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Back in September, after only a couple weeks of being in Birmingham, I attended the Birmingham Twestival.  It was my second Twestival, the first being in Detroit, but it was the first social event I participated in here.  What an excellent way to quickly get to know the wonderful people that live and work in this city!  I was also thrilled to win a raffle prize, a photo shoot by Lee Allen. 

I was a little bit nervous about the whole thing, I generally don't like the way I look in photos (though, everybody says that, don't they?) but in the spirit of the event and knowing that having some nice photos will help spice up some other projects I'm working on here and there (blog redesign, CV, and article bios), I decided it was definitely a good thing to embrace. 

I am so pleased with the results!  We set up a day last month to meet in the Jewelry Quarter in Birmingham (a short walk for me as I live just on the outskirts).  The walk over threatened a little rain, but I liked the atmosphere, it was a beautiful autumn day.  Lee was great, my nerves didn't last long, he made the whole experience really comfortable, and he only risked my life in dangerous British traffic once during the whole day ;)  Though to be fair, he risked his life in traffic far more than I did.  I liked the Jewelry Quarter as a backdrop, I've been here for a couple of months so it does feel like home now, and the urban landscapes do remind me of being in Detroit.  Below are a few of my favorite pictures from the day.

I'm really glad I had this opportunity, and now having done it I would recommend to people that it's worth it to get some professional photos done of yourself (and if in Birmingham, call Lee of course!)  I've already updated my Twitter background, and changed some of my online avatars, it does kind of make me feel a little bit grown up :)  Thanks to Lee, and thanks to the Twestival for opening doors and giving me some unique experiences here in Birmingham.

I only lived in Detroit for a short time, six months, and I went to school there for three years.  No matter how long you're in the city though, Detroit is the kind of place that stays with you forever.

There's a lot of attention on Detroit these days... corrupt politicians, a failing auto industry, and an unemployment rate at almost 30%, it does sound like a pretty depressing place.  Even with all of that though, it's difficult not to love Detroit. It's especially difficult not to love the people.

Recently I stumbled across this piece in Time called Assignment Detroit.  Time bought a house in Detroit and they're going to live there for a year.  Why?

Because we believe that Detroit right now is a great American story. No city has had more influence on the country's economic and social evolution. Detroit was the birthplace of both the industrial age and the nation's middle class, and the city's rise and fall -- and struggle to rise again -- are a window into the challenges facing all of modern America. From urban planning to the crisis of manufacturing, from the lingering role of race and class in our society to the struggle for better health care and education, it's all happening at its most extreme in the Motor City.

I was happy to see somebody finally get it... but surprised to see that it was a media outlet making the effort.  I'm drawn by these stories though and I hope that Time can present them in a respectable way.

Detroit is a city filled with optimism and pessimism (sometimes by the same people at the same time).  It is a city filled with hope and with despair.  It's a city you have to be in to understand though, which is why I think it's often misunderstood.  Some of the videos I've watched so far from the Assignment Detroit project are interesting and candid.  I especially enjoyed the interviews with Kid Rock and Michael Moore... both had a very different understanding and vision, but both still seemed to represent the essence of the city.

When something enters your consciousness your awareness of it becomes more heightened, so having lived for a short time in Detroit and then moving to a different part of the world that's sort of what has happened with me.  I don't know where I came across it initially, but a few days ago I was reminded of Detroit's motto, it started with one of my typical snarky comments about the city's flag (on twitter)... but after the snarkiness wore off and I considered the motto (errr, well I realized I could use in this blog post which I had already started weeks ago anyway).

The relevance of the flag and the city motto is described on the Detroit Historical Society's website:

The official Seal of the City of Detroit is the centerpiece of the flag.  It commemorates the great fire of 1805 that burned Detroit to the ground.  The seal shows two women.  The woman on the left represents Detroit at the time of the fire.  She is weeping. The woman on the right, who is comforting her, represents hope and the future.  The background scene shows the city in flames on the left.  On the right, a new and brighter city is shown.  On the sides are Latin words which translated into English read "We Hope for Better Things...It Shall Arise from the Ashes."  This motto captures the real spirit of Detroit - one that meets challenges and evokes images of Detroiters working and building together.

