Hurricane Ian is awful. As a former resident of Florida, I keep half an eye on all hurricanes when they happen. This one, I watched more closely. My parents retired to Florida and I have a lot of extended family there. My in-laws live in South Carolina. I am thankful that everyone is okay and, so far, the main issue anyone has had to deal with is power loss and simple yard clean up.

Here's what was good in my week:

• DC's very accessible COVID centers helped us all get our flu shots and boosters
• I got to sleep in until 10am last weekend
• Rode a carousel with my kiddo for the first time
• Making dinner plans with a friend
• Sandwich crackers
• Hoodies with pockets
• Spying on kiddo reading some of her books at our dining room table
• Lap blankets
• Pumpkin beer season!

Thirsty Mermaids
Kat Leyh

This was a delightful graphic novel that was parts heartwarming and zany. It's a great story of friendship and acceptance.


Classic Calligraphy for Beginners: Essential Step-by-Step Techniques for Copperplate and Spencerian Scripts
Younghae Chung

I mostly perused this for the pretty pictures. While I find most calligraphy books are similar, I liked that this one chose to focus on two specific styles of calligraphy. 


The iPhone Photography Book
Scott Kelby

This is my current read. The author’s somewhat snarky attitude is getting to me, but the tips are sound.  The book includes both technique and technical information and that makes the advice well rounded and actionable. ​It makes me want to get our there and take more pictures.


*Titles shared here use affiliate links for Bookshop.org

Changing things up on this weekly post again.

Instead of breaking down my projects by work/personal and then overarching category, I'm just going to list the top three projects I'm focusing my bandwidth on each week.

I find that I can only really manage three major "things" at once but what they are varies from week to week.

Here's what's on my list this week.

1. Reference Assignment Design - I have one more interview to code with the first iteration of our joint codebook. It has gotten faster, but I still feel like I am missing things. When I'm done with my first round of coding, I want to give the excerpts a once over to see what I missed. Also, we all realized that we have a poster due about our initial results in just a few weeks. We are starting the scramble for that. October snuck up on us.
2. Website Usability Testing - I tested out the script with a colleague and now I want to beta test the actual material and notetaking on someone who does not use our website regularly. Assuming that goes well, we'll start recruitment and testing. We need 10 students and 5 faculty members. We're bribing/rewarding them with Starbucks gift cards.
3. Condo Logo​ - Our condo needs a new logo and we're trying to do things in-house. I joined a small group of folks working on this. Right now, I've done my first round of mock-ups. I'm going to go photograph our building and then put together a few more. We're getting together soon to discuss what we like and where we want to go.

Continuing my look at keyboard short cuts, another one I find useful is Ctrl+A. This is known as the "Select All" command.

Essentially, you click once on a page and can then Ctrl+A to highlight all of the material in that window. This is useful when you want to copy and paste things or delete a mass chunk of material. I find it faster than highlighting with a mouse.

This command works in most document and spreadsheet programs as well as most browsers.

It's been ages since I did one of these round ups! I finally got through a backlog of book related emails which added several titles to my list. 

Y​ou can see my complete TBR list on Pinterest.

Items featured here are Bookshop.org affiliate links.

Sometimes there are chores I just can't be bothered with. 

For example, this week, the weather turned cool which means we got to throw open all our windows. This is a glorious time of year and I'm glad it's finally here. What I am not happy about is that doing this reminded me of all the cobwebs that are hanging around outside. 

Our building has deeply inset windows. Spiders like to make their webs between the brick façade and window frame. This means each window has several clusters of cobwebs just staring me in the face. As the wind blows, the cobwebs smush and thicken. The spiders make more webs. Soon, I see thick strands and clumps of cobwebs every time I look outside. They're now starting to gather leaves.

What I need to do is open the screens and wipe everything down with a duster pole covered in a towel. That will sweep away the webs and make our windows look cleaner.

This whole chore would probably take me 15-minutes to do. I just don't feel like doing it.

