So, then, what’s the problem?

Well there are a few:
1. Timing: Justin’s upper echelons management have decreed that no one can take vacation or personal time after June 18th due to some shenanigans that may be occurring. Since we also do not know where we will be living or if I’ll have a job after that time date, planning a later honeymoon is not feasible for us. Since I’ll be done with school AND my job as of May 7, we figured we might as well use that time to do this. So, we can only go after May 7 and be back no later than June 17th. Which leads into…
2. Cost: We have a pretty healthy honeymoon budget, but, as we can only go in May/early June, this is also the beginning of the tourist season in most locations we’re interested in. Flight costs are also jacked up as evidence of my search this past weekend (using Kayak, Travelocity, Expedia and Priceline as well as airline website). Justin is 6′6″ and I’m nearly 6′ – we thought, “Hey! We’ll fly first class! It’s our honeymoon!” Yeah — that thought process was totally rejected after searching at aforementioned sites and discovering that we can get coach seats for about $1K USD each but to go first class? Cost skyrockets to (on average) $5K USD per person. In some cases, some airlines were charging taxes that were nearly half the cost of the coach ticket (Air Canada quoted me a price of $1K USD for coach ticket AND THEN another $500 USD for “taxes/fuel surcharge” on top of the price). Calling around to airlines to get better deals using our miles and cash combo also produced similar results (and in some cases, more expensive than web offerings on said airlines website). Even buying coach seats that are upgradeable to better class is also impossible as you still need to use miles AND pay another $2-3K on top of the initial seat cost. Buying miles an option but most airlines cap the number of miles and we’re short enough on the mileage that is not feasible. Thus our goal to get 2 first class tickets for under $4K USD combined? Not happening, apparently.
3. Location: Justin and I have wanderlust — we want to go everywhere and see everything. So one would think that we would have a list of places, ranked in importance. In a way we do, but we decided when it came to our honeymoon, we’d go somewhere were neither of us have been before. Great in theory, but in practice one of us (okay, me) is rattling off what places I REALLY HAVE TO SEE AGAIN. Scotland for the beer, food and beauty, Rome for the culture, food and Caravaggio obsession, England to get my Anglophile on. Brussels? I have friends there. Amsterdam? They know how to treat tall people! But what about Moscow or Prague or Paris or Venice? New Zealand? Australia? We can’t freaking decide!

So internets, I implore you: Where can we go for our honeymoon that we can wander around overdosing ourselves in art, museums, food and drink and seeing wondrous things. Where our coach tickets combined cost is not the same as the GDP of a small country and that we can find a decent hotel near the heart it all or near a metro/public transport option. Stipulation: Cannot be in North/South America.

But what I thought about on my way to work this afternoon was HOW I prepared for the job hunt. I got a plethora of ideas from friends who have already been through the process, but a listing of what I did could help someone else.

