Summer's still going, and I'm still busy. Go figure.

In happy news, I was offered 12-15 hours/week at the yoga studio so I am quitting Brueggers's at the end of the month. Even though Illinois minimum wage is higher than Iowa's, I'll still be making less at Indigo just because I'll be working fewer hours. But that is a good thing. I think right now, my time/sanity is more important. And it'll be so nice to have a desk job again. And it's a desk job at a yoga studio! What could be better? It's so awesome to know I only have a couple more weeks of my current job, rather than up to another year. What relief. Though I'm a little bit nervous about the actual process of quitting, since I've never had to do it before. I'm sure it will be fine, but there are some people that will be sad to see me go (I hope) and I don't want to have to tell them I'm leaving.

So that's the big news. Otherwise, I'm racking up the weekend travel miles. This weekend is the American Library Association's Annual Conference. This year it is being held in Chicago, so it's a great excuse to go to check it out. I'm not paying for full conference admission (it's expensive) but I'm going to go see the vendors and exhibits on Saturday. There's a lot of cool stuff to see, from what I've heard. And a lot of authors will be there. My goal for the day is to get autographs from Neil Gaiman and Judy Blume! I'm not sure if I'll be going back on Sunday for more conference fun (I'm staying in Lombard, IL with some friends) but I kind of want to go to see the Book Cart Drill Team World Championships. Seriously.

calm Regina Spektor - Blue Lips library, work

I think after last night I have decided conclusively that drinking and dancing in college nightclubs is not my scene. Fun to do once in a great while, but that's about it. Hanging around with a bunch of drunk 19 year-olds with fake IDs is not all it's cracked up to be. If it's cracked up to be anything.

calm Matchbox Twenty - Push

Super productive Saturday!

I went to Panera with my Mom and then we went grocery shopping. I picked up some more quinoa since it worked out so well the last time I made it. I'm going to make stuffed peppers again! And raspberries were on sale for $1.80/pint. I restrained myself and only got 3. That'll keep me busy for a few days, haha. I love summer produce.

Speaking of summer produce, I -finally- got my wee little vegetable sproutlings in the ground. It's been several weeks, so I hope I didn't stunt them or anything by keeping them in those little plastic planter thingies for too long. I planted 4 each of yellow tomato, green pepper, jalapeno and cauliflower in the ground and put the rest (cucumber, zucchini and spinach) in a planter to keep on the deck. I also constructed a little cage out of chicken wire to put around the patch to keep rabbits and deer out. Hopefully it works! And hopefully I'll be able to grow something. I'm sure I'll at least get cucumbers - they practically grow themselves and then take over the backyard without any help at all. But it would be great to get some of everything!

I also got some practice with my new cycling shoes. My Dad attached the cleats to them for me (backwards at first, but we got them straightened out eventually!) and I spent about half an hour alternating clipping one foot in and out and then the other. I tried a couple times with both feet clipped in and managed not to fall over when stopping, so yay. Hopefully I won't wipe out when I go for a real bike ride, but I'm told most people fall at least once or twice at the beginning because they forget their feet are attached to the pedals.

Today I also managed to get thank you notes written for my few family birthday gifts. Most of my family has ceased sending me money or gifts on my birthday, which is actually fine with me. I mean, I won't turn down a birthday check for sure, but I really don't need it anymore. I'm just as happy to get a card. I think this year's birthday money will be socked away for my trip to NYC over Thanksgiving! :D

I actually got this done a few days ago, but it was something else that's been looming on my To Do list, so I'll report it any way: Lindsey's paintings! She commissioned a set of flowery pictures for her apartment living room. She bought the paint and canvas and I designed and painted them. I've had the canvas sitting around for months and only managed to find time for it a few weeks ago. It's been a while since I painted and I think they turned out really nice considering that. I almost didn't want to give them up! But they are done and mailed to NYC, so I shall see them next time I visit.

