Blogging Month Day 30: The End of the Journey!

That’s it! This will be 30 days of 30 posts! It’s all done!

Blog every day of June was a fascinating exercise. It forced me to reflect on a daily basis (even if my reflection was rarely very profound). It brought me lots of new readers, commenters and blogs I must follow now. It gave me more than one exhausted late-night “must-post” moment. It taught me things I’d never known before. So thank you, #blogeverydayofjune!

Following MissSophieMac’s example, I am going to treat you all to 30 things I did this month (other than blog of course) and then follow up with a final, overall Good Thing/Bad Thing/Learned Thing/Link Thing to sum up the whole month. So here we go – this month I:

1. Went to Sea World.
2. Learned how to make my own fettucine.
3. Packed both my mother and my sister off to Israel.
4. Packed hubby off to Adelaide.
5. Inherited a Clavinova and promised myself I’d take up piano lessons again.
6. Read and loved The Language of Stones by Robert Carter, looking forward to Book 2!
7. Read 50 pages of, hated and gave up on The Anderson Tapes by Lawrence Sanders.
8. Read Princess Pig to small children.
9. Went to Lifeline Bookfest and managed not to bankrupt myself.
10. Made a bird-feeder (which admittedly I’ve never seen a bird using, so it must not be very good!)
11. Polished off Season 2 of True Blood.
12. Worked on the ERA submission for MPOW.
13. Got a review published in a journal.
14. Found out I’m to be a second cousin. Twice over.
15. Started playing (and obsessing over) The Sims 3.
16. Got to play with an iPad.
17. Discovered the awesomely delicious Heat-And-Eat beef goulash my local butcher sells (his wife makes it).
18. Experienced the bizarreness of Gaga-brarians.
19. Got a peer mentor at work.
20. Signed up for the ALIA PD Scheme.
21. Farewelled a friend at work who’s moving to another institution.
22. FINALLY met my Head of School and didn’t come off looking like a complete idiot…
23. Got a taste of not only A Game of Thrones, but also Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, just to test my patience.
24. Took my dog to the dog off-leash park numerous times.
25. Babysat my mother’s 16 year old cat.
26. Mowed my lawn (admittedly for the first time in months. I’m a bad housekeeper.)
27. Investigated Mendeley to see if I like it better than the reference management programs I already use (yep that’s right. Plural. Gotta do something about that…)
28. Went to the Aurora Institute Alumni Queensland inaugural meeting.
29. Played Wii at work
30. Read blogs, commented on blogs, shared posts from blogs…

So there you go!

To sum up regarding Blog Every Day Of June:

1) One Good Thing: It’s convinced me to blog more regularly. Not every day. But starting from next Monday I think I’ll do three a week – a Monday meme, a midweek links, and a wrapup good/bad/learned/link thing at the end of the week. Stay tuned!

2) One Bad Thing: My Google Reader is now unmanageable because of all the new blogs I’m following and I don’t even know where to start to clean it up

3) One Thing I Learned: How many passionate, intelligent, thoughtful and just-a-bit wacky people there are out there in Library Land. I’m so glad to have met (well virtually anyway) you all!

4) Today’s Link: there’s only one way to farewell Blog Every Day Of June properly….

Blogging Month Day 29: Sharing Sites, Salons, Silly Names and Sookie Stackhouse

I have something large and overarching prepared for tomorrow as the last day of June, so this is probably my last entry of day to day “good thing/bad thing/learned thing/link thing”. So enjoy!

1) One Good Thing: Taught an, um, “older” colleague (okay, he’s old. Not like my grandfather old, but probably older than my dad. I often get accused of being ageist. I’m not, I’m just observant about these things…) anyway, taught a colleague how to use LibraryThing. He’s a classic book hoarder, has sheds full of bookshelves on his property, thousands and thousands of titles, and had the idea that not only did he want a list of exactly what he had, but he also wanted to be able to sort or filter it by things like topic, year, author etc. He’s also, not to be unkind, a two-finger typing technophobe. But I showed him how my account worked, and how he could use a barcode wand to scan in the ISBNs from the back of his books to add them to his account quickly, and he’s happily going off to give it a go, and if he gets to 200 titles on his free account and likes the way it works for him, he’ll get an upgraded one. Sensei Liberrydwarf, guiding pupils to greatness!