DO’S

• Get your resume together a month or two before you begin applying and have more than one person review it. In my case, I had two people who have professional editing experience and they were ENORMOUS help making sure my i’s were dotted and my t’s were crossed. Regardless of your prep time frame, the idea is that you have enough time to write the resume, submit for editing and work future revisions.
• Once the resume is more or less together, be aware of the fact you may have to change it as you hunt for jobs. I have caught grammar, spelling and other errors even after the final proofing because sometimes we just simply miss things. I also have updated sections when new things occur (giving a presentation, adding/removing software from my technology list). The .pdf version of my resume was uploaded a month ago and I’ve already made several revisions after that one. The idea in point number 1 is get 90% of it in shape as you will add/remove stuff as necessary. This point it remind you not to get too married to that “supposed” final version.
• Confirm your references (professionally and personally) and then create a single sheet, separating them by professionally and personally. You should have their name, title (for the professional ones), name of company/library/whatever, work address, work phone number and preferred email address. For personal, I have name, address, phone number and email. CONFIRM THAT WHO YOU PUT DOWN AS YOUR REFERENCES WILL ACTUALLY DO IT.
• Use the same letterhead on your resume as you do for your references list. Keep it consistent (i.e. if you change one, change the other).
• I have a .doc AND a .pdf version of my resume and references list, you should too. Word PC07/Mac08 and Open Office allow you to convert from .doc to .pdf seamlessly. There are also plugins and websites that will do this for you. And remember, if you update your resume/references list, make sure to update the .pdf version as well!
• Create a digital portfolio that includes your resume, coursework, presentations and other relevant stuff. (DO NOT PUT YOUR REFERENCES LIST ONLINE AS THAT IS JUST STUPID. ONLY HAND IT OUT TO EMPLOYERS IF/WHEN THEY REQUEST IT.) You can do this using WordPress, Blogger or even Tumblr. I had more than a few friends who utilized Google Sites to create their digital portfolio. This illustrates you know how to use “emerging”¹ technologies, HTML (to some degree) and a CMS. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t have be perfect. Keep the URL professional (not iizawesomsauce.tumblr.com) and ONLY use it for job hunting/professional stuff. Don’t post “OMG, James McAvoy is HOTTTTT!” on the same space you’re handing to future employers. Be smart.
• On the digital portfolio versions of my resume, my address/phone are blacked out. Make sure to do the same. If an employer wants/needs that information or you are being headhunted, they can email you to ask for it. Do not be an idiot and willingly publish your home address/phone number online.
• Also make sure to include your digital portfolio URL in the letterhead of your resume/references and cover letters.
• Resume is created, you’ve got your online portfolio created, so the next thing you need to do is create a spreadsheet to keep track of where you are applying. This will make it easier to see where you’ve applied, where you need to apply and when to do (if any) follow-ups. I have eight columns on mine in the following order: Company/Library, Position, Salary, Web Address, End Date, Resume Submit Date, Type, Status, Followup. Explanation of some of the ones I am using: Salary is to keep track of who is paying what (when mentioned), also helps me gauge what the market is currently paying out for certain types of jobs. Lots of positions are accepted via corporate HR sites and are assigned a position number – this include this as well in the Position field. Resume Type: Did I apply online, email it, fax it or what?
• If you’re applying for the same type of jobs, after your first cover letter is written, you should then have a template for the rest of them. Make sure to change the addressee information, job title and do some tailoring to fit the specific job you are looking for. Also make sure to use the same letterhead you created for your resume and references list.
• Also make sure fonts and stylistics are consistent across your materials. If you’re using Verdana in your resume, don’t use Comic Sans MS in your references list.
• My reference list (professional and personal) have requested that I email them links to the jobs I’m applying for so if they get called, they can speak more intelligently about recommending me for that particular position. Since I’m applying for jobs in batches, they get regularly updated emails from with job titles and links.

This is enough for now — am I thorough? You bet. I just like making sure my i’s are dotted and my t’s are crossed. Justin (TheFiance), however, likes to refer to me as being “anal retentive,” but if I have to get out there and get the ROCKSTAR LIBRARIAN/ARCHIVIST job, the only way to do that (other than with my sparkling wit) is to make sure I’ve got alllllllllll my bases covered.

1. Vague sarcasm here.

(As an aside, I recently became a member of a kind of small, specific professional organization. Discovered via my website logs that they not only had Goggled me upon receiving my membership form but before cashing my check, they passed along my website to other people in their office since I had log entries form each of their individual work stations. So I, in turn, Googled them. They were silly enough to name their workstations after their personal names, so that made it even easier!)

Don’t totally misunderstand me on this point: I get that employers really do want people who follow directions and that yes, people who send in resumes covered in clip art with a bright pink background should NOT be considered for the job or that people who routinely apply for positions they are certainly not qualified for should be rejected. I get that HR has a lot on their plate and that sometimes it does take the picayune points to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I’m venting because sometimes the ridiculous gets to be so, well, ridiculous! Especially when I’ve spent the last two days applying for positions and I felt like I spent more time jumping through arcane online HR systems, digging for HR contact info than actually spending time working on cover letters or compiling stuff for the application itself.

I did a lot of cursing out loud today and vague venting on Twitter because this IS 2010 – shit should just work. What becomes even more stressful is when the employer has a listing for a “emerging/digital/technical technologies/project librarian/archivist/curator” and while one location might define it as X, another place will define it as Y and the requirements are TOTALLY opposite of what the title suggests and this is especially true when the job title is identical at multiple positions.

I realise that this is how the game is played and that while I’ve been out of the #biggirljob loop for nearly a decade, I had not realized that really was as convoluted and as much of a mess before.

To help alleviate my stress levels, I’ve started doing the following:

• Every single domain I own has an invisible counter on each of the landing pages (since sometimes the click-through on a domain is not necessarily accurate), and I just put one on my on resume page. If you’re finding me either directly by site, link or keyword, I will more than likely know. I will also know if institutions are actually visiting the additional information at my resume page. I also have raw access to the logs if I wish to analyze traffic.
• I’ve began Googling HR representatives/directors/whomever for each of the positions that I’ve applied for and tailored (when necessary) my cover letter to hit upon specific points of interest that not only reflect the job but also their personal interests (if that particular HR person is the direct contact, etc).