Of course I focused on the burning part, Detroit has a habit of catching on fire, a lot.  Sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident.  The motto is what the city is really all about though.  It is a city that burns, it is a city that weeps, but it is also a city of hope.  Detroit did rise above the ashes after the 1805 fires, it became the center of industry in the US, a large and prosperous city... it was a city that immigrants were eager to travel to because they could find good work there, it wasn't always the city we see today.  The prosperity wasn't enough to sustain it through modern times though, so it burnt again, but in spirit. 

I'm pretty confident the city will rise again.  It's a slow and painful process there though, like many places in the world it is fearful of change and stuck in tradition.  It's a tradition that the city cannot sustain, and many are aware of it... though painful to watch, maybe the city needs to burn to be good again. Speramus Meliora, Resurget Cineribus.

Well, hopefully I don't cry today, but looking back on the past year crying seems to always be a possibility.  I know, it's been a long time since I updated this blog.  I'm still here, tweeting mostly.  No excuses this time, it really is a motivation thing.  Today I'm 32.  I feel older every year, not just older, but tired and worn down.  I know I'm not really old, but the back pain tells me something different.  The back pain really is the only thing I can count on every year for my birthday anyway.  This isn't meant to be a sad post (more matter of fact really), but it's been a turbulent year and I figure there's no reason to pretend like it hasn't been.  I suppose if things had been happier this past year then there would've been more blogging and less tears.

I'm not the kind of person that really cares for these retrospective sorts of moments though.  I get nostalgic sometimes, but I've always felt that what happens happens.  It's a survival mechanism.  You can't change the past.  This year has been good and bad in many different doses.  If there's one thing I should be grateful for is the blank canvas I have in front of me.  It is weird getting to this point in life where you finally know what you want, but then not sure if you'll ever get it.  There's a reason why I never make plans, they never work out that way.

When I last left this blog I was actually moving from Ann Arbor to Detroit.  I spent an entire six months in Detroit and didn't blog once.  I somehow fell in love with a city that people love to hate.  I miss it there, but not enough to move back.  I love the people, I love the Bronx (best burgers), and I love Motor City Brewing (best beer and pizza).  Detroit taught me an important lesson though, and that is that things aren't always what they seem on the surface (sounds really cliché, huh?  Well, it's true).

I didn't know what I would think of Detroit when I moved there, I moved there because it was close to one job and rent was cheap.  I never expected to enjoy living there, but that's what happened.  I tell people I'm from Detroit, though I'm really from Toledo, I'm proud of being from both places.  I'm also happy to have lived in Ann Arbor for so long.  I've met some incredible people along the way there, and the journey only continues.

I'm in Birmingham, in the United Kingdom now.  I love the UK too.  Birmingham is a wonderful city, and not unlike Detroit, people tend to think otherwise.  There's some subtle similarities between the two cities (meant in a good way actually), but there's definitely some differences.  The biggest difference is that Birmingham is not as desolate as Detroit.  Detroit has pockets life here and there, but Birmingham has a thriving city center and an amazing amount of shopping crammed into a small space.  I like being here because I can walk anywhere and shop for just about anything. 

I think Birmingham is what Detroit could be, maybe someday in my lifetime.  Birmingham, was the original center of industry, while Detroit clings to its automotive roots.  Where Birmingham gets it right is that it keeps rebuilding itself into something new.  I would love to see good things for Detroit too.  There's a heart and soul to Detroit that you can't detect from the bleak news that comes out of it.  It's difficult to explain but I'm sad to leave but glad I did.  I know it doesn't help Detroit to flee, but life is difficult enough as it is on its own.

