For my feline-loving compatriots

LOL by sgt83007

Food This Week 20

Thanksgiving is here! Almost. We'll be eating a minimum of 3 turkey dinners next week, because the fixings are on sale, and because I loooooove turkey barley soup. This weekend I'll make a low-key turkey dinner and put up the turkey carcass for soup and extra sliced/shredded meat for planned leftovers. On Thursday, which most people in America know as Thanksgiving Day, my wife and I will be with my parents, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandfather (and perhaps assorted others) for dinner. This is a surprising twist, because my family always celebrates Thanksgiving on Friday (an excellent tradition). We'll be doing that as well, with a slightly different cast of characters -- largely because my wife has to work a double shift. (Customer service is like that.) So I'll have a weekend with my family, and she'll have a weekend of... driving.

Goals Check-in: October

Here's my end-of-the-month wrap-up regarding my 2013 goals:

Weekend Catch-up

I know this blog's become more about life stuff recently. Groceries and meal planning, frugal living, and personal achievements aren't the only things going on for me right now, but I'm out of library school and there's not much library stuff I can talk about right now. I hope to come back to it in a while. In the meantime, here's what I've been up to this weekend!

Food This Week 12

The grocery budget is spent (and I went a little over, too, with some bulk purchases that will last a while). And we have no room in the freezer for the mountain of chicken drumsticks I saw on sale, either... but I still wish I could stock up. I want to try this sticky chicken recipe. Or maybe this one. Ah, well -- the sale cycle will come around again. My wife's out of town this weekend, and I'm singing at the wedding of friends and then hitting the Big Book Sale, so it will be a few days of eating up odds and ends and single servings.

Today is Monday

And it is a MONDAY, if you know what I mean.

This song has been stuck in my head all day. (Wednesday: sooooouuuup!)

Movin' On Up!

Just a little groove to get you set for the big news.

Earworms of the Moment

I'm unloading my current earworms in the hope that it'll make them stop... a futile hope, perhaps. Feel free to share your own songs of the moment!

Ban kids from reading "too much"?

On my virtual desk today (although it's from last week) was this article, in which a public librarian discouraged a 9-year-old from participating in the reading contest he's won for the past 5 years.

That's right, a librarian who tried to ban a child from reading.

I'll wait.

Children with Incarcerated Parents

Today I read a frightening statistic. 1 in 28 children in the U.S. have a parent who is serving a prison sentence. That's an average of one or more per classroom (though probably more concentrated in urban areas like mine). Many more who know incarcerated people -- family members, neighbors, etc.

Okay, this settles it: This year I'm using Visiting Day in Read Aloud.

Making a Weekly Menu Plan

I thought I'd write a little about my process for planning a weekly menu and shopping list. No, it's not particularly library-related, but it does relate to organization of information and efficient systems. Plus, it's my darn blog and I'll post lots of stuff! Some of it will be home/life-related. Enjoy the links!

CC by LizMarie_AK (Flickr)

Food This Week

I keep forgetting to take pictures of the produce box when it comes. By the time I remembered this week, I'd already put away potatoes and corn, juiced limes, and made zucchini bread. (This recipe, sans nuts -- although this one looked good, it involved math and then an uneven number of eggs to accommodate the amount of zucchini I had. I ended up short on the smaller batch as it was, but it tastes fine.)

Goals check-in: June

Here's my end-of-the-month wrap-up regarding my 2013 goals:

The Liebster Award

I was nominated for the Liebster Award by Joshua Brown at Brown's Balanced Life. (Thanks! It's nice to know more about who's reading.)

This "award" (okay, it's more like a chain letter -- but don't be scared off!) says something like, "Hey, I like reading your stuff!" and is an opportunity for new(er) bloggers to introduce themselves to a larger blogosphere. Bloggers love an excuse to talk about themselves!

If you're coming here because you were nominated or tagged by me, welcome! Here are your instructions:

1. Make a new post about this award in your blog.
2. Post 11 random facts about yourself.
3. In your post, answer the questions the nominator has created (below). 
4. Then choose 3-5 new bloggers (with fewer than 200 followers) to "nominate" and link to them in your post.
5. Create 11 new questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer.
6. Go back to their pages and tell them about the award.
7. (If you'd rather have an "Honorary Award", you don't have to do any of this -- just keep blogging!)

Strides in Snowflaking

As I've sent some extra snowflakes to the Adoption fund recently, it's grown quickly! Today I got an email from CapitalOne360 (formerly ING Direct) to congratulate me on my savings progress:

Volunteer for Green Branch May-September

Because I answered a similar volunteer call last summer and found myself with an unexpected but very worthwhile internship, I have to pass on this message from Green Branch Library's executive director, Shari Leskowitz:

We Need Volunteers!

Internship Week 9

This week was relatively mellow on the CPL front. (I've been catching up on my e-portfolio, mostly.) The new topic I'm researching is digital storytelling, and I logged 4 hours last week and 8 hours so far this week doing the research and outlining the report.

Note to self (and anyone else who needs it).

A Week in the Life of a Library Student

Next week I will be cataloging my daily activity for Hack Library School's "Library Student Day in the Life" project (#HLSDITL). Because of the inadequacies of contemporary time travel, I'll be backdating my posts: that is, I'll live my day, write it up, and then publish it with a post timestamp of, say, noon from that same day.   So don't worry if it looks like I haven't posted anything on Monday -- just check back on Tuesday, and so on. If you have my blog in your feedreader, you'll get the new post at the time I click the Publish button, and I believe it will show up at the top instead of near other posts from noon. Don't quote me on that.

You can read others' posts -- and see pictures and videos -- here on the project wiki. Maybe you'll meet some library students you want to start reading. (I recommend Lezbrarian, for a start.) Enjoy the glimpses into different types of library student life and all the ways we integrate our studies into our other work and home commitments.

It's not too late to join the blogging/tweeting/otherwise updating crew! You could also have a look at the results from this trial period (March 4-8), and decide later about joining the next round. No pressure!

Formed by the Public Library

John Scalzi blogged A Personal History of Libraries today, in response to a Guardian article proclaiming the public library model extinct. (Where, by the way, does the author think that teachers get the books to teach literature to "the impoverished" through "compulsory schooling"? Education budgets are stretched pretty thin.) As usual, the comments are worth reading.