Life in Denim and Flip Flops

I'm headed to the Brewers game with the family. Manda got tickets through work and they include a tailgate at the park. I'm excited. Ball games with the family are always fun. Manda and I took the whole family to a game for dad's birthday last year too. This year, it just so happened the regional M&I Bank game fell on my dad's birthday. Clearly this is a sign. Here's to hoping they pull off the game against the Mets. You should look for us. We'll be in the right field bleacher seats, hopefully catching Brewers home runs!! :)

Craziness ensues when the powers that be go on vacation. My week has been a bit loopy. Weird questions and odd requests, but I've survived long enough to get to a Things I Love Thursday post :) Angel- I didn't watch Buffy or Angel when they were on. Back when I was moving out of the apartment in Madison, I started watching both on Hulu. However, since Hulu only had so many seasons up, I sort of stalled. I like Buffy, but when I got to Dubuque I really wanted to watch Angel. However, neither the public library or UD had the series. Not true anymore!! Now we've got the entire runs of both Angel and Buffy. Yay! I've watched all of Season 2 this weekend, and have moved onto 3. So much fun. I have a feeling after running through Angel, I'll be picking Buffy back up in Season 3 where I left her. YA lit- I got to do a book talk for the Children's Lit class on Monday. I'm by no means an expert in YA lit, but I am a big fan. It's fun to go into the class and b...

So, you may have previously heard about my childhood desire to be a fashion designer. I realized very quickly that this wasn't going to be an option due to my huge lack of drawing skills. I used to play fashion show with Barbies a lot because I got to mix and match outfits and pieces without actually having to create anything. And now...Christina has now enabled me to play this game all over again. She introduced me to Polyvore . I've had a bit of fun playing with this today. The first one is a dream work outfit. The second is for an imaginary evening out. I refuse to look at the prices of these items (as we all well know I can't afford them, so why tempt ourselves), but I like to think this gives me an opportunity to play with a wardrobe I can only dream of. Well and to see what's out there so I can find it in a knock off! Just me by beckiejean featuring Manoush tops Evening out by beckiejean featuring Bloch shoes

Wow. It got warm fast here. It seems like just a week or two ago it was threats of frost and now I'm contemplating turning on the ceiling fans. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy warm summery weather, but it makes my work wardrobe a bit trickier. I like walking to work in the summer. This means clothes appropriate for hot weather, but it's always cold at work. The first floor office pretty much guarantees it'll be the coolest place in the library. So I guess it's back to keeping a few different colors of cardigan sweaters at work to keep me warm enough at work, but cool enough to walk home ;)

I've been a bit busy on weekends lately. So I'm taking this weekend as a mental break. That's why my evening is going to consist of watching season 2 of Angel and listening to the Brewers-Twins game. I think the most taxing thing I'll attempt to accomplish is deciding which audio feed to listen to. I feel a little bad cheering against the Brewers, but I suppose its their own fault for trading away my favorite player. ;) Tomorrow I'll probably spend some time at work tomorrow prepping and organizing the books I'll be booktalking in the children's lit class on Monday. I just sort of lost my concentration this afternoon. I need a little me time and a few hours of sleep, then I can tackle the rest of the prep tomorrow! So on that note, I'm going to get back to my Twins announcers. Go Twins!!

nutella- somehow a coworker and I got talking about nutella today. Then I was craving it, so I had to buy it this evening. It's just as fabulous as I remember. rhubarb- I made a rhubarb cake today. Growing up rhubarb pies and cakes were synonymous with May. That's when the 5 rhubarb plants in the backyard were ready to harvest and bake. Love it! Also, did you know that rhubarb is actually a vegetable? Who knew! The Last Five Years- I love love love that musical. It's this cool show with only 2 people: a guy and a girl in a relationship. He tells the story from beginning to end, and she tells the story backwards. They only interact once on stage during the middle song. It's pretty amazing, and they're putting it on downtown for free this weekend. (Anyone in the area who wants to join me is welcome!!) my coworkers- We had a meeting set aside to write up our accomplishments for the semester. Hanging out in the computer lab with everyone was so fun. Sometimes I feel a l...

