Congratulations to Bill & Andrea, who got married this weekend in Meredith, Colorado, at Norrie Colony, where Bill’s family has had a cabin since 1940.The whole area — the Fryingpan River Valley — is just gorgeous. It’s way up in the mountains, about an hour away from Aspen. The GSLIS contingent at the wedding is already making plans to return for a vacation in a couple of years.

Apparently, there’s nothing quite like a country wedding (except maybe a faeries & jedis wedding, but I didn’t know Sparkle J & JeT yet). We sat on hay bales, and the backdrop was miles of mountains and sky. It was a lovely, informal ceremony (take a look at the photo of Andrea and her parents walking down the aisle) for a wonderful pair. I’m so glad I was invited!

At the moment only photos of the ceremony itself are up on Flickr - more to come, though, including some hikes and reception shenanigans.

Congratulations are also due to Darius & Ellen, who marked their first anniversary on Monday. I still can’t believe I missed their wedding . . . actually more than that, I can’t believe I haven’t seen them since before they were engaged (that would be why there is no photo). We hope to remedy that sometime soon, but wrangling the schedules of a grad student, a travlin’ PR guy and an instruction librarian is no small task.

If you’re reading blogs right now, you probably have 15 minutes to watch “Fairfield Beach,” a choose your own adventure video from the Fairfield University Library. This got sent around today by the associate director (though it’s dated ‘07, and probably got sent around some listservs while I was stressing my way through the last semester of library school). We’ve been having some conversations about it here and there today at my library, and I want to know what other people think of it.

One of the things we were wondering was what the purpose of the video was. There was lots of speculation and I finally did the unthinkable and IM’d a librarian at Fairfield and asked. Gasp! (Vacation day tomorrow = extra sarcastic this afternoon, apparently.) They use it at the beginning of instruction sessions for their Freshman composition classes, to get the students a little more engaged in the topic. The video sets the scene for the library as a friendly, helpful, non-intimidating place (something I definitely could have used as an undergrad), and throws in enough cues to library instruction topics that the librarian can use the video to springboard into teaching those topics.

I couldn’t help but think about our equivalent Freshman literature instruction classes, and how difficult (impossible?) I find it to get even a couple of the students to really engage in the lesson. Anything that can entertain the students enough to get them to pay attention would be helpful, and this strikes me as just the kind of thing that would do it.

People generally assume that librarians know how to find stuff, especially in their own libraries. But that is not always the case. Witness the past 20 minutes of my life.

I took a call from a professor who needed a copy of an article he wrote. Not available electronically, but he says we have it here. I pull up the record in the catalog and verify that we should have the volume in question. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s what I completed in July. Links below take you to my reviews on Goodreads.com.

• The Principles of Uncertainty, Maira Kalman
• Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers, Jane Robinson
• Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping, Paco Underhill
• McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers, Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey

Is that really all? Huh. I suppose I did spend a week or so ignoring the stack I got out of the library after vacation.

This was news to me, but apparently del.icio.us is being redesigned, and that redesign is about ready to debut. One thing to note: they’re asking that everyone make note of their login info, as when they update with the new design, everyone will be logged out and will have to log back in. So, go check on that.

Also, my MacBook is here. “Here” as in sitting in my office right behind me here and I have only opened the shipping box and peered inside. A cute FedEx guy brought it this morning. I have things to do at work now, so Willpower is currently set at “iron” in order to avoid throwing the rest of my workday off track. (Normally it is set at “silly putty,” all the better to take advantage of any passing cupcakes.) I cannot wait to get home and I am psyched that tomorrow I work the evening shift — that means I can play all morning. (So much for that bike ride.)

I just wanted to plug a great movie I saw recently that I think is one of those indie films that gets lost in the shuffle for most of us. I forget why it came up, but at some point The Dead Girl was recommended to me by Netflix, so I added it to my queue. The Dead Girl is a quiet little film with some great talent: Mary Steenburgen, Toni Collete, Josh Brolin and plenty of others. The gist of it is that someone finds the body of a dead stranger, and we see how this discovery affects the lives of several people. In that sense it’s a little like “Crash,” but felt less hectic to me. I’m no big critic when it comes to movies, but I thought the acting was great and the story was just wonderful. Go rent it, or queue it, or check it out — however you get your film fix.

Well, thanks for the input when I asked for opinions, but I’ll be holding off on doing anything about XM Radio. I remembered hearing that there was a proposed merger, but hadn’t heard anything for so long that I figured it had gotten nixed. As I herad from NPR and now from Consumerist, it hasn’t. I think I’ll wait for some third-party, interoperable recievers to come out, and see what this a la carte packaging looks like.

Besides, my Mac is on the way. That will keep me occupied for a while. Especially if I get off my butt and get internet at home. (I wish there were some neighborhood hotspots other than McDonald’s.)

A while back I was talking about sunscreen because I was looking for a few things to add to my usual routine — I need to use more protection, more regularly, here. I went out and bought a few things to add to my arsenal. I thought I’d share for any other interested folks out there. Read the rest of this entry »

Is it asking too much that there be a reasonably-priced and reasonably-located transportation option between Baltimore and NYC?

I can either take Amtrak for $200 from the easy-to-get-to Baltimore Penn Station, or MegaBus for $40 from the difficult-to-get-to-without-a-car White Marsh Park & Ride. Oh, or I can take Amtrak for $100, but in order to do that I get less than 24 hours with my friends. I have checked Amtrak’s prices to Newark and New Rochelle but they’re the same as going to NYC. EKW suggested trying SEPTA to Trenton, and then NJ Transit into the city, but a train round-trip to Philly at a reasonable hour is $100 (at the moment, at least). So then to add on SEPTA and NJ Transit fares, I’m not sure the savings would be worth the hassle. I have even gone so far as to check one-way car rentals and flights.

I just don’t understand why Amtrak is so expensive. If it weren’t for a couple of other upcoming trips involving flights, hotels and rental cars (split with others, but still), plus the flight home for Christmas which I need to buy soon, I wouldn’t be agonizing about this so much.

No, really. Vote for Ellen as Alabama governor of Red Sox Nation. Go! Now!