Thoughts on the Journey

Well, I didn't get the full time job that I applied for at the library. Apparently I've improved in my interviewing since the last one I did at the library and I was a strong candidate but someone else was better. I think waiting to find out about this has been quietly stressing me out since the interview which was about a month ago.

Now I know and ugh, time to take my nice looking resume and start applying to other libraries since while I love this library. I don't know if there's ever going to be more than a part-time place for me. I know the new budget comes out in July and they want to do more hours for people but I hate waiting and hoping. And I'm feeling especially useless as with the budget not there, there's very little to do down in processing so I feel more stuck. I don't mind Tech Services but I know its not the best fit for me in the long run. I'm not as meticulous as I could be with some aspects and I need the social parts of the desk.

Not really how I wanted to start my birthday week but then this whole last week has been a lot. I stayed up far too late last weekend watching all of EXU: Calamity as I've fallen into the Critical Role hole. So before the Monday holiday, I didn't get enough sleep which messed with the rest of my week and it also ended up being stupidly hot.

Work was okay but the lack of sleep left me feeling not my best. That was kind of annoying as on Thursday, I had a get together for my NZ university and I had planned to go to the Aquarium beforehand. The weather and air and everything was hot and heavy so while I had a good time, I ended up feeling completely exhausted by all of it.

I'm glad that with my birthday coming up, I'm getting some time off and will have more in July.

I had a wonderful little trip with my parents, the travel both ways sucked as those days it rained or snowed, but during the days we were there, it was sunny. Not fully warm but nice weather for walking and it was kind of cool to see the Mystic museum not fully open, shrinkwrapped ships and how they were preparing for what came next. We also were able to catch the end of an incredibly cool exhibit of this giant panorama and have lots of long talks with volunteers.

Since I've been home, the weather's been getting warmer and my allergies have returned, also while I was away, my job contract was extended until June. And the rest of March is going to be busier which should be nice after a slow February. I also came home to my Girl Scout cookie order which made me smile.

I spent a lot of March and April not getting as much stuff done as I'd planned on. Now in May, I feel like finally I'm actually getting things done. Part of that is I have a deadline as I'm going to have a long family visit around the time of my birthday. That means waking my car up after it wasn't in use, sorting out various home things and the big one that I did earlier was getting my haircut. I know that I did get stuff done before since taxes were sorted and I put up a new chapter of my rebelcaptain kid fic, but it didn't feel like as much. Some of that's the weather changing but I think a lot of it is in my head too. A huge relief is that I finally have a permanent crown on a tooth that first had a root canal back in 2019 and has been in a weird limbo of needing overly complicated stuff is set.

Library jobs are seeming to slowly appear and I feel like there's more out there but I'm kind of taking my time. Contact tracing taught me a lot about what I can do as well as thinking more about all the complicated factors around work. That's something I'm still thinking about and might write more on.

I had my second shot on May 6th and didn't have much reaction, a headache, some fatigue but it also coincided with my shark week starting. So far it seems like it hasn't made anything worse just the normal amount of annoying.

Today I've enjoyed reading a really good book, A Tip for the Hangman about Kit Marlowe, which actually has inspired a new scene for my rebelcaptain kid fic. I highly recommend the book if you want spies, romance, and all the complications told in a really well done historical fiction read. I haven't been watching that much new stuff lately though I have a list of things I want to like Shadow and Bone, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but my energy for new media is something that's slowly coming back. I'm wary about The Bad Batch since I didn't find them that interesting in the last season of Clone Wars, they seem like they belong in a different story, but I know I'll watch it at some point. Instead I’ve been watching a lot of youtube; costubers and two video game channels that a friend introduced me to that work for me, good for dipping in and out of. Outsidexbox and Outside xtra. They also do D&D and streaming playing games together, that especially suits me since I miss that hanging out energy. Also it oddly reminds me of when I was in high school, and being friends with mainly guys more into video games. So I'd watch them and every once in a while, take a turn in Smash brothers or Goldeneye.

Tomorrow I get to see my lovely relatives who I haven't seen since last Fall, and I'm doing happy birthday planning too. Another benefit of seeing family is that in June, one of my nieces is graduating high school and I can actually be there for the party, as well as see my brother around his birthday at the end of May. I'm also really looking forward to having time to read, cook, walk and be with family, there's something about being there that takes a weight off of me.

I seem to have gotten into the habit of posting about once a month. I mean to do it more often but words haven't been coming that quickly. Also I'm nearing the end of a bad shark week which has sapped a lot of my energy. But the weather lately has been feeling more fall like which has helped. So I'll go with various things that are going on.

For my shark week, I bought myself a heatable pillow with lavender in it shaped like a uterus and it makes such a difference in my pain levels.

