my running mojo...

has disappeared.

that can't be good.

someone please send it back.

i just want to sleep. read. be.

which is not really me all that often....

and we haven't even completed base phase...whiny? check.

confidence lost? at the moment.

but today? supposed to do 7 miles post work. why is it so hard lately to put the shoes on?

for the friends & family...

ugh. enough work.

that last post took a lot of my evening. why?

because in true jennifer fashion i multitasked my way through a work project, online, on my night off.

caught up with a few folks on facebook.

researched travel links for the work thing.

cooked dinner.

texted mark (he's outta town singin').

not much is super new here.

the library closes in it's current condition a week from today.

april first, we box up all of my department (something i am in charge of, whoo boy! it's going to go very smoothly and quick i predict since i have awesome coworkers...) and moving day is april 9th. (once we box up the kids dept, we of course box up the *rest* of our 20,000 square foot library).

last weekend, 3 co-library-gals and i went to a cabin. martha's folks own it, and we had a restful few days despite dreary march weather. i even got my 12 mile solo run in on saturday morning and had to forgo on the wine friday evening in prep for that. of all nights i was the designated driver girl, and we stayed in ;) the cabin was part of a lodge property near crosslake, mn. which is just a hop, skip and a jump from brainerd, hence babe as our backdrop.

here's the crew. we only talked about libraryland for a small portion of the trip.
from left to right...martha, lisa (yeah, it stinks her eyes are closed :(, me & carol...


we drank some vino.

we sang in a bar. (i apparently sing loud...it's the only way i know how ;)

we met the local legion folk.

we tried to go to a meat raffle but got the night wrong.

we had copious amounts of food.

we found an awesome 2nd hand store.

we soaked in the hottub at midnight. martha ran there barefoot (the building was close, but still! wet frozen muddy ground and she was like a kenyan in a race!)

good times. we hope to repeat it down the line if possible...

so happy spring to you all, as it looks like the times-are-a-changin'...

86 days and counting to the marathon of my life.
~jd

thing 33...travel 2.0

i like to travel.

i know for some of you this might be a completely new tidbit.

and from others, i get a lot of grief.

before i start, part of this Thing mentioned if you know of a good travel blog to tell about it.

Matt Logelin gets 1000s and 1000s of hits a day on his blog. Is it a travel blog? He'd probably say no, but for a computer guy with a newly minted 1 year old daughter (happy birthday Maddy!!!) he has seen SOOO much of the world and is a rock star photographer for fun. And even though his blog started to share news of a pregnant wife to family back in 'the MN' as he calls it, and ended with the heartbreaking loss of her 24 hours after Madeline's birth, it's got me and most of the world hooked.

Matt has posted so many places worth seeing....the one that sticks in my mind the most is Banff, Canada. I want to see Lake Louise....holy awesome.

okay, anyway, back to the post.

i found The Cranky Flier pretty entertaining....very interesting tidbits into the airline industry and varying airlines. i don't fly nearly enough as many others in the world, but this author seems to really know his stuff...

Virtual Tourist was really well done....I loved the ease of layout, the plethora of links and the quick info and pictures right there. I'm also a big fan of 'personal' reviews from real folks who have stayed places, and those that are here looked credible and honest. nicely done...

For those wanting to start a new travel blog of their own, this is clearly the site for such things...easy to navigate, great stories, photos and everything told first hand. of course the fact that there was a 'marathons' section truly drew me in ;) I help co-teach a blog class at work with a colleague, and it would be fun to use this as a 'highlighted' link for those who are curious about various kinds of blogs out in cyberland...

have i mentioned i like wine? besides water, coffee, organic chocolate milk and runner juice (usually powerade zero), wine is the last of the 'jd's favorite beverages' category. i like a nice frosty beer on a hot day or with friends at a pub, but wine is my booze of choice at home on a quiet night or while hosting a dinner for friends...
so this site was the one i had to peruse...http://winesandtimes.com/wnt/index.php

willamette valley, OR and Sonoma County, CA are on my lists of wines places i'd love to travel to. so if either of those opportunities come my way, I have found the helpful site to plan out my tour.

so thing 33? au revoir~

more work..thing 32..let's mash

or mashup i guess. 2 different things? i think so...

so, google maps and mashups are the topic of this post.

wow. this was a blast to play with.

i recently got to visit maui, hawaii for a few weeks.

so i chose this as my test subject just for fun....and WOW. that google earth aspect with the satellite view is *phenomenal*. i am so overwhelmed by what technology can do these days. i'm only 35. i can't even imagine how different things will be in the *next* 35 years...

anyway...

here's what i made. (i hope)...