( Picture of my paintings! )

productive Jump Little Children - Yearling cycling, gardening, painting

Jack and I just completed Week 5 of Couch to 5K! 20-minute straight run, baby! We went approximately 2 miles, though I haven't figured the exact distance yet.

I've never run anywhere near that far before in my life. And you know what? It wasn't that bad.

Heck yes. Go me!

accomplished fitness, running

Well, I just renewed my paid account for another year, so maybe I should try updating this thing once in a while, eh?

I'm quite enjoying summer so far. It's nice to have time to pursue my personal interests again and not worry about detracting from time I should be spending on class. I'm doing a summer musical at Countryside Community Theater (South Pacific!) and the rehearsals for that start up tomorrow. It should be a fun, low stress production so I'm looking forward to that. I'm even reading recreationally again (it's been freakin' forever - I'm such a bad librarian)! It's a book called The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University, and it follows a nonreligious Brown University student who decided to spend a semester at Liberty University to try to better understand the people behind the evangelical Christian movement. He's very honest, open and non-judgmental about his experiences there and I like the book a lot. I'm about halfway through, and so far I'd definitely recommend it. Hopefully this'll get me on a roll and I'll keep reading all summer. I need to get out of my non-reading rut, especially when it comes to fiction (almost all of my recent reads, including this current one, were nonfiction).

I've also started another job (yes, exactly what I needed) working the front desk at one of the yoga studios I go to. Right now it's only alternate Saturdays because that's all they need me for, but I'm hoping they'll rework the schedule and finagle me 10-15 hours a week there. If that happens, I will be out of Bruegger's faster than you can say Big Bagel Bundle. They'll be losing basically all of their high school student employees to college this fall, so I feel sort of bad about being so ready to get out of there, but whatever. Part time jobs do not need to be stressful like that. For serious. It's just annoying to me that pretty much all of that can be pegged to one unpleasant person when everybody else is perfectly nice and normal.

Work at the library is still fine. I've got a computer class to teach this week, which I suppose I should start preparing for. It's PC Basics again, which I've already taught twice, but I should review my powerpoint and handouts and maybe adapt it to the computers in the lab, which have the new version of MS Office. I've got another class this month and then two next month. Hopefully then they'll approve more classes starting in the fall. There's a few I'd like to do, specifically one on the new online catalog and account services.

On the fitness front, I'm still progressing in Couch to 5K. My brother and I just completed week 4 of the program, so we're about halfway through. Running 3 times a week has cut into my gym time, because I am just not at the point where I can handle multiple cardio workouts per day when one of them is running. It takes too much out of me. Combining swimming, cycling yoga or AMT on the same day is totally fine, but not running. Eventually it might be, but not yet. Speaking of cycling, I'm excited to get my birthday present from my parents - we ordered me a sweet pair of Shimano touring shoes, so I can switch to clipless pedals. Next thing I'm going to get for myself is an honest to goodness cycling jersey. I've been eyeing a few cool ones at Twin Six. I need to get out and ride more, too. Some of my friends have expressed interest in occasional bike rides, and I'm keeping my eyes out for short weekend or day group rides that I could do.

My birthday this week was excellent. I took the day off work and went out for the day with Jack and his girlfriend Liz, who is visiting for the day. We went out on the Channel Cat, a sort of boat-bus that is an extension of the MetroLink Transit system. It's really only used for tourism, but it's fun. We took it over to Moline and had lunch at Lagomarcino's, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. After that we went over to the John Deere Commons and played on the machinery for a while. Got some great pictures too, haha. I'll have to post some eventually. After that we finished the Channel Cat route and went home to prepare for a potluck at Jessies. I made quinoa stuffed peppers, which turned out great. I've never cooked with quinoa before, but I'm definitely adding it to my repertoire. It tastes better than white rice and is a complete protein to boot. Sweet deal.