And this is what becomes even more frustrating – I can’t discuss on my own blog what I feel about X because I think X sucks nuts for requesting Y for their application process when Y isn’t really necessary. I can’t discuss why the HR system at S is redundant because it not only asks for upload of CV/Resume but also requires the user to transpose all that information into an online form. (This was even more frustrating when the directions clearly spelt out that uploaded CV/Resume would replace the filling of forms but nope, sure didn’t!) Or that numerous positions online application is nothing more than a PDF file and that they want you to fill it out (but it’s locked) and signed (you can’t sign the file unless you actually have it unlocked and the line available) and have it emailed. (Numerous places use the later technique for “online application” and I was just boggled by this – what’s the bloody point?!).

I don’t get it but I still must continue because the student loans will not pay for themselves.

This has many beginnings.

12 years ago when Justin and I were mere children living in San Francisco, I whined incessantly that all I wanted to do was write. I had been publishing journal entries online since 1996 but they were random and scattered, in content and location. There was no coherency to them with the exception that they were about me, whether about my life or my emotions, but the running theme was that I was somehow worked into the story. And most of it, whether I remembered it or not, is true.

In the spring of 1998, one my co-workers at Slip.Net told me how she decided to start putting her journal entries online in a diary format. I thought this was brilliant and in May of that year, I registered simunye.org. I thought I was being oh, so clever naming it “The Lisa Chronicles,” because that is all that it is — a chronicle of my life. I knew that it was something that could work: professors had praised my writing during my first foray into college that I had more than enough voice to make a living with the written word. Writing an online diary of sorts seemed to be a natural extension of that same concept – if enough people like it, it would spur me on to write more, push me into honing the craft and make something out of it (like every other 20-something pretentious fuck twit who thinks they can write).

But could I actually make a living off of it? I, then, never even bothered to try and find out.

Justin says that if I’m passionate about writing, really passionate as I exclaim during our near monthly argument on the topic, why am I not doing something with it? Why do I push it away and bind it away from me, like loose hair?

Writing, I tell him, is extraordinarily lonely work. There is no water cooler chitchat, no gossip amongst the cube farms – writing for me has to occur not only when I’m inspired to drop a few syllables, but when there is a time and place to do it. Writing, I tell him, requires focus and hard work and if you know anything about me at all, I’m a pretty lazy person.

And against my better judgment, I’m also a pretty social person too.

The return argument, you see, is that if I’m excelling at everything else — why can I not excel at this – the one thing I’ve always wanted to do, have never wavered on? Because, I retort, I excel at other things because those things are mechanical to me. I don’t have to think when I’m working with something technical, or studying for school, or helping a patron at the library. Those things are logic puzzles to me: If D is the final step, and I don’t know A or B, but I know C, I can figure out what A and B are to make them add up with C to D.

I think about writing a lot – almost too much. It’s not just technique and delivery, but I think about the stories that I may write (or could write, if I so choose), I think about other writers (and totally Google-stalk them when applicable), their styles, struggles and influences. I’ve bought Writer’s Market every few years because “That is the year I’m going to make at least $1 dollar writing!” – and yet, I never really do make a penny. I’ve produced pieces, entered them in contests only to have the website lose their database / go under/ silence. A rejection would have been nice, but I have to get one of those because I’m apparently bad juju to online submission sites. I spend more time preparing and researching writing then I actually do writing and I’m aware of this and yet – I do nothing to fix it.

Several things have happened in the last few weeks that have caused me to pause this sort of meaningless circular argument that I have on this topic with myself:

• J.D. Salinger died on January 27, 2010.
• Around the same time period, I started reading A Moveable Feast by Hemingway.
• Recently, reports popped up of a 17 year old German wunderkind, Helene Hegemann, who though accussed of plagiarism, calls it “remixing”.

A death, a book discovery and a scandal do not seem to be likely bedfellows, but in my head it seemed to be pointers towards something I had to go towards. And it is almost becoming an obsession.

[To be continued.]