I've been sending out a good bit of my mail and my two nephews in France sent me drawings they did which are now on my fridge. One of the first big trips I'll be planning when its possible is to see them.

My cooking's going fairly well, my local Asian supermarket has had a deal on pork belly and the other time I got it, I think was smaller. This second batch is giving me lots of leftovers, which is good but a lot. So I keep trying to find ways to change it up, I also ended up with a lot more guacamole than I normally have but I think I can make a good dent in both of those tonight.

I finally was able to go back to the dentist and have this major gum cleaning thing, which feels like useful maintenance. Now I need to take that same kind of idea to my poor car that's waiting for me.

Job stuff is a lot of waiting and throwing things out into the void hoping someone answers back.

I did reconnect with the alum group from my NZ university, we actually had a video call that went pretty well. A little disconcerting to realize how many of the men on the call had MBAs and all but I like this alum group.

At the moment, I'm reading this amazing book Sharks in the Time of Saviors which is really good. I have a couple of books due on Monday so I'm planning on doing lots of reading this weekend.

Today is my birthday and it feels surreal to be thinking about it and celebrating with everything going on in the world. Since March, my life has been fairly quiet as all the libraries are closed so I've been staying home. I've been donating since I've had a sore throat that comes and goes so I don't feel safe to be out more than my normal walk and errands. The song that keeps going through my head is Sixteen Tons especially the line, 'another day older and deeper in debt.' Even though I'm actually doing okay money wise since Massachusetts' unemployment is pretty generous but the song's there in my head.

In good news, I've been doing some cooking since one of my brothers sent me a package full of dried chilis and various spices. So since everything's made, tonight I can have chicken tacos with homemade guacamole and brownies and ice cream. On my walk, I think I'm going to pick up some wine. Yesterday, I had a nice Zoom call with most of my family, sadly not the brother in France as he forgot but I know I'll talk to him at some point.

I recently finished rewatching Avatar: the Last Airbender and I'd forgotten how good that show is. Also I love seeing all the meta as I wasn't really in the fandom before, but a lot of my friends were. In my reading, I've had lots of holds come in but I've been stalling out on new books and instead rereading a lot of Terry Pratchett. I started Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth but its a bit too close to real life so I'll probably give up on it until another time. My writing has also slowed down but that's how its been the past few months, it comes and goes, the ideas are there just need to get the words down.

-Wearing a mask means I had to learn a new way to breath as wearing one wakes my asthma up
-Also I want to get another masks that's more cheerful, my current one is blue with some white stripes on it
-Twisting my ankle hurt and while its almost better, I now have something that sets a time limit on my walks
-Frozen phyllo dough is tricky to work with but not impossible
-I miss my librarian work
-I've also missed writing characters being angry, writing this Cassian fic: Someone to punch was very satisfying
-Having a new laptop is great but laptops eat up so much memory
-I really miss browsing in stores or places that aren't pharmacies, grocery or liquor stores
-Being patient worked and I'm writing again

I never realized how much I missed the smaller social interactions of going to a cafe or the library and reading or the conversations that are part of being a public librarian. I've had jobs and times when I worked from home but then either I was living with my parents or could go and sit in a cafe for lunch. Since the library I'm working at closed last Friday for two weeks that looks like it will extend to the end of the month, my days have been okay. The people at this library are lovely and each day my email is filled with pet pictures.

I did a lot of shopping so I feel prepared food and other things wise, but I do wish I'd had time to get my hair cut before everything shut down. At this point, I have far too many ideas of food I want to cook or bake but haven't yet. Also I have ideas for stuff I want to write and read but I'm not pushing myself too much, creativity's strange. One of the odd ironies is before this, I was getting ready to go out and do more, visit museums, go to book signings, get myself out more.

My neighborhood's a weird mix of open and closed and every day I walk to a little park behind where I live. It does worry me to see people playing basketball and tennis but most of the time in my walks, we're all avoiding each other.

One of the unexpected benefits of this is how Milliways is more active as older players come for a thread in the All Skate. I'm so grateful for all the online friendships that I have.

( Family health )

I meant to write up this past week earlier since a good deal happened in it but then I stayed up too late watching The Haunting of Hill House and haven't been focused enough for words. And I binged that because it pulled me in and some of the grief felt familiar. Powerful and well done show, I'd recommend stretching it out since its in intense.

I think I'm on a slightly more even keel now but life is feeling in an odd place. The holidays are coming up, which I love but now there's also the association of my sister being sick around them. And I'm between jobs, which adds to that feeling of being unsettled. This past week and the one before, my last one at the public library felt more like a month than two weeks.