Anyway, the potluck was a ton of fun. Lots of good food and fabulous people. I got some really nice presents including a beautiful ceramic bowl from Jenna that she made and a Lego-shaped cake mold (!!!) from Jessie. That'll go really well with the two cake recipe books that my parents gave me, haha. I will definitely post pictures when I use it. All in all, it was a really nice birthday. I got a lot of well-wishes from a lot of people and I'm extremely grateful to have such awesome family and friends. :)

cheerful Matchbox Twenty - Bent books, cycling, fitness, work

Couch to 5K, here I come!

And I think I'll drag my brother along for the ride run.

determined Brian Eno & David Byrne - Everything That Happens fitness, running

I reached a yoga milestone today!

I pushed up into Urdhva Dhanurasana unassisted for the first time ever in my life tonight at yoga class. Woo!!

I've been getting -so- close in classes recently, I knew it was coming, but I'm still excited anyway. I held it for a really long time too (mostly because I was afraid to come crashing down on my head/neck.)

Huzzah!

accomplished fitness, yoga

Here's another one of those "Life Update at Random Intervals" posts that I have become so good at making.

Life is going pretty well. School is almost over for the year, thank goodness. I turned in my final project for my Use and Users class yesterday, 17 whole minutes before the deadline. We have to present our projects in class this week, but I'm not really worried about that. The class is super laid back and my professor doesn't really want a formal presentation anyway.

Today I'm headed to IC to work on my Databases final project, which is due Thursday of this week. It's...nowhere near done. The project is basically a rehash of what we did in Computing Foundations (aka design a database) but this time we actually have to make it work for real using PHP and mySQL. No cheating with HTML this time, haha. Again I have become sort of the default programmer, but it's my strong suit and I don't mind doing it that much, so it's all good. I've got all of the required functions working in a haphazard sort of way, so I still need to design and build the website structure which will be hopefully not too hard. I'm not doing the cosmetic design this time and I think I'll be excused from writing much of the paper since I'm doing so much of the coding, which is a-ok with me.

Then I have a large-ish final paper to write for my Literacy and Learning class, which I'm not looking forward to at all. The assignment is really vague and the professor very particular (what a great combination, eh?). But I hope to start that once the major work on the databases project is over with, which hopefully should be this weekend.

Well I guess all I have time for at the moment is a school update, so maybe I'll get to the rest of my life later today.

awake Jesus Christ Superstar - Superstar library school

Well, I have been majorly overtaxing and over stressing myself for the last few weeks, and it has finally come back to bite me. Big time.

I've been feeling crappy since the end of my NYC trip (sore throat) but it seemed to get better. Then I got a pretty bad cough the other day. This morning, I very nearly passed out while at work. I felt it coming on and stupidly ignored it because we were busy, etc. I really should have gone to sit immediately but I'm dumb. The (probably) two minutes while my vision was blurring were the longest two minutes I have ever experienced. As soon as I saw an opportunity though, I ducked out of there. We got majorly busy right after that and I feel sort of badly about not helping, but what help was I going to be if I couldn't stand up?

I called my Mom to come get me since I didn't trust myself to drive after that. I've spent the rest of the day sleeping, lounging about and saving up my energy for the show tonight. The Producers opens at Music Guild this evening! I do hope it will go well, but I'm not as emotionally invested right now for obvious reasons. I just want to make it through without dying.

Dangit I forgot my earplugs (I sit right in front of the drum kit and the other percussionist.)

Oh well. I've pretty much cancelled my plans for tomorrow so I will also spend tomorrow doing nothing (until tomorrow night's show), which is probably exactly what I need.

sick pit

Quick update because I just realized I haven't mentioned it yet:

New York was so awesome. I had a really great time, much better than my last visit. The last visit, while fun, left me exhausted the entire time. Not so much this time. We ran ragged doing fun stuff and I didn't get worn out at all. I started to get sick at the end, which dampened my enthusiasm somewhat, but that's not NYC's fault.

I will recap the trip in more detail later, but I wanted to mention that I'm back and that it was AWESOME.

In fact, the trip was so much fun that I am now seriously entertaining the completely crazy idea that I might try to get a library internship there this summer if I can figure out how to afford it.

Train - Lincoln Avenue
trips