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.