I think this is a very valid question so after I answered, I went to ye old Google¹ to see what other people were saying and interestingly, I got more hits for online library school programs (reputability low), people asking/bitching/complaining at Yahoo! Answers, Twibes, Tribes and other communities about where to go to school or why their existing school sucks then answering the query. Also interestingly, very few people praised their school based upon my ultra scientific skimming of the communities that I found. Even after changing the search query a bit, I still could not dig out from under the iSchool/LibSchool snow jobs that nearly EVERY school seemingly puts out on how SUPER CRAZY AWESOME THEIR SCHOOL IS. In short, I could not find a really decent answer.

So I’m keywording the hell out of this entry and hoping it helps gets indexed asap.

So, after reading Part the First on “So, you want to be a librarian?”, you’ve applied to library school and you realise, this kinda sucks! You don’t want to deal with the crazies in public OR academic (these are considered the “traditional paths” in librarianship), and by crazies I’m not talking about just the patrons. Or perhaps you’re doing your MLIS and getting an archival certificate (as I am doing) OR you’re doing your MLIS and subject specialization OR you have another masters/phd in another field (which I also have).

So, what the eff can you do with your damn degree if you don’t want to go into “traditional” librarianship/archives?

Actually, you can do a crazy amount of other careers without ever having to step foot in a traditional library.

Here are some of the options:

• Information Architect
• User/Usability Experience Design
• Datamining
• Cataloging (Original and copy)
• Web design (I mention this because a portion of MLIS programs now offer/require web design classes since so many “traditional” libraries need people with web programming background)
• Taxonomy/Folksonomy specialist
• Digital librarianship/archival work (working in mainly digital formats, for preservation/cataloging/creation/etc)
• Conservationist
• Project management
• Content development
• Knowledge management
• Records management
• Indexer
• Consultation on any of the above

These are just the tip of the ice berg, but should be enough to whet your appetite.

You can also go into specializations, such as being trained specifically for youth orientated, urban libraries, etc etc. There is also special libraries, which tend to be libraries in hospitals, businesses, law firms, museums, historical societies to name a few that may require or will require additional education. For example, to work in a law library, many firms are now requiring a JD as well as the MLIS.

If you have an additional masters/phd in another subject, you can easily teach at a university. A lot of academic libraries are looking for adjunct/tenure faculty/staff with additional specialization degrees to work as a subject specialist and/or teach in the field as well.

And another thing — don’t discount your passions either. A number of archival jobs I’ve started to apply to for when I graduate in May have been in the rock’n'roll business and one of the requirements was a love of pop culture. Who’d a thunk that all my years of listening to crap radio, watching trashy television, and overly copious magazine and website reading would pay off!?! But it does go to show that whatever you’re passionate about can also be translate into helping you find that dream job, preferably one away from the snot-nosed kids, the pushy patrons and the crazies who may or may not be your co-workers.

1. Google is our overlords, I’ve drunk the koolaid — please take me to your leader!

Below you’ll find our poetic offerings, enjoy.

Him to me:
Untitled
She is clumsy and sweet, this you can tweet!
Of Lisa I will speak, pay attention.
Her merits are beyond comprehension.
I shall point out a few glimmering traits.
But first, you may ask, what is my motive?
To make her chortle, I say, even swoon!
Surely, to me, this would be a great boon!
For now, that reply, will have to suffice.
What? Dear reader, you wish to give advice?
I listen to reason, what shall I do?
Silence? Now you’ve thrown this whole poem askew!
Stanzas run thin, balls destined for a vice.
Through this couplet, I’ll find a way to say,
Darlin’ Lisa, Happy Valentine’s Day!

Me to him:

