Busy Bee!

Ok, so I'm still crazy busy.  Working on my grant proposal, management case studies, and evaluation for the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum has kept me on my toes.  On top of that, we're starting our pilot of Social Media for Public Health in a couple of weeks (and I have a lot of work to do!).

So, this all seems like it should be manageable, but there have been some special circumstances the last few weeks.  First off, I've been applying for jobs.  I really wish that you didn't have to type in all of the information from your resume into the applications.  It makes a single application take so much time.  Second, I've been taking more hours on the desk at Taubman, mostly subbing for people who have been sick or on vacation.  I've also been working on a project identifying top players in the schools the Health Sciences Libraries serves.  That's been an interesting but tedious project.  Third, I've been doing a lot of outreach with Kate.  Last week Friday I went to the Great Lakes Chapter of the Society of Public Health Education in East Lansing.  I manned the table and also helped Kate and Gillian teach public health professionals how to use Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter.  It was nice to see how the project I'm working on involving social media will fulfill a need within the public health community.  I'm also going to be at the Partners in Research event at Ann Arbor District Library this week.  It's about the diagnosis and treatment of OCD, so it should be quite interesting and very related to the work I did at the FRIENDS Depression Education Resource Center (FDERC) this past summer.  While I really like academic libraries, I do think I could be ok in patient education.

I've also been trying to keep up with the news and current library information.  It doesn't hurt that I'm constantly checking my Google Reader account for new job postings.  It really gets me there reading the blogs and news that will help keep me up to date.  I can't help but feel a little overwhelmed by it all, though.  Sometimes I come back to my computer and have almost 200 unread items!  Some items, though, are not so good.  I'm still trying to figure out what blogs I like.  Librarians out there (and non-librarians, alike!), what are some good blogs that you follow?

And finally, I have succumbed full-force to the addiction of knitting.  I keep finding such cool patterns on Ravelry and I want to try them all!  My most recent creations have included the Grrrrr! washcloth from Knitty and the Springtime Bandit shawl/kerchief from Kelbourne Woolens (where I got the pattern for my Give a Hoot mittens).  Pictures soon (as soon as I block the shawl and put the face on the washcloth).

Alas, it is almost time for my second class of the day.  As I always say, I really am going to try to be better about posting!

My confession.

I am decidedly bad at blogging.  I try to frequently update, but I forget.  Maybe I'm just decidedly absent-minded...

So, Hollander's class number three, Advanced Book Repair, was fun.  We did a lot of spine repairs and I got to practice some of the repairs I learned in the Basic Book Repair class.  I actually feel like I made one of the books I worked on look almost as good as new!  I'll try to post pictures soon.  I really should have taken before and after pictures.  Oh well.

School has picked up and I'm knee deep in homework.  Luckily I only have one paper to work on next week while I'm in sunny California!  I have a few meetings with libraries out there, so here's to hoping I'll at least have the hopes of a job when we move.

On a more fun note, I've been knitting a lot more lately.  It all started when I was trying to think of ideas for my grant proposal and was searching for pictures of owls.  That landed me on the Kelbourne Woolens site and a pattern for these super cute owl mittens.

While at the store, I found some other patterns that I wanted to work on, and then I got on Ravelry, and now I have 45 projects in my queue.  There goes my free time!  I'll be either bookbinding, boxmaking, or knitting/crocheting!

I've written about half of my grant proposal for my grantwriting class.  I completely made up the program and it's something that might actually get off the ground somewhere in the future if I decide it's something I want to do.  It's for an after-school arts program and coffee shop that would function as a gallery and a continual funding source for the program.

I've also been trying to get into the professional literature more, but it's so hard with the amount of work I have to do for classes.  I have a few feeds on my Google Reader, but they don't necessarily always capture my interest.  Any suggestions out there for good blogs/feeds to read?