I've wanted to be in a city for a long time.  I don't miss my car.  I don't even miss my things (currently packed away in a garage in Toledo).  To be honest I don't miss much about the US.  Things are just different.  Not better, not worse, just different.  I enjoy wandering the city (except for Saturday, there's way too many people here on Saturday).  About every other day I go out for a walk around now familiar Birmingham roads and shopping centers.  I like to go to the markets at the Bull Ring, and especially into the meat markets inside.  I like the activity and the bustle and the cheap stuff.  I like walking around and listening to podcasts on my iPod (I'm finally catching up).  I'm getting used to traffic coming at me from the wrong direction at insane speeds.  I spend some time shopping in the grocery stores.  It's a little like an anthropological exercise for me.  Grocery shopping is different here and I prefer it.  Because I'm walking everywhere I don't do all of my shopping all at once.  Things seem fresher.  Notably, vegetables are cheaper.  For anything considered "healthier" in the US expect to pay way more money for it.  The reason why obesity is a problem in the US is because it's cheaper.  I enjoy being able to cook again too so it's nice to find fresh food a short walk away.

I will try to blog and write more.  I can't get online as much I want yet, but writing can be done offline.  It helps sort through the things in my head, which is pretty scary at the moment.

I don't know what's in store for the next year.  I would like to say more blogging and less tears.  I would like to say a lot of things for certain, but I can't.  Well, that is except for more back pain.  Another year done, and another new chapter to write.  So, Happy Birthday to me... knowing that birthday wishes do not always come true, but we do what we can.

Yeah, it's been awhile... but not quite a month.  Truth is I don't have much to say.  I've been enjoying a very nice couple of weeks of no school and no work with absolutely no regrets.  I still have a few more days before I start work, and a few more before I start school back up again for my last semester at Wayne State.  This semester I'm taking two online courses, Web Development and Integrated Library Systems... hopefully they won't be as stressful as the last semester was for me.

I try to avoid New Year's Resolutions because I'm bad about keeping them, but I have to admit that I do get pretty motivated this time of year.  I have a lot to do, and things have been an organizational mess for a little too long so I'm working on those areas before the motivation dies... which it will eventually, that's just how things are with me.

To start I've decided to go through my books.  I probably don't have a lot compared to a lot of librarian type people (I don't read fiction much, and I don't buy books much), but I have enough that I've decided to weed them and organize them.  First step is to decide which I'm keeping.  My long stagnant LibraryThing account has been resurrected.  What I like about LibraryThing is that it pulls in the call numbers from Library of Congress, I've been writing these inside the covers to eventually label them properly (I think I can work some magic with Excel and Word to automate this with some labels).  I've decided to use Library of Congress instead of Dewey only because I have a lot of Classical music CDs and sheet music that will also get labeled and I think Dewey is pretty horrible for cataloging CDs, I would like these items to be relatively close to one another in order so I can find them easier.  At one time I did want to teach flute lessons, thus the reason for organizing my music, I probably never will, but I still like the idea of having them in order.  This probably makes me a huge geek on so many levels though, and to think I really don't like "real cataloging" all the much it seems funny I want to do this at home, but LibraryThing makes it really easy.  Right now most of the books I have added to LT are my old music textbooks, that was just the first shelf I grabbed.

So what to do with the others?  I've opened a PaperBack Swap account.  I don't have much there yet (ok, it's been harder than I thought to part with some books), but the great thing was the first day I posted books I had a request for one!  I mailed it off yesterday, it was a pretty nice book about making and playing folk instruments so I hope they enjoy it.  The really old and really useless books will probably get recycled, I do have a few old workbooks that I don't know why I've kept them for so long.  I've never been one to sell off my textbooks, this has come to my benefit, especially last semester when in a desperate attempt to find resources last minute I found the best in an an old Library textbook... you just never know.

In the meantime I also want to rip all of my CDs to my backup drive, and I'm ditching the cases in favor of a sleeved binder.  I might buy another binder just for the Classical CDs though.