Today was a shopping day. Amy needed to go to the container store and I'd never been to IKEA so clearly we needed to fix that. Boy did we have fun. Amy found a solution to her cabinet problem and a new spice rack. I found the cutest new purse/travel bag ever. The one downside to my fabulous camera is it's size. It's not exactly the most convenient to throw in a purse or a bag. As we were wandering around The Container Store I came across the most adorable solution to this problem. It's a Sherpani bag. It looks like this . Oh and it's pink :) It's a great shoulder bag that I can put a digital SLR camera, my flip video cam, a wallet, sunglasses, and my Chico Bag comfortably, which will make it perfect for traveling this summer. Because we all know that I can't travel without my camera and flip video camera! After digging around their website, I think I'm officially in love with the rest of their line. You should check them out at www.sherpani.com . IKEA w...

So I've had some interesting birthdays in the past. Today I celebrate my 26th birthday. I spent a lot of it on the road. It's construction season, so I ended up getting a bit frustrated. But I got here and now I get to spend the rest of weekend hanging with Ms. Amy. Dealing with one-lane highways is not the most-memorable of my birthdays. I'll give you a little run down of a few of my birthdays. -16th- The day after my 16th birthday my dad had to 2 vertebrae fused in neck surgery. Oh, and my friends mostly forgot. (I didn't get my license til 2+ months later. I was one of those kids.) -18th- I spent my 18th birthday at school. I was there from 7am (for peer tutoring) until 8pm (for newspaper layout). We celebrated with cake and pizza. -21st- I spent my 21st in Chicago, in and of itself not so weird. The weird part was the fact that I almost spent it alone. I was studying in Chicago for class and everyone else in the class was from around the area and were planning on go...

I'm not sure if you're familiar with Cory Doctorow. If you aren't, you should be. He's one of my new favorite people. I know that I have waxed nostalgic about Little Brother before. As much as I talk about lots of other YA books, I think Little Brother lives in my top 5. Cory is also a major contributor on one my fave blogs Boing Boing . He's a champion of Creative Commons licenses and fair copyright policies. He's political and intelligent, and spins a hell of a story. And the best part? Even after all that he gives back. He releases a free electronic edition of his book at the same time the print copy comes out. He's had people want to donate money to him for offering it free. So instead of taking that money, he's set up at system for those people to buy and donate copies of the book to libraries and schools that could use a free copy. How freaking cool is that? You find out more about the system here . I think I'll be donating 2 copies. One to a...

Today was graduation. I got up early and had myself and my hazelnut latte on the road at 8:10am. The drive back was pretty uneventful. As was my morning before getting to campus. Graduation was good, but long. I wandered my way home, grabbing my first meal of the day on the way. I threw on some comfy clothes and watched a bit of TV. Somewhere after finishing my dinner but before the movie was done my eyes were drooping. I was lucky enough to remember to set an alarm before I slept the evening away. I woke up to my alarm at 6:30 but reset the alarm to 7 when I realized I couldn't keep my eyes open. It's now 7:18 and I'm listening to the Twins game online. It's so wrong, but I'm considering dragging my butt and computer to the bedroom to let the Twins announcers "sing" me to sleep. Now that I've survived to graduation, I've just got a few more things to accomplish before Monday. I think I'll put those off til tomorrow. I've been running on so...

It was a nice day. I got a few more things accomplished for this online class. I'd set aside most of the day to create video tutorials of some of our databases and the catalog. I thought they'd be quick. Sadly, I was quite wrong. First I couldn't get the microphone to work. Then after I finally did figure it out I was tripping over my tongue and clicking in the wrong spots. And because we use Jing to create it, I don't have editing capabilities and must do it all in one shot. I did finally get them done and they look pretty good. It feels nice to get those accomplished. They're definitely something we can reuse in other classes. :) Finally it was 4:30 and I could leave to drive back to Madison. I was invited to my friend's recital tonight. He just finished the school portion of med school and will be starting his residency in about a month. So to celebrate he decided to sing a recital :) I love my friends. It was so nice to get to see some people I haven't ...

It's been a crazy week. There were moments today when I thought, "wait, what is today?" This week was finals week at the college which means I've seen stressed out students and crazy busy faculty. Actually I've been one of those crazy busy faculty. But I did find the time this week to be a part of 3 graduation gifts. That's what I'm gonna blog about tonight. The first gift was for a seminary student. He was the student assistant for one of the seminary faculty members and thus spent a lot of time in the library doing research for said professor and getting together a huge number of course reserves. While I am by no means an expert in seminary research, I got lucky and the topic was actually historical so I was of service. He also stopped by a lot on Monday and Tuesday mornings when I'm on desk. He's been a saint to the library helping us out with all the reserves stuff. I mean, the kid is being replaced by 2 people!! He spent so much time in the li...