Jacob or Edward??

How long has it been since I’ve posted?  7-8 weeks probably.  Who’s counting?  Not me!  But I just had to tell everyone that I got Breaking Dawn at the library today, so I’m very excited.  I have a ton to read this week though, what with school reading.  I have to read Charlotte’s Web and The Tale of Desperaux.  Good thing I’m a fast reader or I’d be screwed.  I’ve read Charlotte’s Web before, but it’s been too long, so I figured I could do with a refresher

Oh!  And I registered for classes today, so that’ll start my 3rd quarter at Drexel.  I’m a little less enthusiastic about it this quarter (only because it’s a lot of reading, and I like to have personal reading time too!!), but other than that it’s been great.  I LOVE my Resources for Children class.  This is the class I have to do all the reading for.  I mean, who can say that they’ve read a Babysitter’s Club book for SCHOOL??  I can!  Some people would hate that though – like the fiance – I think he would rather chew through his own foot than read a Babysitter’s Club book, or any book for that matter.  Which is fine with me, because it’s not like we can share reading.  I guess I could read to him, but I don’t think his attention span is long enough for me to do that.  Plus, I suck at voices. 

In other news, my soon-to-be-nephew had major surgery last week, but he is back at home and doing really well.  He was 10 months old on August 2nd, so he’s a little guy!!  I’d post pictures of his before and after pictures, but he’s not my child, and if I were his mom I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want random people looking at pictures of him   BUT, he looks great.  He had metopic synostosis surgery, which you can learn more about here.  I know, it seems scary, especially for such a little baby, but apprently it’s not entirely uncommon.  His surgeon does at least two surgeries a week like this.  Crazy what we can do now huh?

Today, instead of leaving you with a LOLcat, I’m going to leave you with a picture I took myself.  Not OF myself, but I took it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hehe.  Gorilla butt.

Long time no blog!

So sorry about not blogging, but what can I say – getting engaged has thrown me for a loop and I’m so excited that I can’t think of anything else!  Plus, classes are over for the next 2 weeks, so I haven’t been thinking of many library related things.  BUT, I will tell you this… I got my grades back and I’m oh-so-happy!  I guess my grant proposal wasn’t as bad as I thought it was   Woohoo!  Anyway, I’m going home to Charlotte this weekend to celebrate Father’s Day with my family since I wasn’t able to get home for Mother’s Day.  We’ll be going wedding dress shopping and we’ll also be going to the Symphony in the Park concert Sunday night.  I can’t wait!  I love these shows.  We always go to Harris Teeter beforehand to pick up some fun things to eat and drink and then we sit on the lawn and enjoy listening to the Charlotte Symphony play some great music.  I miss it.  Whenever I go home for things like this it makes me hate eastern TN, because heaven forbid people up here be cultural enough to come up with something like this, much less attend something like this.  Kingsport has FunFest, but it’s not really fun unless you have kids, and the last concert of the summer is always some country piece of crap concert that not everyone likes!!  Granted, last year Charlie Daniels played and I was fortunate enough to play in his backup orchestra (SO COOL), but still.  I like to think one day Fiance and I will move someplace that has a little more culture.  I can’t wait……..

 

*I totally think the dog did this – and blamed it on the cat*

Woohoo!

I know, I know, I haven’t written in a bajillion years, but I have a really good excuse – my boyfriend proposed over the weekend, so my head has been filled with things not having to do with writing in my blog.  So I apologize, but I’m sure I’ll have something to say once I get my grant proposal grade back…EEK.  Not looking forward to that. 

Blech.

I’m in the middle of writing a grant proposal for one of my finals and I’m stuck.  I have NO clue how to write these things and I really feel like I’m just pulling this stuff out of my you know where.  We had one lecture on grant writing and that was 5 weeks ago and even then, we didn’t learn how to write one.  We just read about what should be in them and how they should explain what you need.  I don’t feel like I know how to write one at all.  I’ve got an A+ in the class right now, and I Just know that after I turn this pile of crap in, it’s probably not going to be that anymore.  Sigh.  I’ve been working on it for over 2 weeks and I Just don’t know how you can write a fake grant proposal.  I mean, I’m making stuff up as I go.  I have no idea how much time it’ll take to do what I want, so I’m making it up.  I have no idea how much money it’s going to cost to do anything, so I’m making it up.  Am I supposed to go down to Lowe’s hardware and ask them how much money it would cost to build what I’m proposing?  Heck no, because they’d be like, well, what do you need and I would say I DON’T KNOW.  Can you tell I’m frustrated?  Cause I am.  What I wouldn’t give to just write a 10 page paper on something we covered in class…

Certain crap

So I just finished Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner.  I didn’t think the ending was as horrible as some people made it out to be, but I did think it was completely unnecessary.  I won’t say much more only because I know one of my friends has this on her list of things to read and I don’t want to spoil it for her   Tell me what you think when you’re done T!

Now I will write about something that happened on Tuesday night at a library board meeting I attended (as the public of course, so I couldn’t really say much).  Anywho, here’s what happened:  basically, they voted to not buy movies that are rated R because if people want to watch “those kinds of movies” they can rent them from Blockbuster and they believed them to be inappropriate and shouldn’t be in their system.  They all voted “no” and they moved on to the next topic.  Now here’s where I get confused.  As librarians, aren’t we supposed to be against censorship, not completely for it??  I saw this move as blatant censorship because of how they felt about movies that are rated R.  There are PLENTY of ways to make sure kids don’t get their hands on them without parental consent (card restrictions? hello!?).  One of my classmates made a good point: “Movies like Million Dollar Baby and Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan and Brokeback Mountain and Black Robe certainly earned their R ratings, but they also contain important social commentary–some of them are effective teaching tools for crucial points in history.”  Exactly!!  The library board brought up Band of Brothers, which I haven’t seen, but can’t possibly imagine how it was so horrible that they felt the need to make damn sure their patrons didn’t see it.  I’m going to be really upset if this is the way this area of TN thinks.  I’m going to be even more upset if my thoughts get overridden once I become a part of it.  Sigh. 