And yes, I do hope to blog more.  Maybe I should be less ambitious than once a day... maybe once a week is ok.  And if not once a week I seem to do ok with once a month.

There's a lot in the works at the moment but there are two events I wanted to highlight here for anybody interested.

Ed Vielmetti @ WSU

The student chapter of ASIS&T at Wayne State University is excited to have Ed Vielmetti of Pure Visibility in Ann Arbor come out and present to the LIS students at WSU (Ed is also known by some as Superpatron).  Details of the talk will probably come later on this blog and elsewhere but here's what we're planning.

March 6, 2008

Presentation @ 11:00 am

Lunch get together after the presentation.

Ed has a very interesting topic lined up and I can't wait to hear it!  I'll save the details for a more proper post though.  This event is also open to anybody interested in attending.

Library Camp in A2

Ann Arbor is hosting a second Library Camp on March 20th.  The first was a great success, and actually where I met Ed for the first time!

Library Camp Ann Arbor

I also noticed that the folks in Kansas are having their Library Camp the day before. 

Library Camp Kansas

March is the month for Library Camps, that's for sure!

There's a lot going on around Ann Arbor, and there's a lot we have planned for ASIS&T too, I'm really excited for the rest of the year.

I honestly don't know how long we've been throwing our Chinese New Year Party now, it seems like 5 years, but now I'm thinking this is the 4th, but honestly I can only find pictures going back to 2005, so maybe it's 3?  Three doesn't sound right though, my pictures might be labeled wrong.

It doesn't matter though, it's fun every year.  We started having a Chinese New Year Party (despite the face we're not Chinese) for two reasons:

1.  We're huge procrastinators, the first year we wanted to throw a Christmas Party, but we never got to "planning" until about January. 

2.  It's hard to compete with all of the other festivities around Christmas time, so this seemed like a better solution.  Now when Christmas rolls around I can go to everybody else's parties, start thinking about our Chinese New Year party plans, and actually enjoy myself, to the extent I can enjoy myself during the Holiday Season.

This year we feasted on Chinese food and White Castle (our parties are certainly unique, to say the least), watched a few hilarious YouTube videos on our TV through the PS3 (what's a party without YouTube videos?), then played Guitar Hero.  Oh and I can't forget the hit of the party, the Champagne Punch!

Champagne Punch

• 1 1/3 cups lemon juice
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup orange liqueur (such as Grand Marnier)
• 1/2 cup Triple Sec
• 1/2 cup Cognac
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 2 bottles dry Champagne (chilled)
• Orange slices
• Strawberries

Combine lemon juice through orange juice and stir to dissolve sugar.  Add the Champagne and stir.  Cover and refrigerate for about 1 hour until chilled. Add oranges and strawberries and serve in a nifty punch bowl.

Then enjoy of course!  The orange slices were especially yummy to munch on.

Happy Year of the Rat!

So this is the first post of the New Year on my blog and I'll warn you, it's nothing special. That to do list I posted about earlier never happened, as a matter of fact this new year hasn't started out all that great for me. I hurt my back on Christmas Day and I've been in a lot of pain since then. My New Year's Resolution is to be able to walk without looking like an old geezer again. Today is really the first day I ventured out into the world to run errands on my own. I don't think I got much past noon before wishing I were at home and in bed. I'm in for a long evening though because class also starts tonight. Driving a manual transmission with back pain is not recommended either. Pain is a motivation sucker; I haven't even had all that much motivation to even be online. Work isn't fun either. I don't have the luxury of sitting at a desk all day, I move around constantly, bend, stand, sit, and move heavy boxes. I started shifting biographies a few weeks ago but could only work for about 30 minutes before I got tired or hurt. I'm envious of people who can walk. The whole situation sucks for me because I have to rely on other people and I hate relying on other people. I've actually prefer to work through the pain than to ask another person for help, and usually that's what I do.