Ode to Snookie Wookums:
A billet-doux for Justin

I struggle to tell you how much I love you,
Not because I do not know how to say it -
But because it has been said many times before (and in many different ways).
Not just from me to you, or from you to me, but
Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Keats — dead white guys
          (Your favorite kind.)
Who wrote overly flowery language to describe,
The merest changes in touch, scent and vision of their beloveds,
     When they were naked upon the often stained mattresses.
          (And why were those mattresses always so stained?)
          (Did they not believe in cleaning in those days?)
     Or having their woman kill themselves for whatever reason –
          (Death, despair, misery – your favorite subjects).
Love, then, is a word we throw about carelessly these post-modern times,
To describe anything we have strong affection for from -
Our pets, food, clothing, movies, to music and cars.
     (And do we love, in that we have strong emotion or do we love because we cannot use any other word to describe how we feel for the item we are attached to?)
So then, on this Valentine’s Day –
     (A saint who is honored for love instead of being remembered as a Christian martyr in antiquity)
Let me not talk of death, misery, despair, or Nazi’s –
     (Thrown in to see if you’re still reading),
But rather let me just tell you that for all of the reasons that I love you,
And for all of the reasons that could possible exist and
Have been turned into a Lifetime Movie Extravaganza –
     It is because of your quirks and your stubbornness,
     Your strong sense of wavering morality,
     Your love of pretentious literature and even more pretentious music,
     Your arrogance, your silliness,
     Your daring and your bravery,
     Your sense of adventure and your resoluteness,
     And all of the physical reasons that I adore you so –
          (Not stated in case your mother reads this).
Thank you for stalking me all those years,
For proving to be worthy, for believing in me,
For being all of the things that I could hope for and more –
I love you, my snookie wookums, and am every so glad
That I will be dragging you, unwillingly, to the alter in May!

Happy Valentine’s Day, my love!

Since then, it has just been WednesdayThePug and I, who has also grown to have her own fan base, complete with her own Twitter account. Wednesday has always been an extenstion of my own personality — she’s haughty and clingy, she likes beer and boys, she’s picky about who cuddles against and she always loved me best of all.

Then Justin moved in and I was kicked to the curb in her affections.

Her schedule is our schedule, she is adamant about ALWAYS being between us whether it is on the couch or in bed. When both of us are home, she clings to Justin like his shadow, preferring to lay at his feet if he’s working, near his side when they are on the couch or sprawling on my side of the bed if I get up first. Her bedtime rituals is that she runs around and sniffs the comforter, then burrowing between us under the covers to lay between us, then she comes snuffling out to climbs up to the top of the pillows on our bed (pillow mountain) and will lay there, dead weight, until the morning. Other times she will burrow back out and sleep between us, on top of the covers, refusing to move the entire night making it difficult to adjust our own sleeping during the course of the night.

Wednesday turns 10 this summer and for this Valentine’s day, Justin wrote me a poem honoring her, to the tune of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

Pug Will Tear Us Apart
Wednesday nibbles hard,
And the temperature runs low.
And the snoring rides high,
With pillow mountain below.
And we struggle for sheets,
Under heavy pug load.

Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again.
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again.
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again

I think about having my own space a lot these days, not necessarily my own apartment, but a place where I can go shut off the world, lounge on a chaise reading or writing and basically just having time for me. How Justin and I have existed nearly half-a-year in a 600 sq ft apartment where everything we do is broadcasted to the other is still kind of a minor miracle. How Justin survives with his “desk” actually being the dining room table, no room for his things except for one large closet and a corner by his “desk,” again, a minor miracle. Granted when he moved in, he came with just a carload of things, mainly a box of books, clothes and some personal effects — but everything else in the apartment is me.

We can’t wait to shed our skins from this dump and get our own place to make “ours,” because everything in our apartment reeks of a mish-mash of collegiate chic and IKEA furniture. While the bed, dresser and couch are less than a year old, they were not first selections or picked out with care but chosen because they were best of the lot of what was presented to me at the time.¹

Soft household goods, such as sheets, towels and the like, are carry-over from stuff I purchased over the years. Nothing really matches (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – shabby chic?), but there is no cohesiveness to the mess. Towels I bought a few years ago are starting to go yucky, sheets are starting to get threadbare and there is only so many duvet covers one can purchase before you just have to realise that the duvet itself probably needs to be replaced.

What’s interesting about Justin and I is that our approach to home furnishings is directly related to how we grew up. His family saves everything so he loves minimalism while my family saved nothing so I border on being a pack rat. Things purchased, regardless if they are for personal or communal use, are based on negotiation. Purchasing new shoes for me requires that I get rid of two pairs. Buying new sheets would require ditching two existing sets. Buy one, get rid of two. The paring down of my closets and soft goods has been amazing.

However, I refuse to budge on paring down books and media because I am determined to have a library in our (eventual) new home.

When we move next year, we’re getting rid of mostly everything. What we will be keeping will be incredibly minimal. The bed will be relegated to the guest room and we’re purchasing a king sized (He’s 6′6, I’m 5′11.5″ and the pug — we do not fit comfortably on a queen bed). We need a couch that is at least 12′ long to allow us to both sprawl or some kind of sectional were choosing to intertwine our legs is not about necessity but about wanting to touch, so the current couch will be secondary. We want new furniture, so the IKEA stuff will be sold or donated via FreeCycle or Craig’s List. I’ve been carting around electronics that may or may not work for years, those will be donated or recycled. My TV, which was awesome when it was purchased in 2006, is slowly dying and will need to be replaced.² But we’ll end up giving/selling for cheap when the time comes because when we move, we’ll not keep most of these thingswith us and purchase new when we arrive at our new destination, regardless of where that may be.