2) One Bad Thing: My old hairdresser has moved out of town, and I’ve been putting off the decision about a new one for ages. I finally called the local salon for an appointment – painstakingly explaining what I usually have done, etc. And I get the feeling that they think I’m a complete idiot. I’m hoping that it was just the girl answering their phone who wasn’t overly thrilled to be getting my business – and that they don’t screw it up! D-day is Thursday, so hopefully I won’t have to come and put “I’m so horrified” pics up!

3) One Thing I Learned: that apparently in NZ you can name a baby “Midnight Chardonnay” but not “Fish and Chips”. By law. Ah, thank you Mental Floss!

4) Today’s Link: pinched from kalafudra – again! I know! I’m sorry! But since the Book and TV Memes proved so many #blogeverydayofjune bloggers were Charlaine Harris/True Blood fans, I absolutely had to share this new Snoop Dogg clip

Blogging Month Day 28: Meme Monday

Today’s meme is bonitoclub’s “My Life According To” meme. And My Life will be answered according to songs from long-established Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies, who have been my favourite band for almost half my life now. (It does help that they have 9 studio albums plus EP’s plus special releases to choose from )

My life according to Barenaked Ladies

Are you a male or female: I’ll Be That Girl

Describe yourself: Bull in a China Shop

How do you feel: Upside Down

Describe where you currently live: Peterborough and The Kawarthas

If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Hello City

Your favourite form of transportation: Helicopters

Your hobby: Alcohol :p

Your best friend? Maybe Katie

You and your best friends are: Alternative Girlfriend

What’s the weather like: Hidden Sun

Favourite time of day: When You Dream

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Life, in a Nutshell

What is life to you: Same Thing

Your relationship: I Love You

Your fear: Spider In My Room

What is the best advice you have to give: Wrap Your Arms Around Me (actually, that song is I’m pretty sure about domestic violence, so don’t read too much in there…)

Thought for the Day: Never Do Anything (it’s been one of those days)

My soul’s present condition: Crazy

My motto: Everything Old Is New Again

Plus Bun toting librarian’s bonus…

A statement on libraries: I Live with It Every Day

I’m not sure if I’m amused, disappointed or horrified at how easy that was…

Blogging Month Day 27: Term Plans, Terrible Hoaxes, Thrones and To Be Read Lists

Eek! Blog quickly, blog quickly! It’s still Day 27 (i.e. 27 June) somewhere in the world, right?

1) One Good Thing: yesterday I sat down with the other guy who leads my Scout Troop with me, and we planned the whole term out. It wasn’t a burdensome task, and between puppet-shows, airport visits and Master Chef night, it’s going to be a super-fun term!

2) One Bad Thing: I log on Twitter this morning, see “Edward Scissorhands” is a trending topic. I click, because hey, ES is one of my favourite films of all time. I see tweet upon tweet about Robert Pattinson being Edward Scissorhands in a remake! Turns out it was just a hoax, thankfully, but the taste of nausea is still in my mouth, and the cardiac damage I’ve sustained from sickening heart-drops-to-pit-of-stomach is probably irreperable

3) One Thing I Learned: from Kalafudra, who I now absolutely adore – A Game of Thrones is coming to HBO, at long last! With Sean Bean! And Jason Momoa! I have died and gone to heaven! (I think I will totally be throwing my morals out the window and watching this online, I cannot possibly wait til 2012 for it to come out here!)

4) Today’s Link: what, you haven’t got enough YouTube goodness already from the above? Well I guess I’ll pop in something bookish then: the 2010 Locus Awards were on over the weekend, and the list of winners is now available. (Locus = Science Fiction, for those not in the know.)  Off to inflate the wishlist again!

