Librarians do the unexpected!

So I provided Nelson over at Financial Uproar with some, uh, research for his recurring Saturday posts, and now I'm his new favorite person. He's fickle, though, so I don't expect that to last long. Go check out my contribution of Serena Williams, a babe loosely related to finance (What? She's loaded! Although I'd've used this picture to get a bigger reaction.), and enjoy the snarkiness of a fun personal finance blogger. Just don't listen to him when he writes about why you shouldn't go to university. You could end up driving a potato chip truck for a living.

Supermarket Savings

I get a little excited about saving money. It's kind of weird to most people, but a lot of personal finance bloggers understand. So here's a long part-confessional/part-bragging sort of post about what I saved on the first grocery purchases of the year.

Textbooks for Spring Semester

I'm seeing a lot of statuses on Facebook grumbling about textbook prices. It must be that time of year already!

I've already priced out my textbooks for the semester and found some good deals on used books from Amazon and on semester-length rentals from College Book Renter. (I'm waiting for payday before I buy mine, but I have them in my shopping cart already.) Even with reduced prices, it comes out to about $160 for 5 books. Oof. And I know that's really nothing compared to what I paid at the campus bookstore as an undergraduate. Why are textbooks so expensive??

This infographic explains some of the reasons:


Via: OnlineEducation.net

Okay, so say you're stuck with a list of expensive textbooks. How can you get textbooks for less?

Strange Search Keywords

Hack Library School, that excellent blog for LIS students, just posted their 2011 blogging stats. I'm impressed! They're definitely a popular location. (Go, check them out!)

Now, I'm just starting out on this blog, and it's a hobby I have to cram into little spaces of free time between work and school. But I do watch my traffic stats on the Blogger dashboard, and I keep an eye on which posts get the most views. One feature I hadn't noticed until last night is the Search Keywords (under the section on Traffic Sources). I guess some people are stumbling across my blog while looking for something in a search engine -- not just from the links I post to Facebook and LinkedIn.

For now, most of the search keywords that led users to click on my listing are from (presumably) other library science students: "libr 285" competency proposal and subject analysis "libr 202" head the list, and also someone's search for design and implementation of instructional strategies for information professionals. Boring stuff like that.

But the best keyword search so far?

Laptop Lunch #1 of the year!

This was (some of) my lunch today:

I thought to snap a photo when I was mostly done with my entree -- leftover chili and rice and tortillas. The star-shaped things are biscuits, and my sweetie packed a little container of honey and some jellies we picked up at a hotel breakfast a while back.

I won't be posting every day, like some very organized people manage to, but I did want to acknowledge the cuteness of the biscuit stars and show off my new lunchbox in action. I am a lucky girl to have my lunch packed for me -- and in such a nice, eco-friendly purple box, too!