Broken no longer!

Yay!

The new theme is up, it has been tweaked some, and I am enjoying a brief respite prior to starting my FINAL class of my MLS.

Unfortunately, I’m still brain-dead.  Thanks for hanging in with me here.

Yes, I’m mucking with themes

Bear with me…

My old theme was… old.  Old enough that I wasn’t able to take advantage of a lot of WP features.  My WP goddess/guru (yes, she spends much more time helping others with their sites rather than updating her own) suggested I update.  So, this is me, updating.

Thanks for your patience.

Hitting the wall

John asked me the other day if I had given up blogging completely.  I don’t think he was kidding, either.

The short answer is, “no.”  The longer answer has something to do with the combined effect of summer, school, and a full-time job.  I haven’t felt much like doing a lot of the things I usually enjoy doing: writing, running, and knitting are all on that list these days.

In the past, I might have freaked out, decided that I must make myself do these things I enjoy doing — else, who am I?  Enter identity crisis, then insert frenzied period of making a job out of things I enjoy, which is pretty much a one-way ticket to aversionville.

It only took me a couple of decades to figure out how utterly insane this is.

So, my new method of dealing with that feeling is to use the old “if you love something let it go” philosophy.  I have a pretty solid notion that these things I do truly love to do will return to me in their own time without my insisting that they Come. Back. Right. Now.  (A negotiation tactic that is only slightly less effective on one’s own desires than it is on our dog — which is to say, on a scale from “not very” to “not at all”).

In the interim, apologies for the light posting.

Endless airplane

So I found out today that one of my photos was used on a Wired Blog post (don’t worry – it’s creative-commons licensed.  Happy for them to have it, just wish I had been able to take it with a better camera – I didn’t have the SLR then).

More wooden planes

So now I’m posting about a posting that used a photo I posted.

Funny old world.

Truly interactive memery

The general run of question-answering memes are pretty much only interesting to the people writing them, I believe.  However, when Harriet posted this one, it seemed more interesting to me because it was more personalized.  The rules follow the question-and-answer session.

1.  Your house is on fire.  All the people and pets are already out and safe.  You can take only one thing with you.  What will it be and why?

My artsy-fartsy ego would like me to say I would grab a painting, but knowing myself the way I do, I’m afraid I would probably grab my laptop.  We only do local backup, y’see, and my MacBook has all of my schoolwork, finances, photography, personal writing – a lot of the stuff I value.

2. A benefactor has agreed to fund you for a year. There are no strings attached – you can do whatever you’d like for 12 months, practical or frivolous, and have it all paid for by this person. What will you do?

This is a really hard one, I have to say.  At this point, I can only think about it in pieces, and those pieces seem to be: Europe, art, knitting, eating.

I guess I would fund a pan-European trip involving learning language(s), lots of train travel (knitting time), museums, and cuisine.  Not very inventive, and certainly not practical, but it sounds lovely.  If I could manage to wangle a tour with Rick Steves along the way, that would be fun.

3.  Tell me about your favorite place (you can take this any way you like it — a cozy chair, an interesting continent).  Why is it your favorite?  When did you first go there?  When did you last go there?  What is your favorite memory there? Is there someone you would especially like to take there?

Wow – I don’t really do absolute “favorite” because so many things appeal for very different reasons.  But one of my favorite places is actually our den at home.  It’s cozy in a slightly cluttered way, it has a fireplace, and it has a tendency to contain my favorite people and animals.  Some of our favorite art is also on the walls there.

4.  Of all the things that you have made or done in your life so far, what are you most proud of?  Why does the thing you picked mean the most to you?

I think I’m proudest of being smart enough to seek John out after a breakup and absence of over six years (see #1 and #2 here for a brief explanation).  I was pretty sure he was The One, but our initial timing wasn’t right for a bunch of reasons (we first dated when I was in law school and John didn’t really know what he wanted to do with his life).  It was scary to try to find him again (I feared he would be happily married with 2.7 children, a Volvo, and a golden retriever), but it was definitely a gamble that paid off.

5.  What made you decide to go back to school?  Was it a gradual realization of wanting to change directions or more of an epiphany?  Was there someone who inspired you?

It was sort of a gradually sudden epiphany.  At first, I think I subconsciously ignored the idea because it seemed like I was “copying” John instead of paving my own way.  But when I consciously confronted that notion, it seemed absurd.  There’s plenty of room in library science, and me taking this degree enables us to contemplate a lot more geographical possibilities down the road.  John inspired me, as did Marie – I envied the fact that they liked what they did and it seemed like something I would like also.  Actually making the decision to go to school now was one of those spooky instances of a bunch of things independently clicking into place: my job got outsourced, Maryland started a program at the campus closest to me, and they also waived the application deadline.  I don’t go in for the phrase “it was meant to be,” but if I did, this would be an instance of it.

Thanks, Harriet – that was fun!

If you want to play along, leave a comment and ask to be interviewed and I’ll think of 5 questions to ask you. After I email you your questions, post your answers on your blog, then link back to this post.

Baaa.

So, my friend and former classmate Erik Heels went and put the Google Connect thingy on his blog.  I’m testing it out myself, so if you’re feeling the love and don’t mind putting your face out there, please feel free to join.  I put it in my sidebar, just past "recent comments."

Overheard in our car, library nerd edition

Heading to the grocery store, John has some "Top 40 of our misspent teenage years" show on the radio, starring the cryogenically frozen head of Casey Kasem.  Inevitably, REO Speedwagon comes on.

Heard it from a friend who…
Heard it from a friend who…
Heard it from another –

"Well, that sounds like an incredibly reliable chain."

"So, is that an information need?  Does it involve information-seeking behavior?"

"Sounds more like information transmission to me."

"We’re really geeks, aren’t we?"

"Yes, but at least you’ll get a blog post out of it."

I’m back…

I’ve spent the last week in the great State of Maine (since Milo is busily making himself at home on my lap, I first typed that as the "Great Sate of Maine," and when you consider the amount of good food that was consumed, it’s just as appropriate).

It’s awfully pretty there.

John near Bubble Rock

And we had a very good time. Brother Brian also took some great shots, which you can see here , and we also talked about restarting Literagraphica , which has been on hiatus since Bri’s spent the last year and some doing piffling things like starting new businesses and winning awards and silly things like that. He says he’s got things sorted now, and wants to restart the project, so that’s very cool.  I took a pretty nice shot of him also:

Brian at Bubble Rock

And an arty shot of my own:

Aht

That’s pretty much it. We’re trying to get back into the swing of things here – which is always easier if you take an extra day at home before jumping in to real life.  In our infinite wisdom we… didn’t do that.  I’m already really looking forward to the weekend.

Testing

I’ve been having some issues with feedburner lately, so I’ve nuked the old feed and created a new one.  Here’s hoping the rss gods are smiling on me now.

The inevitable Wordle output

jillasmith.com as a wordle picture

It’s not of this site, though – it’s the output from my professional site.

Even though I feel like I’m probably the last person on the planet to do a Wordle, I know one or two of my readers might not know how to make their own, so if you’re one of the one or two, wordle is here.