Blogging Month Day 26: Little Victories, Literacy, Late Risers and Learned Squid

Big family evening, speedy post before a nice warm bed with a nice warm cat

1) One Good Thing: Little victories: our OPAC broke down on Friday afternoon and we got an early mark. I got invited to write another review. Oh, and Thursday’s Honey Cookies were fantastic, total smash hit!

2) One Bad Thing: This isn’t really a today thing, it’s been a few things across the last couple of days that go together and have ticked me off. I have a strange-ish surname – Creese. It might be prone to mis-spelling, if one didn’t have it written down in front of them. I have this week suffered not one, but two, bad misspellings, and on reasonably important/official things too. And it’s not like I was dictating over the phone: in both cases these people had my surname written out in front of them (in one case on a driver’s license, for pity’s sake) and still got them wrong. So according to my first published review article, I’m a Crease. Even worse, according to my annual theme park pass, I’m a Cheese. Is it really that hard, honestly people?

3) One Thing I Learned: that I can get from bed to car on a work morning in 5 minutes if need be! My alarm didn’t go off on the morning of my early shift, and I awoke with 5 minutes before I needed to be out the door and on the road, and I made it – clothes on the right way around, medications taken, hair brushed. And I even managed to break a pair of shoes and have to switch to another one in that time too! (Of course, now my argument to hubby that yes, it does take an hour for me to get ready to go out to dinner, isn’t really going to work is it?)

4) Today’s link: and the World Cup is officially so all-pervasive now that even psychic octopuses are getting in on it…

Blogging Month Day 25: The One Where I Cheat And Post Holiday Photos

Well, it’s been a long, tiring, and awful in a way that I’m sure if it was in a movie about someone else I’d be laughing. No energy to look into the good, the bad and the learnings of the day today: you’ll just have to put up with snaps we took at Seaworld yesterday…

That's me and my sister-in-law with a fibreglass walrus. Just because.

SIL and me again just before watching trained seals pretend to be 1920's Policemen...

He was looking right at us...

Speaking of looking straight at you...

Yes, that dolphin is upside down. They're nuts like that.

We're at the back of the second carriage from the back. Hair got very very messed...

Just before splashdown...

A great day!

Blogging Month Day 24: The Out Of Office Post

Mini-post this morning: I’m off to seaworld for the day!
Hoping to get to post some photos tonight…

Blogging Month Day 23: Models, Munchies, Making Cookies and Musicals

1) One Good Thing: thanks all of you for the lovely comments back on my photoshoot photos from yesterday. You know how to make a girl feel gorgeous! @gigglesigh and @KatieTT and @nomesd and I had a slightly tongue in cheeck Twitter chat last night that we should do a Sexy Aussie Librarians  shoot like the Swedish one – what do you think?

2) One Bad Thing: I was naughty at lunchtime – started off well eating my salad and drinking water like a good girl. Then the thought popped into my head “it’s a cold day. I would like a hot treat.” And I proceeded to buy and eat not one, but two, potato scallops. Those things are terrible for you (but delicious. Maybe even because they’re so terrible for you). Now I’m grumpy, guilty and queasy… (and the rest of the seven negative dwarfs )

3) One Thing I Learned: a new recipe for honey cookies that I’ll be trying out to give to the Scout kids at their Teddy Bears Picnic tomorrow night. Hope it’s nice!

4) Today’s Link: In the same spirit as Improv Everywhere, there was Prangstgrüp (who by now have all graduated college and gone onto more non-exhibitionist pursuits). Anyway, their Library Musical made me grin…

Blogging Month Day 22: Holiday Gifts, Hard Work, Honest Truths and Hotties

Last late evening shift of the semester: and it’s the time of year when nobody wants anything, so lots of time for blogging!

1) One Good Thing: hubby on holidays = hubby that goes shopping and buys me gifts! (We won’t mention the new digital camera he got himself which I am afraid to ask how much it cost). I got home yesterday to find new books and The Sims 3 waiting for me, and he even got off Assassin’s Creed II long enough for me to have a go before bedtime. Booyah!

