Continual State of Becoming

Ahh... the holidays are over, for the most part anyway. Things here have been kinda crazy. The end of the semester did not (as I had hoped) mean that my life slowed down at all. In fact, I've managed to be even busier lately. But it's been a good kind of busy for the most part. I love my new job. Other than switching the subject to music (other than art) it's pretty much perfect for me. Although, if I can't work at a music library yet, art is the second best fit. I get to stay on top of all the current exhibits and artists going on all over the world. My boss is super nice (and I think she likes me more now that she knows that I actually know a little something about art... a very little something, but still, every little bit helps). And she's really interested in helping me learn as much as possible about the WHOLE library and art museum world as possible while I'm there (as opposed to confining me to my assigned tasks). So it's been a lot of fun. ...

Today was my official first day at the National Gallery (I went through processing on Monday). It was great. I think I'm really gonna like working there. And I have to say, I'm SO glad I took LBSC670 (Information Structure) this semester because I'm gonna have to use pretty much everything I learned there for this job. 670 (as it is referred to by us library students) most deals with the "back-end" of information. As in how to make it accessible rather than how to access it. Mostly we learned about ways to organize information, including various principles and standards used in the library world (AACR2, MARC, LC Authority Files, Dewey and Library of Congress classification schemes). The class was very difficult (the teacher was an EXTREMELY hard grader... but that just forced me to really learn everything) I really enjoyed it. I learned all kinds of new ways to organize things, which I think will end up making me OCD. Anyway, I'm excited about my new jo...

Days until New Job: 2 Days until Finals: 3 Days until Opera: 8 Days until Christmas: 16 Days until trip to New York City: 17 Am I ready for any of this? Not really. awesome. I have, however, managed to finally finish my portion of a take home final. For one of my classes we have to work on a take home final in groups, so the group I'm in divied up the questions amongst ourselves (there are 9 people, and 4 questions). Then I met with my partner yesterday to work on overall concepts and principles for our question, and we divied up the work we had to do, then today I typed it all up. Number of hours spent answering one-half of a question... hmm let's see... background research: 2-3 hours, discussions with partner: about 1 1/2 hours on Tuesday and 5 hours (nonstop) yesterday, writing/typing/editing/proofing/formatting: 4 1/2 hours today. Total length of one-half of 1 question out of 4 total questions... 10 pages. I am SO glad we didn't have to do the whole thing by...

My new least favorite word: kitschy The last time I heard this was the other day while watching a decorating show on TV. The designer created a "kitschy" piece of wall art for the room she was working on. Today I looked up the word kitschy, partly because I wasn't 100% confident in its meaning, and partly because I wasn't even sure if it was a real word. Here's the definition (according to dictionary.com): "Something of tawdry design, appearance, or content created to appeal to popular or undiscriminating taste" "Kitschy" is an awesome word for a decorator to use; and an even more awesome design aesthetic to be shooting for. (wow in one sentence I managed to use a word I hate (kitschy), a word I love (aesthetic), and end with a preposition... wahoo)