Bring on the Christmas cheer!

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but I got the second grade from the second class I was taking this semester, pbulic libraries. I am happy to say that I got an A in that class. This means I've gotten two A's for my first semester in grad school. YAY ME!!! I am so happy that this semester is over. Although the classes were interesting, I'm glad that I can now focus my attention on other things like packing for our California trip and my spring classes.

In other news, this weekend me and Den as well as co-workers are supposed to be meeting somewhere for a Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, my cousin sent me an e-mail yesterday reminding me of our family Christmas dinner which will be happening on (guess when?) Saturday as well. Well although the family Christmas dinner is well....a family Christmas dinner, I called mom and told her me and Den wouldn't be able to go. I further explained to mom that we had a prior commitment and apologized.

Mom of course seemed very nonchalant about me not being able to come and said that she figured we wouldn't since the same conflict happened last year.I'm at the point though that if you know you're planning a family gathering for Christmas, it would be in the best interest of everyone if you'd give a lot earlier warning than four days before the event will take place. By planning in advance, people can have you event marked down somewhere and feelings won't get hurt.

All I want is a little consideration for Christmas-is that too much to ask for?

New Do or did I ?

It's always funny to me how people react to a new hairstyle. Mainly, people react to a new hairstyle in one of three ways: (1.) They acknowledge the new hairstyle and make positive comments, (2.)They completely ignore the fact you've done anything at all, or (3.)They ignore the hairstyle until someone else comments on it and the add their positive comments. At any rate, I've experience all three of these reactions today which is always surprising to me because I don't think that people really pay that much attention to me.

Over the weekend, I had my hair braided and prior to that, I had my hair permed. I'm not really a fan of perming my hair, it's too much upkeep to worry about. Also, whenever I've gotten my hair permed, it's limited the amount of things I can do like exercising, messing around with my husband and just doing anything that leads to sweating. Do you know what it smells like to have had a perm done and then sweat it out? It smells like rotten eggs. Yep, you read right, rotten eggs. That being said, can you blame me for wanting to use any method possible to avoid having to do that? The process I've been do for a couple of years now if braiding, letting my hair rest (perming) then rebraiding. I am at the point though where I will be wanting to go natural and be completely chemical free.

I guess that other thing that trips me out is how intrigued some people are with the concept of braids. It always makes me laugh when someone asks to touch my hair. It's like they've never seen hair like that before. Then comes the question of is it all my real hair and I have no problem sharing the information. After all, I believe that the only way people can become educated about things is if someone teaches them and so if it has to be me, why not?

Counting down the days till California

I am so ready to leave for California. It's not even about California itself,I just need to get away from all the crazy patrons and frustrating work environment and the cold weather. I'm sure as usual, me and Den will get bombarded by his family while we're there but I won't mind it so much because I'll be on vacation. I mean a week away is better than no time at all right? His sister has already given us her vote for where to ring in New Years (Disneyland) although everyone else would much rather go to Vegas. Well, guess we'll see how that pans out.

In other completely unrelated news, I went to my best friend's lingerie party lasy night. We all had a great time but the whole situation still seems surreal to me.Initally, she was supposed to get married in June 2008 and instead, the moved the date up to January 2008. She says he didn't want to wait anymore which is understandable considering he's in the military and could possibly get called up again. I couldn't imagine being in a relationship with a man in the military and having to deal with deployment and worrying about whether or not he's safe. Anyone who can do that gets my eternal gratitude.

At any rate, the shower was fun and nostaligic for me as I was seeing her open the gifts. It seems like forever although it was last year that I got married. Man how time flies.

My husband, his sister, and VMK

Although I love my husband very and much and I like my sister-in-law, lately, they have found a new way to drive me up the wall and its name is VMk. VMK (aka virtual magic kingdom) is an online disneyland website. On this site, people from all the world can meet, creat avtars and do stuff like create rides, play games, and trade items as well as build their own room. I have no problem with this, as a matter of fact, I think it's kinda cool. I do however have a problem with the fact that him and his sister spend hours at a time on the webiste and that he has her on speakerphone so they can talk back and forth the whole time.When they're on VMK, the rest of the world doesn't exist and they are completely focused on VMk and nothing else. I've had to force my husband to take a break to eat because he's been so wrapped up in VMK, he lost all track of time.

I guess I should be too surprised;my husband and his sister have always been close. I guess I just have a problem with it because I feel excluded from the experience. After all, since my husband was born and raised in California and has been to Dineyland millions of times and has not been able to go as much since we live in Alabama, VMk has a bigger significance than it does for me. In a way, I really should be counting my blessings, at least I'm not married to his sister. She lives, breaths, and sleeps Disneyland. As punishment for her son sometimes, her and her husband have went to Dinseyland and left him behind. She had memeberships to tons on Disneyland groups and has an annual pass as well as pins collection. Disneyland was nice-I'll give you that, but it's nothing to get crazy over.I don't get it....I just don't get it.

