2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Most Orderly Graduation Ceremony Ever

Posted by Kanga.

There she is in the front row looking up to search the crowd for her parents.

Standing in line for that trip across the stage and that well earned piece of paper

Just look at all the wingdings after her name. They stand for National Honor Society, North Carolina Academic Scholar, Honor Graduate, and Academically/Intellectually Gifted.

The proud grandparents

Proud DaddyBird and his BabyBird

There were 4 speeches and 400 graduates, yet it only took 1 hour and 15 minutes start to finish. A well oiled machine, I’d say. This is due in large part to the strict instructions that grads and guests received. “Guests will not be allowed to approach the stage to take photographs or to videotape. … We ask all parents and their guests to refrain from yelling out, screaming, clapping, or acting in any inappropriate manner as names are called. Diplomas are not awarded to seniors who conduct themselves in an inappropriate manner or whose guests disrupt the solemnity of the ceremony.” There was also a rule against bringing any flowers, balloons, stuffed animals, or gifts into the ceremony.

You almost could have heard a pin drop in that place as the names were called. Only two pebbles were thrown into that pond – one grad fell down in the middle of the stage and one family disregarded the noise prohibition and proceeded to whoop and holler for their grad. They were promptly escorted out. As she was leaving the grandmother said “We came too far to be quiet!”

The rules seemed a little harsh, but I am very thankful. It was a pleasant ceremony. Of course, once everyone had their diploma and it was time to turn the tassels, the cheering began.

Need a laugh?

Posted by Kanga

I’m going to recommend two blogs. The writers/illustrators of these blogs crack me up. If you are lucky enough to have a sense of humor like mine, they will crack you up, too. These blogs also make me think maybe I should draw my own illustrations, but I suspect that they make it look much easier than it actually is.

First is Hyperbole and a Half. I don’t know the writer, but she recently moved to Oregon, so she gets extra points for that. My favorite post so far is Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving. Made me laugh so hard, I cried.

The second is Wit and Sarcasm by Alexandra, a student worker at my previous place of employment. My favorite so far is “Am I An All-Knowing Genie? Not Yet.” I’ve lived it. Every word is true. No hyperbole there.

Without a rock solid sense of humor and ability to laugh at the stupidities of life and at myself, I would not have made it this far. Here’s to another year of laughter.

Humor Will Keep Us Together

Posted by Kanga

Typical day with DaddyBird and Kanga:

[DaddyBird is terribly sick with a cold. Kanga is preparing to go out to get him some dinner, medication, and juice.]

DaddyBird: … and some lemonade and some fresh ginger to put in my tea…
Kanga: Wait, this is getting to be a long list. [grabs iPod Touch to enter the shopping list as a note] …heh, heh, it wants to capitalize Ginger…[pause for effect] I’m not bringing you that kind of ginger.

Why librarians don’t sit around and read books

Posted by Kanga.

I had one of THOSE conversations with a good friend last weekend. “If you don’t read books all day, what does a librarian do?” Every librarian has had this conversation multiple times.

So, this has not been a typical week, but I am going to describe it for you so that you will know why librarians are not sitting around reading books all day.

Sunday (first day of the work week in the Muslim world):

• Late shift, came in at 10 am, worked until 8 pm
• One hour – new student orientation to the library
• One hour – collection analysis, comparing the titles in our collection to a recommended core collection (percentage is too low, need to order a lot of core titles)
• Meeting with other library staff to discuss how the first session of student orientations went
• Lunch – yes, for my health I insist on actually taking a break and eating something
• One hour – reference desk = being available to answer any questions people have and help them use library equipment (photocopier, scanner, computer)
• One & half hours – preparation for instruction sessions I will be doing Monday & Tuesday evenings
• Rest of the “day” until 8 pm – “manned” the circulation desk, sole library staff person on duty

Monday:

• In one hour late, because I am staying late to provide instruction to an evening class
• Four hours on the reference desk – photocopier help, etc.
• One hour – new student orientation
• Lunch
• Administrative tasks – trying to catch up on paperwork, follow up on tasks that have cropped up, responding to faculty requests, scheduling instruction sessions, etc.
• Instruction session for a class – teaching them information literacy in preparation for a major research paper they will be doing

