Our kiddo's daycare is closed today for professional development. They try to schedule these around long weekends in order to reduce the impact on parents. For that, I am grateful. Given that our kid now has a four day weekend, we took advantage of the extra time home and got her flu shot done today. This gives her a few days to get over any side effects.

Here's what else was good this week:

• We ordered pizza from a local place we rarely get because, while it's very good, it's also expensive. No regrets! It was so darn tasty. Same for the fried goat cheese salad we got with the pie.
• I accidentally broke my library's website while working on coding for our new homepage. Luckily, I was smart and saved the original code and we were able to restore everything to normal in under an hour.
• Speaking of the coding, I found myself in a groove a few times this week where I could just plug away and figure things out. 
• I went to pub trivia!
• Last night, I hit a reading spurt and plowed through nearly 100 pages of my current doorstopper of a book.
• All the little pieces of crispy fried pork belly in the bowl I ordered from Cracked Eggery for lunch today.

Sometimes, when I'm working on a poser of a question or a difficult problem, I find myself staring at nothing over the top of my computer screen. I joke about my toddler doing her "reboots" where she stares off into the distance at nothing, but I do it to. I guess the brain sometimes just needs a moment to process everything.

Here's everything that has my attention at the moment.

WORK

• At my University the Library is in the same department with the Center for the Advancement of Learning. We started meeting to discuss more projects we could collaborate on. We have a good list, but one of the first things we're tackling is an app for faculty professional development. Right now, CAL is taking the lead and I am helping the library provide support services and information. Eventually, the library will provide content. But that's a ways away.
• I am still working on coding the new library website. Earlier this week, I actually broke our current website. We don't know how it happened (since I didn't touch the main homepage) but it did. We were down the same day Facebook was offline but, luckily, we recovered in less than an hour. I wrote an after action report to help ensure I don't put us through this again. On the plus side, I discovered an easier way to do things so now I am pushing ahead. Also, I finally fixed a coding problem that was bugging me for days. Woohoo!
• We are rolling through our webinar series for the semester. I'm still manager and host, but a couple of my colleagues have been creators and presenters and that's a nice change.
• I finished my calendar of library instruction sessions for this semester. I hope a few more crop up because I miss teaching.
• I'm attending a few sessions from Candid's 2021 Network Days conference. I'll watch the recordings for the sessions I was able to attend live.
• The survey for our research assignments research project closed. We investigators met to discuss what we want to do moving forward. The survey told us a lot while not really telling us much at all.
• So many senate committee meetings this week...

PERSONAL

• One of these days I am going to find a sofa table that I like. One of these days...
• Was able to add a few more categories to my blog archive, but this is a slow process because Weebly doesn't have a bulk blog post editor. (They really outta fix that.)
• Set up my bullet journal for October. If I'm careful, I won't run out of pages before the end of the year. Also, I'm starting to write down plans for how I want to set up my bujo for 2022.
• Got my flu shot!

The Internet Librarian Conference was supposed to be in person this year, but delta changed everything. Upside - you can now attend virtually! Sign up here for live and/or recorded options.

I will be speaking on Thursday, October 18 at 3pm on friendly-face marketing.

Library anxiety is real. While many people adore the library and their librarians, there are just as many patrons who approach the library with trepidation. Friendly-face marketing is a method of outreach which helps put your patrons at ease by creating a personalized and positive customer service experience. Watson discusses connecting with community in new ways such as spin selling. He shares how to do it, the likely outcomes, and the best techniques. Kowalski shares methods for conducting outreach research that will help you develop small and actionable friendly-face marketing campaigns. She shares friendly-face marketing techniques to help your staff engage with patrons and shows how these campaigns and actions can both ease library anxiety and speak to non-patrons to help increase your community outreach.

Looking for ways to get our kiddo more involved in cooking in order to get her more interested in eating a variety of things.

If you want a den of hot takes, I recommend subscribing to a local neighborhood list-serv.

​I subscribe to one for our neighborhood and it's an endless source of entertainment and frustration.

There's the usual batch of people selling things and looking for things, making recommendations, and sharing pictures of animals spotted in the wild.  There's also a good chunk of debate about neighborhood issues that tend to revolve around NIMBY/YIMBY topics and transportation changes. Lately, there has been an ongoing debate about cashless businesses. 

A new restaurant opened on the main drive and they are cash-free.  Going cashless is trending in cities these days and really took off during the pandemic. Some folks on the list-serv are NOT having it. Debate exploded about places being cash-free and "Why won't they accept my legal paper tender?" and "What is the world coming to?" and "It's a privacy violation to make me use a credit card!" and - legitimately - "What about the unbanked/unable to get credit cards?" 

