Bibliomama

My dad used to drive me and my sister and our friends all over the place. My friends were bad enough, but my sister had some who raised even my sanguine father's eyebrows with what they were willing to discuss with him sitting there, from their crummy marks to boy problems to their "red friend" (he tells about that one repeatedly). This morning I drove over to Angus's school with him at seven to pick up five other volleyball players and drive them to another school for a tournament. At the end of the day, I went back to watch them play the final (they won) and then drove them all home. My experience with driving Angus and teammates has been mostly confined to a couple of baseball players or a basketball guy who gets in, sticks in his earbuds, says nothing for the entire drive and grunts in a faintly grateful manner on his way out. So I wasn't sure what to expect. Turns out a bunch of thirteen-year-old boys are not appreciably different from my sister and her fri...

I wrote that post title last night and then stared at it for a while and then went away and whined on Twitter about being brain-dead and spinning my wheels and feeling creatively bereft, and some lovely people commiserated and offered words of wisdom and comfort. So I took a deep breath, did some loin-girding and.... decided screw it, and went out for a beer. But I came back today. While I was staring at my post title yesterday, and then procrastinating by looking at Facebook and checking if my assignment grade had been posted yet and uploading pictures to print and then emailing Kim when I saw a picture of her at my house last Christmas and remembered I hadn't answered her last email, Eve was across the table with paint, construction paper, toothpicks and pumpkins. She had been home sick with a cold for the day, and after I got groceries I came home and asked if she felt well enough to go get pumpkins. She said yes, so we went to the pumpkin patch and she picked two big ones...

How do I do this again? Blog without a specific event and pictures to anchor me? It's been a while. I was feeling a touch surly last night, although mostly still shaky. I'm taking a basic Computers course in my Library Tech Diploma. Until now I've been able to muddle through all the courses even though I'm not terribly comfortable with computers and they keep changing course platforms on me; but NOW, I'm supposed to be learning about computers ON A COMPUTER. It feels somewhat akin to learning how to race cars by building my own car and then racing it - I worry there could be a catastrophic injury. So I was starting a little late because of all the World Series nuttiness, then school starting, then Matt being in Asia and Eve having the flu, then Blissdom, because I knew the first assignment wasn't due until next week. I was working through the chapter on Windows 7, clicking all the buttons and thinking this was pretty good, useful and simple even - some instr...

I freely admit that I attended Blissdom under somewhat fraudulent circumstances. I did the same thing with BlogHer last summer, because Marilyn said it was legit to just go to hang out with your girlfriends in New York AND she offered to room with me, but I thought that would be my first and last blogging conference. I went to Blissdom because when were Nicole and Hannah ever going to scoot their little butts from Calgary and Halifax, respectively, to Toronto at the same time ever again? When you have a chance to catch lightning in a jar - or awesomeness on a hotel room couch - you take it, right? My preciouses I had thought that my biggest takeaway from BlogHer (along with the fact that I kind of hate the term 'takeaway' and yet I'm still using it, WHY?) was that I am a personal blogger and that 'branding' or 'monetizing' my blog just wasn't going to happen. I tried one giveaway when I was sent a product that I did really like, and it w...