But what is important to both of us is space — lots and lots of lovely space. There is no room for us to ramble without tripping on the other. Justin gets the advantage that with my schedule, he gets alone time when he gets off of work since I will not be home until many hours later. Typically 2-3 days a week, I’m gone 10-14 hours a day which gives him time to himself, which he finds to be incredibly important. I don’t get that kind of alone time because when I get home from doing whatever, both he and the pug are there – as whatever gym events/errands that he has to run will be done well before I get home. 600 sq ft in some areas (Paris, Amsterdam, New York City, San Francisco) can be considered to be “spacious” if the design of the space is done right but even with the open plan our our apartment, we’re still crowded since we lose so much wall space to floor to ceiling windows and radiators.

(This is one of the many occasions where my skills as a Tetris master come into play. Whoever said gaming was destructive clearly did not look at Tetris, Breakout or Pong.)

This paring down, we’ve often discussed, is a direct result of consumerism — we buy cheap because it is cheap and what we can afford at the time but because of this, we end up spending more because we often have to replace the item. I recently created a Wedding Registry on Amazon so we could, privately, start keeping track of items we’d like to get when we move and I balked when he added salt and pepper grinders that were roughly $120 for the pair. His reasoning is that the mechanism on most grinders were such that after some time, the ground seasoning goes up into the shaft and not on the food. Our current grinder is currently behaving in this manner and we seem to spend more time trying to “fix” the damn thing than get pepper out. He found a set that used a different type of mechanism and shouldn’t have this problem, but really? $120 for the pair? His argument is that he would rather spend the cash on quality rather than deal with cheap and keep replacing, as we have been doing so much of lately.

I get his mentality, but after being graduate student poor for so long and the idea of having a disposable income in which spending $120 on grinders is not really a big deal still appalls me. Recently, I started researching combination espresso/auto coffee machines and it seemed most people were happy with the $100 Mr. Coffee combo than the Krupp’s or other higher end brands. While this was surprising to me, as I was expecting the prices to be much higher, crowd mentality rules, right? A few days later, Justin gave me a link to a coffee “system” that seemingly did everything under the sun, including being programmable via the Internet. The cost for such a treasure? $2k USD. That is not a typo — and I think I visibly blanched. Do I love coffee? Sure, but to spend $2k USD on such a machine, I’d expect it to give me sexual favors and start smoking a cigarette when it was through. I’d rather spend say up to $500 USD for such a machine and bank the $1500 towards something else, such as putting money down for a new car or putting it towards my retirement. You know, something sensible.

But a room of my own and a room for Justin, where we can each not worry about the others habit since it will not be communal space. We’re so freakin’ excited about the prospect of nesting, of getting rid of the old and coming on with the new, that it seems to be all that we talk about these days.

And we’re okay with that.³

1. My family knows someone who owns a local G-Rap furinutre store so we were given preference for stuff from the showroom for a great deal. But since the store is quite small, I had the choice of say four couches and maybe a half a dozen dressers to choose from.
2. The volume randomly doesn’t work when you turn the TV on, but works when you turn it off and then on again. The tube needs to be degaused but we’ve searchd high and low on the web for instructions and can’t find them. The TV has also started emiting a loud whistle that randomly pops in and out. We’ve troubleshot possible causes of the whistling but nothing seems to be working.
3. While we may be okay with it, not sure how Wednesday will feel about all the space. She tends to favor whomever is where she wants to be over one person or another. She seems to get antsy if she has to choose between me in the bedroom or Justin in the dining room.

Television is much the same way in that he loves sports (primarily football and basketball), the Hitler channel, Jeopardy! (You’d think I was marrying a 70 year old) or something along the lines of the aforementioned topics. Personally, I am a sucker for series (In Justin’s opinion, read: crappy) television, stocking up on guilty pleasures such as Gossip Girls ¹, Grey’s Anatomy or The Big Bang Theory to name a few.