The debate, on all sides, was vociferous and lengthy. Just as the emails on this topic were dying down, a 7-11 down the block from the new restaurant in question was robbed - in broad daylight - of $3,100 in cash. The list-serv was suspiciously quiet for about 24 hours and then everything set off again which much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. Again, on all sides.

All of this is to say, if you want to stay informed and have a high tolerance for drama, sign up for you local list-serv. You learn a lot.

What's your favorite way to stay in touch with where you live?

I like to set my Friday afternoons aside to get some professional reading down. For the past four months, I have not had a chance to sit down with a single journal, article, book, or catalog. Some project, event, or appointment always comes up and takes priority.

Today, my luck may be changing! Fingers crossed my afternoon stays clear and I can start a book I've had set aside to read for over a year.

Here's what else was good this week:

• We found out good friends of ours had their second baby. We get to meet the new arrival tomorrow.
• Naan. It's just so tasty when dipped in tikka masala sauce.
• We only closed the windows once this week... and for only 12 hours at that. The weather has just been perfect.
• I swung by a local bakery and bought a pain au raisin to share with the kiddo. She liked the pastry, but mostly wanted the plump raisins. Fine by me. I adored the flaky croissant like dough.
• Took me a few days, but I figured out how to fix the brightness on my work PC.
• Our floor's laundry room continues to be empty on Saturday nights. It's nice to not have to fight for machines when we want put in a few loads.

We're only 6 weeks into the semester and students are already ghosting me on scheduled appointments. While I enjoy having the time back, I desperately miss helping students in person. It's just so much easier to do reference when you can read someone's facial expressions (even with a mask on). At least my most recent ghosted appointment rescheduled. We shall try again!

Here's what else has my attention.

WORK

• Our library is prepping for an upcoming remodel, that means we are split in two locations. Our second location (soon to be our only location) is in a building newly acquired by the University. While the building is next door, it's not the easiest to navigate to from our main location. Today, I took myself on a little field trip and put together a quick walkthrough video. Doing this introduced me to a new video editing app, Splice. You have to pay for it, but I made the video using the free trial and I am tempted to ask my employer to pay for me to have permanent access.
• Our University is holding bi-weekly town halls about our COVID response and other updates. I've been mostly attending to jump in with answers about the Library, but I've asked a few questions of my own.
• A professor asked me to update an existing video for her class. As I was working on that, I realized it would be a lot better as a few smaller videos that I could reuse in other areas. She was game for that plan. I ended up making a video about the library this semester, getting started on your paper, and brainstorming keywords.
• Still managing and handling the logistics for our webinar series.
• I went on a binge and wrote most of the blog posts I need for work this week. Just two more to go, but one of them I need to solicit input from the rest of the staff.

PERSONAL

• I cooked with tofu for the first time and it was a success! Even with our toddler. I'm hunting for more tofu recipes. Please feel free to leave your favorites in the comments.
• Still working on adding categories to my archives of blog posts. You can see which ones I've already gotten to over in the sidebar.
• We have confirmed our family photo session date! I can't wait to see how these turn out. Our kiddo loves to look at herself when we take pictures, so this event could come with some extra cat herding.

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam
Mark Bowden

My reading pace with non-fiction is a glacial crawl. I try so hard to read every detail and remember every fact that my pace is about 15 pages an hour. Luckily, Mark Bowden has a way with writing non-fiction like it's cinematic fiction so my page per hour count jumps up a little bit. 

​Bowden is my favorite non-fiction writer and I’m (slowly) working on his entire bibliography. A book about the Vietnam War is not exactly light reading, but fall feels like a good time to finally start this 600 plus page doorstopper which has been sitting on my bookcase for several years.


Also, complete forgot to post that I started (and finished reading) Well Played by Jen DeLuca last week. It was a delightful rompy romance.

It was a good week for book recommendation emails.

If the weather pattern is any indication, fall is (finally!) here.

Let's ignore the fact that global warming is lengthening summer to the detriment of all other seasons, and just relish this cooling time of year. It may be "basic" but I don't care. I love fall. I am that woman wearing a scarf, carrying a pumpkin spice coffee (not a latte - never lattes), and shuffling her feet happily though the fallen leaves.

Here is why I love fall:

• Goodbye DC humidity.
• The trees change into a riot of glorious colors.
• Apple cider donuts.
• No more mosquito bites.
• Open windows all day and night.
• Wearing long sleeves but pushing the arms up to my elbows and being perfectly comfortable.
• Football and hockey are back.
• Back to school vibes (and supply shopping)
• Feeling like it's a good time to start a long non-fiction book.
• More slow cooker meals.
• Wearing a hoodie and yoga pants and curling up under a blanket on the couch to veg with a binge watch, binge read, or the internet.
• Those cute little tiny gourds and pumpkins.

What do you love (or hate) about fall.