.

My parents always used to take pictures of us on the first day of school and my mom requested one for this year (maybe my last year of school as a full-time student!), so here's my first day of class.

Also, Mike and I made a very delicious Thai Chicken Pizza last Sunday with a new crust recipe (thanks, Erica) and it turned out beautifully.

And here's a random shot of the compact shelving on the 5West deck of the main stacks in the library where I work:
Books, books, and books as far as the eye can see. I think this is what heaven will be like, except not so dark, musty and scary.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
-Jorge Luis Borges

My Backpack

My royal blue JanSport backpack and I have been together for a long, long time. In fact, our relationship is one of the longest-term relationships of my life. I got the backpack way back in 1996 (or thereabouts). The bag survived the teenage angst of high school; four years of lugging around literature anthologies in college; three years of graduate school and teaching, carrying gradebooks, freshman essays, and the collected works of May Swenson; and now it's carried me halfway through another degree, this one in Library and Information Science. Alas, the backpack begins to show the wear and tear of its long life and five shiny safety pins hold together a bottom corner. Michael suggests replacing the backpack, but I believe the backpack and I can finish our journey through higher education together. We can make it through just two more semesters . . .

Another semester bites the dust

Enacting a little librarian stereotype here on the steps of the library.
(Just so you know, we actually NEVER shush people.)

Besides being Michael's birthday, yesterday was also the end of summer semester! Some of the fabulous people I've worked with for the past year are now moving on -- E to a job in Reno, K back to her life in Oregon, and C to Boston to look for a job there while her boyfriend goes to Harvard Law School. I feel really lucky to have worked with these ladies!

Enjoying lunch at the Y Thai

Taste of CU, summer school, and bangs

Many of you know that food is a major source of entertainment for Mike and me. Luckily for us, the Champaign City Park district sponsors a yearly festival that fits our main interest. We attended Taste of CU last night, and for twenty bucks we tried some of the best food Chambana has to offer and rode our bikes home with very full stomachs. We had:

• pad thai and basil chicken,
• a reuben sandwich,
• humus,
• baklava,
• pizza,
• a meatball sandwich,
• kettle corn,
• peach pie,
• and ice cream!

(Don't worry -- these were mostly just "tastes" and not full servings. But still . . . we ate a lot.) Everything we tried was very delicious and it was in a really fun atmosphere -- a downtown park with two music tents and lots of art booths. We had beautiful weather -- as I mentioned, we were able to ride our bikes to and from the festival.

We've been riding our bikes to and from school/work most days for the past two weeks. $4 gas is a big motivator! I'm taking two classes this summer, and they're very fast paced, but going well.

• Web design and construction for organizations: I'm already learning a lot in this class. Our major project for the summer is to redesign a university website -- bring it up to date, make it accessible, usable, and easy to maintain. My group has taken on Student Legal Services and we're hoping to bring the site into the 21st century. (It currently resides in 1999.) I'll post the redesign here when we're done.
  
• Administration and management: I want to recommend one of the books I read for this class, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Blurb about the book: "When we make decisions we think we're in control, making rational choices. But are we? Entertaining and surprising, Ariely unmasks the subtle but powerful tricks that our minds play on us." This class is focusing on understanding human behavior (particularly our own behavior) and learning to manage ourselves. Good stuff.

And the last bit of news is that I have a slightly altered hairstyle. I got a haircut last week after soliciting salon recommendations from friends on Facebook. I wanted it to look like Reese Witherspoon's hair and unfortunately I still don't look just like her, but I am pleased with the results.





















I went in to Michael's place of work right after the haircut and he said, "Wow. Your hair was really . . . big . . . before." He's right. It was.

School's out, snow, etc.

We got several inches of snow yesterday and last night. Here's the view from our front porch:

Today our church meetings were postponed until 11 a.m. so that hopefully people will be able to get there. For the last two weeks our church meetings have been canceled, so we're happy that we'll get to go today (but just for one hour instead of the usual three -- I know my little brothers are so jealous right now). Mike is outside shoveling the driveway as I write this.

I finished the last of my coursework for this semester on Friday and it feels great to be done. It's remarkable that I was able to finish my final paper under these working conditions. Simone was sleeping on the laptop!

