Not unemployed...

The big news is that yesterday I accepted a new position here at Princeton. I will be a Digital Imaging Technician at Firestone Library starting May 3rd!

It has been quite a stressful few months since I found out at the end of last year that my position here would be ending at the end of May. I don't envy anyone looking for a job right now. It is practically a full-time job, it's frustrating and scary and makes you question all kinds of things. Although it was interesting to come up with a "List of things to do when/if I'm unemployed", in the long run I'm happy to not have to go there.

Here's to new beginnings!

Easter Adventure: Canoeing

After Grounds for Sculpture and having lunch, Mac and I headed out for a canoeing adventure on Lake Carnegie. Mac and his roommates have a canoe that they leave out by the lake, and they leave the paddles in their apartment, so any of them can take it out whenever. Earlier in the week, Mac and I had joked about how we should have these newspaper hats for canoeing, so I went ahead and made a pair for us to wear. Here we are before heading out on the water:

Mac was in charge of steering and pointing out all of the wildlife.

I just had a good view and had to paddle forward for the most part. From campus, we went up past Alexander Road (whose bridge you can see here), and then back past the boathouse, almost to Harrison Street and then back to the apartments.

We were out on the water for almost 2 hours and got to see a ton of wildlife. Here are some diving birds (cormorants?) and a seagull:

And here are some turtles:

We also saw tons of geese and ducks, and Mac saw deer and a snake, but his eyes are much better than mine. It was a wonderful day to be out on the water. We also saw some other canoers and kayakers and some folks fishing on the banks. Everyone was in a good mood because the weather was truly outstanding.

It was an awesome Adventure Day!

Easter Adventure: Grounds for Sculpture

Sunday was an Adventure Day for Mac and I. First we headed to Grounds For Sculpture, which is a wonderful sculpture garden about 20 minutes outside of Princeton. And it was FREE thanks to Bank of America's Museums on Us program. The day was perfect and we took advantage of the weather and enjoyed the outdoor sculptures and gardens. GFS is known for its peacocks, and we saw no shortage of them. They were all out squawking and trying to impress the peahens with their plumage. It was quite a site.

One of my favorite things to do in a sculpture garden is to imitate or interact with the sculptures. GFS had no lack of opportunities for this! Here is Mac doing his best hobo impersonation:

Here's me being very interested in this girl's writing:

Mac as ballerina (nicely done!):

Me baring my teeth like this little monster:

And Mac looking sophisticated with this lovely gentleman:

It was a perfect way to spend the morning. We wandered the grounds, had a nice mid-morning snack, perused the gift shop and then decided it was time to head out for lunch and the second part of our Adventure Day.

Easter with the Fam!

On Saturday I went down to my parent's house and had a great Easter with the family. I was first to get in around lunchtime, and then John and Jill showed up, and then Dad and I headed into Philly to pick up Aunt Angie at the train station. The boys were very patient and waited for Dad and Angie and I to get back before starting the Easter Egg Hunt! Mom and Dad "hid" 117 eggs in their back yard this year.

It was so fun to watch the boys run around the yard picking up eggs. Emmy preferred the blue ones (as always) and Nathaniel and Sebastian pretty much grabbed what they could. Here's Aunt Angie helping Emerson open his eggs to see what he got. They either had candy or quarters in them.

After the Egg Hunt the kiddos wanted to stay outside because it was a perfectly gorgeous day. We had fun with sidewalk chalk:

And Big Wheels:

And just sitting out in the grass pretending to fly helicopters,

And tell Batman stories:

It was a perfect day to spend with the family.

Weekend in Syracuse

I spent March 20th and 21st in Syracuse, NY. After flying in from Atlanta on Friday night, I unpacked, repacked, slept a little and then left for Syracuse early on Saturday morning. I drove straight up to the SU campus and arrived a little late for a accepted student reception for the School of Information Studies (aka the iSchool). I was accepted to pursue a Certificate of Advanced Study in Digital Libraries and depending on how job things pan out, I might be starting that as a distance program this summer. It was great to meet some of the faculty and I definitely got some of my questions answered about the program. And it was just nice to be back on campus. It was a beautiful day.