But with the weather getting colder and our ability to go outside becoming less of a reality these days, we’ve started watching series shows on premium channels (Nurse Jackie, Dexter, The Tudors, or Bored To Death), but the problem with these shows is that the series’ are much shorter than network television and we have gotten into the habit of watching the entire series within a week or two, catching up on back episodes and having marathons. Thus, we are back at square one with nothing to watch.

A few weeks ago, friends of ours tipped us off to a HGTV show called House Hunters International. The point of the show is that a person/couple/families/whatever are looking to buy in X locale for Y reason, and they need help to find their home/condo/apartment/flat/beach front mansion with Z budget. A local to the area real estate agent takes the wish list and presents the person/couple/family/whatever with a listing of properties that match their requests. The person/couple/family/whatever then select from the top three choices as their next crib.

The show format never varies, thus it is always consistent from episode to episode: Intro to the house hunter, their background, their budget, where they are moving to and why. The viewer is then shown clips of the house hunter going through three properties, their likes/dislikes of the properties and the “finale” of their selection of one of those three properties and why the chose said property. In short, it is the same formula on every show regardless of who/what or where the show is being taped. There is also very little surprise as to what the house hunter chooses in that based upon their wishlist, location and budget, 90% of the time we correctly guesstimate which property they end up choosing and it is almost always property #2.

At first glance, this show doesn’t sound like something that would interest me in the slightest. I don’t consider myself a domestic goddess, my panties don’t get wet at the thought of a new vacuum (I was pelted by a vacuum ad on HGTV’s website that bothered the piss out of me and wouldn’t let me read the site until the ad did its thing. Usability fail.), nor do I get passionate when discussing herringbone versus parquet floors. These things, however, excite Justin. He spends hours every week not only cruising real estate sites for the search for our perfect home but he also has a surprisingly aesthetic appeal to what he likes and doesn’t like. We’ve spent dozens of hours pouring over real estate ads for condos in a variety of markets around the US and we’ve picked apart every nuance from the floors, to the window treatments and bathrooms.

What does interested me about HHI is that it appeals to my wanderlust in the hopes that someday in the future (hopefully nearer than farther), we might be able to move and live abroad. I see HHI as research then, to get an idea of what the markets are like around the globe and what our budget (roughly about $400K USD) would get us in other countries. In Paris, that would barely buy us a pied-à-terre while in Fuji, that’s beach front mansion and even better, in Buenos Aires, that would give us a nice sized condo in a great location.

What also interests me about the show is that I’m nosy and I want to know what people do for a living to make the kind of money they make — especially the ones who talk about buying a home on the Amalfi Coast and their budget is $750K USD but hey, the villa they really want is $1M USD, so they buy that one even though it’s over their “budget.” Then there are the people who are buying second or third homes — and I wonder, what the hell do they do to juggle all those mortgages and they seemingly always have some generic job such as “marketing manager” or “mid-level manager.”

What kills us though is the over expectations these people have. “I want a 2 bed, 2 bath, 1000 sqft condo in Paris for $400k USD, with a ‘view,’ American kitchen and a bathtub. And oh! I have to have the outdoor living space!” When shown that for $400k gets them a 5 story walk-up in one of the outer districts, at 600 sqft and the bathtub is a little bigger than the sink, they get all indigent. Specifically when for that range, the properties are fixer uppers.

Maybe then this is why we are so addicted to the show and we push through 4-6 episodes a night, which sounds like a lot but considering that each show is only 30 minutes long, take out the commercials its down to about 15-20 minutes and we do watch a few of them in our bedroom as we are getting ready for bed. Also, the show is on ALL THE TIME. While we were gone for two days over Thanksgiving, we had 20 new episodes to view on our DVR. Currently, our DVR is telling us that there are 43 new episodes to be recorded in the next two weeks.

Plus we like the snark value, picking on people’s poor taste and decisions, wondering why they were idiots in choosing a cookie cutter home in X neighborhood instead of going with the one with character outside of their favorite neighborhood. Why they would paint X color in Y room over leaving the current combination alone or even better, when they misuse terminology to make it sound like they know what they are talking about.

The crack is getting a little out of hand in that we’ve decided to start DVRing regular House Hunters, to give us an idea of what markets look like around the US and makes it much easier than hunkering around a laptop looking at grainy photos of properties in various areas. Even if we have a spare hour before bed, we watch HHI. This is getting bad.

But I’m not sure if I am capable of asking for help yet.

