Insanity + school work = EXHAUSTION

Okay, so my fiance and I are pretty athletic people (although I'm terribly out of shape since we haven't worked out since April) and we are staunch advocates for the P90x program.  It really works, as long as you put in the time and effort, and make sure to alter your diet.  However, we've done the program at least three and a half times already and were looking for something else to get us motivated.

Enter Shawn T's INSANITY!  It's a crazy-hard workout -- think interval/circuit training but instead of a few minutes of hard work followed by a few minutes of rest, it's like 10-15 minutes of hard work non-stop with just a 45 second break in between.  Dang!  We did the "fit test" this afternoon and wow, was that difficult!  We made it through but it was tough!  Combine that with a full-time job and a bunch of school work and I'm bound to be exhausted!  I'd post a link to the program here so you could catch a glimpse of what it's about, but I'm worried about copyright infringement.  Hehe...  ;o)

Surprisingly easy

With just a bit of direction and some playing around, I managed to complete the fragment assignment in a mere hour.  Here's the link, in case anyone's interested:  http://www.pitt.edu/~sks55/

Good luck!

What the Dickens

Yeah, I made a lame joke, too.  I've been seeing a few funny ones around and thought I'd add my two cents.  I'm going to attempt to make the web page and Dickens fragment now, so wish me luck!

Fast Track weekend was so great and it was awesome meeting everyone!  I honestly didn't realize how important that visit would be until I was actually there.  The campus was gorgeous and, although I visited Pittsburgh many times because my mom had transplant surgery at Pitt's own UPMC so I've walked around the campus before, I had never been in the Cathedral for Learning before.  It was so beautiful!  I would love to live closer to campus so I could actually be an on-campus student.  I am liking the online program just fine, but the visit made me realize how much I miss seeing classmates and professors face-to-face.  I'll just have to settle for memories for now...  ;o)

Old School Strikes Again!

So, as I posted earlier, I had a field trip at my store yesterday with about 35 third and fourth graders.  One of the activities was a book talk where I introduced them to a bunch of neat mystery books (their day camp had a "Night at the Museum" theme and they wanted mystery incorporated into the FT).  I told them about some new stuff but I made sure to include good 'ol Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.  To my complete surprise, more than half of the students left with the "updated" Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys super mysteries!  I was so excited!  All those books to choose from and they went for the characters that have been around for longer than I have.  Sweet!

So, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm having a really hard time getting through The Wealth of Networks for LIS 2000.  Between the extremely hot weather (it was 101 degrees where I am yesterday and promises to be again today) and the fact that my house doesn't have A.C. (just window units), it was quite a struggle to get through 100 pages last night.  It is already hard to concentrate and the language the book uses make it so much harder to even get through a sentence.  I can't even tell you what I read last night -- I don't think I retained anything!  Let's hope tonight goes smoother...

Totally exhausted

...and I haven't even left yet!  Busy week:  Had 35 kids in for a field trip today and since our Children's Department lead quit last week with no notice, I was left to run the show -- good practice for becoming a school librarian; we have another field trip coming in tomorrow (gotta love summer school programs); local minor league baseball game to go to tomorrow night; packing and leaving Thursday afternoon; driving 5 and a half hours to my brother's house; then it's Fast Track weekend!  All while studying and reading in all the free minutes I can find, which unfortunately is not many.  I hope the midterm goes well.  I'm worried...

I'm excited to meet all my cohorts and professors, though.  Should be fun!  See you all soon!

Piece of cake

Well, after the immense help of a classmate and Dr. Tomer's tutorial, I managed to complete the Koha assignment.  It was really quite easy once I knew the basics of the program.  I had no idea what the z93.whatever button was for, and apparently that was the biggest piece of the puzzle.  I look forward to using programs like this once I am working in a library, now that I know how it works!

Off to watch the lecture on HTML, go to another baby shower, then a 4th of July picnic.  The rest of my 3-day weekend will be spent reading for LIS 2000.  Joy...

What a kill joy...

Not really, though.  Here is an interesting article by Michael A. Stackpole on The Huffington Post, titled "Will Ebooks Kill the Joy of Reading?"  Spoiler Alert! -- No, they won't.  Stackpole makes a great argument for why books are enjoyable in any format and also why staunch anti-ebook readers are actually already ebook readers and they don't even know it.  My favorite line: "The advent of ebooks is no more going to kill the pleasure of reading, than the introduction of the internal combustion engine made horses extinct."  Nicely done!  Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid real-paper-reader, but I do have to agree that people who are treating the advent of ebooks as the first sign of the apocalypse need to take it down a notch and get a new hobby.