I also had a chance to head over to the Orange Grove and see the paver that my parents got to commemorate the 3 SU grads in our family - me, my mom and my sister-in-law:

The true purpose of this trip to upstate NY was much more somber than my reception at Syracuse. Last December my dear friend Jerri lost her brother Ross to diabetes and she and her family organized a beautiful memorial service for him to be held on the first day of Spring, March 20th. Many close friends from college came to support her, along with family and friends from all parts of Ross's life. Ross was an amazing musician and wished to be remembered through his music, which you can hear here. You can also read more about him here. He was a sweet, beautiful and talented person and is sorely missed by many people, as was shown by the over 150 people who attended his memorial. I'm so glad I was able to attend. It's always great to see Jerri and Mark's families. The kids running around and playing the instruments after the service was a great reminder that this next generation will amaze us in ways we can't imagine and that music is a wonderful thing to encourage and pass down to them. Here is Jerri's daughter Zoe at the service:

I roomed at the hotel with Christa and enjoyed catching up with her, as always. After meeting up with everyone Sunday morning for breakfast at the hotel and saying our good byes, Mark, Christi, Tara & Hal and I headed into Syracuse to have lunch and watch SU basketball in the NCAA tournament. We ended up at Empire Brewery in Armory Square. It was fun to watch the game with the townies since all of the students were on spring break. After watching SU win, we headed our separate ways and they all headed back to Boston. It was an easy drive back and I had a chance to stop for some dinner and shopping at an outlet mall in the Poconos.

This weekend was a mix of emotions, from thinking about my unknown future, to mourning the loss of Ross and offering support to friends, to rooting for the home team and cheering them on to victory. Through it all, it was obvious that the group of friends I made in college is a truly outstanding group of people and I'm so happy that I met them and that we are all still in touch over a decade after meeting. Love you all!

VRA Atlanta

From March 17-19 I was in Atlanta, GA to attend the Visual Resources Association Annual Conference. I moderated a session this year called Transition to Learning Spaces, which went really well. I had plenty of chances for networking and socializing and had a little bit of time to get out and explore Atlanta. The weather was pretty crappy while I was in town, but I made the best of a free afternoon and headed over to Coke World with Shana, my former co-worker from Harvard. On the way over we walked through Olympic Park.

Coke World was like Disney meets High Fructose Corn Syrup. After forcing all guests to watch this extremely bizzaro movie we were released into the museum.

One of the first things Shana and I did was get our photo taken with the Coke polar bear. This, too, was creepy. As you can see this polar bear insisted on petting my head like I was one of it's freakishly red-eyed little cubs. We got this photo and then continued on.

The rest of the museum was more about the history of Coke and the pop culture related to it, which was actually quite interesting. We watched some old Coke ads, and ads from around the world for different coke products. One of the most interesting (and sticky) parts of the museum was the tasting room. Here you can actually sample different Coke products from around the world. Inca Kola is actually a banana flavored soda.

It was great to catch up with Shana, and also Allison who I went to school with at Simmons. Allison and I got to watch a little of the NCAA tournament, and sadly witnessed Georgetown losing while eating dinner at the hotel bar. Overall it was a worthwhile trip, although I don't see myself rushing back to Atlanta any time soon.

More crazy weather

This past weekend Princeton got hit pretty hard with amazing amounts of rain and 60-70 mph wind gusts. This resulted in a loss of power at my apartment for about 13 hours, a tree leaning on the house and water in the basement. Mac and I decided to spend the waking hours without power hanging out in his lab. We made some dinner in the microwave (baked potatoes with cheese), played some Bananagrams and got to hang out with some other folks who were also avoiding power outages by drawing Jackalopes on the huge white board and eating some pizza that was delivered to the lab. I think everyone was in a pretty silly mood. Here is a photo of me with an abundance of safety gear, just in case! Headlamp, safety goggles, ear protection and the most awesome, bright orange, super high-heat ove-gloves ever:

Sunday was quite a trip with the rain letting up a little bit, the realization that Daylight Savings Time happened and a plan to meet John and Jill and the kiddos in Brooklyn. I won't go into the details, but driving was a disaster on both ends of the trip with roads closed, etc and I ended up spending about 4 and half hours on the road. But I did get to see the everyone for a little bit...

Here is a view of the tree on the house and bright blue skies! Things are looking up here with bright sun today and a great forecast for the rest of the week.

Shame I'm heading to Atlanta where it's supposed to be chilly and raining...