To begin with, last Monday, I learned about volunteering work that I think I'll be able to help with including working with a fellow librarian who works for the same library staffing agency. That was a really nice surprise and need to get back in touch with her. Then I had probably one of the worst work schedules at the nice library, closings and then openings, 5 to 9, Monday and Wednesday and 9 to 1 on Tuesday and Thursday. By the time I hit Friday I wasn't up to doing much and I think I might have been sick too. The last day of work was nice, one of the older librarians bought me one of the Dunkin Halloween themed donuts and the director of the library made it clear that they'd be happy to have me work with them again and it might happen.

Oh and Thursday after work, the HVAC maintenance person stopped by for what was meant to be a regular check up but instead found out it was broken. They came by again early Tuesday morning to fix one leak and say there's another, so as the weather's getting colder, I don't currently have heat. I'm also still dealing with a prescription thing that's taking far too long but I think its on the right track now.

Wednesday night was an alum meet up for my New Zealand university which I helped to arrange a little with an older couple at a pub in downtown Boston. I left the night feeling good about how it went but also feeling a lot like Lady Sybil Ramkin, since I was more in the hostess role. The spot we ended up in was pretty tight for how large a crowd we had but everyone had a good time and wanted to do more. It was nice to meet other Americans who spent time in New Zealand as well as New Zealanders living the US. The crowd was a true range of ages and experiences, but I spent most of the night handing out drink tickets and name tags.

So while I met people, the connections didn't feel as strong and I didn't find any fandom folks. I know they're out there but its always tricky knowing the right questions to get beyond so what do you do. There's a cool bookstore that does events that I keep meaning to try and get to. And then the night ended with a truly disheartening conversation with two NZ men about politics with them being 'realistic' and it left me tired. I think the worst of it was I felt talked down to, like how precious of you to be hopeful, it was disappointing since I'd had good interactions with them throughout the night. And I think that compounded that feeling of being slightly invisible.

In hopeful holiday news, I signed up for Yuletide and the Rebelcaptain secret santa and I'm planning on using November to try and get more writing done. Get some works in progress out into the world. The first chapter of my college AU is up and I think that's one that won't take much to finish and post, two more chapters, one smutty interlude. Ice Dancing AU as always is going to take more work, but I know I can get it done and also I have some shorter works to finish up.

I finally got all my icons back and added a few Star Wars ones but I want to add more. This is one of my favorites because its Cassian being a pilot and hyperspace which is cool and beautiful.

After I finished my college job, I started an over two week long vacation down at my parent's place by the shore. It turned out to be just what I needed after the last academic year.

Important thing that happened was I saw my mother's dentist twice, once for x-rays and for him to go, yes, you need a root canal and then the actual root canal. So now my tooth doesn't hurt and I'm not thinking constantly about my mouth. The dentist was really nice, his office was part of a very fancy dental complex and so while the whole process was long, it went fairly well.

For the Fourth of July, I made blueberry boy bait from a Smitten Kitchen recipe that was delicious but far too large a recipe for the small group that came to celebrate. If you ever want an easy recipe that makes a simple and very blueberry cake, I recommend this one. Later I also made a delicious blueberry and peach crumble when my brother and his wife stopped by for a quick visit. I was able to have soft shell crabs twice which are honestly one of my favorite parts of summer down by the Delaware shore.

We also had a fun and unexpectedly good visit out to the Air Mobility Command Museum that's right outside Dover. I've always had a love for aviation and my current interest in Star Wars has only added to it. This museum was really wonderfully done with the focus on all the planes and with really good and active volunteer docents. The museum was half inside and half outside and the day we went was really bright and sunny so going from the hangar to outside was intense.

Other than that, I spent a lot of time reading, a few walks though it was really hot and humid and planning what's next. I also had a phone interview with a school that went okay, it helped me think about recrafting my resume and things like that.

One wonderful thing that happened was the dwarf sunflower kit that I bought before my sister's memorial has finally bloomed. The plant's going to live down in my parent's garden where it can get more sun.

And I watched Good Omens, which was beautifully done but didn't completely work for me. The casting and the look of it was great but a lot of the choices made it more Gaiman's story not Pratchett's; too much focus on angels and demons, much less on the actual humans. Aziraphale and Crowley were amazing but I find it really telling how most of the fandom stuff I see about them isn't actually connected to the actual plot of the Apocalypse.

My last two weeks have been full of a strange mixture of what comes next, the sense of the end of my time at work and looking forward to my birthday. To begin with, the Monday before last I changed offices to where the woman I originally replaced sat. What makes this change so surreal is that suddenly by sitting where she was sitting, I can keep a much better eye on the student workers and the desk. One of the parts of this job that I've had trouble with and honestly messed up a bit is helping the students work enough and keep track of when they're missing shifts. Until I sat in this desk, I didn't realize just how much of that was because I couldn't easily see them. My other office did technically have a window that looks out but the blinds are always down so I had to get up to see. People always searched me out with questions but now all I do is look up as my open door leads to the desk.