I went to the doctor, even though I hate going to doctors. He told me that it's a chronic flare-up; basically I just have to deal with it. That's fine because now I can systematically avoid more doctor visits. It is getting better, some days it doesn't always feel like that, but the first week it happened I could feel it in my whole back, now the pain is just centralized in one spot on my back. I can't walk real straight though so that's making me overcompensate and after some time my leg muscles start to get sore.

But life goes on. I'm leaving for Vegas on Saturday so I'm hoping to be able to move a little faster by then so my trip doesn't suck. I'm also hoping to be fine by the time we leave for Toronto because I planned some geocaching and sightseeing that requires us to walk a lot.

Last year wasn't bad; I'm not worried about this year being bad either (despite the rough start). My life philosophy is to take things as they come and deal with them as they happen.

As usual the time after the end of a semester seems to fly by too fast to do anything you want, but here's an attempt at a to do list:

1. My blog needs some serious help. I want to redesign, I want to actually post more (but I'll settle for a redesign if posting more falls through). I realized that del.icio.us posts have overtaken the blog. I've stopped them from posting to my blog, but moved them to my FeedBurner so you can still get them through there if you really like them. If you don't like them then you can still subscribe to the normal feed, I think it's somewhere on my blog. I love FeedBurner though so I encourage you to use it. Other improvements to the blog include adding a blogroll that will be updated through Google Reader and maybe even an about me page (although that one has been in the works since I started a blog eons ago).
2. I have a bunch of photos that need to be uploaded on Flickr. I have some on my camera, my new computer, and my old computer. This will continue to be an ongoing process, although I'm happy to say that I have a suitable organizational method for my pictures now. It's not as painful as a process that it used to be.
3. This weekend, Alex got all gung ho about getting our music collection to stream through our computers to the PS3 (it's actually pretty cool). That was easy, but now he's all gung ho about getting our music to our backup server so we can access all of our CDs from any computer at any time (we're not using a lot of space on the server so we might as well do something with it). I started a similar project using Rhapsody, but I'm the only one who uses it and apparently Rhapsody is not compatible with the PS3 (even though it finds my Rhapsody music, the PS3 won't read the files). At any rate, we're working together to reorganize our music, and I'm still trying to get the CDs out of the cases and into a CD binder instead of on shelves. I'm on a mission to downsize our possessions.
4. I want to do some networky type stuff with my old computer. Right now the computer is gathering dust, I think we can set it up so that we can print wirelessly and Alex wants to be able to access our music through it. He doesn't always bring his computer home and my computer usually kills the internet when I'm on the wireless. Oh yeah, if anybody has any idea why my wireless network dies every time I visit a profile on Facebook or Google Maps, please clue me in. I can sit on the Facebook news feed fine, or any other app page, but once I open a profile my internet dies. It drives me nuts!
5. I need to clean the apartment. I hate my apartment right now, but I think I hate cleaning more. It's a vicious cycle.
6. I stopped playing around in SecondLife because I got busy with school. I would like to play around with it more, I've still been reading through a couple of SL books that I got from the library.
7. We need to start planning a trip to Toronto in January. I can't wait for this trip because even though I've lived less than 2 hours from Canada most of my life, I've never been there. We're driving there, and we'll try to geocache along the way. We'll have one day together for sightseeing and then I will have one day by myself while Alex visits his potential future lab. I'm looking forward to all of those things. I'm also looking forward to the idea of living there someday. I have not talked to a single person who said they hated Toronto. Actually most people I've talked to said they were jealous that we're thinking of moving there.

This is hardly a complete to-do list. I seriously don't know when we're going to get anything done either. We're leaving for Illinois/Indiana this weekend, and I work all the rest of the days. I might have some time over New Year's but I will need to visit my family in Toledo since I won't be around for Christmas. All this holiday cheer stuff really puts me in a bad mood sometimes. What I really want to do is stay home, not visit anybody, not buy anything, and not go anywhere.

