Goodbye For Now

After some thought over the past week, I have decided to end, or at least suspend, this blog. What started out being fun has turned into an obligation -- just one more assignment. Because I wanted to keep the details of my life private, I was limited to what I could post about. This meant that I was only writing about school, which can be boring after awhile.

Therefore, I will be suspending this for now but I'm going to keep the blog available on the Internet as a record of my summer.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Debra

Summer Goals: How Did I Do?

Now that we're past Labor Day, it's a good opportunity to review my summer goals and determine whether I achieved them or not.

Support my partner through her surgery and aftercare - Successfully completed.

Combine errands so as to avoid unnecessary car trips - Successfully completed.

Don't buy gas until July 1st at the earliest - I haven't needed to buy gas in a while. I think the last time was mid-July. Gas has gone down considerably (it's down to around $3.41 or so) but it is still too expensive.

Actually READ the books that I check out of the library - Yes, sometimes. However, I'm not going to waste time reading a bad book.

Begin working sometime in August - I decided to change this goal to September and yes, I've been actively looking for work.

Successfully complete three library school courses - Yes! I'm so glad that I took 3 this quarter.

Pare down my magazine subscriptions - Yes. One of my subscriptions had expired and I was tempted to renew but it's not worth it.

See my nephew for his 18th birthday - Successfully completed. It was a fun day.

Blog at least once a day - Most of the time.

Watch fewer hours of television - Definitely. There's barely anything on.

Life is too short to waste on bad movies - if I am losing interest in a film I'm watching, turn it off - Yes.

Take pictures on the digital camera but don't go overboard - Yes, this has been working out. Ollie gets distracted when I turn the camera on, so I have wound up with a lot of bad pictures. As a result, I take fewer.

Exercise at least a little bit each day - I definitely could be exercising more.

Learn something new every day - I try.

Last but not least, continue to love my cats! That's an easy one! - I love them.

Hot!

After a relatively cool August, September has been quite HOT thus far. I love the heat, so it doesn't bother me at all.

I wonder what my life will be like on October 4th. A new job (I hope) and a new school quarter. I'll say this: I predict that September will be a quick month -- because I'm not in class!

I found out that one of the recommended books for the Metadata course that I'm registered for is available online via the university's library. I started reading a little bit of it today.

Registration Madness: Over!

Registration Madness has never gone this long. I have been trying to get into that online Archives course but last night I finally decided to give up. I am now registered for Digital Reference and Metadata & Resource Description. I'm pretty excited about it. I have a bunch of articles about Metadata from my Digital Libraries course and I'm going to read them all again. I have 3 weeks of fun and studying (and hopefully employment) before class starts.

Happy Half-Birthday, Ollie!

On March 3rd, 2008, our cat was born. It was also the day that I quit my job. Beginnings and endings on the same day. Of course at that time, we thought our cat Emmy was in good health. We had no idea that we'd be adopting a new cat in June. As for my employment situation, I hope to be working soon. I don't miss that 3 to 4 hour commute, though.

Happy birthday, Ollie! You've given us such joy over the past few months.

Summer Quarter: Over!

The summer quarter started early in the morning on Monday, June 23rd. I logged on to the school's website as my partner prepared for her surgery that morning. I printed out material for my Digital Libraries and Managing Information Organizations classes so that I would have something to read while I was waiting for her to be settled into her hospital room. The reading calmed my nerves. It was my partner's 2nd knee surgery (the other one was done last summer) but it was still a major operation.

My partner is now back at work and the Summer Quarter is over.

I'm already excited about the Fall quarter. Right now I'm registered for 2 classes but I may be dropping one of them, depending on my employment situation.

One More Class to Go!

I completed my Digital Libraries research paper at around 15 minutes before midnight last night. I'm basically done except for a few last minute items on the group project for my Management class. I've spent the day catching up on things: watching Obama's speech (I hadn't seen the whole thing in its entirety) returning books to the library and loading pictures from my digital camera.

I'm grateful for the break but I learned a lot this quarter. My Digital Libraries course alone provided a great template for future study: metadata, virtual and roving reference -- particularly medical "informationists," preservation, the Internet Public Library and institutional repositories. Although I played catch-up nearly every week because some of the concepts were quite difficult (I haven't mentioned them here), I've probably gotten more education from this course than any other.

It figures that just as graduate school is ending, I am really starting to enjoy myself. It's a matter of taking the right classes.

Library Automation Final Assignment COMPLETED!

I woke up at around 7 and after feeding the cats, I jumped into my Library Automation assignment. I had typed up the material last night but unfortunately had a lot of corrections to make. I finally submitted it at 9:40 this morning. I took a few breaks to read Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd's columns in the New York Times.

Today is going to be crazy! I have my Digital Libraries paper due tonight and expect to review the final draft of our Management class' group project later today. I'll also need to read and critique some vendor analysis papers in my Library Automation class. However, all of my assignments for this latter class are done, which calls for a big sigh of relief this morning.