Its also odd to not be sharing an office anymore, the library has been having a lot of office musical chairs going on. So the woman who originally shared the office with the person I replaced moved offices before I went into that office. Then someone else has moved into my old office which has space for three people. Another temp who left at the beginning of May called our office the office of misfit toys, because all the stuff lives there and there were two temps plus my other co-worker, a recent alum who's working on a two year contract.

The timing ended up being just right for another reason as the week before last, other than one day, I had phone interviews either at lunch or one after work for school librarian jobs. The first lunch time one was the last day of finals and all the library study rooms where I'd normally go were rooms for finals. So I walked all over the library searching for a quiet space before realizing wait, I have an office with a door I can close. So I closed the door and had privacy to talk. It was kind of weird and nice. All the phone interviews were pretty hopeful, next Tuesday I have a video interview as a follow up to one of them. Its a nice reminder that my skills are seen and people want to learn more about me.

Sunday I was finally able to hang out with some friends in person which I'd really been needing. We bought food at the Public Market and then ate out on the Greenway. The day was beautiful and there were lots of dogs and kids playing around us. I'm trying to get myself out more this spring and summer as I've been realizing how much my commute has cut down on my desire to go too far when I have time off. I'm so grateful to live in a city where there are friends, schedule wrangling is required but we make it work. My plan for birthday is to try and maybe get to the Dragon Boat festival on Sunday or try to get out to the zoo one day. There's also free entry to the MFA with a BPL library card which I want to take advantage of too.

After the last day of Finals even before that the library and campus have been getting quieter and quieter which has meant my boss has done a little more hovering. There hasn't been too much to see was the students who are working are good at getting done what needs to be done. And I'm at the point of feeling like she can be disapproving all she wants at me that I wasn't standing directly at the desk and immediately there to help someone, but I know things are getting taken care of. Also that she was annoyed I forwarded an email to a student with some dates in it, it feels like an odd sort of reaching. But I also knew that my shark week started so I'm a little more grumbly. My contract ends at the end of June and I'm going to end having some time to not be working.

Friday was commencement and I was at the front desk all day except for when I did lunch and dropping some gifts to graduates and I loved watching the ebb and flow of people. The weather which has been grey was beautifully sunny and not too warm, just the right temperature. I ended being a tiny bit late due to traffic so had to deal with my boss being a little disapproving at me but then she left. And then it was the fun of taking these little snack bags to our student workers who are graduating as they were lining up. It was wonderful, I even got a hug and so many smiles. Then I came back and did a lot of directing people to the bathrooms and watching the ceremony where it was streaming. Anita Hill was the speaker and she seemed like she did a great job. I didn't see all of it due to my timing.

An odd note to the day was that Bill, this older man who's the main facilities guy in the library kept hanging out and talking with me. At some points it was interesting to hear his views on how things are run, we shared some complaints on how communication isn't great on campus. Other times, he talked more at me which was kind of annoying and now I look back, I wonder how often he's done that to student and other workers. He's an odd presence, tall older guy that's not very neat. Some of the things he'd said, I wish he'd actually brought up before as he sees when some jobs weren't getting done. Normally I'll see him briefly at the end of the day but I guess he also likes the energy of commencement since he spent a lot of the day near the front.

My birthday's next Saturday, which is also reunion and I've got enough students to cover it. As a kind of early birthday present to myself, I did a big order from Torrid, who was having a really nice Memorial day sale. The first thing arrived today, a dress which I put on and felt comfortable and beautiful. Its been a while since I wore dresses even though I like them, but part of this order is trying clothing styles that will make me feel summery and pretty. Another fun early birthday thing is that my parents bought me the thinkgeek death star glasses. I need to figure out where in my small kitchen to put them but they look very cool.

In terms of books, I've been reading Little, Big by John Crowley which is one of those books that's always coming up on book lists alongside other books I really like. I'm finding it slow and strange going, the language can be lovely and lyrical with an intriguing setting, but the thread of the story is odd. It keeps turning away from what seems to me to be the interesting plotline for a more almost normal one and that choice always seem to be from something happening to a woman to a man's life. Also there's an odd sexual undercurrent to it that keeps pulling me out of it. I wouldn't say its a slog as when I sit down to read it, I tend to move fairly quickly through it but it feels longer. Reading it has me wanting to reread some of my favorite authors who write magical realism or fantasy.