Just a few words about my experience at ArbCamp yesterday (A2's un-unconference), I had a great time! Thanks to those who organized, it was really well put together. I talked to quite a few students there, I know there were several that came from all over Michigan, and being a student myself, I was felt so welcomed at the event and I do appreciate that.

I didn't take a whole lot of notes at ArbCamp, I think I was noted out after ASIS&T, but I did have a lot of wonderful conversations with people the entire day.

I enjoyed Mitten's enthusiastic talk on Grids in Web Design. I wasn't aware of Blueprint Grid CSS but I am now! I'm a big fan of generators (or anything that will do things for me for that matter) so I found a link to one while I was listening to the discussion. Also mentioned was the nifty Firefox extension It's All Text! There were other great tools being bounced around here, but I actually missed the rest, I think my internet cut out toward the end of the session.

Before lunch we went to Ed's Lunch 2.0 which mostly just turned into a chat session with an SI student at Michigan. Garin from SI explained the Community Information Corps, a weekly lunch featuring speakers in the Information field. It's too bad I normally work on Fridays, the speakers sound fascinating and I wouldn't mind attending some time. From here on until after lunch I met and talked with several interesting people.

After lunch I started in the Photography & Social Networks session but then ended up in the Library Camp session after a few minutes. Sometimes it's just so hard to decide. My friend Sarah stayed in the photography session though. During the library session we talked about some interesting ideas of small libraries or personal libraries. Peer-to-peer circulation came up. As it was being described I almost envisioned it as a library social network, within your library network you're able to share library books with one another or see what your friend has, bypassing the hold/checkout process at your local library. The advantage to the library would be that your patrons bypass the circulation process and deal directly with one another, saving circulation costs and freeing up shelf space (if the library allows items to stay out until they are needed by somebody else). In a Library 2.0 dream world this sounds like a fabulous idea, but l know that libraries would never buy in to this. It's hard enough getting things like RSS in catalogs and social features in our systems scare most librarians. It's too bad.

LibraryThing also came up a lot. I find LibraryThing interesting but I'm not a user myself. One point I mentioned at the discussion was that since I borrow most of my books from libraries and don't actually own them myself, that has always been a perceived barrier for me to start to use LibraryThing. I did start a LibraryThing account to catalog our sheet music a long time ago though; I wouldn't mind trying to start that process back up again. I wanted to catalog our sheet music and then also our classical music CDs so finding corresponding pieces would be easy to cross reference between the two collections. Since we don't play much anymore this hasn't been high on my priority list. Anyway, one reason why I would start using LibraryThing would be to contribute to the collective tagging data on materials. Some libraries are starting to import LibraryThing tags into their catalogs and I think this is potentially more beneficial than trying to integrate tags on their systems themselves.

After then was Derek's discussion on Social Media 101. Some of the topics included a rundown of the popular social networking tools, a brief discussion on privacy, as well as a list of potential uses for the tools. I'm sure I'm missing a lot. I use a lot of the tools already, but one thing I did think during this is that I will probably want to figure out what I'm not using anymore and clean all that up. Network portability came up and this is something I'm interested in. Probably not so much portability but just some way to know what it is I'm signed up for and a more efficient way to aggregate my online presences. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the number of choices in various networking tools and also the fact that I'm not even sure what open accounts I have out there anymore.

Sarah and I spent a good while talking to Andy, a neogeographer, which is a title I find fascinating. I also enjoyed talking to Andy at ABC later that evening.

All in all it was a good day; I met a lot of great people, had a lot of interesting discussions, and took my husband out with me for some beer and more great discussions at ABC later. Although I think today is the first full day I've spent at home in over a week so I'm actually enjoying this time too.

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I cancelled my MySpace account just now. The comment spam has been driving me nuts, not just in my name but I've been getting the same sort of thing from some of my friends. Today I changed my spam settings and it happened again so I'm done. I don't really do much on MySpace, I'm not sad to see it go either. Sorry if any one of you were my friends on there, but if you really want to keep track of what I'm doing, feel free to add me on Facebook instead.

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