Weight loss and its unforseen cost

There's something funny and equally sad when you're overweight. You're always constantly ingored by people and the clothes that are available for you to wear are unflattering to say the least. You get used to people not noticing you and while you do your best to look good, more often than not, nobody cares. At least that's been my experience in the past.

Growing up, I've always had problems with low self- esteem and my weight. As you can imagine, teasing in school only made matters worse. I've always been the type of woman known for not being able to take a compliment. It's not that I don't appreciate the compliment, I just don't know how. Whenever someone says soemthing nice to me, I automatically overanalyze what they said and why they said it. The most I've ever weighed was 298 and as of today, I weight 234.Although I am proud of what I've accomplished, I don't broadcast it to everyone I meet-that's what other people are for.

Since I have lost weight, the compliments pour in on a daily basis. While I appreciate the positive compliments, I can't help but wonder if people are being serious or if they are hating me for what I've done. Relationships have become strained because I don't view food the way I used to to and for some, this is that only way I could bond with certain people. Even now, while two co-workers were talking, co-worker one mentioned my weight loss and asked me to stand up so that the co-worker two could look at me and how thin I've gotten. It was amazing to me in that after co-worker two looked at me, she said "Are you sure she's not pregnant? You know with her being so young and looking weight, it wouldn't suprise me."

Even this Thanksgiving at a gathering with family, even though my family gave me tons of compliments about my weight loss, I was still uncomfortable. Partially it was because my aunt pointed out that while I'm getting thin and have always been fat, my sister and cousin who have always been skinny are picking up weight. The nerve of her!Both of them are 25 years old and if they weighed the same now that they did when they were 12 or 13, I'd be worried about their health. My aunt has her own issues with weight and she's also diabetic so she's definitely not one to judged anyone.

I also get irritated because people ask me what I did to loose the weight and I tell them eat less and exercise more. My husband has gotten pissed with me "lying" as he calls it because he saw the hard work it took for me to lose the weight and it took a whole lot more that eating less and exercising more. I had to cut my calories to around 1,800 a day in addition to exercising three to four times a week. I've started telling people what I've really done to lose the weight and if nothing else, I feel better for being truthful.

Why is it that when someone looses weight, you can't just be happy for them and instead look for flaws and reasons to tear them down?

Ignorant people at the library and future career goals

I am so sick of ignorant people coming to the library and showing their ass when they don't get their way. They always come in packs and we (the library staff) have to constantly tell them to be quiet and to stop gathering at one computer. Most of the time, the problem people do comply but it's usually after we've threatened to kick them off if they don't stop what they're doing. I think what irks me the most is that it's almost always black teenagers that are causing the trouble. I don't understand why people are so angry.

As a young black woman, I feel that working in a library I act as a role model to some people and it just irritates me to see people treating the library with such disrespect by cursing, talking on their cellphones loudly or pretending to fight while in the library.

I am just so tired of having to babysit grown people all day. It's a thankless job and although I'm in library school. I decided a while ago that I definitely didn't want to work at a public library anymore. Right now, I'm leaning more towards working for the federal/governemt sector.

Term Paper, Scherm Paper

Right now, I'm supposed to be working on my ten page term paper for Public Libraries class that is due monday night and yet I am constantly looking for something, anything to keep me from working on it. Why?

Well, I think it's probably because I haven't written a term paper since around 2003 and although my professor is really cool about the whole thing (it's 10 pages long but he's said to make it as long as it needs to be), I still have this nagging fear that he's gonna read it and think it's the worst piece of crap ever written. Granted I have little bit of leeway in that this is an online class that meets one night a week so at least I won't see him be completely dumbfounded when he reads my paper about weeding in public libraries.

Why did I write a paper on weeding in public libraries? Well, to be honest, it was a topic that interested me and I liked when we had to do it at work. As you can tell, I like organization way too much. At any rate, I'm currently (well not right now) writing the paper and so far, I've managed to bang out 7 1/2 pages which isn't really all that bad I guess. Thankfully when it comes to writing papers, at least for me, this is when having a Bachelor's in English comes in handy.

Just when I think I've found a way out, I get pulled back in

I applied for a job at another library as a library technican at a government library branch about a month ago. True, the library's schedule was weird and it wasn't a full-time job, but at least I was going to get paid what I was worth being that I have nine plus years of library experience behind me and am currently in library school. At any rate, I called to see what was up with the position when I got a hit with a big pimp-hand of reality: although I was more qualified, since I'm not a military spouse (they get first dibs),I might not get the job.

After finishing talking to the branch manager, I tried to rationalize the logic of the situation. Although I have more experience, someone with little or no experience will get a great paying job all because they happened to marry a soldier? While I guess I understand this, it still smells like bullcrap to me. As you can imagine, when I called today to follow up on the job, I was informed that the position was filled. I'm somewhat surprised but not really.