I’d give you a kitty, but I haven’t seen any really funny ones lately… even more sigh.

Go!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – Go see it. 

FULL OF AWESOME.

I have no idea why this post is in Bold.

When I said I was going to read the next Sister’s Grimm book, I lied.  Instead, I decided to pick up Jennifer Weiner’s new book Certain Girls.  I’ve really enjoyed all her books, and this one is no exception.  I really like how she alternates chapters between the mother’s point of view and her daughter’s.  At first I was like, “Um, the mom is still in middle school? oooh…that’s the 13 year old!!”  because she doesn’t make it obvious by naming the chapters after the character or something.  Although, there must be something wrong with me and my emotions because I seriously get upset when characters talk bad about another character behind their back.  This is especially hard for me in this book because what 13 year old doesn’t hate their mother and wishes they were dead?  Yeah, it’s rough.  But, I’m only half way through the book, so there is plenty of time for that to resolve itself.  This book is about the same character from her book Good in Bed - which I loved too.  I kinda want to smack her sometimes though, because she is SO out of touch with her daughter’s feelings.  But then again, her daughter doesn’t tell her anything, and why should she because her mom always says NO to anything.  I may be 25, but I still remember what it was like to be 13, so I can relate more to the daughter than the mom at this point.  I’ll let you know what happens at the end ok??  Haha just kidding, you’ll have to read it for yourself

Mmmm blood.

I just tried to give blood for the 5th time in my life.  I’m never doing it again.  I’ve been successful 2 times, fainted once, and almost fainted twice (one of those times was today).  I started feeling bad, so I called the nurse over and she slathered my face in cold compresses and told me I was as white as a sheet.  And get this, I had ALMOST filled up my bag.  They can’t use it if you have to stop, and I have no idea why.  I’m not rich, so I can’t donate money, I don’t have a lot of time, so I can’t donate that (I probably could if I tried though), but the thing I have plenty of, I can’t donate!!!  UGH.  I’m eating a Snickers bar right now because I need more sugar – yeah, that’s it.  So please, if the Blood Mobile comes back to Kingsport and I write that I’m going to try again, PLEASE stop me.  Please?  Thanks

This is for your viewing pleasure…

Anyone? Anyone?

In my Professional/Social Aspects of Information Services class, we’re learning about copyright and I have a question that I would like to ask the void.  PLCMC charges $2 for new books and DVDs and labels them as “Rental” fiction. The check-out time is shorter by a week, and you can’t put them on hold. Now, my question is this – how are they allowed to charge money to lend something that is copyrighted? My professor seems to think this is a little fishy and I had never thought of it like that before. She says it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen and I’m just wondering if there is something in library policy that allows them to do that. I can certainly understand why they do it, because for instance, when the new Janet Evanovich books comes out, there will be hundreds of holds on it already, so they like to have some for people who don’t want to wait and don’t mind paying the $2.  I did it a few times, because well, I’m impatient and I wanted to read my book NOW dangit.  Does anyone know the answer to my question?  I don’t mean to be nosey and poke around where I might not belong, but I think that as a library student I should be allowed to ask questions like this, right??? 

 

Earthworms and librarians

I started working on library homework last night and I gotta say, I am totally loving all this stuff we have to do!  What other class lets you search the internet for earthworms??  Don’t get me wrong, I loved music school, but it was all about memorization of composers and their dates, notes in a scale, etc… but now, I really feel like I’m having to use my brain to do my homework.  In one of my classes, we talk about the social and professional aspects of librarianship and sometimes our discussions online get pretty heated!  Last week we discussed the pros/cons of the Patriot Act so you can imagine how that went, especially in regards to libraries and patron records.  This week we’re talking about copyright law.  I haven’t done the reading yet (mainly because I’ve been searching for earthworms), so it’ll be interesting to see what the articles say about it.  I have a feeling that librarians are more on the side of “yes we should definitely hold copyright true” than the “oh who cares who it belongs to, let’s just use it!”  I remember my boyfriend telling me once how he used to mail CDs to himself of songs he composed.  I probably gave him some weird look (because I’d never heard of that before) and he says it’s the poor man’s copyright!  Apparently something becomes automatically copyrighted if you mail it to yourself.  I think I should ask my professor about that one… seems kinda fishy to me!  Anyone know anything about that?

On a book note, I’m in the middle of reading Sarah Dessen’s new book Lock and Key and I really like it!  It’s along the same lines as her other books (girl gets emotionally hurt, girl meets boy but doesn’t like boy at first, then girl and boy become friends, then girl and boy hook up and everything is roses), which is alright by me because I love her writing.  This time, I love how she’s written in some tiny cameos of people from her other books, and sometimes their names don’t even pop up, you just know who it is because of what she’s saying.  I’d better hurry up and finish it because I have the 6th Sisters Grimm book waiting for me and it’s burning a hole in my nightstand - I love these books!!!!

Anyway, here’s your daily kitteh!