View Larger Map

there's a lot of zooming in and moving west to see what i made...but it's there. simple, a few highlights.

can i see using this in clases on how to use google. do i see using this kind of thing daily at the reference desk? not so much...at least in first impressions.

but is it kinda cool? heck yes! i'll love playing with this kind of thing for future trips or marathons...it's cool to see where you've been or will go...

a lil melancholy...

well, the ursula's chapter is closed.

after 5 1/2 years of working for a small independent wine bar, i gave notice 2 weeks ago, and tonight was my last shift.

it was really really dead. both school districts in white bear lake started spring break, plus many st patty's day parties are this evening, so it was a quiet night. my fellow runner & friend Kim stopped in with her hubby to drop off some flowers for me...so *so* kind...

it was my choice to resign (though i did say i'd be happy to be on call if they get into a bind). i plan to work for blackbird on saturdays starting in a few weeks. but i am a really loyal employee and i met some awesome folks at ursula's....so i can't help but feel a little sad about leaving a job i've really loved on the whole for the past 5 years. i've learned a ton about wine and good quality food, and for that i'm grateful...

mark left town today. part 2 as to the melancholy-ness.
only gone a few days. but still...

good news? we got new furniture :) it's super comfortable! and of course the zoo agrees as well. (blankets are covering most of the new furniture to try and limit the hair so it's a little hidden...but still comfy! a reclining sofa & loveseat and 2 end tables with new lamps. it's like a *real* room :) maybe i'll post a pic if i take one later this week..it just arrived last night.

also had a great 11 mile run this morning with not as much pain as last week. Did miss Ally & Duana and others who are on vacation around the US. But those folks who did make the run enjoyed a fabulous early spring day where temps were near 30 at the start and near 43 at the end 2 hours later.

work is early tomorrow morning for me. I traded Saturdays for Sundays for the next 3 months, so that's the trade off to training every Saturday morning....so off to bed now...
ps a few things have been taken off the site. links and the 8 ball. too cluttered :(

this week...

coming to a sky near you...


(a stunning but cold eclipse from about a year ago)



(up in the arrowhead region)

full moon. one of the most beautiful things mother nature gives us.

it also makes little children and infants cry more.

it's true.

i noticed it in the 3 hours in a row i was at the kids desk today at work.

still? it's part of the job, and giving a sympathetic eye towards the parents, or trying to make the kids feel better with a hi or a bye-bye wave if they're leaving, or anything small to try and make it better makes *me* feel like maybe i'm helping...a trick i learned recently was to use bubbles or maracas near the crying child to distract them. gotta go to target to get those ;)

on the running thing...the foot for this runner girl is apparently better. thank. goodness.

an interesting thought popped into my head today.

i've heard this vaguely in other running stories....does running define who you are? does it define your life more than anything else?

it's funny. if folks ask what i do, it's a 50-50 shot of the context and whether 'librarian' or 'i run' comes out first.

if i couldn't run, what would i do? (cry, be depressed, whine a lot more)

if i couldn't run, i realize life wouldn't end. but boy would it be hard. it would be like a part of me wasn't breathing right.

injuries happen. this i know. (do you hear the knocking on wood here? loudly..)

but will anything keep me from my dreams if at all possible?

no.

so does running define me or my life? yes.

but only a part of it.

another interesting query....is running a religion? or an addiction?

you make the call that's right for you....(of course this is a shout out to my runnin' faithful)

peace ~ jd

thing 31...more twitter

seriously?

*more* tweeting?

okay, here's what i learned...

i changed my screen name.

mother lake girl. i love lake superior. (among many other parts of wilderness & lakes...)

all of that other jazz?

'gift wrap your tweet'????

dudes, i have way more important things to do...like help move and relocate a library and order materials for our collection.

i like twitter for what it was to me, all of a month ago.

quick short updates, a way to see what others are up to for all of 5 or 10 min per day.

so not to be a wet blanket on 30 & 31, but there's not much here that i feel that i want to expand on...

thing 30...rss +

truthfully?

rss is just not my thing. i'm sorry.

after the first 23 things, i just didn't stick with this.

maybe it's the time i feel it takes to set up what i want it to feed me.

or maybe it's that i have my set ways in how i like to search the web, find news, etc and i'm good with that.

if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

i *did* use delicious when i was in europe last year in order to find all of my news in one spot, and for some reason i will use it 5000 miles from home, but not *at* home. weird? yes.

all done with this.

never say never, but for now? no rss for this girl.

let the countdowns be shown...

here's what's on tap....(hmmmmm, besides beer...this week's tap beer at work is Moose Drool Ale)

*27 days until the DC Cherry Blossom 10 mile race

*47 days until the Get in Gear 10K, here in Mpls

*60 days until the Fargo Marathon (runnin' the half)

*75 days until the Stillwater Marathon (runnin' the half)

*102 days until Grandma's Marathon. the whole. big. long. race.

my plan? no injuries, taking care of myself, and not being stupid. (ie streaking across a yellow light to try and make it and tweaking a knee or a foot in the process. dumb dumb dumb...)

ipod love

guess what came over the weekend?

it's awesome.

and as soon as i figure out what i did to screw my foot up, i'll run around with it like a little girl...and look forward to wearing it out just like i did the last one. it took 4 years to do that, so maybe this one will go 5 or 6 :)

thanks, Dad!

thing 29...google tools

back to work. i kind of sloughed off on this Thing as it looks really long and tedious..

but here's the gist. or what i am aiming for as the gist.