I'll just chalk it up to the job probably not being the right fit for me....yeah, that sounds good. The job wasn't a good fit and the perfect job for me is just around the corner.

Guess I'll keep sticking it out where I am until I either finish library school or a great job comes along.

Final Exam-the aftermath

So I took my first graduate level final yesterday and did very well. The teacher was also able to grade my other assignment fairly quikly and was able to tell me my grade for the whole class. I got an A!!!! I am so happy.

I was kinda worried for a while there because on our third assignment, the teacher said that out of the entire class, 25% got an A and 75% got an F. The funny thing was, after she said all that, while passing out the papers, she tells us not to panic. Yeah, good luck with that one! Needless to say, I was worried because my other grade up until this point were good and I didn't want my whole semester of work to geo down the toilet. At the same time, I also knew that she was going to drop our lowest grade so I was praying this was going to be my lowest.

Turns out my grade for the third assignment sucked but I did perfect on the fourth assignment and the final. In reference to the final exam, since she went over eveything the night before the exam, it was still fresh in my mind and I made sure that I studied and was able to do what I needed to so I could pass.

One class down, one class to go.

Registration Frustation

I am so frustrated with the registation process for this semester! I was planning on taking LS 500 and LS 507 this semester, but then I (along with everyone else) received and e-mail from the head of the school saying that people who enrolled in the library school in certain years are going to be allowed to register for LS 560 and LS 507. Although I understand the reasoning for this, I am also irritated that while registration offically started on the 29th, most of the class in the school on library science are still closed.

How am I supposed to complete my degree in a timely manner if I'm being blocked from signing up for classes that I need? Granted, I do understand that there are some students who are almost finished and need to get their last class in,but my whole thing is if you say students can register for classes, let students register for classes without giving them more hoops to jump through. I mean it's hard enough to be a graduate student working a full-time and having to occassionally commute without throwing any unneccesary obstacles in the way!

Hero to Zero all in the same day

Today was both a great day and an awful day. First, the great part; I helped catch a bad guy! This is what happened. Early this morning, my co-worker got a call from IT that one of our patrons was wanted by the U.S. Marshals for being a child predator, they had tracked him to using out computers and she was asked to keep an eye out for him. Although she recognized the patron's name, she couldn't remember what he looked like but fortunately since he comes in a lot, I was able to give an pretty good description.

Some time passes and a patron needed my help, so I went over to computer 5 to help him. Imagine my surprise as I'm helping the patron on computer 5 and I see that right across from him on computer 6 is,yep you guess it, Mr. Child Predator. After helping the guy on computer 5, I quietly alerted my co-worker that he was in the library and using the computer. She had me double check that it was him and she alerted the IT guy. The IT guy then called the U.S. Marshals who then came and very discretely escorted him out of the library without any problems.

Now on to the zero moment of the day. I had been having an enjoyable work day then my boss tells me and my co-workers that our computer policy has now changed. Before, a patron could only get 1 hour in our department and two hours in another department which equals 180 minutes a day. After a patron used their hour in our department, they couldn't get another hour but instead, they had to use the other computers on the third floor. If they were caught re-logging in after they'd already had their hour, they'd get kicked off the computer.Today we were told that this rule no longer applies and that patrons can re-log on to the computers after their hour is up and we can't stop them.

I think this is the stupidest idea I've ever heard! With this new rule, this means that a person can come and get 3 hours on the computer uninterrupted while others have to wait. Another issue with this is the number of kids we have that come in using myspace, this means we will probably have more complaints because people who need to do homework and type papers/resumes won't be able to cause they'll have to wait for kids to finish myspacing and playing games.

I guess my big question is where is this going to stop? I feel that the library and the powers that be are trying too hard to cater to the patrons.We already had a patron complain about "being forced " into having to get a computer card to access the computers and now this. I'm expecting any day now, we're going to be told not to enforce the no cellphone policy anymore because someone will be bothered by it. Either that or we're going to start letting patrons eat and drink at the computers.

Will this ever stop?

Playing catch up

Sorry it's been a while since I've written-I've was just reminded that I had this site today while I was in my computer technologies class. So much has changed in my life since the last time I've written. I guess this is because I've been busy with work, homework, and just life in general.At any rate, I'll give you the cliffnotes version of what's been happening since I've written last.

First, I got married on June 24,2006 to my wonderful husband D. We had a nice evening church wedding and my mom walked me down the aisle. It was a beautiful day and one that I'll always remember.

Secondly, me and my husband bought a house. We actually found the house, took care of all the inspections and closed on it within a two week period in Feburary of last year. That being said, I am really enjoying having so much space and a chance to decorate the house the way I want.

Third, I decided to start graduate school I am currently enrolled at the University of Alabama where I am taking classes to obtain a MLIS. So far, the classes have been very informative and my classmates have been great to work with. If everything goes as planned, I should be done by Summer of 2009. My goal in reference to clasess are to take two classes a semester for six semesters so that's my plans for now.

Wish me luck!