personal

On Birthdays: 2023 Edition

It looks like it’s that time of year again! My Facebook feed is exploding with well wishes, and I’ve got people knowing about my birthday left and right in person. (I have many complaints about Facebook, but this is not one of them. I think it’s great that it gives people something small like this to connect over, though I am a habitually terrible Happy Birthday wisher.) When you’re a kid, a birthday is an extremely exciting event. I mean, cake and presents? How does it get any better? I think it’s also big, because people pay extra attention to

Disney+ for Language Learning

I’m still on my language learning kick, trying to study Slovak once a day. (Well, Slovak on Mondly. Duolingo still doesn’t do Slovak, so I do Czech, instead.) I’m up to 250 days in a row, as of yesterday. Is it working? Um . . . definitely not as well as actually taking a class in it, speaking as someone who’s taken a number of languages. However, some of that is because I don’t devote an hour a day to the lessons. Usually it’s more like 10 minutes. On the other hand, it’s definitely teaching me the language better than

What Exactly Do I Do?

As the new semester has started up again, it’s been as busy and hectic as it always is. Every year, I think this is the year when I’m going to be on top of everything heading into September, and every year, I’m anything but. So while I was bemoaning my perpetual state of not-quite-on-top-of-everything, I thought it might be interesting to you all to know just what exactly I’m up to these days. Between work, writing, family, and church, there are a number of balls in the air. How many? Let’s find out. That rounds out the things I do

Social Media has Calmed Down

I don’t want this post to turn political, because then I’d be causing the very thing I’m noting has changed, but it occurred to me today that either I’ve gotten much better at unfollowing anyone who posts dramatic political links to Facebook, or people in general have stopped posting things beyond normal status updates. Trump has been indicted four times, and I don’t remember a single post about it appearing anywhere other than . . . a rogue Twitter post, perhaps? On the one hand, this makes me very happy, because it really felt like social media was just making

Moving Offices

When I graduated with my Masters in Library Science, getting a job was difficult. I applied to 50 places in the space of a few months, and almost all of those came back with a decided “no.” When I took the job of Information Technology Librarian at the University of Maine at Farmington, I didn’t really have an idea of what it would entail. I just knew it took two different things I was good at (tech and libraries) and jammed them together. I had an office right on the main floor of the library, and I spent most of