What chore are you ignoring?

We slept with the windows open last night and it was glorious. I have very much missed the crisp air of fall. Also, windows open means lots of savings on our electric bill and that makes me happy.

Here's what else was good this week.

• Had dinner at a small biergarten with friends. Kiddos loved it too.
• Finally watched a movie on our list that had been there forever.
• I make an awesome looking event table.
• A good (and cheap!) bottle of sauvignon blanc
• Kiddo finally sits still for her Covid "nose tickles" at home.
• Fuzzy slippers
• Trying something new for work that looks like it will be successful.
• Biscuits
• Only one more interview left to code. Huzzah!

You know how, when you get a knot in a muscle, it just bugs you until it suddenly lets go and you can move again? That's what my brain feels like with all of my tasks right now. I just need one or two things to finish up so that I can get the knot out of my brain.

This is what I'm working on.

WORK

• Research Assignment Design: I have two more interviews to code from scratch. Then I'm going to give everything a once over to see if I missed anything. The code book is getting easier to work with. I think it's still a bit big, but we can clean it up in iteration two. 
• Presentations and Publications: I haven't worked on anything this week but I am brainstorming for an idea to submit to speak at Computers in Libraries 2023.
• Reference and Instruction: Later today, I am going to do my first session of roving reference. This is a new thing so we're just going to feel it out this semester to see if it's worth keeping. I just hope to reach three people during each two hour session. We've also seen an increase in numbers of questions from outside our University. Trying to track down what's causing that. It's totally fine, I'm just curious. Last night, I got a question from a student in Botswana about something our University doesn't teach.
• Outreach: Two events down, one event to go. I got smart and started putting a newsletter sign up sheet on the table for these events. 
• Administration: Not a lot beyond the typical email management going on here.

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: Still nothing.
• Email Newsletter: I've taken a bit of a break from strategic planning, but I think I may look into more cross-promotions soon.
• Home Projects: Scoping out a place to possibly wrangle plastic for recycling via our grocery store drop-off. Our building can handle most things but bags/warps/films are not one of them. I would love to be able to recycle that via the store but we need a place to collect things.
• Hobbies: Got down to Feedly and Inbox Zero so I'm hoping this frees up some time for hobbies.

I love a good tracker. Extensive or short, complex or simple, show me how something is coming along and I'm a happy camper.

I have a tracking sheet for my newsletter so I know what I've shared. I have trackers for my blog. For work, I have good ole lists where I cross off project steps as we go along. I wear a FitBit. My bullet journal has several trackers including what TV series we're watching, habits I want to keep, tasks I want to get done through the year, monthly tasks, and a cleaning checklist. 

My husband was out of town this week. I tracked his flights online. When he ran a marathon, I kept tabs on him through Find My iPhone so I knew where to meet him to cheer him on.

I love trackers so much that they don't even need to be relevant for me. 

Case in point, I am addicted to checking the tracker for "The Queue" [gift link]. This is more formally known as "Her Majesty The Queen's Lying-in-State." It's an official government feed on YouTube that shows the length, wait time, and location for those who want to pay their respects to the queen. I'm not in London. I'm not going to go to Westminster. I still can't help myself from checking this feed several times a day. I want to see where things are at and read the little notes they add to let people know what's going on.

If you give me the chance to see what's going on with a "thing," I will use it.

​Do you like trackers?

The husband was out of town for work the past few days. Luckily, kiddo decided to be mostly kind during my solo parenting time. I also love that the husband wrote "Listen to mommy" on our white board... even though she can't read yet. It's the thought that counts.

Here's what else made this a good week.

• Got to spend a whole afternoon outside on a glorious day working a student event
• Went to a free concert at a local park
• Office blanket keeping me warm
• Cardigan weather!
• Husband: *howls like a wolf* Kiddo: No. You're not the big bad wolf.
• Bagel and lox for breakfast
• Got to see my bestie for a few hours
• Playing around in Canva 
• A pot of hot coffee all to myself