2) One Bad Thing: Having visited my Head of School a couple of weeks ago, I was gung-ho to prove to him that yes, librarians could be helpful. And yesterday an opportunity came up where his PA wanted some figures on economics publications. I said yep, sure, no problem, I could help with that. BIG MISTAKE. This was a complex query. Very complex. Compare numbers of publications in top ARC ranked journals by staff in similar discipline departments to ours at other universities for the past 4 years. It took me 2 hours just to write the search syntax. And the job just kept getting bigger and bigger. It’s done now. The PA is grateful. The presentation can go on. But it makes you wonder (well it makes me wonder anyway): what was it all for? Aside from that it’s my job, of course. This took me the best part of a whole day to do. The figures aren’t perfect, there was no way to account for the dozens of variables in the scope of this project. The PA has no appreciation of how much time and anguish it took, and I doubt the HOS will ever get to hear that it was me that found the figures. So what exactly do I get out of it that I wouldn’t get out of Business As Usual?

3) One Thing I Learned: that apparently, following yesterday’s Meme Monday, I’m not as shrouded obscurely in mystery as I thought I was! Yes, most of you guessed that I do not, in fact, write Twilight fanfic. I dabble in a bit of writing (more so when I was younger in school) but most of what I right is original. I think the rabidness (rabitidy?) of fanfic devotees frightens me off. The whole “Character X so would not do that!” thing. And I dislike Twilight and accompanying Twi-Hards very much.

Now, comments have asked for clarification on the two truths, so here you are:

1. I’ve been to every continent except South America and Antarctica.

I have indeed. When I was 14 we had lived in a rent-free house for the last 3 years (my mum was a residential director of a mental health facility and we lived there free. Yes, I grew up in a mental hospital. That should have been one of my truths!) Anyway, since she’d had no rent or mortgage bills for 3 years, Mum had a whole bunch of savings, and as she was preparing to quit that job she figured we’d blow it all on a round the world trip. So in 12 weeks we went to North America (US & Canada), Europe (UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Greece) and Africa (Zimbabwe). I’ve also been since to Spain and briefly to South Korea. Hubby argues that it’s in fact part of Australasia and not Asia, but I’ve also been to NZ. I haven’t ever been to South America: though my father grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and I’d love to go visit with him some time and see what it’s like now. I have never met anyone who’s been to Antarctica – many of my little Scouts claim to have, but they are dirty little liars and I don’t believe them at all.

2. I have done modelling shoots for several Australian fashion magazines.

Yep, done this too. Two of them (which I’m totally going to say is several). A couple of years ago I did Weight Watchers Online, and mostly through sheer stubbornness managed to lose about 25 kgs. Once it had stayed off for 6 months, I figured there wasn’t much point keeping on giving them money, so I cancelled my account. When you do this, if you’ve been successful, they invite you to fill out a success survey and send them before and after shots, which I did. They then phoned me to say they had an opportunity for someone who’d successfully done WW Online to appear in an advertorial-style thing in Cleo Click magazine, did I want to do it? I did – flew down to Sydney for the day, did hair and makeup and dresses in this gorgeous house in Mossman, flew back in the evening and was sent the photos and a copy of the magazine a month or so later. They also called me a few months after that to do a similar story for their own WW magazine, which I also did – a bit more relaxed of a shoot than the Cleo one which was full of models, but pretty much as surreal. At least I have some photos to one day show my grandkids how hot I was. I present them below for your viewing pleasure…

4) Today’s Link: In the words of Flight of the Conchords: “Just wanna do something special / For all the ladies in the world”. Thus I present, for your viewing pleasure, Hot Guys Reading Books. You’re welcome.

Blogging Month Day 21: Meme Monday

Today I’m nicking LibrarianHoi’s Truths and Lies meme. Of these 3 statements, 2 are true and 1 is a lie. I invite you to guess which one!

1. I’ve been to every continent except South America and Antarctica.

2. I have done modelling shoots for several Australian fashion magazines.

3. I have been known to write the occasional Twilight fanfic…

Aaaaaaand go…