Randoms

My (former) workplace and (still) home branch is celebrating its 75th birthday on Saturday. You may want to check out the historical tidbits I've been posting here. Or not. Whatever.

I'll be over here in the corner frantically preparing my lecture for tomorrow morning. Ack. I feel like the little rabbit on a metal stick being chased by a pack of greyhounds these days. Teaching is actually amazing. A lot of people used to ask me (when? I don't even remember anymore. High school? Undergrad, maybe?) if I wanted to teach, and I would say, "heck, no" (OK, maybe not exactly that) but now... I really love it. I'm not saying I want to set up shop in the ivory tower, I'm still firmly committed to working with the public, and I would miss the variety of my day job, and the outreach.... but it is pretty fun.

Speaking of outreach, I spent my day at a local public school that ranks quite low (think, near the very bottom) on the school rankings here in Ottawa last year. I visited every class (Junior Kindergarten to Grade 6, including a parent and child literacy group and a class of students with special needs), gave a mini-storytime and/or booktalk, and introduced them to library services and programs. A lot of it was, hey, I work at the library where the pool is! and My name is Alexandra, and next time you visit, say hi!, and Did you know you can borrow as many books as you want for free? and my favourite stories of the day were The Spider and the Fly, Three Little Ghosties, Wolves, and the You Wouldn't Want to ... series (eg. Be a Roman Gladiator!, Egyptian Mummy!, etc). It was fun. For Ghosties, I explained nonsense words and had the kids try to repeat back all the ones they remembered at the end of the story. They loved it. Plus, there's always just something neat about visiting the kids in their schools: I'm pretty visual, so even on a trivial level, I get to see them in their natural environments, which helps me better understand them, their situations, their life, the way they cope with things going on...


A part de ça, I did have a lovely Thanksgiving, and got a good rest (mostly because the computer nearest me over the weekend is sort of slow. The person to whom it belongs is reading this... sorry, but it is!) Generally, I try to avoid the "what I did" posts, because really, who cares?

But I did give a talk at McGill about readers' advisory! And hang out with rezlings! And visit some old haunts! And walk on a very, very muddy Mount Royal. And stalk old workplaces (to iron out details for a presentation, and to meet The New Director). And eat stuffing (I hear there was turkey. I hardly noticed. Stuffing and I have a long-time love affair).

Back to salt mines, my pretties. Still working on those blog drafts, too.