1) google alerts.
i've never used this. how could it be useful for a library setting? i guess it depends on your audience or area of expertise. as a kids librarian, if it was the months between may and august, i might try things like 'summer reading' as key words to be alerted to in news stories, blogs, etc.
for this experiment i chose to put in 'running'. very very broad but we'll see what i think of how it works as those alerts start comin' in...

2) google news.
i messed around with this and read through the varying ways to tailor what kinds of news i could see, but quite honestly, i like the news sources i read and the sites i frequent just fine. i'm leaving this one be...

3)google search wiki
really interesting! i had no idea you could move things around like that in your own google search results wiki and keep track of what you find that way. the searching for a specific URL to add to such results is also pretty cool. say you want to go camping all over MN this summer. i can see looking at varying camp websites, state parks, national forest sites, etc and keeping them all in one spot so that you don't have to go re-search them all again when the time comes to actually reserve a weekend. pretty slick. i think i'd probably use it, but as with many other aspects of this assigment of Things, i'm a little overwhelmed at what i've seen so far just this evenin' and need to kind of file this idea away before i jump in and use it.

4)web history
hmmmm. yet another interesting tidbit. i did enable or turn on my history button. i hadn't prior. esp related to work, when i get patrons who want common sites like 'what do you recommend for a 4th grade boy?' it's nice to access other library sites and booklists to help patrons. i can see using this at work if i had a dedicated station.
i think that privacy is more an issue related to web things more often than not. have most of us become accustomed to most parts of the web being private or safe? yes. but you always have to watch your back and take precautions, just like so many other things in life. i'm interested in sharing browsing history with certain topics, but not everything.

5)gmail.
i've been a fan and user of this part of google for 3 years now at least. i know pretty much most of this part of google inside and out, including the new video/voice possibilities. i kind of like the proverbial curtain of email and chat, so being on camera or hearing a voice i can see being very cool for families or friends far away often, but not an every day thing for me. i LOVE gmail. it's handy. it's easy. it's intuitive. and it's what i use.

6) calendar
use it. love it. so far i only use it for personal stuff. but work stuff is a close second as something i want to use it more for. there's this meeting there, that meeting next week, program dates, etc to put in place, and i think it could be time to branch it out to work life.
it's nice to have a group of people be able to access the same calendar to keep everyone on the same page (pardon the pun). but it's true.

phew. this one took some delving into. but on a sunday night? it's time for some bad but addicting reality tv and dinner. have a great week ya'll....

what's going on in jd-land...

*i gave notice to a job i've had for 5+ years yesterday. topsy turvy set of circumstances, but in the long run, i had a new boss who, after just 3 months of my working there, just didn't want to lose me. so after giving notice to *that* job last week, it turns out i'm leaving the longer term one instead. i'll miss my customers and my chef, but honestly, it's time to move on if i have the chance. scary? yes. the wine bar has become a 2nd home...but life throws curve balls on top of new adventures and so there it is...

*my new iPod isn't here yet. anxiously awaiting....it's going to feel so nice that it won't be HEAVY to run with anymore!

*week one of marathon training is complete. miles run? 15. over 3 diff days.
i should have done some speedwork last night, but i bagged that for a quick 3 miler and a very impromptu dinner with friends...(which after a not so great day was hugely needed and enjoyed!) so this girl will buck up and follow protocol next week fo' sure...

*speaking of running, i did a really ballsy thing last week. i put my name in the new york city marathon lottery. dad called to say that his TV truck is going to the marathon yet again, and if i wanted to come to the marathon, i should. so i thought 'what the heck...my chances are pretty slim of actually making it in, and if i DO? well, that's a big huge hairy deal and you only live once...race day is november 1st, 2009. i won't find out until mid june (maybe even *after* i run my first marathon) if i get in...but i plan to go none-the-less and volunteer if i can! it's a MASSIVE race. 45,000. big name runners. 100,000 people try to get in...so there's my odds..i'm hoping my coach will join me since there's a free hotel room and she's been a major inspiration for me, but we'll see if that plan comes to fruition...

*the big library move starts in less than one month. holy yikes. however, the weightlifting in moving boxes, lifting, etc, should only HELP marathon training, right?

so there's the report. life keeps on pluggin' along as the season of spring is finally upon us...