1. I will maintain and stand by that Gossip Girls is perhaps one of the better written “adult” dramas on television. I’ve started stop watching most network television this season as many of the shows I used to love have become convoluted messes with wooden characters, plots that beyond ridiculous and of course, the trusty jumping of the shark.

Going 40 days without Twitter was an interesting experience as I’m terrible at moderation — it’s either feast or famine with me. This is one of the reasons why quitting smoking has always been so hard for me: I WANTED just one cigarette and then I would smoke 12, which meant I would have to buy a pack or bum from someone and the whole smoking process would start all over again. The only way I kicked it this time was not hang out with smokers, which is easy to do since I don’t know any smokers on the east side of the state.

However with Twitter, the problem was that just as I was weaning myself off of Twitter, everyone and their second cousin was joiningTwitter. Since this was definitely not a geographic issue (like attempting to quit smoking)¹ but rather a interest issue, what was a girl to do?

I decided to to go off of Twitter for 40 days not because I am religious and needed something to give up for Lent² but rather I was spending an inordinate amount of time on Twitter and not allocating that time for other, often necessary, projects. Twitter is not just about reading my public_timeline and tweeting but rather for me it is also about looking at what others are tweeting, following links, researching interests, people and things. If someone posted a blog entry, I’d end up spending several hours on that blog and then some. I want to to know who I am interacting with, so thus, Twitter became this full-time job of me searching out and expanding my network. I’m a curious cat who needs to know how things are done!

I wanted to use the time off from Twitter to do a variety of things though, things that I swore I was NOT doing because all of my time was being sucked in by Twitter. Things such as: updating lib schooled. more often, personal research, knitting, exercise (WiiFit), homework, writing, cleaning my apartment. I suck at time management and Twitter was fast becoming another obsession that was sucking down my time and like smoking, I couldn’t find myself an easy way to quit. More succinctly, I couldn’t find myself moderating my Twitter activity to do something else. Feast or famine.

In the Twitterverse (or really, any active online social life), 40 days is almost an entire cycle or IS an entire cycle of birth to death. Fads can come and go in 40 days or less, and with Twitter it went from bubbling under the surface of explosion to totally exploding all over the media. Every single form of media outlet was becoming Twitterized and add insult to injury, bands, authors, celebs, friends and everyone else in between were suddenly joining the Twitter bandwagon! And I couldn’t add them or read them! The one and only time I logged into Twitter during this period was when a co-worker asked me a question that required me to do so. But I didn’t look at my public_timeline, I swear. But other than that single instance, I refrained from reading my public_timeline, I did not log into Twitter, I did not follow Twitter links, I did not log into Twhirl or any other application, did not respond to DMs: not a damn thing.

The only thing I did was check how many minions were following me because the number kept growing and it was insane! In the 40 days I was gone, the number of my followers almost doubled! Thanks to auto-tweeting on this blog, I tweeted maybe half a dozen times in the last 40 days but not the continual dozen times a day (or more!) that I was doing before. According to TwitterCounter, the projection that I was to hit 500 minions before Easter was completely feasible — something that Chris and I had a gentlemen’s agreement on (that I would indeed hit 500 before Easter, while he did not believe it to be so). The final tally was 520 before i

And this became the puzzlement for me: I was not tweeting with any regular basis and I was gaining new minions. Why? I came up with the following reasons:
1. People I knew who created Twitter accounts after my hiatus.
2. People who were recommended to follow me (via #followfriday or another method).
3. Key word/geographic search: I gained a lot of new minions because of “librarian” and “punk rock” (@pnkrcklibrarian) in my name. I also gained new minions because of where I live, as it’s listed in my bio.
4. Hashtag (#) via my own self-created hasltags or via key wording my bio.
5. Spam bots, auto/serial adders.
6. MLM market peeps.

Was there a lesson learned in any of this? Probably in the end I was able to do a bit better this semester than projected because I was able to keep away from the time sucking whore that Twitter had become in my life. But other than that? I came back fast and furious to the Twitter world, as the SomeECard that Chris created for me.

P.S. As of November 2009, I’ve hit nearly 1200 minions. Yeah, I don’t get it either.

1. Yes, I’ve been smoke-free for 10 weeks now. I’ve got the 10-15lbs to prove it too!
2. While I was raised Catholic, I’ve given up all preludes of Catholicism years ago (despite the fact that I went to a Catholic college). Interestingly enough, my mother who is Christian and only practices some tenements of Catholicism (when it suites her) continually gives up men for Lent every year. You can see where my sense of humor comes from, then.