Tuesday:

• Three & half hours – proctoring an English proficiency test
• Lunch – totally starving because I missed breakfast
• One hour – new student orientation
• Three hours – reference desk
• Instruction session, just like the one the night before

Wednesday

• Administrative tasks – trying to keep up with my email and paperwork
• Collecting together all our policy documents related to “collection development” = selecting, ordering, receiving, and withdrawing library materials (On another day, I will read all these, edit, and add to these documents.)
• One & half hour – attend a class to see students give their first presentations in front of the class and to talk about blogging.
• Lunch & run to the bank
• Responding to emails and following up on some requests, trying to keep my head above water
• Meeting with another staff member to revise some documentation on our process for ordering books from vendors like Amazon
• New student orientation
• “Manning” the circulation desk so that the assistants can be free to do other end of day tasks

Thursday: (tomorrow, so this is speculative)

• Library staff meeting – one hour
• New student orientation – one hour
• Reference desk – two hours
• Lunch
• Meeting about donating withdrawn books to another library
• Meeting with another librarian to draft proposals for a change in how we do some of our tasks in hope of freeing up some time

Now, I do have to admit that I did check out a book. It is a book on how to build a core library collection, so not an exciting read. I’ve managed to read about one page. I did pick up another book. This was during a orientation session time slot. I was waiting for students to arrive and wandered into the biography section, discovering that we have a biography of Yul Brynner written by his son. So, I looked at all the pictures, read the captions and read about one page of the first chapter while waiting. I also did some reading while proctoring the test, but it was mostly Twitter on my iPad.

So, there you have it. This is what those strange non-reading librarians are up to.

Studly

Posted by Kanga.

Here they are, two studs. Their manes blowing in the wind.

This is DaddyBird with one of the public art Arabian Horses. This one is called Open Doors, Open Minds and stands in front of the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding. Thursday evening we joined some of our Twitter friends to experience an Iftar dinner presentation at the centre. I took plenty of pictures and will post them soon.

Examples: Good or Bad?

In addition to the 20 something year olds we hang out with saying that they wish their parents were like us, our friend Nas just tweeted:

So, dear parents, you may have wondered if we would ever amount to anything, but apparently we are setting some kind of standard.

(For the non-computer geeks among you – FTW means “for the win” an exclamation that means its a good thing.)

Who’s idea was this?

Someone thought that black marble was a cool idea for a bathroom sink counter. Clearly, this person had a maid who could spend her days cleaning it. They probably didn’t have two cats who insist on getting up on the counter to drink.

In addition to making footprints all over the counter, Oliver likes to put his paw in the water bowl and fling water drops all over the mirror. I spent Friday thoroughly cleaning two bathrooms. Had to take a picture so I can look back and remember how nice it looked for a few minutes.

Blackeye

Oliver was walking along the top of the headboard of the bed and apparently just fell off onto Daddybird’s face. In the process, he managed to give him the world’s tiniest black eye.
This picture doesn’t do it justice. It is a lovely shade of red. It’s not the only bruise Daddybird is sporting right now. He has two bright red spots from being shot playing paintball earlier in the week. Poor thing!

Daddybird, the influencer

According to Steve Vaile on his Social Media Middle East blog, Daddybird is #10 of the 15 most influential Dubai Twitterers. [Although, if this blog (Living the Travel Channel) is a factor, I have to take some of the credit for that, since of the 300 posts so far, Daddybird has authored around 5. (I didn't go back and do an exact count.)]

He tweets about tea, our cats, Kushti wrestling, T-shirts gone wrong, great food, bad phone service, and whatever else occurs to him. He meets people who say “hey, we’ve been tweeting about your cats!” He’s leading an expedition this Friday to the wrestling. He’s advising Wildpeeta on the fine tuning of their brownies and jam. He’s a mover and a shaker. When I meet people, they say “you don’t tweet much.” I just say, “I’m with Daddybird.”

If only he could influence Oliver, we’d have it made.