Month: May 2012

Itinerary

Rough itinerary for next month’s trip west:

Thursday 21 June – Tuesday 26 June: Anaheim for the ALA Annual Conference. My presentation is Sunday at 8AM, for those who care. I’ll probably be roaming around Orange County and environs some too.

Tuesday 26 June – Thursday 28 June: I may spend a couple of days in San Diego. I haven’t decided for sure.

Thursday 28 June – Tuesday 2 July: LA proper. Actually, I’ll probably be staying in Pasadena.

A week-plus of exploring and taking pictures. I do so love LA. There’s really no place quite like it. I’m up for the odd lunch or dinner meet-up if anyone’s interested, although I have to admit that I’m not sure how many people I still know in the Southland.

I may come to regret this, but…

Me, approximately twenty years ago. This (obviously) was taken during my “hair monster” phase. When I finally cut it all off a couple of years later, I went for the buzzed look. No in between for me.

Spring cleaning can be fun. And frightening.

Six years on the cul-de-sac

Six years ago today, the ex and I took possession of this lovely house in Winston-Salem.

In a lot of ways, it’s the only place I’ve ever lived as an adult that’s ever really quite felt like home. At the same time, it also sometimes feels like I’ve never really lived here at all. For the first few years, I was waiting for Mark to be here full time so we could really “start” living here together. Once he moved back (only for a few months, as it turned out) we pretty much immediately put the house on the market with an eye toward downsizing and moving to Greensboro, and it’s been on and off the market ever since–in a pretty much “staged” condition, devoid of any personality whatsoever. And then there was the mortgage nightmare earlier this year, where I took full possession even though I wasn’t particularly sure I wanted to do so. I feel like the poor house and I have both been in limbo for a good chunk of the past six years.

And now, strangely enough, I’m thinking about hanging on to the place for a while. I’d be hard pressed to find a rental that would compare at the same price point. I really do like the house even if it is too big and too much to maintain. I have a lot going on in my life for the next year and the thought of a move fills me with much dread. And to be brutally honest, I kind of like having thirty miles separating me and my parents right now; I think that maintaining that distance might be essential to my sanity.

So after six years, I’m thinking of actually moving in. On my own terms. With my own stuff on the walls, and new curtains in the somewhat grim bedroom, and maybe even a new refrigerator and some paint.

But when I ponder the yard and the roof and that big, dead tree out back, I waffle a bit.

To be continued, evidently…

Onward to L.A.

Got my flight booked for ALA in Anaheim in June, with some vacation days at the end. The great thing is that by waiting a  few days to book it, the price actually went down. Adding the vacation days brought it down even more. So I’m actually saving the state money by going on vacation. This is a major bonus since I was pretty convinced last week that I wouldn’t even be able to do the extra vacation days.

Oddly enough, this will be my first ever solo trip to L.A. Despite the fact that I lived on the West Coast for thirteen years, I was always either with someone or visiting someone when I went south. So this should be interesting. And the fact that I don’t have to pay to get there makes it even better. My only regret is that I won’t be visiting Clifton’s this trip. And I don’t necessarily mean that I would say no to hanging out with interested parties, should there be any.

And for those of you who are (a) librarians, and (b) get up really early on Sunday mornings, a colleague and I will be doing a presentation for what I assume will be a very sleepy and/or hungover group of metadata catalogers on Sunday the 24th.  Woo hoo!