Simone is my little helper

On Thursday we're leaving for Cache Valley and we're so excited! It will be a really long road trip, but we're checking out a bunch of audio books from the library, loading some podcasts on the iPod, and we're praying for good weather. Hopefully the roads will be good and we won't drive each other nuts cooped up in the car for ~20 hours together.

I hope that you are enjoying the run-up to Christmas and that you feel the joy of the season. I felt the Christmas spirit arrive the other night when we watched Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. At the end, the Grinch has a realization:

Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

Isn't that true? It's easy to get caught up in all of the exciting gift-buying, gift-getting, decorating, going to parties, eating lots of food, etc. But that's not what the holiday is all about. I recently read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and was impressed with this quote:

I am sure I have always thought of Christmas-time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely. . .

Merry Christmas!

(You can see a video clip from the Grinch here or read about the making of the Grinch here. Both links are from NPR.)

Food, Glorious Food

The new documentary The Hollywood Librarian was released last week to coincide with Banned Books Week. The film was released at libraries and library schools nationwide and Mike and I got to see it at GSLIS -- a fundraiser for the Library and Information Science Library at UIUC. The film juxtaposed images of librarians in movies (Party Girl, The Desk Set, It's a Wonderful Life, The Music Man, etc.) with real librarians talking about their work: what they do and why they do it. I really enjoyed the film -- it was more serious than I had expected and actually brought a couple of glistens to my eyes. The filmmaker spoke with very dedicated, very inspiring public librarians who work hard every day to keep their doors open to as many people as possible, to have storytime for children, to have literacy programs for prisoners, and more. It made me very proud to be a part of that community.


Before we went to the movie we tried a restaurant called Milo's that has been recommended to us several times, ever since we first visited town. It was magnificent. Really. If and when any of you come to visit us here, we'll take you to Milo's. I had apricot stuffed chicken breast and Michael had pan-seared scallops in a creamy pepper sauce -- so delicious.

I'm very pleased to report that I am once again a member of a knitting circle! A few library students decided to get together weekly on Saturday afternoons to knit and yesterday we were at Anna's house with a delicious quiche, apple bread, and a couple of hours of dedicated knitting. I'm working on a brown cabled cardigan for which I bought the yarn one year ago at a little-bitty store in Driggs, Idaho, where the yarn was on clearance. Now I'm just hoping that I have enough yarn to finish. If so, this will be a VERY cute sweater. :)

Speaking of knitting, I got the most exciting package in the mail this week. My dear sweet friend Wendy sent me a beautiful graduating/going away/getting married present that she made:

A lovely lacy pink wrap that I will wear as soon as it gets below 70 degrees. We're having unseasonably warm weather here and actually set a record this weekend with temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s. By mid-week, though, it's supposed to be "below normal temperatures" according to the guy on the morning radio. But what is normal?

We enjoyed staying home and watching General Conference this weekend. We were reminded and inspired to be a little kinder, more patient, and especially more grateful for all that we have.

The coming week should be calmer than last week was, for which I am grateful. On Friday I did a presentation in my reference class (on biographical resources) that went really well and tomorrow morning I'm doing a group presentation on research ethics. Now I don't have another really huge assignment due until November.

Still no sign of the handsome Dobler. I miss him very much.

Sweet Corn and more

It's been a very eventful week. I started school on Wednesday and things are going great -- I really like my classes, professors, classmates, and my work at the reference desk is going well. (If you want to hear about my first few "real" reference questions, I'd be happy to talk your ear off about it. Call! Email!) I'm really, really interested so far in the stuff we're covering in my classes and I've been recapping it all to Michael, whether he wants to hear it or not. By the time I graduate HE'll be qualified to be a librarian, too! I'm so lucky to have a spouse who is an excellent listener. :)

Pretty corny, huh?

My spouse is also very cute as a corn cob. Yesterday was the Sweet Corn Festival in Urbana. It's kind of a strange thing -- not much sweet corn is grown around here. It's all feed corn. Also, you'd think this kind of festival might take place around harvest time, right? Well, they haven't harvested the corn yet. But it was a fun event, nonetheless. We saw a cool band that played covers of Michael Jackson, 38 Special, and Journey.

Last night we went to Hessel Park for a little "Shakespeare in the Park." A community theatre group did a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a pretty uneven performance, to put it nicely, and we left at intermission. But it was fun to be there for a while and observe the crowd, if nothing else.

Titania and the fairies

I think Dobler's got the right idea here. Just stretch out next to Michael. And relax.